An inner face advantage in children's recognition of familiar peers

Children’s recognition of familiar own-age peers was investigated. Chinese children (4-, 8-, and 14-year-olds) were asked to identify their classmates from photographs showing the entire face, the internal facial features only, the external facial features only, or the eyes, nose, or mouth only. Participants from all age groups were familiar with the faces used as stimuli for 1 academic year. The results showed that children from all age groups demonstrated an advantage for recognition of the internal facial features relative to their recognition of the external facial features. Thus, previous observations of a shift in reliance from external to internal facial features can be attributed to experience with faces rather than to age-related changes in face processing.     

Hippocampal low-frequency stimulation and chronic mild stress similarly disrupt fear extinction memory in rats

Disruptions of fear extinction-related potentiation of synaptic efficacy in the connection between the hippocampus (HPC) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) have been shown to impair the recall of extinction memory. This study was undertaken to examine if chronic mild stress (CMS), which is known to alter induction of HPC–mPFC long-term potentiation, would also interfere with both extinction-related HPC–mPFC potentiation and extinction memory. Following fear conditioning (5 tone-shock pairings), rats were submitted to fear extinction (20 tone-alone presentations), which produced an increase in the amplitude of HPC–mPFC field potentials. HPC low-frequency stimulation (LFS), applied immediately after training, suppressed these changes and induced fear return during the retention test (5 tone-alone presentations). CMS, delivered before fear conditioning, did not interfere with fear extinction but blocked the development of extinction-related potentiation in the HPC–mPFC pathway and impaired the recall of extinction. These findings suggest that HPC LFS may provoke metaplastic changes in HPC outputs that may mimic alterations associated with a history of chronic stress.     

The Cerebellum in Frontotemporal Dementia: a Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Studies

Neuropsychology Review - Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a neurodegenerative brain disorder primarily affecting the frontal and/or temporal lobes. Three main subtypes have been recognized:...     

External details revisited – A new taxonomy for coding ‘non-episodic’ content during autobiographical memory retrieval

Autobiographical memory (ABM) is typically held to comprise episodic and semantic elements, with the vast majority of studies to date focusing on profiles of episodic details in health and disease. In this context, ‘non-episodic’ elements are often considered to reflect semantic processing or are discounted from analyses entirely. Mounting evidence suggests that rather than reflecting one unitary entity, semantic autobiographical information may contain discrete subcomponents, which vary in their relative degree of semantic or episodic content. This study aimed to (1) review the existing literature to formally characterize the variability in analysis of ‘non-episodic’ content (i.e., external details) on the Autobiographical Interview and (2) use these findings to create a theoretically grounded framework for coding external details. Our review exposed discrepancies in the reporting and interpretation of external details across studies, reinforcing the need for a new, consistent approach. We validated our new external details scoring protocol (the ‘NExt’ taxonomy) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (n = 18) and semantic dementia (n = 13), and 20 healthy older Control participants and compared profiles of the NExt subcategories across groups and time periods. Our results revealed increased sensitivity of the NExt taxonomy in discriminating between ABM profiles of patient groups, when compared to traditionally used internal and external detail metrics. Further, remote and recent autobiographical memories displayed distinct compositions of the NExt detail types. This study is the first to provide a fine-grained and comprehensive taxonomy to parse external details into intuitive subcategories and to validate this protocol in neurodegenerative disorders.     

Growth and Decline of Evangelicals,Fundamentalists, Pentecostals,and Charismatics in Switzerland 1970–2013

This article describes and explains patterns of growth and decline undergone by evangelical, fundamentalist, and Pentecostal/Charismatic (EFPC) denominations in Switzerland from 1970 to 2013. We combine data from different censuses, membership registers of denominations, and a National Congregation Study (NCS) to establish and explain patterns of growth and decline. Our main results are that (1) the overall EFPC milieu has grown since the 1970s; (2) the growth is predominantly caused by a rather strong increase in membership of Pentecostal/Charismatic denominations. In contrast, evangelical denominations are overall rather stable, while fundamentalists seem to be in decline; (3) EFPC growth is not related to deprivation orientation, strictness, or socialization efforts, but to recruitment focus and spontaneity of ritual. We discuss these findings in the light of different theories.     

Applying the attractor field model to social cognition: Perceptual discrimination is facilitated, but memory is impaired for faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions

A new model of mental representation is applied to social cognition: the attractor field model. Using the model, the authors predicted and found a perceptual advantage but a memory disadvantage for faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions. In Experiment 1, participants completed a same/different perceptual discrimination task involving morphed pairs of angry-to-happy Black and White faces. Pairs of faces displaying evaluatively incongruent expressions (i.e., happy Black, angry White) were more likely to be labeled as similar and were less likely to be accurately discriminated from one another than faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions (i.e., angry Black, happy White). Experiment 2 replicated this finding and showed that objective discriminability of stimuli moderated the impact of attractor field effects on perceptual discrimination accuracy. In Experiment 3, participants completed a recognition task for angry and happy Black and White faces. Consistent with the attractor field model, memory accuracy was better for faces displaying evaluatively incongruent expressions. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Origins of adolescents' ideal self: an intergenerational perspective

The present longitudinal study traced the ideal self of 120 adolescents to the ideals that parents hold for themselves and for their children. Ideals were assessed using Q sorts for personality attributes and life goals. After permutation analysis was used to control for random similarity, moderate parent-child ideal-self similarity was evident. Three intermediate transmission steps accounted for this intergenerational similarity: (a) transfer of parents' ideal self to ideals for their children, (b) children's perception, and (c) acceptance of these parental ideals. The last 2 processes related to parenting practices, with parental warmth augmenting parent-child concordance and restrictiveness reducing it. Compared with boys' ideal self, that of girls was more similar to the ideals that parents hold for their children and for themselves. Analyses of patterns over time suggested a growth of ideal-self stability across adolescence.     

Contributions of the dorsal hippocampus and the dorsal subiculum to processing of idiothetic information and spatial memory

It is well established that the dorsal hippocampal formation is crucial for spatial memory in rats. However, little is known about the distinct functions of the dorsal hippocampus and the dorsal subiculum. To examine the role of the dorsal hippocampus and the dorsal subiculum, Long-Evans rats with excitotoxic lesions (NMDA) of the dorsal hippocampus (DH), the dorsal subiculum (DS), or both (DHDS), and controls were trained on a nonmatching-to-place task. Then, to identify the strategy used by each group, they were tested on the same task in the dark with the T-maze being rotated between the sample and the test runs. In the light, rats with combined lesions were impaired. In the dark, groups DH, DS, and controls performed near chance level except in trials without rotation, suggesting the use of a sense of direction. The same rats were trained on a radial-arm maze task. In the light, where proximal visual cues were accessible, combined lesions affected performance whereas in the dark, it was impaired by all lesions. This experiment demonstrated that the dorsal subiculum and the dorsal hippocampus play a crucial role in processing idiothetic information and/or in maintenance of this information in memory.     

Metaphor explanation attenuates the right-hand preference for depictive co-speech gestures that imitate actions

Differential activation levels of the two hemispheres due to hemispheric specialization for various linguistic processes might determine hand choice for co-speech gestures. To test this hypothesis, we compared hand choices for gesturing in 20 healthy right-handed participants during explanation of metaphorical vs. non-metaphorical meanings, on the assumption that metaphor explanation enhances the right hemisphere contribution to speech production. Hand choices were analyzed separately for: depictive gestures that imitate action ("character viewpoint gestures," [McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind. What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.]), depictive gestures that express motion, relative locations, and shape ("observer viewpoint gestures"), and "abstract deictic gestures." It was found that the right-hand over left-hand preference was significantly weaker in the metaphor condition than in the non-metaphor conditions for depictive gestures that imitated action. Findings suggest that the activation of the right hemisphere in the metaphor condition reduces the likelihood of left hemisphere generation of gestures that imitate action, thus attenuating the right-hand preference.