Introspective duration estimation of reactive and proactive motor responses

The metajudgment of motor responses refers to our ability to evaluate the accuracy of our own actions. Can humans metajudge the duration of their Reaction Times (RTs) to a light-flash and the accuracy of their reproduction of a reference time interval bounded by two light flashes (Anticipatory Response Time, ART)? A series of four distinct experiments shows that RT_Meta and ART_Metajudgments are possible but with accuracies about ×2.4 and ×3 poorer than the corresponding RT and ART ones. In order to reveal the origin of this drop in performance, we ask whether a visual feedback synchronous with subjects’ key-presses could improve performance. We show that overall the presence of a visual feedback does not significantly improve metajudgment accuracy although such a trend is noticeable in ART_Meta. We then compare these performances with the passive perceptual estimation of the played back (Pb) RT and ART time intervals when bounded by two (RT_Pb) and three (ART_Pb) light flashes. We show that RT_Meta and RT_Pb accuracies are close to equal, but that ART_Meta is about ×2 less accurate than ART_Pb which in turn is ×1.5 less accurate than ART. The latter observation fails however to reach statistical significance hence not sustaining proposals that active time estimation is more reliable than passive one. The whole dataset is accounted for by a clock-type model where duration estimation performance is limited by four noise sources (visual, clock-count, motor and proprioceptive + efference copy) plus one proper to ART_Meta task. It is proposed that the latter reflects the impossibility for the time-counting system to use the same time origin more than once.     

The cost of being watched: Stroop interference increases under concomitant eye contact

Current models in social neuroscience advance that eye contact may automatically recruit cognitive resources. Here, we directly tested this hypothesis by evaluating the distracting strength of eye contact on concurrent visual processing in the well-known Stroop’s paradigm. As expected, participants showed stronger Stroop interference under concomitant eye contact as compared to closed eyes. Two control experiments allowed ruling out low-level account of this effect as well as non-specific effect of the presence of open eyes. This suggests that refraining from processing eye contact is actually as difficult as refraining from word reading in the Stroop task. Crucially, the eye contact effect was obtained while gaze was not under the direct focus of attention and the participants were faced with another powerful distracter (the incongruent word) in the task at hand. Thus, there is a cost of being watched even in circumstances where the processing of direct gaze is strongly disfavored. The present results emphasize the crucial status of eye contact in human cognition.     

The effect of group-identification on emotion recognition: The case of cats and basketball players

It has been suggested that the in-group advantage in the recognition of emotional expressions by members of different cultural groups may be due to either encoder differences in expressive style or to decoder biases. The latter may be explained by the fact that individuals who identify with an ethnic or social group exert more effort when trying to decode the emotional expressions of group members. The present study investigates this notion. For this, two target groups were chosen such that in-group and out-group members shared the same cultural knowledge and linguistic background and all participants rated the same expressions to control for encoder differences. Both studies showed that individuals who identified with a social group were better at recognizing expressions by individuals perceived as members of that group.     

Immoral behaviour following brain damage: A review

Despite the apparent sociability of human kind, immoral behaviour is ever present in society. The term ‘immoral behaviour’ represents a complex array of conduct, ranging from insensitivity to topics of conversation through to violent assault and murder. To better understand the neuroscience of immoral behaviour, this review investigates two clinical populations that commonly present with changes in moral behaviour – behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia and acquired brain injuries. Based on evidence from these groups, it is argued that rather than a single underlying cause, immoral behaviour can result from three distinct types of cognitive failure: (1) problems understanding others; (2) difficulties controlling behaviour; or (3) deficits in the capacity to make appropriate emotional contributions. Each of these failures is associated with damage to different brain regions. A more nuanced approach to the neuroscience of immoral behaviour has important implications for our understanding of immoral behaviour in a wide range of clinical groups, as well as human society more broadly.     

Being similar while judging right and wrong: The effects of personal and situational similarity on moral judgements

This study investigated the effects of similarity with the transgressor and the victim on the perceived immorality of the transgression. Participants read two stories describing a person that cheated on their partner and a police officer that mistreated somebody. In the first story we manipulated participants' personal similarity to the transgressor and in the second their personal similarity to the victim. In each story, participants' past situational similarity to the target character was assessed according to their previous experiences of being in the same position. Results show that both personal and past situational similarity to the transgressor determine less severe moral judgements, while personal and past situational similarity with the victim have the opposite effect. We also tested several potential mediators of these effects, derived from competing theoretical accounts of the influence of similarity on perceived responsibility. Empathy emerged as mediating most of the effects of similarity on moral judgements, except those induced by past situational similarity with the victim. The foreseen probability of being in a similar situation mediated only the effects of similarity to the transgressor, and not those of similarity to the victim. Overall, results highlight the complex mechanisms of the influences of similarity on moral judgements.     

What day is today? A social-psychological investigation into the process of time orientation.

Social-psychological research on time has pointed to the social construct of time rather than a mere physical entity that we reflect cognitively. Using two paradigms (day retrieval process and goal priming), the authors show that the time orientation is strongly prone to social influences and argue that a self-regulatory process underlies these findings. The degree of social comparison orientation in Study 1 and the degree of identification with groups for which the landmark is relevant (Study 2) both moderate the functionality of the landmarks within time orientation. Consistent with these findings, Studies 3 and 4 offer evidence that the activation of a personally relevant goal activates the day of goal attainment, a process that again can be moderated by social comparison orientation and identification. Overall, these results suggest a socially regulated time orientation. The internal clock (if any) is at least partly a "social clock."     

The Montreal Affective Voices: A validated set of nonverbal affect bursts for research on auditory affective processing

The Montreal Affective Voices consist of 90 nonverbal affect bursts corresponding to the emotions of anger, disgust, fear, pain, sadness, surprise, happiness, and pleasure (plus a neutral expression), recorded by 10 different actors (5 of them male and 5 female). Ratings of valence, arousal, and intensity for eight emotions were collected for each vocalization from 30 participants. Analyses revealed high recognition accuracies for most of the emotional categories (mean of 68%). They also revealed significant effects of both the actors' and the participants' gender: The highest hit rates (75%) were obtained for female participants rating female vocalizations, and the lowest hit rates (60%) for male participants rating male vocalizations. Interestingly, the mixed situations--that is, male participants rating female vocalizations or female participants rating male vocalizations--yielded similar, intermediate ratings. The Montreal Affective Voices are available for download at vnl.psy.gla.ac.uk/ (Resources section).     

Motives for secondary social sharing of emotions

This study provides new evidence of motives of secondary social sharing of emotions. In a retrospective study, 140 female (Mage = 29.4 yr., SD=12.8) and 116 male (M = 29.5 yr., SD = 13.1) participants were asked to recall a recent situation in which they had talked to a third person about a positive or negative, low or high intensity emotional narrative they had heard. 70% of the respondents reported having secondarily shared the reported event rapidly after the narration with several persons and at several times. Moreover, they not only described the event, the speaker's reaction and their own reactions, but also revealed the identity of their first confidant. Participants reported having spread the emotional narrative more widely in the high negative condition in order to seek emotional support and social comparison.