The sustained effect of emotional signals on neural processing in 12‐month‐olds

Around the end of the first year of life, infants develop a social referencing ability – using emotional information from others to guide their own behavior. Much research on social referencing has focused on changes in behavior in response to emotional information. The present study was an investigation of the changes in neural responses that underlie social referencing behavior, reflected in event‐related potentials (ERPs). Twenty‐six 12‐month‐olds participated in a single‐session visit in which ERPs were recorded both immediately before and after a behavioral intervention in which infants' caregivers provided positive, negative or neutral information about each of three stimuli (ERP data available for n = 17). After the intervention, infants devoted more neural resources to processing negative versus neutral and positive information, as observed in early and late positive‐going components. Changes in neural responses from the pre‐ to post‐intervention recordings clarify this observation, indicating a sustained response in the negative and positive conditions, and a decrease in the neutral condition, suggesting an attenuation effect in the neutral condition. Further, infants who attended most to the objects in the behavioral intervention showed increased neural responses in the negative condition and decreased responses in the positive condition. Taken together, these findings suggest that infants' neural responses are differentially affected by positive, negative and neutral information. Furthermore, the findings highlight the importance of measuring the change in neural responses to better interpret post‐experience responses.     

Transfer between Picture Books and the Real World by Very Young Children

Picture book reading is a very common form of interaction between parents and very young children. Here we explore to what extent young children transfer novel information between picture books and the real world. We report that 15- and 18-month-olds can extend newly learned labels both from pictures to objects and from objects to pictures. However, the degree to which they do so is affected by iconicity—how much the objects and pictures resemble one another. The children in these studies more often extended the labels between picture and object when realistic photographs and drawings were involved than less realistic cartoons. These results show that higher levels of perceptual similarity between symbol and referent make the referential relation more transparent, thereby helping children transfer information between them. Thus, the educational function of early picture book interactions may best be served with realistic illustrations.     

Toward a Comprehensive Understanding of Officers’ Shooting Decisions: No Simple Answers to This Complex Problem

Police officers make life-or-death shooting decisions in complex situations under extreme time pressure. If officers make a mistake, there are dire consequences—they could kill an innocent or be killed themselves. In contrast to prior work's near-exclusive focus on suspect race, the present study examined features of methodology, officers, suspects, and neighborhoods that may affect officers’ shooting decisions. Empirical exploration of officers’ shooting decisions and mistakes is still in its infancy, and given the seriousness and importance of this phenomenon—and the potential for this research to inform policy decisions—additional research is needed.     

The relativity of time perception produced by facial emotion stimuli

Insults elicit intense emotion. This study tests the hypothesis that one's social image, which is especially salient in honour cultures, influences the way in which one reacts to an insult. Seventy-seven honour-oriented and 72 non-honour oriented participants answered questions about a recent insult episode. Participants experienced both anger and shame in reaction to the insult. However, these emotions resulted in different behaviours. Anger led to verbal attack (i.e., criticising, insulting in return) among all participants. This relationship was explained by participants’ motivation to punish the wrongdoer. Shame, on the other hand, was moderated by honour. Shame led to verbal disapproval of the wrongdoers behaviour, but only among the honour-oriented participants. This relationship was explained by these participants’ motivation to protect their social image. By contrast, shame led to withdrawal among non-honour-oriented participants.     

Coping with the 10th anniversary of 9/11: Muslim Americans' sadness,fear, and anger

The events of 9/11 marked an increase in prejudice, discrimination, and other forms of unfair treatment toward Muslim Americans. We present a study that examined the emotions of Muslim Americans in the days preceding the ten-year 9/11 anniversary. We measured the antecedents (concerns) and consequences (coping) of sadness, fear, and anger. The 9/11 anniversary precipitated intense concerns with loss and discrimination, and intense feelings of sadness, fear, and anger. We measured three coping responses: rumination, avoidance of public places, and religious coping. Participants engaged in all three coping responses, with seeking solace in one's religion being the most frequent response. Moreover, emotions mediated the relationship between concerns and coping responses. Sadness accounted for the association between concern with loss and rumination. Fear explained the association between concern with discrimination and avoidance. Anger accounted for the association between concern with discrimination and religious coping.     

Cognitive bias and emotion in neuropsychological models of depression

Neuropsychological models of depression were tested by examining encoding and recognition biases elicited by emotional stimuli manifested in regional brain wave activity. Participants were pre-exposed to emotional stimuli. These stimuli were presented again embedded in new stimuli, and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants judged whether they had viewed each stimulus previously. Controls showed an enhanced P300 during encoding and reduced P300 during recognition of positive stimuli, indicating a response bias for positive information. In contrast, participants diagnosed with major depression showed no valence difference during encoding of new stimuli or recognition of old stimuli. These results suggest positive cognitive biases in controls and a lack of such a biases in depressed individuals. Additionally, regression analyses demonstrated that a substantial proportion of P300 variance was related to clinical scale     

REMEDIATION OF ALEXIA: A CASE STUDY

This article describes the results of a remedial program provided to a subject who had incurred aphasia and alexia as a result of a series of strokes. The subject was pretested individually on a battery of tests and provided a specific type of remediation by a trained tutor. Posttests were administered to determine the effects of the instructional methods. Substantial gains were noted in language and auditory comprehension with a lesser gain in word recognition. Scores on other tests remained unchanged and the subject continued to make errors indicative of alexia. The results suggest that further research of the remedial methods over a longer period of time is needed.     

Serial position-dependent false memory effects*

ABSTRACT

Evidence for false recognition within seconds of encoding suggests that semantic-associative influences are not restricted to long-term memory, consistent with unitary memory accounts but contrary to dual store models. The present study sought further relevant evidence using a modified free recall converging associates task where participants studied 12-item lists composed of 3 semantically distinct quartets (sublists) related to a separate, non-presented theme word (i.e., words 1–4/theme1, 5–8/theme2, and 9–12/theme3). This list construction permits assessment of false recall errors from each sublist, and, particularly, the primacy and recency sublists that have been linked to long- and short-term memory stores. Experiment 1 tested immediate free recall for items. Associative false memories were evident from all sublists, however, significantly less so from the recent sublist, which also showed the highest levels of veridical memory. By inserting a brief (3?s) distractor prior to recall, Experiment 2 selectively reduced veridical memory and increased false memory for the recent sublist while leaving the primacy sublist unaffected. These recall results converge with prior evidence indicating the immediacy of false recognition, and can be understood within a unitary framework where the differential availability of verbatim features and gist-based cues affect memory for primacy and recency sublists.     

The Effects of Object Weight on the Kinematics of Prehension

The purpose of these experiments was to determine the effects of object weight and condition of weight presentation on the kinematics of human prehension. Subjects performed reaching and grasping movements to metal dowels whose visible characteristics were similar but whose weight varied (20, 55, 150, 410 g). Movements were performed under two conditions of weight presentation, random (weight unknown) and blocked (weight known). Three-dimensional movements of the thumb, index finger, and wrist were recorded, using a WATSMART system to obtain information regarding the grasp and transport components. The results of the first experiment indicated that object weight and condition of presentation affected the temporal and kinematic measures for both the grasp and transport components. In conjunction with the results of a second experiment, in which time in contact with the dowel was measured, it was shown that the free-motion phase of prehension (i.e., up to object contact) was invariant over the different conditions, however. The changes were observed in the finger-object interaction phase (when subjects applied forces after contact with the dowel), prior to lift-off. These results were interpreted as indicating (a) object weight does not influence the planning and execution of the free-motion phase of prehension and (b) there are at least two motor control phases involved in prehension, one for making contact with the object and the other for finger-object interaction. The changing contributions of visual, kinesthetic, and haptic information during these two phases is discussed.