I like you but I don't know why: Objective facial resemblance to significant others influences snap judgments

Does a new person's objective facial resemblance to a significant other influence snap judgments of liking, and if so, does this effect occur even when individuals are not consciously aware of the resemblance? Participants (romantic couples) made trait judgments about 24 novel faces, each shown for 500 ms. Objective facial resemblance was manipulated using morphing techniques such that half of the novel faces resembled participants' partner and half did not. We found that women's evaluations of novel men who resembled their partner (vs. those who did not) were more positive, but men's evaluations of novel women were not appreciably affected by facial resemblance. These results held even when individuals were not consciously aware of the resemblance. Moreover, the effect of facial resemblance on judgments of liking was more pronounced for individuals who were more satisfied in their relationship, suggesting that these results were due to activating the specific partner representation (rather than familiarity). This research shows that objective facial resemblance to a significant other influences snap judgments of liking automatically, effortlessly, and without conscious awareness.     

One first? Acquisition of the cardinal and ordinal uses of numbers in preschoolers

We studied the acquisition of the ordinal meaning of number words and examined its development relative to the acquisition of the cardinal meaning. Three groups of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children were tested in two tasks requiring the use of number words in both cardinal and ordinal contexts. Understanding of the counting principles was also measured by asking the children to assess the correctness of a cartoon character's counting in both contexts. In general, the children performed cardinal tasks significantly better than ordinal ones. Tasks requiring the production of the number for a given quantity or position were solved more accurately than those testing the ability to select a set of n objects or the object in the nth position. Different profiles were obtained for the principles; those principles shared by the two contexts were mastered earlier in the cardinal context. Regarding order (ir)relevance, older children adhered to rigid ways of counting, producing better results in the ordinal context and incorrect rejections in the cardinal trials. Altogether, our data indicate that the acquisitions of cardinal and ordinal meanings of numbers are related, and cardinality precedes the development of ordinality.     

Goal relevance moderates evaluative conditioning effects

An important process by which preferences emerge is evaluative conditioning, defined as a change in the evaluation of a stimulus by pairing it repeatedly and consistently with an affective stimulus. The current research focuses on the role of motivation in this learning process. Specifically, it was investigated whether a conditioning procedure that is relevant to an individual's current goals is more effective than an irrelevant procedure. To this end, beverages were conditioned with either disgusted faces (relevant) or fearful faces (irrelevant). The results showed that thirsty(rather than non-thirsty) participants’ choice and evaluation of beverages were influenced by pairing beverages with disgust but not with fear. As similar results were obtained under optimal and suboptimal presentation of the conditioned stimuli, it is suggested that goals can affect automatic, associative learning, adding to the emerging body of research demonstrating that goals unconsciously affect evaluative processes.     

The ambivalence of challenge stressors: Time pressure associated with both negative and positive well-being

According to the challenge–hindrance model, challenge stressors contain both stressful and challenging aspects, hindrance stressors only stressful aspects. Typically, negative outcomes of challenge stressors refer to well-being (strain), positive outcomes to so-called work outcomes (e.g., productivity, intention to quit). As both effects occur simultaneously, the positive outcomes often emerge only when controlling for the negative effects. We suggest that the negative and the positive effects of challenge stressors may refer to well-being. Specifically, we propose challenge to indicate competence, thus fostering organization-based self-esteem (OBSE), which, in turn, should enhance more general indicators of positive well-being. We explored the effect of time pressure (a prototypical challenge stressor) on a general well-being variable (positive attitude towards life; PAL). We postulated challenge stressors to be associated with PAL positively via OBSE and negatively via strain. These processes should (a) result in a non-significant bivariate association, which should (b) become significant once strain is controlled (suppression), but (c) become insignificant again once OBSE is controlled (mediation). Using structural equation modeling, we could confirm our hypotheses in a cross-sectional study. Results confirm the inherently ambivalent nature of time pressure, containing both positive and negative variance. In line with our theoretical position, results suggest that the negative and the positive outcomes may be conceived in terms of different aspects of well-being, in addition to “work outcomes” that do not refer to well-being. This concept of challenge stressors may help to explain why many people do not reduce challenge stressors even when they could: Feeling good about themselves and their lives may, at least temporarily, outweigh the strain.     

How Does Neurobiological Research Influence Psychoanalytic Treatments?—Clinical Observations and Reflections From a Study on the Interface of Clinical Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience

One of the counterarguments against empirical research in psychoanalysis is that research negatively influences the treatment situation. In this paper, the impact of a neurobiological study on psychoanalytically oriented treatments is presented from three different perspectives: patients' views, a study group of participating psychoanalysts and a clinical case example. Twenty chronically depressed patients, 20 healthy controls and 16 psychoanalysts participated in the project on research. Results show a clear influence of the neurobiological study on the course of treatments. Patients consistently reported that study participation had a positive impact on their treatment experiences. However, study participation was conflictual for the psychoanalysts and forced them to carefully reflect on their unconscious and conscious involvement to establish a psychoanalytic stance independent from empirical research.     

The ability of children to delay gratification in an exchange task

The ability to wait for a reward is a necessary capacity for economic transactions. This study is an age-related investigation of children's ability to delay gratification in an exchange task requiring them to wait for a significant reward. We gave 252 children aged 2-4 a small piece of cookie, then offered them an opportunity to wait for a predetermined delay period before exchanging it for a larger one. In a first experiment, the children had to exchange the initial food item for rewards two, four or eight times larger. Results showed that children aged 3-4 years old sustained longer time lags for larger rewards than for smaller rewards. This effect was not found in 2-year-old subjects. In a second experiment, a reward 40 times larger than the initial piece was offered to determine the maximum waiting time that children could sustain. All age groups increased their performances. Older children were more successful at waiting, but some children as young as 2 years old were able to tolerate delays of up to 16 min. Older children who chose to give up waiting earlier than their known capacity demonstrated anticipation skills which had not been seen in younger children, showing that they had anticipated an increase in the time lag, and that they had considered both time and reward value when making their decision. Despite the age effect, we did not establish any limits for delaying gratification in children. This study may have educational implications for dealing with behavioral misconduct, which is known to be related to impulsivity control in young children.     

Chicken or egg? Untangling the relationship between orthographic processing skill and reading accuracy

There is increasing evidence of a relationship between orthographic processing skill, or the ability to form, store and access word representations, and reading ability. Empirical research to date has not, however, clarified the direction of this relationship. We examined this question in a three-year longitudinal study of children from Grades 1 to 3. We included standard measures of orthographic processing skill, at both the lexical and sublexical level, and word reading accuracy, as well as controls of vocabulary, non-verbal reasoning, and phonological awareness. In all analyses, word reading predicted progress in acquiring orthographic processing skill, regardless of grade level or orthographic processing measure. In contrast, orthographic processing skill did not predict progress in word reading. Our results suggest that, between Grades 1 and 3, children acquire orthographic processing skill through their reading and that this ability, as characterized by the most common tasks used to date, does not play an independent role in supporting reading acquisition.     

The effect of kurtosis on the power of two test statistics in covariance structure analysis

We study the effect of excess kurtosis on the non-centrality parameters of the rescaled and the residual-based test statistics for covariance structure models. The analysis is based on population matrices and parameters, which eliminates the sampling variability inherent in simulation studies. We show that the non-centrality parameters, and consequently the asymptotic power, decrease as kurtosis in the data increases. Examples are provided to compare this decrease for the two test statistics, and to illustrate how substantial it is.     

Dopaminergic and prefrontal contributions to reward-based learning and outcome monitoring during child development and aging

In many instances, children and older adults show similar difficulties in reward-based learning and outcome monitoring. These impairments are most pronounced in situations in which reward is uncertain (e.g., probabilistic reward schedules) and if outcome information is ambiguous (e.g., the relative value of outcomes has to be learned). Furthermore, whereas children show a greater sensitivity to external outcome information, older adults focus less on a rapid differentiation of rewarding outcomes. In this article, we review evidence for the idea that these phenomenologically similar impairments in learning and outcome monitoring in children and older adults can be attributed to deficits in different underlying neurophysiological mechanisms. We propose that in older adults learning impairments are the result of reduced dopaminergic projections to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which lead to less differentiated representations of reward value. In contrast, in children, impairments in learning can be primarily attributed to deficits in executive control, which may be due to a protracted development of the dorsal medial and lateral prefrontal cortices. We think that this framework maps well onto recent neurophysiological models of reward processing and is plausible from a broader developmental perspective.