Mate choice and friendship in twins: evidence for genetic similarity

This study examined the genetic and environmental contribution to people's preference for spouses and friends to be similar to themselves. In their responses to 130 personality, attitude, and demographic questions, 174 pairs of monozygotic (MZ) twins resembled each other (r= .53) more than did 148 pairs of dizygotic (DZ) twins (r= .32), 322 pairs of spouses (r= .32), and 563 pairs of best friends (r= .20). It was not previously recognized that spouses and friends are as similar as DZ twins. MZ twins also chose spouses and best friends more similar to their co-twins' friends and spouses than did DZ twins (mean rs = .22 vs. .14). The twins' preference for spouses and friends similar to themselves was about 34% due to the twins' genes, 12% due to the twins' common environment, and 54% due to the twins' unique (nonshared) environment. Similarity to partners was more pronounced on the more heritable items than the less heritable items. It is concluded that people are genetically inclined to choose as social partners those who resemble themselves at a genetic level.     

Transmitting and decoding facial expressions

This article examines the human face as a transmitter of expression signals and the brain as a decoder of these expression signals. If the face has evolved to optimize transmission of such signals, the basic facial expressions should have minimal overlap in their information. If the brain has evolved to optimize categorization of expressions, it should be efficient with the information available from the transmitter for the task. In this article, we characterize the information underlying the recognition of the six basic facial expression signals and evaluate how efficiently each expression is decoded by the underlying brain structures.     

Temporal references in dreams and autobiographical memory

In an attempt to determine whether temporal references identified in dreams follow the same temporal distributions as those documented for autobiographical memories, 28 younger women (18-35 years of age) and 30 older women (60-77 years of age) kept a home dream diary for 1 week and then slept 1 night in the laboratory for rapid eye movement sleep dream collection. The following morning, they identified temporal references in their dreams and produced a sample of autobiographical memories using the semantic cuing method. For both groups, there was a linear decrease in temporal references identified in dreams and autobiographical memories with increased remoteness for the last 30 years. As predicted, for the older group, there were similar cubic trends reflecting a disproportionately higher number of both temporal references identified in dreams and autobiographical memories from adolescence/early adulthood compared with adulthood and childhood. The results support the notion of continuity between waking and dreaming memory processes.     

Applying bubbles to localize features that control pigeons' visual discrimination behavior

The authors trained pigeons to discriminate images of human faces that displayed: (a) a happy or a neutral expression or (b) a man or a woman. After training the pigeons, the authors used a new procedure called Bubbles to pinpoint the features of the faces that were used to make these discriminations. Bubbles revealed that the features used to discriminate happy from neutral faces were different from those used to discriminate male from female faces. Furthermore, the features that pigeons used to make each of these discriminations overlapped those used by human observers in a companion study (F. Gosselin & P.G. Schyns, 2001). These results show that the Bubbles technique can be effectively applied to nonhuman animals to isolate the functional features of complex visual stimuli.     

Sex differences on use of associative and dissociative cognitive strategies among male and female athletes

This study assessed whether men and women differed in using associative and dissociative cognitive strategies during athletic performance. Athletes (31 men, M age = 23.2 yr., SD = 3.9 and 29 women, M age = 22.9 yr., SD = 4.3) who practiced endurance activities (running, swimming, and cycling) were considered high-level performers because they participated in national or international competition. The athletes were interviewed, and Schomer's 1986 method of measurement was used to evaluate and quantify two cognitive strategies. Most specifically, categories of association concerned the way the athlete paid close attention to bodily signals, and categories of dissociation described how the athlete shunned sensory inputs. Analysis of variance and the t test showed that women tend to be more dissociative than men and men more associative than women. The results suggest that pain perception in these sports may be a function of sex.     

fMRI of developmental stuttering: a pilot study

The purpose of this investigation was to explore the feasibility of fMRI in the study of developmental stuttering. Speech contrasts (loud versus silent reading) and language contrasts (reading of semantically meaningful text versus nonsense words) of six developmental stutterers and six nonstutterers were compared using a commercial 1 Tesla MR-Scanner (Siemens Expert). Results indicate that mapping cortical function in persons who stutter is indeed feasible, even with a 1TMR-system. Compared to normals the stutterers seemed to employ different and particularly less differentiated auditory and motor feedback strategies in speech. They apparently rely on auditory processing and on cerebellar contribution as much during silent reading as during reading aloud. Moreover, they showed a greater involvement of the right hemisphere in language processing, activating not only the typical language areas on the left but also and with equal magnitude the right side homologues of these areas. In spite of the promising results, at present several practical problems such as possible movement artifacts and possible masking through scanner noise still hamper a more straightforward use of fMRI in the study of developmental stuttering.     

Does remote work erode trust in organizations? A within-person investigation in the COVID-19 context

The global COVID-19 pandemic led to a widespread increase in remote work arrangements. This trend raised concerns regarding the potential negative ramifications it might have for organizational trust and cooperation. We explored the initial effect of COVID-19 induced remote work on trust in organizations: trust in co-workers, trust in the supervisor and in the organization at large. In a four-wave longitudinal survey of remote workers (N ∼ 1000) in the UK conducted between May 2020 and August 2020 (first COVID wave), we examined the association between the share of remote work (out of total working hours) and different forms of trust at work. The results showed that, for the same individual, increasing the share of working hours spent remotely was associated with more trust in the organization at large (but not in the supervisor and co-workers). Further, during the months where individuals spent more time working remotely, they experienced lower turnover intentions (but not less burnout or more work engagement, productivity, and satisfaction) compared to the months where they spent less time working remotely. The results contribute to the literature on flexible work arrangements, organizational trust, and other work outcomes.     

“Weapons effect” revisited: Motor effects of the reception of aversive stimulation and exposure to pictures of firearms

The effect of presenting images of firearms on the speed of clenching of the fist of human subjects simultaneously receiving an aversive stimulation was studied. It was thought that, whereas the classic interpersonal experimental situation confounds the effects of the stimulus presented and several interpersonal processes, speed of fist clenching in a noninterpersonal setting could constitute a valid measure of the subject's readiness to fight. Twenty-four male and 24 female students (ages > 20 and <36 years) were instructed to press with their right hand a device commanding the projection of slides upon reception of an acoustic signal. Speed of clenching of the hand was recorded in the four conditions generated by the combination of two levels of acoustic signal (aversive and nonaversive) and two modalities of slides (firearms or tools). The results show that the reception of aversive sound accelerates fist clenching. Simultaneous presentation of slides of firearms and reception of aversive noise increases the speed of clenching of the fist. The slides' main effect was not significant. More irritable subjects tend to execute this movement faster than their less irritable counterparts, and more emotionally susceptible subjects tend to be slower than less susceptible ones. Male subjects were faster than females. This pattern of results is discussed in relation to the hypothesis formulated by the authors.     

A matter of time: novel nouns mark object categories when delays are imposed

In previous work, preschool-aged children have revealed a specific expectation that novel count nouns (but not adjectives) will refer to object categories (but not to object properties or to thematic relations). However, in these tasks, children have been permitted to extend a novel word immediately after it has been introduced. The current experiments test the hypothesis that the noun-category bias is sufficiently robust to hold up even when a delay is imposed between a naming episode and the child’s opportunity for extension. To capture this phenomenon experimentally, we imposed delays of 30 s (Experiment 1) and 1 h (Experiment 2). Across both delay conditions, children in a ‘novel noun’ condition revealed a strong inclination to consistently choose other members of the same object category as the (previously named) target. Children in either a ‘novel adjective’ or ‘no word’ condition revealed no taxonomic inclination. These results establish the power of the noun-category bias in situations that more closely approximate some of the very real challenges that children face in mapping and extending novel words.