My Physical Appearance at the Center of Others’ Concerns: What are the Consequences for Women’s Metadehumanization and Emotions?

Despite the frequency of women’s exposure to sexually objectifying behaviors in their daily life (e.g., through comments on their appearance, gazing or touching), no previous work has investigated how such a focus on their physical appearance influences women’s meta-perceptions. Capitalizing on recent studies showing that sexually objectified women are dehumanized by both male and female participants, the present paper investigates women’s metadehumanization (i.e., their perceptions of being viewed as less than fully human) and its emotional consequences following interpersonal sexual objectification. In three studies, we showed that when an interaction partner focuses on their physical appearance, women report higher levels of metadehumanization, as well as increased anger and sadness, than when the partner focuses on non-physical parts. Theoretical and empirical contributions of the present findings are discussed.     

Impaired strategic regulation of contents of conscious awareness in schizophrenia

Conscious awareness comprises two distinct states, autonoetic and noetic awareness. Schizophrenia impairs autonoetic, but not noetic, awareness. We investigated the strategic regulation of relevant and irrelevant contents of conscious awareness in schizophrenia using a directed forgetting paradigm. Twenty-one patients with schizophrenia and 21 normal controls were presented with words and told to learn some of them and forget others. In a subsequent test, they were asked to recognize all the words they had seen previously and give remember, know or guess responses according to whether they recognized words on the basis of autonoetic awareness, noetic awareness, or guessing. Overall, patients showed the same degree of a directed forgetting effect as normal subjects. However, whereas the effect was observed both for remember and know responses in normal subjects, it was observed for know, but not for remember, responses in patients. These results indicate that patients with schizophrenia exhibit an impaired strategic regulation of contents of autonetic awareness for relevant and irrelevant information.     

Centre-embedded structures are a by-product of associative learning and working memory constraints: evidence from baboons (Papio Papio)

Influential theories have claimed that the ability for recursion forms the computational core of human language faculty distinguishing our communication system from that of other animals (Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch, 2002). In the present study, we consider an alternative view on recursion by studying the contribution of associative and working memory processes. After an intensive paired-associate training with visual shapes, we observed that baboons spontaneously ordered their responses in keeping with a recursive, centre-embedded structure. This result suggests that the human ability for recursion might partly if not entirely originate from fundamental processing constraints already present in nonhuman primates and that the critical distinction between animal communication and human language should more likely be found in working memory capacities than in an ability to produce recursive structures per se.     

Self-images and related autobiographical memories in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness, which affects sense of identity. While the ability to have a coherent vision of the self (i.e., self-images) relies partly on its reciprocal relationships with autobiographical memories, little is known about how memories ground "self-images" in schizophrenia. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and 25 controls were asked to give six autobiographical memories related to four self-statements they considered essential for defining their identity. Results showed that patients' self-images were more passive than those of controls. Autobiographical memories underlying self-images were less thematically linked to these self-images in patients. We also found evidence of a weakened sense of self and a deficient organization of autobiographical memories grounding the self in schizophrenia. These abnormalities may account for the poor cohesiveness of the self in schizophrenia.     

Use of change blindness to measure different abilities to detect relevant changes in natural driving scenes

Drivers have to focus their attention on a danger to become aware of it. Change blindness paradigms are therefore relevant to studying the ability to detect danger. However, research has not yet focused on the role of two essential factors in guiding drivers’ attention: driving experience and the specific needs for performing a manoeuvre. Based on a previous analysis of real accident situations, we used a one-shot paradigm with static scenes to test observers’ ability to detect various changes as a function of their driving experience, the manoeuvre envisaged and the environmental context. The results showed that change detection depends greatly on driving experience when planning to cross a junction or to turn left, while it depends more on the environmental setting and task complexity when seeking a direction. The results were not conclusive, however, in explaining how drivers failed to notice that the vehicle ahead of them was turning when they considered an overtaking manoeuvre. We discuss the contributions of our research in relation to the possibilities of using change blindness as a measurement tool in studies on automobile driving.     

The six most essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis: a pluralogue part 1: conceptual and definitional issues in psychiatric diagnosis

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article will take up the first two questions. With the first question, invited commentators express a range of opinion regarding the nature of psychiatric disorders, loosely divided into a realist position that the diagnostic categories represent real diseases that we can accurately name and know with our perceptual abilities, a middle, nominalist position that psychiatric disorders do exist in the real world but that our diagnostic categories are constructs that may or may not accurately represent the disorders out there, and finally a purely constructivist position that the diagnostic categories are simply constructs with no evidence of psychiatric disorders in the real world. The second question again offers a range of opinion as to how we should define a mental or psychiatric disorder, including the possibility that we should not try to formulate a definition. The general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances.     

Dichotic listening performances in the follow-up of Landau and Kleffner syndrome

Abstract

In the follow-up study of 4 children with acquired epileptic aphasia or Landau and Kleffner syndrome, dichotic listening studies evidenced a unilateral ear extinction. In the four cases, the dichotic extinction was contralateral to the temporal cortex involved in the generation of epileptic discharges during the active period of epilepsy. This pattern of dichotic performances persisted several years after the complete recovery from epilepsy and EEG normalization. The long-lasting dichotic extinction revealed a permanent dysfunction in the temporal auditory system that may be a consequence of the presence of an active epileptogenic focus during the critical period of functional differentiation of the temporal cortex.     

Couples in Therapy: Actor-Partner Analyses of the Relationships Between Adult Romantic Attachment and Marital Satisfaction

This study was the first to investigate the relationship between adult romantic attachment and marital satisfaction in a clinical sample of 172 distressed couples seeking therapy. Fifty-six therapy-seeking nondistressed couples were also assessed for comparison. Analyses of variance showed that attachment avoidance was a distinctive characteristic of distressed couples. Actor-partner analyses revealed that attachment avoidance (for men and women) and attachment anxiety (for women only) were predictive of marital dissatisfaction for distressed couples. Gender-stereotype discordant partner effects were also found. Results suggest that attachment orientations (especially avoidance) are relevant predictors of marital dissatisfaction in distressed couples seeking therapy, and that couple therapists can gain important information by assessing partners’ attachment orientations.     

Facial Reactions to Emotional Facial Expressions: Affect or Cognition?

This study investigated whether observers' facial reactions to the emotional facial expressions of others represent an affective or a cognitive response to these emotional expressions. Three hypotheses were contrasted: (1) facial reactions to emotional facial expressions are due to mimicry as part of an affective empathic reaction; (2) facial reactions to emotional facial expressions are a reflection of shared affect due to emotion induction; and (3) facial reactions to emotional facial expressions are determined by cognitive load depending on task difficulty. Two experiments were conducted varying type of task, presentation of stimuli, and task difficulty. The results show that depending on the nature of the rating task, facial reactions to facial expressions may be either affective or cognitive. Specifically, evidence for facial mimicry was only found when individuals made judgements regarding the valence of an emotional facial expression. Other types of judgements regarding facial expressions did not seem to elicit mimicry but may lead to facial responses related to cognitive load.     

Social anxiety biases the evaluation of facial displays: Evidence from single face and multi-facial stimuli

This study examined the contribution of social anxiety to the evaluation of emotional facial stimuli, while controlling for the gender of participants and stimuli. Participants (n=63) completed two tasks: a single face evaluation task in which they had to evaluate angry versus neutral faces and, a facial crowd evaluation task in which they had to evaluate displays with a varying number of neutral and angry faces. In each task, participants had to evaluate the stimuli with respect to (a) the degree of disapproval expressed by the single face/crowd, and (b) the perceived difficulty of interacting with the face/crowd (emotional cost). Consistent with earlier studies, results showed that social anxiety modulated the evaluation of single faces for emotional cost, but not for disapproval ratings. In contrast, the evaluation of facial crowds was modulated by social anxiety on both ratings.