The effect of fearful faces on the attentional blink is task dependent

In a set of three rapid serial visual presentation experiments, we investigated the effect of fearful and neutral face stimuli on the report of trailing scene targets. When the emotional expression of the face stimuli had to be indicated, fearful faces induced a stronger attentional blink (AB) than did neutral faces. However, with identical physical stimulation, the enhancement of the AB by fearful faces disappeared when participants had to judge the faces’ gender. If faces did not have to be reported, no AB was observed. Thus, fearful faces exhibited an effect on the AB that crucially depended on the observer’s attentional set. Hence, the AB can be influenced by an emotional T1 when T1 has to be reported, but this influence is modulated by task context. This result indicates a close connection between temporal attention and emotional processing that is modulated by task context.     

Asymmetric Comparison in Choice Processes

Since Tversky's (1977) seminal paper on asymmetric comparisons was published, comparisons of different options are generally believed to be directional. Interestingly, the asymmetry involved in comparisons has not been considered systematically for choices between different options. This paper argues that, in decision situations, one of the options serves as a dominant standard against which the others are evaluated, which results in asymmetric comparisons and, in turn, has important and systematic consequences for the choice process. This paper outlines which conditions should result in asymmetric comparisons. Taking existing models of asymmetric comparisons into account, a process model will be presented using the loss of a previously available choice option as an example.     

Creativity: Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Selection of Creative Ideas

Creative idea selection—the selection of the most creative idea(s) from available ideas—is an important yet understudied topic. Creative idea selection can be performed by the idea generator (i.e., intrapersonal selection) or by another person (i.e., interpersonal selection). In the current research, we examined whether these two types of selection lead to different levels of performance. Participants generated six creative ideas to solve a societal problem. Thereafter, two selection tasks—intrapersonal selection and interpersonal selection—were performed. During intrapersonal selection, the idea generator selected the most creative idea from his/her own ideas; during interpersonal selection, another person made the selection from the same ideas. We found no effect of intrapersonal and interpersonal selection on creative idea selection performance: People selected ideas of identical creativity, irrespective of whether that idea was from themselves or from others. Moreover, we replicated the earlier finding that people perform suboptimally at creative idea selection, failing to select ideas that were more creative than an average idea, for both intrapersonal and interpersonal selection.     

The Hubris of Transcendental Idealism

Jan Pato?ka’s early phenomenology, as presented in The Natural World as a Philosophical Problem, does not merely adopt Husserl’s concept of the lifeworld. The paper demonstrates the originality of Pato?ka’s appropriation of this concept, but also its internal tensions and difficulties. Seeking to elaborate a concept of a phenomenology allowing for a theory of the lifeworld stricto sensu, i.e. of the life of the world, Pato?ka’s book effectively shows that there is no ahistorical, absolute or “natural” starting point for phenomenology. Truth, as approachable through phenomenology, is not (pre)given, but must rather be developed. Elaborating on the concept of transcendental idealism, Pato?ka’s early phenomenology thus suggests a vivid idea of “intermeshing” monads ontologically grounding the world.     

Brain activity for visual judgment of lifted weight

It is well established that humans can recognize high-level aspects from point-light biological motion, such as gender and mood. If the task is to judge the manipulated weight we expected that sensorimotor regions should be recruited in the brain. Moreover, we have recently shown that chronic pain in a limb that is involved in the presented movement disturbs the weight judgment. We therefore hypothesized that some cortical regions usually activated during the processing of pain will also be activated while viewing point-light biological motion with the instruction to judge the manipulated weights. We investigated point-light biological motion of two types of movements performed with different weights in a blocked fMRI experiment in healthy subjects. In line with our a priori hypothesis, we found strong activity in the regions known as the neuromatrix of pain, such as the anterior cingulate (ACC), insula, as well as primary and secondary somatosensory regions. We also found activation in the occipital and temporal regions that are typical for biological motion, as well as regions in the cerebellum and prefrontal cortex. The activation of the somatosensory regions probably serves the judgment of the biological motion stimuli. Activation of the anterior cingulate and the insula might be explained by their role in the integration of behaviorally relevant information. Alternatively, these structures are known to be involved in the processing of nociceptive information and pain. So it seems possible that the interference between judgment of weights and perception of pain in chronic pain patients occurs in the somatosensory areas, anterior cingulate and/or insula. This finding provides important information as to the underlying mechanisms used for the weight judgment task, but also why chronic pain interferes with this task.     

Learning from examples does not prevent order effects in belief revision

A common finding is that information order influences belief revision (e.g., Hogarth & Einhorn, 1992 Hogarth, R. M. and Einhorn, H. J. 1992. Order effects in belief updating: The belief-adjustment model. Cognitive Psychology, 24: 1–55. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We tested personal experience as a possible mitigator. In three experiments participants experienced the probabilistic relationship between pieces of information and object category through a series of trials where they assigned objects (planes) into one of two possible categories (hostile or commercial), given two sequentially presented pieces of probabilistic information (route and ID), and then they had to indicate their belief about the object category before feedback. The results generally confirm the predictions from the Hogarth and Einhorn model. Participants showed a recency effect in their belief revision. Extending previous model evaluations the results indicate that the model predictions also hold for classification decisions, and for pieces of information that vary in their diagnostic values. Personal experience does not appear to prevent order effects in classification decisions based on sequentially presented pieces of information and in belief revision.     

God image and mood in old age: Results from a community-based pilot study in the Netherlands

Religious involvement is frequently found to be associated with less depression in later life. The emotional aspects of religiousness, such as pertaining to the God–object relationship, have not received substantial attention in empirical research among older adults, and especially not in European samples. As part of a pilot study of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, a small sample of older church-members (n?=?60), aged 68–93, filled out a questionnaire, including the Questionnaire God Image on feelings to God and perceptions of God, two of the God Image Scales designed by Lawrence on perceptions of God, the brief positive and negative religious coping scale designed by Pargament, and items on hopelessness, depressive symptoms, and feelings of guilt. Feelings of discontent towards God correlated positively with hopelessness, depressive symptoms, feelings of guilt, and also with depressive symptoms assessed 13 years earlier; these findings pertained to Protestant participants in particular. Most facets of God image, positive, critical, and about punishment reappraisals, were associated with more feelings of guilt. A possible explanation for the most pervasive finding, that feelings of discontent towards God are related to depressive symptoms, is that both, throughout life, remain rooted in insecure attachment styles.     

Action embellishment: an intention bias in the perception of success

Na?ve theories of behavior hold that actions are caused by an agent's intentions, and the subsequent success of an action is measured by the satisfaction of those intentions. However, when an action is not as successful as intended, the expected causal link between intention and action may distort perception of the action itself. Four studies found evidence of an intention bias in perceptions of action. Actors perceived actions to be more successful when given a prior choice (e.g., choose between 2 words to type) and also when they felt greater motivation for the action (e.g., hitting pictures of disliked people). When the intent was to fail (e.g., singing poorly), choice led to worse estimates of performance. A final experiment suggested that intention bias works independent from self-enhancement motives. In observing another actor hit pictures of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, shots were distorted to match the actor's intentions, even when it opposed personal wishes. Together these studies indicate that judgments of action may be automatically distorted and that these inferences arise from the expected consistency between intention and action in agency.