The ‘White Male Effect’ in perceptions of risk of dying from COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic people had to gauge their personal health risks in order to decide which protective behaviors to adopt. We explored whether mortality risk perceptions varied by demographic background. Using data from a nationally representative U.S. survey, we analyzed bi-weekly mortality estimates of 8339 individuals from 1 April 2020 to 21 July 2021. Consistent with a White Male Effect, White men estimated the risk of death to be lower than White women, non-White men, and non-White women. Furthermore, when linking those estimates to the actual risk of dying from COVID-19, as reflected in official fatality rates recorded by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), White men were indeed less likely to die from the coronavirus than would be expected based on their proportion of the populations. In contrast, deaths in non-White men and non-White women were higher than would be expected. Thus, subjective risk perceptions tracked objective mortality risks. Because White men tend to disproportionally hold positions with high decision-making power, although biased risk estimates may be less likely to have negative consequences for themselves, they may be especially detrimental to those for whom such decisions are made.     

When the Tree Falls and No One Hears It: On Being Dropped and Learning to Hold

This case study focuses on a student therapist’s reflections upon a premature termination that occurred in her work with an adolescent male patient. The therapeutic process is traced back to the beginning of treatment, and the article delineates the extent in which the patient’s early interpersonal experiences influenced the development of the therapeutic alliance. The author addresses several themes that evolved throughout the treatment, including the patient’s experience of unpredictability and instability and his inconsistent understanding of time, and the ways in which these experiences ultimately influenced the treatment’s ending. The article describes the therapist’s development as a clinician over the course of the treatment, focusing on the various experiences that helped her consolidate a dynamic understanding of the holding environment.     

The role of empathy in the neural responses to observed human social touch

One of the ways in which individuals convey feelings and thoughts to one another is through touch. Although the neural responses to felt and observed tactile stimuli between an inanimate object and a part of the human body have been vastly explored, the neural responses to observed human interaction involving touch are not well understood. Considering that the observation of social touch involves vicarious sharing of emotions, we hypothesized that levels of empathic traits modulate the neural responses to observed touch and focused on the attenuation in the mu\alpha rhythm (8–13Hz), a neural marker that has been related to sensorimotor resonance. Fifty-four participants observed photos depicting social touch, nonsocial touch, or no touch while their electroencephalography (EEG) activity was recorded. Results showed that interindividual differences in levels of empathic traits modulated both behavioral and electrophysiological responses to human social touch, such that highly empathic participants evaluated human social touch as inducing more pleasant emotions and exhibited greater mu suppression upon observation of human social touch compared to less empathic participants. Specifically, both the behavioral and the electrophysiological responses to observed social touch were predicted by levels of personal distress, a measure of emotional contagion. These findings indicate that the behavioral and electrophysiological responses to observed social touch are modulated by levels of empathy.     

Semantic effects on sensory-motor modality switching

Language processing always involves a combination of sensory (auditory or visual) and motor modalities (vocal or manual). In line with embodied cognition theories, we additionally assume a semantically implied modality (SIM) due to modality references of the underlying concept. Understanding ear-related words (e.g. “noise”), for example, should activate the auditory SIM. In the present study, we investigated the influence of the SIM on sensory-motor modality switching (e.g. switching between the auditory-vocal and visual-manual combination). During modality switching, participants categorised words with regard to their SIM (e.g. ear- versus eye-related words). Overall performance was improved and switch costs were reduced whenever there was concordance between SIMs and sensory-motor modalities (e.g. an auditory presentation of ear-related words). Thus, the present study provides first evidence for semantic effects during sensory-motor modality switching in terms of facilitation effects whenever the SIM was in concordance with sensory-motor modalities.     

On the relationship between negative affective priming and prefrontal cognitive control mechanisms

Although several studies have examined inhibition of affective stimuli, valence-dependent cognitive control effects remain poorly understood. Behavioural and functional imaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging) data were collected from 17 healthy participants to examine neural correlates of the Negative Affective Priming (NAP) task. We created relative ratio scores considering the reaction times of prime trials in order to assess the amount of interference after the presentation of negative and positive distracter words. Behavioural results showed an attenuated NAP effect for negative distracters compared to neutral stimuli. Furthermore, priming negative distracters generated more interference by reacting to the probe target than positive distracters. Neuroimaging data revealed a stronger prefrontal activation during negative NAP trials compared to positive NAP and neutral control trials, which was reflected in a heightened activation of superior and middle frontal gyrus as well as parietal cortex. The findings show the impact of negative distracters on prefrontal response, contributing to the understanding of NAP effects in healthy subjects.     

The attentional ‘zoom‐lens’ in 8‐month‐old infants

The spatial attention mechanisms of orienting and zooming cooperate to properly select visual information from the environment and plan eye movements accordingly. Despite the fact that orienting ability has been extensively studied in infancy, the zooming mechanism – namely, the ability to distribute the attentional resources to a small or large portion of the visual field – has never been tested before. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the attentional zooming abilities of 8‐month‐old infants. An eye‐tracker device was employed to measure the saccadic latencies (SLs) at the onset of a visual target displayed at two eccentricities. The size of the more eccentric target was adjusted in order to counteract the effect of cortical magnification. Before the target display, attentional resources were automatically focused (zoom‐in) or spread out (zoom‐out) by using a small or large cue, respectively. Two different cue–target intervals were also employed to measure the time course of this attentional mechanism. The results showed that infants' SLs varied as a function of the cue size. Moreover, a clear time course emerged, demonstrating that infants can rapidly adjust the attentional focus size during a pre‐saccadic temporal window. These findings could serve as an early marker for neurodevelopmental disorders associated with attentional zooming dysfunction such as autism and dyslexia.     

Self-awareness and self-deception: a Sartrean perspective

In spite of the fact that many find Jean-Paul Sartre’s account of la mauvaise foi puzzling, unclear and troublesome, he remains a recurring figure in the debate about self-deception. Indeed, Sartre’s exposition of self-deception is as puzzling as it is original. The primary task of my paper will be to expose why this is the case and to thereby correct a recurrent misunderstanding of Sartre’s theory of consciousness. In the end, will we see that Sartre offers the following theory: self-deception is to be accounted for by assuming that there are intrinsically self-deceptive epistemic states. The latter are self-deceptive in so far as they claim certainty while nevertheless being accompanied by an inbuilt and incorruptible awareness of being unwarranted. For Sartre, developing this rather peculiar account of self-deception, is, as we will see, not primarily intended as an end in itself. Rather, Sartre thereby hopes to illuminate the nature of self-awareness as (i.) epistemically super-secure, (ii.) pre-reflexive, (iii.) non-positional and “embryonic” knowledge that (iv.) does not necessitate but can still ground epistemically super-secure reflexive knowledge, and (v.) that can replace Freud’s notion of unconscious knowledge. As an account of self-deception, Sartre’s suggestion, however, comes at a high price. Apart from the presuppositions Sartre makes in the theory of consciousness and intentionality, his account is deflationist with regard to local cases of self-deception.     

Should I stay or should I go? Initiation of joint travel in mother–infant dyads of two chimpanzee communities in the wild

It is well established that great apes communicate via intentionally produced, elaborate and flexible gestural means. Yet relatively little is known about the most fundamental steps into this communicative endeavour—communicative exchanges of mother–infant dyads and gestural acquisition; perhaps because the majority of studies concerned captive groups and single communities in the wild only. Here, we report the first systematic, quantitative comparison of communicative interactions of mother–infant dyads in two communities of wild chimpanzees by focusing on a single communicative function: initiation of carries for joint travel. Over 156 days of observation, we recorded 442 actions, 599 cases of intentional gesture production, 51 multi-modal combinations and 80 vocalisations in the Kanyawara community, Kibale National Park, Uganda, and the Taï South community, Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire. Our results showed that (1) mothers and infants differed concerning the signal frequency and modality employed to initiate joint travel, (2) concordance rates of mothers’ gestural production were relatively low within but also between communities, (3) infant communicative development is characterised by a shift from mainly vocal to gestural means, and (4) chimpanzee mothers adjusted their signals to the communicative level of their infants. Since neither genetic channelling nor ontogenetic ritualization explains our results satisfactorily, we propose a revised theory of gestural acquisition, social negotiation, in which gestures are the output of social shaping, shared understanding and mutual construction in real time by both interactants.