Human facial discrimination in horses: can they tell us apart?

The human–horse relationship has a long evolutionary history. Horses continue to play a pivotal role in the lives of humans and it is common for humans to think their horses recognize them by face. If a horse can distinguish his/her human companion from other humans, then evolution has supplied the horse with a very adaptive cognitive ability. The current study used operant conditioning trials to examine whether horses could discriminate photographed human faces and transfer this facial recognition ability a novel setting. The results indicated the horses (a) learned to discriminate photographs of the unrelated individuals, fraternal twins, and identical twins and (b) demonstrated transfer of facial recognition by spending more time with their S+ woman in the field test.     

Life events and internalizing problems among Chinese school children: An examination of the cognitive diathesis model

This study examined the cognitive diathesis model for child internalizing problems among 459 Chinese elementary school children in grades four to six. Life events were associated with beliefs about external control and threat perception bias, both of which were related to child internalizing problems. The relation of life events to internalizing problems was partially mediated by threat perception bias measured by ambiguous situation task. The main findings indicate that the cognitive diathesis theory for child internalizing problems might be applicable to Chinese children. This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of the internalizing problems of Chinese children, which can lead to use of more effective treatments.     

Emotional Responses to Disfigured Faces: The Influences of Perceived Anonymity,Empathy, and Disgust Sensitivity

Two experiments investigated self-reported emotional reactions to photographs of people with attractive, unattractive, or structurally disfigured faces. In Experiment 1, participants viewing disfigured faces reported raised levels of sorrow and curiosity but not raised levels of negative emotions. In Experiment 2, there was more negative emotion and less positive emotion reported under conditions of relatively high anonymity, compared to low anonymity, specific to disfigured faces, suggesting that self-reports are influenced by social desirability. Trait empathy was associated with sorrow and negative emotions when viewing disfigured faces. Disgust sensitivity was associated with negative emotions and inversely associated with positive emotions.     

Discussions on Child Development: A Consideration of the Biological,Psychological, and Cultural Approaches to the Understanding of Human Development and Behaviour. Volumes I and II Edited by J. M. Tanner and B. Inhelder

Self-esteem and peer relationships are such interconnected phenomena that the self-evaluation may be viewed, in large measure, as the inner experience of the esteem in which one is held by one's peers. The ability to have successful peer relations, which validates one's sense of personal worth, depends on positive self-esteem. This article provides a review of the relevant research literature of the last ten years, but it is of interest that discussions of the relationship between self-esteem and peer relations date back to William James, and include Sullivan, Cooley, and Piaget.

When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state, … Shakespeare Sonnet 29     

Role of HIV serostatus,relationship status of the patient,homophobia, and social desirability of the psychologist on decisions regarding confidentiality

Abstract

What factors influence a psychologist's decision to maintain or break confidentiality of an HIV-positive patient? Dangerousness (serostatus), identifiability (relationship status of patient and third party), homophobia, and impression management were the major factors examined. The sample was composed of 236 psychologists and psychologists in training attending the 1994 American Psychological Association (APA) convention in Los Angeles, California. They were given 16 scenarios depicting four different situations with patients at various HIV risk levels, and measures determining levels of impression management and homophobia. A majority (51% to 92.2%, depending on the scenario) of the respondents chose to maintain confidentiality in all scenarios. Participants were least likely to maintain confidentiality in scenarios describing a high level of dangerousness and identifiability.     

Effects of mental stressors on mitogen induced lymphocyte responses in the laboratory

Abstract

There is considerable evidence from naturalistic studies that psychosocial stressors affect human immune function. To achieve control over factors that could bias naturalistic studies, laboratory stressors developed by cardiovascular researchers were tested to determine if they affected immune function. Thirty volunteer students were exposed to 20 minutes of mental tasks. Psychophysiological indices (heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductance) and subjective responses were monitored prior to, during, and 1-hour after the tasks, blood, samples for immunological analyses were also drawn at these times. Thirteen subjects who were not exposed to the tasks served as controls. Subjects exposed to the tasks showed increased levels of subjective distress and increased psychophysiologic responses (except diastolic blood pressure) during the tasks. Relative to controls, stressed subjects had reduced lymphocyte proliferative responses to classic T cell mitogens both immediately after and 1-hour after the tasks were found in whole blood cultures, although responses of isolated lymphocytes were not significantly affected. There were only marginal differences in whole blood mitogen responses for stressed subjects with low versus high autonomic reactions to the stressor. These results support an emerging view that the immune system is sensitive to brief stressors and that laboratory models may be useful for exploring stress-induced changes in immune function.     

Against Metaphorical Meaning

The commonplace view about metaphorical interpretation is that it can be characterized in traditional semantic and pragmatic terms, thereby assimilating metaphor to other familiar uses of language. We will reject this view, and propose in its place the view that, though metaphors can issue in distinctive cognitive and discourse effects, they do so without issuing in metaphorical meaning and truth, and so, without metaphorical communication. Our inspiration derives from Donald Davidson’s critical arguments against metaphorical meaning and Richard Rorty’s exploration of the diverse uses of language. But unlike these authors we ground our discussion squarely in distinctions about causal mechanisms in cooperative activity developed by H.P. Grice and others.     

Footprints sticking out of the sand. Part 1: Children's perception of naturalistic and embossed symbol stimuli

The shading information in images that depict surfaces of three-dimensional objects cannot be perceived correctly unless the direction of the illuminating light source is known, and, in the absence of this knowledge, adults interpret such images by assuming that light comes from above. In order to investigate if children make use of a similar assumption, we analysed data from 171 children between the ages of 4.6 and 10.8 years using 10 images (shown upright and upside-down) that could be perceived as either convex or concave. Each of five images depicted a naturalistic picture (e.g., a footprint), each of the other five depicted an embossed symbol (e.g., a square). On each of 20 trials, a child was presented with either an upright or upside-down image, and indicated whether the depicted shape appeared convex or concave. Our main findings are that (i) naturalistic stimuli are significantly more likely to be perceived as if light comes from above than symbol stimuli, and (ii) children's propensity to interpret stimuli as if light comes from above increases significantly with age, and at a similar rate for naturalistic and symbol stimuli. These results suggest that, irrespective of any innate competence, children's ability to interpret shading information is gradually refined throughout childhood.