Social exclusion and the deconstructed state: time perception, meaninglessness, lethargy, lack of emotion, and self-awareness

The authors hypothesize that socially excluded individuals enter a defensive state of cognitive deconstruction that avoids meaningful thought, emotion, and self-awareness, and is characterized by lethargy and altered time flow. Social rejection led to an overestimation of time intervals, a focus on the present rather than the future, and a failure to delay gratification (Experiment 1). Rejected participants were more likely to agree that "Life is meaningless" (Experiment 2). Excluded participants wrote fewer words and displayed slower reaction times (Experiments 3 and 4). They chose fewer emotion words in an implicit emotion task (Experiment 5), replicating the lack of emotion on explicit measures (Experiments 1-3 and 6). Excluded participants also tried to escape from self-awareness by facing away from a mirror (Experiment 6).     

Repercussions of transition out of elite sport on body image

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychological repercussions of transition out of elite sport from a bodily point of view. We hypothesized that the passage from a bodily over-investment to a more sedentary state would have an effect on body satisfaction. 16 Transitioning Athletes following the Sydney Olympic Games were compared with 16 Active Athletes two times during the transition period using the Body-Image Questionnaire of Bruchon-Schweitzer. Qualitative data in the form of interviews provided a complement to the quantitative data. Analysis yielded no significant differences 1 1/2 mo. after career termination between the two groups but showed a decrease in body satisfaction between 1 1/2 and 5 mo. after career termination for Transitioning Athletes, with a significant between-group difference at 5 mo. The Transitioning Athletes initially reported weight gain and uncertainty about their real physical capacities but also a continued social recognition that maintained body satisfaction. Over time, however, they were increasingly aware of this bodily deterioration, as ongoing exercise served as a reality test. Added to this were perceived decreases in social value as well as disturbing somatic manifestations. The result was a substantial effect on body satisfaction.     

Direct assessments of the processing time hypothesis for the missing-letter effect

When participants search for a target letter while reading, they make more omissions if the target letter is embedded in frequently used words or in the most frequent meaning of a polysemic word. According to the processing time hypothesis, this occurs because familiar words and meanings are identified faster, leaving less time for letter identification. Contrary to the predictions of the processing time hypothesis, with a rapid serial visual presentation procedure, participants were slower at detecting target letters for more frequent words or the most frequent meaning of a word (Experiments 1 and 2) or at detecting the word itself instead of a target letter (Experiment 3). In Experiments 4 and 5, participants self-initiated the presentation of each word, and the same pattern of results was observed as in Experiments 1 and 3. Positive correlations were also found between omission rate and response latencies.     

"Isn't it fun to get the respect that we're going to deserve?" Narcissism, social rejection, and aggression

Across four studies, narcissists were more angry and aggressive after experiencing a social rejection than were nonnarcissists. In Study 1, narcissism was positively correlated with feelings of anger and negatively correlated with more internalized negative emotions in a self-reported, past episode of social rejection. Study 2 replicated this effect for a concurrent lab manipulation of social rejection. In Study 3, narcissists aggressed more against someone who rejected them (i.e., direct aggression). In Study 4, narcissists were also more aggressive toward an innocent third party after experiencing social rejection (i.e., displaced aggression). Narcissists were not more aggressive after social acceptance. Self-esteem plays little role in predicting aggression in response to rejection. These results suggest that the combination of narcissism and social rejection is a powerful predictor of aggressive behavior.     

Lateralized impairment of the emotional enhancement of verbal memory in patients with amygdala-hippocampus lesion

This study investigated amygdala-hippocampus's functional asymmetry in the emotional modulation of memory for stories. Thirty-nine, right-handed, drug-resistant epilepsy patients who had been submitted to unilateral temporal lobectomy (19 left and 20 right) watched either an arousing or neutral version of a story presented audio-visually. The slide sequence was the same in the neutral and arousing version, the narratives were matched for structure and comprehensibility. The set and order of the 11 slide sequence were identical in both conditions. Free recall and recognition measures were taken 2h after story presentation. Subjects in the TLE group who watched the arousing version recalled more details than the subjects who watched the neutral version (t(37)=3.4,p<.001). The group who watched the arousing version recalled more details of the phase 2 of the story (t(37)=6.76,p<.001). Scores in both conditions did not differ between control subjects and temporal lobectomy patients. When the right and left lesioned groups' results were analyzed separately, it was observed that the two groups did not differ in their recall of the neutral version. The right lesioned group recalled more items of the arousal than the neutral version (Z=-3.55,p<.001). However the left lesioned group did not show the memory enhancement for the emotional version, in this group it was only found an enhanced recall of the more pictorial emotional segment of the narrative (Z=-3.11,p<.001). This illustrates that the right amygdala can influence retention of complex emotional stimuli with verbal and pictorial arousing properties. We concluded that an intact left amygdala-hippocampus is important for enhancement of memory related to emotionally arousing verbal material.     

Building syntactic structures in speaking: a bilingual exploration

In a series of three experiments we investigated syntactic priming using a sentence recall task. Participants read and memorized a target sentence for later recall. After reading a prime sentence and engaging in a distraction task, they were asked to produce the target sentence aloud. Earlier investigations have shown that this task is sensitive to a syntactic priming effect. That is, the syntactic form of the prime sentence sometimes influences the syntactic form of the recalled target. In this paper we report on a variation on this task, using Spanish-English bilingual participants. In the first two experiments we replicated the prepositional phrase priming effect using English target sentences and Spanish prime sentences. In the final experiment we investigated two additional syntactic forms, using Spanish target sentences and English prime sentences. Implications for models of syntax generation and bilingual speech production are discussed.     

Visual perspective taking for avatars in a Simon task

In modern digital applications, users often interact with virtual representations of themselves or others, called avatars. We examined how these avatars and their perspectives influence stimulus–response compatibility in a Simon task. Participants responded to light/dark blue stimuli with left/right key presses in the presence of a task-irrelevant avatar. Changes in stimulus–response compatibility were used to quantify changes in the mental representation of the task and perspective taking toward this avatar. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that perspective taking for an avatar occurred in orthogonal stimulus–response mappings, causing a compatibility effect from the avatar’s point of view. In the following two experiments we introduced a larger variety of angular disparities between the participant and avatar. In Experiment 3, the Simon effect with lateralized stimulus positions remained largely unaffected by the avatar, pointing toward an absence of perspective taking. In Experiment 4, after avatar hand movements were added in order to strengthen the participants’ sense of agency over the avatar, a spatial compatibility effect from the avatar’s perspective was observed again, and hints of the selective use of perspective taking on a trial-by-trial basis were found. Overall, the results indicate that users can incorporate the perspective of an avatar into their mental representation of a situation, even when this perspective is unnecessary to complete a task, but that certain contextual requirements have to be met.     

Listeners' uses ofum anduh in speech comprehension

Despite their frequency in conversational talk, little is known about how ums and uhs affect listeners' on-line processing of spontaneous speech. Two studies of ums and uhs in English and Dutch reveal that hearing an uh has a beneficial effect on listeners' ability to recognize words in upcoming speech, but that hearing an um has neither a beneficial nor a detrimental effect. The results suggest that um and uh are different from one another and support the hypothesis that uh is a signal of short upcoming delay and um is a signal of a long upcoming delay.