Group differences in the mutual gaze of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

A comparative developmental framework was used to determine whether mutual gaze is unique to humans and, if not, whether common mechanisms support the development of mutual gaze in chimpanzees and humans. Mother-infant chimpanzees engaged in approximately 17 instances of mutual gaze per hour. Mutual gaze occurred in positive, nonagonistic contexts. Mother-infant chimpanzees at a Japanese center exhibited significantly more mutual gaze than those at a center in the United States. Cradling and motor stimulation varied across groups. Time spent cradling infants was inversely related to mutual gaze. It is suggested that in primates, mutual engagement is supported via an interchangeability of tactile and visual modalities. The importance of mutual gaze is best understood within a perspective that embraces both cross-species and cross-cultural data.     

INTERPERSONAL ATTITUDES AMONG AMERICAN,INDIAN AND JAPANESE STUDENTS1

Attitudes interpersonnelles parmi les étudiants américains, indiens et japonais. — Le différentiateur sémantique et le différenciateur de comportement ont été administrés à des étudiants, 98 américains (Illinois), 112 japonais (Tokyo) et 99 indiens (Mysore). Les concepts-stimuli étaient composites : il s'agissait d'individus diversifiés selon toutes les combinaisons possibles de profession (médecin ou menuisier), de religion (identique ou différente de celle du sujet), de sexe (homme ou femme), et d'âge (jeune, d'âge mûr, vieux). Les éhelles du différentiateur sémantique ont été empruntées à une étude d'Osgood et al. Les échelles du différentiateur de comportement ont été traduites à partir des échelles de comportement qui avaient les saturations les plus élevées dans l'analyse factorielle des composantes comportementales des attitudes, faites par Triandis (1964 b). Indépendamment des jugements formulés sur les stimuli composites, les sujets devaient juger les éléments constituants des stimuli composites. Le principe de congruité d'Osgood et la théorie de la sommation de Fishbein ainsi qu'un certain nombre d'autres principes, ont été utilisés pour découvrir si l'on peut prédire les jugements d'un sujet à l'égard des stimuli composites à partir de ses jugements à l'égard des stimuli simples. Le but de cette étude était d'établir la généralité des résultats américains concernant certains aspects de la perception interpersonnelle. Les résultats montrent que les résultats antérieurs peuvent être grossièrement généralisés, bien que, dans le détail, les résultats ne se recoupent pas d'une culture à l'autre. Ainsi par exemple, bien que les mêmes structures factorielles se retrouvent dans tous les échantillons qu'il s'agisse du différentiateur sémantique ou du différentiateur de comportement, l'analyse détaillée des échelles qui ont des saturations élevées dans les différents facteurs suggére l'existence d'une spécificité culturelle. La théorie de la sommation s'avère supérieure à la théorie de la congruité, pour prédire les jugements des sujets relativement aux stimuli composites à partir des jugements sur les stimuli simples.     

Effects of prior knowledge and response bias upon recognition memory for a story: Implications for children's eyewitness testimony

Abstract: The present study was designed to evaluate the integration hypothesis and the response bias hypothesis for explaining the fragility of children's eyewitness memory, by varying the plausibility of postevent information and the strength of response bias in recognition tests. Preschool children were told a story in which a boy named Ken saw a housebreaker stealing various objects and the postevent information was also incorporated into the story. The first recognition test was administered immediately following the presentation of an interpolated story, and the second recognition test was administered 10 weeks later. The results indicated that high-plausibility objects tended to be recognized as the stolen objects in the second recognition test, and that recognition accuracy was higher for a new-distractor condition than for a misleading-distractor condition. These findings were interpreted as suggesting that the memory representation of the story might be changed through the integration processes and/or rendered inaccessible in terms of the response bias.     

WOMEN'S GROWING ROLE IN CONTEMPORARY JAPAN

This paper discusses the ongoing changes in socio-cultural values regarding women in business and industrial infrastructure accruing from the emerging womenpower in contemporary Japan. Women are becoming an important part of corporate culture. Their role in political life is also increasing. The mass media programmes are frequently targeted to female audiences. In contrast, the fate of men, especially that of husbands, seems to be getting increasingly obscure in contemporary Japanese society. From the perspective of work organizations, a true picture of ongoing changes in socio-cultural values regarding women and in the infrastructure accrued from the emerging womenpower in Japan deserves future research attention.     

Visual alleys as a function of instructions under informative and reduced conditions of viewing

Three experiments were designed to explore parallel and distance alleys as a function of instructions (apparent and objective) under three different distance-cue conditions. The main findings were that (1) the alleys for the apparent instructions were positioned closer to the median plane than those for the objective instructions, (2) in an indoor setting, the parallel and distance alleys were not different under either the apparent or the objective instructions, and (3) in an outdoor setting, the parallel alley lay inside the distance alley under both the apparent and the objective instructions. On the basis of comparison with some of the previous alley studies, it is suggested that exact control of instructions will not produce great discrepancy between the parallel and the distance alleys that were constructed indoors.     

Perception of emergent configurations in humans (Homo sapiens) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

We examined the perceptions of emergent configurations in humans and chimpanzees using a target-localization task. The stimulus display consisted of a target placed among multiple identical distractors. The target and distractors were presented either solely, within congruent contexts in which salient configurations emerge, or within incongruent contexts in which salient configurations do not emerge. We found that congruent contexts had similar facilitative effects on target localization by humans and chimpanzees, whereas similar disruptive effects emerged when the stimuli were presented within incongruent contexts. When display size was manipulated, targets under the congruent-context condition were localized in a parallel manner, but those under the no-context and incongruent-context conditions were localized in a serial manner by both species. These results suggest that both humans and chimpanzees perceive emergent configurations when targets and distractors are presented within certain congruent contexts and that they process such emergent configurations preattentively.     

Psychopathy and looming cognitive style: Moderation by attentional control

Psychopathy has long been associated with lower anxiety. This study examined the relationship between self-reported psychopathy and one of the anxiety-related cognitions, looming cognitive style (LCS; Riskind, Williams, Gessner, Chrosniak, & Cortina, 2000), among students. LCS reflects the tendency to perceive danger as rapidly increasing, as opposed to making a static risk assessment. This study focused on LCS not only because it has a strong association with anxiety, but also because studies employing the Card Playing Task have shown that psychopathy predicts difficulty in detecting changing contingencies. Attentional control was included as a possible moderator of a psychopathy-LCS link. Two questionnaire studies (n = 157 and 312) revealed an inverse relation between psychopathy and LCS in low-attention participants. This suggests that reduced cognitive resources inhibited those with psychopathic tendencies from imagining rapidly developing threats. The results are discussed in terms of the resource requirements of risk cognitions, the multi-dimensional nature of attention, and a defective behavioral inhibition system in (secondary) psychopathy. This study suggests the importance of considering attention when analyzing the psychopathy-anxiety link. Future studies should use multi-dimensional analysis of attentional control and multiple measures of psychopathy.     

Mixed emotions: holistic and analytic perception of facial expressions

In the face literature, it is debated whether the identification of facial expressions requires holistic (i.e., whole face) or analytic (i.e., parts-based) information. In this study, happy and angry composite expressions were created in which the top and bottom face halves formed either an incongruent (e.g., angry top + happy bottom) or congruent composite expression (e.g., happy top + happy bottom). Participants reported the expression in the target top or bottom half of the face. In Experiment 1, the target half in the incongruent condition was identified less accurately and more slowly relative to the baseline isolated expression or neutral face conditions. In contrast, no differences were found between congruent and the baseline conditions. In Experiment 2, the effects of exposure duration were tested by presenting faces for 20, 60, 100 and 120 ms. Interference effects for the incongruent faces appeared at the earliest 20 ms interval and persisted for the 60, 100 and 120 ms intervals. In contrast, no differences were found between the congruent and baseline face conditions at any exposure interval. In Experiment 3, it was found that spatial alignment impaired the recognition of incongruent expressions, but had no effect on congruent expressions. These results are discussed in terms of holistic and analytic processing of facial expressions.     

Implicit transfer of spatial structure in visuomotor sequence learning

Implicit learning and transfer in sequence learning are essential in daily life. Here, we investigated the implicit transfer of visuomotor sequences following a spatial transformation. In the two experiments, participants used trial and error to learn a sequence consisting of several button presses, known as the m × n task (Hikosaka et al., 1995). After this learning session, participants learned another sequence in which the button configuration was spatially transformed in one of the following ways: mirrored, rotated, and random arrangement. Our results showed that even when participants were unaware of the transformation rules, accuracy of transfer session in the mirrored and rotated groups was higher than that in the random group (i.e., implicit transfer occurred). Both those who noticed the transformation rules and those who did not (i.e., explicit and implicit transfer instances, respectively) showed faster performance in the mirrored sequences than in the rotated sequences. Taken together, the present results suggest that people can use their implicit visuomotor knowledge to spatially transform sequences and that implicit transfers are modulated by a transformation cost, similar to that in explicit transfer.