It is written all over your face: Socially rejected people display microexpressions that are detectable after training in the Micro Expression Training Tool (METT)

Social rejection is a powerful negative emotional experience, yet rejected people often appear stoic and unmoved. That is, their macroexpressions of emotion are not accurate reflections of their emotional states. Yet, there is reason to believe that rejected people exhibit involuntary microexpressions of negative emotion. We contrasted people's macroexpressions of emotion with their microexpressions subsequent to an acceptance or rejection experience. Observers coded microexpressions after being trained with the Micro Expression Training Tool. Rejected participants expressed more sad and angry microexpressions than did accepted participants. This research demonstrates that socially rejected people display negative microexpressions that are detectable by observers trained in the Micro Expression Training Tool.     

Human and Animal Subjects of Research: The Moral Significance of Respect versus Welfare

Human beings with diminished decision-making capacities are usually thought to require greater protections from the potential harms of research than fully autonomous persons. Animal subjects of research receive lesser protections than any human beings regardless of decision-making capacity. Paradoxically, however, it is precisely animals’ lack of some characteristic human capacities that is commonly invoked to justify using them for human purposes. In other words, for humans lesser capacities correspond to greater protections but for animals the opposite is true. Without explicit justification, it is not clear why or whether this should be the case. Ethics regulations guiding human subject research include principles such as respect for persons—and related duties—that are required as a matter of justice while regulations guiding animal subject research attend only to highly circumscribed considerations of welfare. Further, the regulations guiding research on animals discount any consideration of animal welfare relative to comparable human welfare. This paper explores two of the most promising justifications for these differences␣between the two sets of regulations. The first potential justification points to lesser moral status for animals on the basis of their lesser capacities. The second potential justification relies on a claim about the permissibility of moral partiality as␣found in common morality. While neither potential justification is sufficient to justify the regulatory difference as it stands, there is possible common ground between supporters of some regulatory difference and those rejecting the current difference.     

Hedonic and sensory characteristics of odors conditioned by pairing with tastants in humans

Animals readily acquire positive odor-taste hedonic associations, but evidence for this in humans remains weak and was explored further. Retronasal pairing of odors with sucrose or salty stimuli (Experiment 1) increased the rated sweetness of sucrose-paired odors without altering liking, although changes in odor pleasantness correlated with sucrose liking. Experience of odors with sucrose or quinine by sweet likers (Experiment 2) found increased pleasantness and sweetness for sucrose-paired odors, whereas quinine-paired odors became less liked and more bitter. Odor-sucrose pairings in sweet likers and dislikers (Experiment 3) found increased sweetness in both groups but increased odor liking only in likers. These data suggest that evaluative and sensory learning are dissociable and that evaluative changes are sensitive to individual differences in sweet liking.     

The control of saccade trajectories: direction of curvature depends on prior knowledge of target location and saccade latency

Recent reports have shown that saccades can deviate either toward or away from distractors. However, the specific conditions responsible for the change in initial saccade direction are not known. One possibility, examined here, is that the direction of curvature (toward or away from distractors) reflects preparatory tuning of the oculomotor system when the location of the target and distractor are known in advance. This was investigated by examining saccade trajectories under predictable and unpredictable target conditions. In Experiment 1, the targets and the distractors appeared unpredictably, whereas in Experiment 2 an arrow cue presented at fixation indicated the location of the forthcoming target prior to stimulus onset. Saccades were made to targets on the horizontal, vertical, and principal oblique axis, and distractors appeared simultaneously at an adjacent location (a separation of +/- 45 degrees of visual angle). On average, saccade trajectories curved toward distractors when target locations were unpredictable and curved away from distractors when target locations were known in advance. There was no overall difference in mean saccade latencies between the two experiments. The magnitude of the distractor modulation of saccade trajectory (either toward or away from) was comparable across the different saccade directions (horizontal, vertical, and oblique). These results are interpreted in terms of the time course of competitive interactions operating in the neural structures involved in the suppression of distractors and the selection of a saccade target. A relatively slow mechanism that inhibits movements to distractors produces curvature away from the distractor. This mechanism has more time to operate when target location is predictable, increasing the likelihood that the saccade trajectory will deviate away from the distractor.     

A point contingency for homework submission in the graduate school classroom

We explored the effects of points versus no points on the submission of homework assignments and quiz performance in a graduate-level course. Students were more likely to submit homework assignments during points weeks, but quiz scores were relatively unaffected.     

Comparing two perceived characteristics of autobiographical memory: Memory detail and accessibility

Four samples of participants recalled autobiographical memories. While some evidence emerged from regression analyses suggesting that judgements of the amount of detail contained in each memory and judgements of the ease with which events could be recalled were partially independent, the analyses generally showed that these judgements were similarly predicted by various event characteristics (age, typicality, self-importance, emotional intensity at event occurrence, rehearsal types). Co-occurrence frequency data yielded similar conclusions, showing that while ease ratings and detail ratings occasionally diverged, they were more often consistent with each other. Finally, the data also suggested that events that prompted emotional ambivalence were not judged to be more easily recalled, or to contain more detail, than non-ambivalent events.     

Against One Form of Judgment-Determinism

Taking 'rationalized judgments' to be those formed by inference from other judgments, I argue against 'Extreme Determinism': the thesis that theoretical rationalization just is a kind of predetermination of 'conclusion-judgments' by 'premise-judgments'. The argument rests upon two key lemmas: firstly, that a deliberator - in this case, his/her assent to some proposition - to be predetermined (I call this the 'Openness Requirement'): secondly, that a subject's logical insight into his/her premise-judgments must enter into the explanation of any judgment s/he forms that is rationalized by those judgments. My contention is that, given the Openness Requirement, no version of Extreme Determinsim can allow for the role played by logical insight in the rationalization of judgment. I end by indicating briefly how this result might figure in a wider argument against any form of determinism about rationalized judgment, and by explaining why I have focused specifically upon rebutting a deterministic view of theoretical as opposed to 'practical' rationalization.     

An Analysis of Motor Coordination Components for Various Localization Tasks

Localization abilities of subjects in three perceptual-motor tasks were considered before and after an exposure to a visual distortion. During this distortion the subject observed his hand ballistically point to an invisible but audible target while either receiving or not receiving knowledge of results (KR) concerning pointing accuracy. Also, subjects either received a 1-or a 4-sec rest period between each of 30 exposure ballistic pointing actions. The pre-and postexposure tasks involved the ability of a subject to accurately point to an occluded and stationary auditory target, to point to the straight-ahead position in space, and to indicate when a moving, auditory target was perceived as being in the straight-ahead position. For these tasks, the pre-vs. postexposure localization difference scores are referred to as the negative aftereffect, the proprioceptive shift, and the auditory shift, respectively. Wilkinson’s (1971) two-component additive model (negative aftereffect= proprioceptive shift plus auditory shift) held when KR was given regardless of amount of rest between exposure pointing responses. With a 4-sec rest and no KR, the relationship between coordination components was nonadditive (negative aftereffect greater than proprioceptive shift plus auditory shift).     

Social problem solving in early childhood: Developmental change and the influence of shyness

The purpose of this study was to examine developmental change and the influence of shyness on social problem-solving (SPS). At 24, 36, and 48 months, children (N = 570) were observed while interacting with an unfamiliar peer during an SPS task and at 24 months, maternal report of shyness was collected. Results showed that across the full sample, children displayed low but stable levels of withdrawn SPS and increasing levels of SPS competence over development. In addition, results showed multiple trajectories of withdrawn and competent SPS. Shyness was associated with high-increasing and high-decreasing withdrawn SPS trajectories compared with the low-increasing withdrawn SPS trajectory. Shyness was also associated with the low-increasing compared with the high-increasing SPS competence trajectory. Findings demonstrate the development of SPS competence over early childhood, and the influence of early shyness on this developmental course, with some shy children showing improvement in SPS skills and others continuing to show SPS difficulties over time.