Effect-based control of facial expressions: evidence from action-effect compatibility

Facial expressions such as smiling or frowning are normally followed by, and often aim at, the observation of corresponding facial expressions in social counterparts. Given this contingency between one’s own and other persons’ facial expressions, the production of such facial actions might be the subject of so-called action–effect compatibility effects. In the present Experiment 1, we confirmed this assumption. Participants were required to smile or frown. The generation of these expressions was harder when participants produced predictable feedback from a virtual counterpart that was incompatible with their own facial expression; for example, smiling produced the presentation of a frowning face. The results of Experiment 2 revealed that this effect vanishes with inverted faces as action feedback, which shows that the phenomenon is bound to the instantaneous emotional interpretation of the feedback. These results comply with the assumption that the generation of facial expressions is controlled by an anticipation of these expressions’ effects in the social environment.     

Sociomotor action control

Our actions affect the behavior of other people in predictable ways. In the present article, we describe a theoretical framework for action control in social contexts that we call sociomotor action control. This framework addresses how human agents plan and initiate movements that trigger responses from other people, and we propose that humans represent and control such actions literally in terms of the body movements they consistently evoke from observers. We review evidence for this approach and discuss commonalities and differences to related fields such as joint action, intention understanding, imitation, and interpersonal power. The sociomotor framework highlights a range of open questions pertaining to how representations of other persons’ actions are linked to one’s own motor activity, how specifically they contribute to action initiation, and how they affect the way we perceive the actions of others.     

Gender and gender role differences in student–teachers’ commitment to teaching

Low commitment to teaching amongst teachers is a problem facing the teaching profession in many countries. Gender might be an important factor in explaining what kinds of prospective teachers are attracted to teaching. This empirical study examined the relationship between student–teachers’ gender, gender roles and commitment to teaching within the context of a large, university-based teacher education program in Tanzania. A self-report questionnaire was administered, comprising commitment to teaching items, gender as a demographic variable and items from Bem sex role inventory (BSRI). Cluster analysis on the masculine and feminine scale of the BSRI indicated three clusters: (1) highly androgynous students with high scores on both masculine and feminine scales, (2) medium androgynous students with relatively high scores on both masculine and feminine scales, and (3) low androgynous students with low scores in relation to the other two groups on both masculine and feminine scales of the BSRI. More female than male student–teachers reported to be highly androgynous. Covariance analysis showed that gender roles were significantly related to commitment to teaching and to intention to enter the teaching profession. Highly androgynous student–teachers reported significantly more commitment to teaching and higher intentions to enter the teaching profession compared to medium and low androgynous student–teachers. No significant relationships were found between gender, on the one hand, and commitment to teaching and the intention to enter the teaching profession, on the other hand. Findings are discussed in the context of teacher and teacher education in Tanzania.     

Negative emotionality,attachment quality,and behavior problems in early childhood

Negative emotionality, as well as attachment security and disorganization, are seen as major contributors to social adjustment and maladjustment in childhood. However, relatively little is known about whether infant negative emotionality and attachment quality operate together to affect developing behavior problems. The present study thus aims to contribute to this question. Participants were 64 healthy firstborn children and their primary caregivers. Negative emotionality was assessed at the infant ages of 4, 8, and 12 months using laboratory routines. At 18 months, the Strange Situation procedure was conducted to assess infant attachment security and disorganization, and at 30 months, the child's behavior problems were assessed within a structured clinical interview. Attachment security and attachment disorganization were significantly associated with subsequent behavior problems. There was no significant relation between infant negative emotionality and behavior problems. However, there were indications of a stronger association between attachment disorganization and behavior problems in infants high in negative emotionality. The results underpin the importance of attachment quality as well as negative emotionality in social adjustment. Disorganized attachment precedes poor adjustment, especially in infants high in negative emotionality.     

Action-effect codes in and before the central bottleneck: evidence from the psychological refractory period paradigm

Voluntary motor actions aim at and are thus governed by predictable action effects. Therefore, representations of an action's effects normally must become activated prior to the action itself. In 5 psychological refractory period experiments the authors investigated whether the activation of such effect representations coincides with the response selection stage of information-processing theories. Participants performed 2 choice reaction tasks, separated by variable stimulus onset asynchronies. The authors varied the compatibility between responses and forthcoming sensorial effects (Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 5) or between responses and effect-resembling stimuli (Experiments 4 and 5) in one of the tasks. They observed that compatibility influences from forthcoming (anticipated) response effects were located within the response selection bottleneck, whereas compatibility influences from action-preceding (perceived) effects were due to processes before the bottleneck. These results point to a crucial role of the endogenous activation of action-effect representations for the selection of voluntary motor responses.     

Design efficiency for imbalanced multilevel data

The importance of accurate estimation and of powerful statistical tests is widely recognized but has rarely been acknowledged in practice in the social and behavioral sciences. This is especially true for estimation and testing when one is dealing with multilevel designs, not least because approximating accuracy and power is more complex due to having multiple variances and research units at several levels. The complexity further increases for imbalanced designs, often necessitating simulation studies that perform accuracy and power calculations. However, we show, using such simulation studies, that the distortion of balance can be ignored in most cases, making efficiency studies simpler and the use of existing software valid. An exception is suggested for imbalanced data from a large majority of small groups. Furthermore, an empirical sampling distribution of variance parameters may show substantial skewness and kurtosis, depending on the number of groups and, for the random slope, depending also on the group’s size, adding another caveat to the recommendation to ignore imbalance.     

A Simon effect for stimulus-response duration

A non-spatial variant of the Simon effect for the stimulus-response (S-R) feature of duration is reported. In Experiment 1 subjects were required to press a single response key either briefly or longer in response to the colour of a visual stimulus that varied in its presentation duration. Short keypresses were initiated faster with short than with long stimulus duration whereas the inverse was observed with long keypresses. In Experiment 2 subjects were required to press a left or right key (according to stimulus form) either briefly or longer (according to stimulus colour). The stimuli concurrently varied in their location (left or right) and duration (short or long), which were both task irrelevant. Approximately additive correspondence effects for S-R location and S-R duration were observed. To summarize, the results suggest that the irrelevant stimulus features of location and duration are processed automatically and prime corresponding responses in an independent manner.     

Anticipated action effects affect the selection, initiation, and execution of actions

This study investigated the impact of contingent action effects on response production. In Experiment 1 responses of varying intensity were initiated faster when contingently followed by auditory effects of corresponding rather than of noncorresponding intensity. This response-effect (R-E) compatibility influence was robust with respect to practice, and it was not due to persisting influences of preceding R-E episodes. These results support the conclusion that R-E compatibility reflects the impact of anticipatory effect representations in response production. Experiment 2 showed that anticipatory effect codes have an impact on early processes of response production (response selection) as well as on processes that immediately precede overt responding (response initiation). Finally, they also influence the way the actions are physically performed (response execution). The results support and specify ideo-motor theories of action control that assume movements to be controlled by anticipations of their sensorial effects.