Unpacking Cultural Variations in Peak-Experiences: Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Early Childhood Recollection Between Hong Kong and Brazil

In this cross-cultural study, 115 Hong Kong Chinese and 117 Brazilian college students described a childhood peak-experience (occurring before the age of 14) and provided a self-rating on its enduring impact. Among various categories of peak-experiences, both Hong Kong Chinese and Brazilians reported interpersonal joy most frequently; the second most frequently reported category was external achievement for the Hong Kong sample and developmental landmark for the Brazilian sample. Compared with Brazilians’ narratives, those of Hong Kong Chinese were more social-focused, involving greater number of other people, but less specific. These characteristics of autobiographical memory, i.e., memory focus (self vs. social), memory specificity (specific vs. general), and the number of other people involved, significantly mediated the relation between culture and interpersonal joy. The present findings have extended research on peak-experiences to cross-cultural contexts and incorporated measures of autobiographical memory to unpack cultural variations in these two collectivist societies.     

Overall Hedonic Evaluations and Evaluation of Specific Moments from Past Relationships and High School Days

Two studies were conducted in which student participants gave overall hedonic evaluations of past relationships or their high school days, and, additionally, gave similar evaluations of the best, most memorable, worst, initial, and final moments from them. They also evaluated a typical moment and the percentages of good and bad times in these experiences. Such results from some individuals were given to other participants, who were also asked to make overall evaluations. Overall, the overall evaluations of the original participant related weakly rather than strongly to the evaluations of the specific moments. Generally, the other participants’ overall evaluations converged on those of the original recalling participants, but their overall evaluations of the past relationships were more positive than either their own initial evaluations or those of the original, recalling respondents. In sum, overall evaluations of these long, diverse experiences were not well predicted from valuations of the specific moments we investigated. Hedonic evaluations of past experiences may be influenced by appraisals of their success.     

Sequential learning and rule abstraction in Bengalese finches

The Bengalese finch (Lonchura striata var. domestica) is a species of songbird. Males sing courtship songs with complex note-to-note transition rules, while females discriminate these songs when choosing their mate. The present study uses serial reaction time (RT) to examine the characteristics of the Bengalese finches’ sequential behaviours beyond song production. The birds were trained to produce the sequence with an “A–B–A” structure. After the RT to each key position was determined to be stable, we tested the acquisition of the trained sequential response by presenting novel and random three-term sequences (random test). We also examined whether they could abstract the embedded rule in the trained sequence and apply it to the novel test sequence (abstract test). Additionally, we examined rule abstraction through example training by increasing the number of examples in baseline training from 1 to 5. When considered as (gender) groups, training with 5 examples resulted in no statistically significant differences in the abstract tests, while statistically significant differences were observed in the random tests, suggesting that the male birds learned the trained sequences and transferred the abstract structure they had learned during the training trials. Individual data indicated that males, as opposed to females, were likely to learn the motor pattern of the sequence. The results are consistent with observations that males learn to produce songs with complex sequential rules, whereas females do not.     

Context-related call combinations in female Diana monkeys

Non-human primates possess species-specific repertoires of acoustically distinct call types that can be found in adults in predictable ways. Evidence for vocal flexibility is generally rare and typically restricted to acoustic variants within the main call types or sequential production of multiple calls. So far, evidence for context-specific call sequences has been mainly in relation to external disturbances, particularly predation. In this study, we investigated extensively the vocal behaviour of free-ranging and individually identified Diana monkeys in non-predatory contexts. We found that adult females produced four vocal structures alone (‘H’, ‘L’, ‘R’ and ‘A’ calls, the latter consisting of two subtypes) or combined in non-random ways (‘HA’, ‘LA’ and ‘RA’ call combinations) in relation to ongoing behaviour or external events. Specifically, the concatenation of an introductory call with the most frequently emitted and contextually neutral ‘A’ call seems to function as a contextual refiner of this potential individual identifier. Our results demonstrate that some non-human primates are able to increase the effective size of their small vocal repertoire not only by varying the acoustic structure of basic call types but also by combining them into more complex structures. We have demonstrated this phenomenon for a category of vocalisations with a purely social function and discuss the implications of these findings for evolutionary theories of primate vocal communication.     

Effects of cage mesh on pointing: hand shapes in chimpanzees (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pan troglodytes</Emphasis>)

It has been speculated that cage mesh exerts a shaping influence on reaching behavior by captive apes, which is then misconstrued as pointing by human observers. Although this notion is clearly falsified by the pointing of captive language-trained apes—who point in the absence of intervening cage mesh—nevertheless, the degree to which cage mesh might influence pointing hand shapes by captive great apes in other housing environments remains relatively unexplored. We examined 259 pointing gestures displayed in archival footage from over 18 h of observation by three nonlanguage-trained chimpanzees housed at a biomedical research center. We coded points in relation to how close to the boundaries of the diamond-shaped cage mesh their points were displayed. We found that points with the whole hand were significantly more likely to be displayed away from the mesh boundaries, relative to points with the index finger or other single-digit points. However, points of each hand shape were displayed at each location, demonstrating that these physical parameters do not fully account for the number of fingers extended while pointing by chimpanzees.     

Rats build and update topological representations through exploration

Although rats are able to build complex spatial representations of their surroundings during exploration, the nature of the encoded information is still a matter for debate. In particular, it is not well established if rats can process the topological structure of the environment in such a way that they are aware of the connections existing between remote places. Here, rats were first exposed for four 5-min trials to a complex environment divided into several sectors that were separated by doors allowing either unrestricted or restricted access to other sectors. In the fifth test trial, we measured the behavior of the animals while they explored the same environment in which, however, they faced changes that either altered or did not alter the topological structure of the environment. In experiment 1, closing previously opened doors prevented the rat from having direct access between corresponding sectors. In experiment 2, opening previously closed doors allowed direct access between sectors that had not been directly accessible. In each experiment, control doors allowed us to discard the mere influence of door manipulation. We compared the rats’ exploratory behavior in response to door manipulations that either strongly altered or did not alter the ability to commute between sectors and found evidence that the animals displayed differential reactions to the two types of door manipulations. This implies that during exploration rats build a precise map of the connectivity of space that can be flexibly updated and used for efficient navigation.     

The psychophysics of uneconomical choice: non-linear reward evaluation by a nectar feeder

Uneconomical choices by humans or animals that evaluate reward options challenge the expectation that decision-makers always maximize the return currency. One possible explanation for such deviations from optimality is that the ability to sense differences in physical value between available alternatives is constrained by the sensory and cognitive processes for encoding profitability. In this study, we investigated the capacity of a nectarivorous bat species (Glossophaga commissarisi) to discriminate between sugar solutions with different concentrations. We conducted a two-alternative free-choice experiment on a population of wild electronically tagged bats foraging at an array of computer-automated artificial flowers that recorded individual choices. We used a Bayesian approach to fit individual psychometric functions, relating the strength of preferring the higher concentration option to the intensity of the presented stimulus. Psychometric analysis revealed that discrimination ability increases non-linearly with respect to intensity. We combined this result with a previous psychometric analysis of volume perception. Our theoretical analysis of choice for rewards that vary in two quality dimensions revealed regions of parameter combinations where uneconomic choice is expected. Discrimination ability may be constrained by non-linear perceptual and cognitive encoding processes that result in uneconomical choice.     

Customer reactions to encountering consecutive service failures

According to previous studies, many consumers in Taiwan have experienced consecutive service failures. Despite these failures, many consumers still remain loyal to a service provider for a variety of reasons, such as money deposits, contractual agreements, associated costs, time constrains, and health concerns. We attempt to investigate the emotional reactions and expectations of consumers after they have experienced two consecutive service failures. Our findings reveal that for high‐involvement services, although customers display strong negative emotional reactions after each service failure, the reaction to the second service failure is less intensive than that to the first one. Furthermore, our findings show that as long as the products or services remain in use, customers tend to retain high levels of expectation in regard to the service provider. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Feedback-related brain activity predicts learning from feedback in multiple-choice testing

Different event-related potentials (ERPs) have been shown to correlate with learning from feedback in decision-making tasks and with learning in explicit memory tasks. In the present study, we investigated which ERPs predict learning from corrective feedback in a multiple-choice test, which combines elements from both paradigms. Participants worked through sets of multiple-choice items of a Swahili–German vocabulary task. Whereas the initial presentation of an item required the participants to guess the answer, corrective feedback could be used to learn the correct response. Initial analyses revealed that corrective feedback elicited components related to reinforcement learning (FRN), as well as to explicit memory processing (P300) and attention (early frontal positivity). However, only the P300 and early frontal positivity were positively correlated with successful learning from corrective feedback, whereas the FRN was even larger when learning failed. These results suggest that learning from corrective feedback crucially relies on explicit memory processing and attentional orienting to corrective feedback, rather than on reinforcement learning.     

Bridging a yawning chasm: EEG investigations into the debate concerning the role of the human mirror neuron system in contagious yawning

Ongoing debate in the literature concerns whether there is a link between contagious yawning and the human mirror neuron system (hMNS). One way of examining this issue is with the use of the electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure changes in mu activation during the observation of yawns. Mu oscillations are seen in the alpha bandwidth of the EEG (8–12 Hz) over sensorimotor areas. Previous work has shown that mu suppression is a useful index of hMNS activation and is sensitive to individual differences in empathy. In two experiments, we presented participants with videos of either people yawning or control stimuli. We found greater mu suppression for yawns than for controls over right motor and premotor areas, particularly for those scoring higher on traits of empathy. In a third experiment, auditory recordings of yawns were compared against electronically scrambled versions of the same yawns. We observed greater mu suppression for yawns than for the controls over right lateral premotor areas. Again, these findings were driven by those scoring highly on empathy. The results from these experiments support the notion that the hMNS is involved in contagious yawning, emphasise the link between contagious yawning and empathy, and stress the importance of good control stimuli.