The effects of facial adiposity on attractiveness and perceived leadership ability

Facial attractiveness has a positive influence on electoral success both in experimental paradigms and in the real world. One parameter that influences facial attractiveness and social judgements is facial adiposity (a facial correlate to body mass index, BMI). Overweight people have high facial adiposity and are perceived to be less attractive and lower in leadership ability. Here, we used an interactive design in order to assess whether the most attractive level of facial adiposity is also perceived as most leader-like. We found that participants reduced facial adiposity more to maximize attractiveness than to maximize perceived leadership ability. These results indicate that facial appearance impacts leadership judgements beyond the effects of attractiveness. We suggest that the disparity between optimal facial adiposity in attractiveness and leadership judgements stems from social trends that have produced thin ideals for attractiveness, while leadership judgements are associated with perception of physical dominance.     

Assessing changes in performance and monitoring processes in individual and collaborative tests according to students' metacognitive skills

This study assessed students' test performances and metacognitive processes in real classroom settings. Psychology undergraduates were categorised according to their metacognitive skills (high vs. low) and had their test performances and monitoring processes in two different types of tests (multiple-choice and short-answer tests) compared in individual and collaborative test conditions. Students' test preparation practices, attributions, and regulatory processes during test-taking were also compared by using open-ended questions. In the collaborative tests, three types of metacognitive pairings were made (high/high vs. high/low vs. low/low). Results showed that: (1) in individual tests, high-metacognitive students presented better performance and higher confidence levels due to their more effective test preparation practices and regulatory skills; (2) Differences in performance and confidence levels due to metacognitive skills disappear when students take tests collaboratively; (3) Over time, collaborative testing had particular positive effects on the low/low metacognitive pairings. Results are discussed focusing on their educational implications.     

Beginning adult L2 learners' sensitivity to morphosyntactic violations: A self-paced reading study

This study investigated beginning adult second language (L2) learners' sensitivity to L2 morphosyntactic violations as a function of cross-language similarity. Online sensitivity was indexed by self-paced reading times at: (1) the critical word at which the violation could first be detected, (2) the post-critical word, and (3) the sentence-final word. In conditions in which morphosyntactic marking systems were similar or different in L1 and L2, reading times on the critical word were slower when it cued a violation than when it did not; however, this sensitivity was not apparent in a construction unique to L2. Slower reading times to violations spilled over onto the post-critical word. Cross-language similarity also influenced sentence-final word reading times. Despite this online sensitivity, post-sentence grammaticality judgements were generally poor. However, these judgements were influenced by morphosyntactic markings on words after the critical word, suggesting that learners can make use of this information.     

Recognition of emotional pictures: Behavioural and electrophysiological measures

The effects of emotional content of images on recognition memory were studied, bringing together electrophysiological (Event-Related brain Potentials, ERPs) and behavioural (accuracy and speed of recognition, and remember/know judgements) indices. In the study phase, participants assessed 120 images on the scales of valence and arousal. In the test phase, ERPs were recorded while participants viewed again the images, put together with 120 new, and were asked to make old/new decisions and remember/know judgements on them. A clear arousal bias was obtained for remember/know judgements, which revealed that correctly recognised arousing images (negative and positive) received more remember judgements than nonarousing images (neutral and relaxing). Moreover, a Late Positive Component (LPC) activation revealed an old/new effect enhanced by arousing images. The LPC activation was located in parietal areas (precuneus), which appears to be mostly related to successful retrieval based on recollection. The results obtained through different indices supported the emotional bias found in previous studies for arousing material, but do not clarify the effect of the emotional valence on recognition.     

Animation and the location of beauty

This paper discusses the development of animation and imaginative activity in a case in which there has been previous severe deprivation. Clinical material from work with an 8-year-old boy will illustrate how omnipotent behaviour, which has the function of keeping fear and feeling from consciousness, can give way to imaginative interaction with the environment. I suggest that, when internal objects have been frozen, it may be safer for the child to see animation outside the room. This may be a necessary stage before a child can begin to play with the therapist inside the room. I am using the term 'animation' in the sense of new imaginative play that has been stimulated by an apprehension of beauty in nature. This is contrasted with driven manic defending against awareness of self and others.     

The analysis of intuition: Processing fluency and affect in judgements of semantic coherence

In semantic coherence judgements individuals are able to intuitively discriminate whether a word triad has a common remote associate (coherent) or not (incoherent) without consciously retrieving the common associate. A processing-fluency account for these intuitions is proposed, which assumes that (a) coherent triads are processed more fluently than incoherent triads, (b) this high fluency triggers a subtle positive affect, and (c) this affect may be experienced as a cognitive feeling and used in explicit judgement. In line with this account, it was shown that coherent triads (a) are processed faster than incoherent triads (Study 1), (b) serve as positive affective primes (Study 2), and (c) are liked more than incoherent triads (Study 3). When participants were provided with an irrelevant source of their affective reactions, they lost the ability to intuitively discriminate between coherent and incoherent triads (Study 4). Finally, an item-based analysis found that triads that are processed faster are liked more and are more likely to be judged coherent, irrespective of their actual coherence (Study 5).     

Monitoring memory errors: The influence of the veracity of retrieved information on the accuracy of judgements of learning

The current study examined the degree to which predictions of memory performance made immediately or at a delay are sensitive to confidently held memory illusions. Participants studied unrelated pairs of words and made judgements of learning (JOLs) for each item, either immediately or after a delay. Half of the unrelated pairs (deceptive items; e.g., nurse–dollar) had a semantically related competitor (e.g., doctor) that was easily accessible when given a test cue (e.g., nurse–do_ _ _r) and half had no semantically related competitor (control items; e.g., subject–dollar). Following the study phase, participants were administered a cued recall test. Results from Experiment 1 showed that memory performance was less accurate for deceptive compared with control items. In addition, delaying judgement improved the relative accuracy of JOLs for control items but not for deceptive items. Subsequent experiments explored the degree to which the relative accuracy of delayed JOLs for deceptive items improved as a result of a warning to ensure that retrieved memories were accurate (Experiment 2) and corrective feedback regarding the veracity of information retrieved prior to making a JOL (Experiment 3). In all, these data suggest that delayed JOLs may be largely insensitive to memory errors unless participants are provided with feedback regarding memory accuracy.     

Lateral biases and reading direction: a dissociation between aesthetic preference and line bisection

Perceptual asymmetries for tasks involving aesthetic preference or line bisection can be affected by asymmetrical neurological mechanisms or left/right reading habits. This study investigated the relative contribution of these mechanisms in 100 readers of Japanese and English. Participants made aesthetic judgments between pairs of mirror-reversed pictures showing: (a) static objects, (b) moving objects and (c) landscapes. A line bisection task was also administered. There was a strong effect of reading direction for static and mobile objects whereby Japanese readers preferred objects with a right-to-left directionality (and vice versa for English readers). In contrast, similar patterns were observed for the Japanese and English readers for the landscape and line bisection tasks. The results show that reading habits affect aesthetic judgments for static and moving object tasks, but not the landscape and line bisection tasks. The difference between the tasks may be related to the horizontal/vertical geometry of the stimuli, which makes the landscape and line bisection tasks more prone to universal effects related to cerebral dominance.     

FOK的线索熟悉性假说与线索熟悉性判断

这项研究对ＦＯＫ的线索熟悉性假说进行了进一步检验,该假说认为,人们是根据自已对记忆线索是否熟悉而作ＦＯＫ判断的,研究结果表明,线索熟悉性判断与ＦＯＫ判断是两种不同性质的判断,它们可以在相同的刺激模式下表现出不同的反应模式。     

《易经》:人类科学思维和审美思维方式的精典阐释

一本诞生于五千年前的中国古书《易经》,已经包含着深刻的现代科学数理逻辑原理,且与美学的审美逻辑原理互为支持、互为表里,使这两大类本来被认为水火不相容的领域及其独具的思维方式得到了高度完善统一的阐释。从这样的角度来看《易经》,也许会有助于目前心理学界对思维方式及逻辑问题的研究,拓开一条崭新的思路。