Friend or foe: the effect of implicit trustworthiness judgments in social decision-making

The human face appears to play a key role in signaling social intentions and usually people form reliable and strong impressions on the basis of someone's facial appearance. Therefore, facial signals could have a substantial influence on how people evaluate and behave towards another person in a social interaction, such as an interactive risky decision-making game. Indeed, there is a growing body of evidence that demonstrates that social behavior plays a crucial role in human decision-making. Although previous research has demonstrated that explicit social information about one's partner can influence decision-making behavior, such as knowledge about the partner's moral status, much less is known about how implicit facial social cues affect strategic decision-making. One particular social cue that may be especially important in assessing how to interact with a partner is facial trustworthiness, a rapid, implicit assessment of the likelihood that the partner will reciprocate a generous gesture. In this experiment, we tested the hypothesis that implicit processing of trustworthiness is related to the degree to which participants cooperate with previously unknown partners. Participants played a Trust Game with 79 hypothetical partners who were previously rated on subjective trustworthiness. In each game, participants made a decision about how much to trust their partner, as measured by how much money they invested with that partner, with no guarantee of return. As predicted, people invested more money in partners who were subjectively rated as more trustworthy, despite no objective relationship between these factors. Moreover, the relationship between the amount of money offered seemed to be stronger for trustworthy faces as compared to untrustworthy faces. Overall, these data indicate that the perceived trustworthiness is a strong and important social cue that influences decision-making.     

Writing problems in developmental dyslexia: under-recognized and under-treated

The International Dyslexia Association defines dyslexia as unexpected problems of neurobiological origin in accuracy and rate of oral reading of single real words, single pseudowords, or text or of written spelling. However, prior research has focused more on the reading than the spelling problems of students with dyslexia. A test battery was administered to 122 children who met the inclusion criteria for dyslexia and qualified their families for participation in a family genetics study that has been ongoing for over a decade. Their parents completed the same test battery. Although a past structural equation modeling study of typically developing children identified a significant path from handwriting to composition quality, the current structural equation modeling study identified a significant path from spelling to composition for children and their parents with dyslexia. Grapho-motor planning did not contribute uniquely to their composition, showing that writing is not just a motor skill. Students with dyslexia do have a problem in automatic letter writing and naming, which was related to impaired inhibition and verbal fluency and may explain their spelling problems. Results are discussed in reference to the importance of providing explicit instruction in the phonological, orthographic, and morphological processes of spelling and in composition to students with dyslexia and not only offering accommodation for their writing problems.     

儿童心理虐待与抑郁：自动思维的中介作用

目的：运用结构方程模型验证儿童心理虐待、自动思维与抑郁的关系。方法：采用儿童心理虐待量表、自动思维问卷（ATQ）及自评抑郁量表（SDS）,对黑龙江省838名初中生进行调查。结果：儿童心理虐待对自动思维及抑郁有直接影响（β=0.245,β=0.674,均P＜0.001）;自动思维在儿童心理虐待对抑郁的影响中起部分中介作用(Z=51.2,P＜0.01)。结论：自动思维在儿童心理虐待和抑郁之间起中介作用,表明可以从认知方面改善心理虐待初中生的抑郁状态。     

Multivariate pattern analysis of event-related potentials predicts the subjective relevance of everyday objects

Potentially decision-relevant stimuli have been proposed to undergo immediate semantic processing. The current study investigated whether information regarding the general desirability (‘Wanting’) of visually presented ‘everyday’ objects was rapidly and automatically processed. Participants completed a foreground task while their electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded, and task-irrelevant images were presented in the background. Following this, participants rated the images with regards to Wanting and the potentially related attributes of Relevance, Familiarity, Aesthetic Pleasantness and Time Reference. Multivariate pattern classification was used to predict the ratings from patterns of EEG data. Prediction of Wanting and Relevance was possible between 100 and 150 ms following stimulus presentation. The other dimensions could not be predicted. Wanting and Relevance ratings were highly correlated and displayed similar feature weight maps. The current results suggest that the general desirability and subjective relevance of everyday objects is rapidly and automatically processed for a wide range of visual stimuli.     

What will Phil do next? : Spontaneously inferred traits influence predictions of behavior

Past research has shown that perceivers intentionally may make trait inferences about others and use this information to make predictions about these others' future behaviors. Other research has also shown that people can make trait inferences without intent—that is, spontaneously. However, one unexplored avenue is whether spontaneous trait inferences (STI), affect how perceivers predict others' will behavior. Three studies explored this issue. Results from Studies 1 and 2 showed that: (1) exposure to trait-implicative behaviors describing an actor influences subsequent behavior predictions made about the actor in a trait-consistent manner, and (2) predictions occurred regardless of behavior recall, implying that the behavior predictions were derived from prior trait inferences and not from behavior recall. Results from Study 3 bolstered this conclusion by showing that behavior predictions were similar regardless of whether subjects were explicitly instructed to make inferences or not, but that a manipulation known to interfere with inference generation (lie detection instructions) muted behavior predictions. Results from Study 3 also suggested that the prediction effects had both automatic and controlled components, and that reductions observed in the lie detection condition of Study 3 were caused by alterations in the automatic influence of trait knowledge to the behavior predictions. These results suggest that STI may be causal inferences about the actors' dispositions.     

Nonconscious goal pursuit: Acting in an explanatory vacuum

Nonconsciously activated goals and consciously set goals produce the same outcomes by engaging similar psychological processes (Bargh, 1990; Gollwitzer & Bargh, 2005). However, nonconscious and conscious goal pursuit may have different effects on subsequent affect if goal pursuit affords an explanation, as nonconscious goal pursuit occurs in an explanatory vacuum (i.e. cannot be readily attributed to the respective goal intention). We compared self-reported affect after nonconscious versus conscious goal pursuit that either violated or conformed to a prevailing social norm. When goal-directed behavior did not require an explanation (was norm-conforming), affective experiences did not differ after nonconscious and conscious goal pursuit. However, when goal-directed behavior required an explanation (was norm-violating), nonconscious goal pursuit induced more negative affect than conscious goal pursuit.     

Pay attention! Attention to the primes increases attitude assessment accuracy

We demonstrate that an oft-used indirect attitude assessment technique—the attitude activation paradigm—accurately assesses attitudes only when participants attend to the prime stimuli during the attitude activation task. Attitude activation attitudes toward obviously valenced words (e.g., torture, liberty) were more sensitive to attitude valence and extremity when participants were required to attend to the prime words than when they attended to a competing stimulus. As a result, we observed a significantly stronger correlation between attitude activation attitudes and a direct, self-report attitude measure when participants attended to the primes than when they ignored them. We conclude that failing to require participants to attend to the primes during the attitude activation task results in a flawed measurement, which could lead researchers to underestimate relations between the attitude activation measure and direct, self-report attitude measures.     

Reaction time indices of automatic imitation measure imitative response tendencies

In his review, Ramsey (2018) argues that it is currently unclear what reaction time indices of automatic imitation measure due to lacking research on their validity and domain-specificity. In our commentary, we argue that this conclusion is based on two misconceptions, namely that automatic imitation was designed as a laboratory measure of motor mimicry and that psychometric approaches to validity can readily be applied to experimental settings. We then show that reaction time indices of automatic imitation measure covert imitative response tendencies. Furthermore, while irrelevant for their validity, we argue that these indices are associated with some, but not necessarily all, types of overt imitation. Finally, we argue that mapping out the brain networks does not suffice to understand the brain processes underlying imitative control.     

When the going gets tough,what happens to quiet eye? The role of time pressure and performance pressure during basketball free throws

In aiming sport contexts, the quiet eye (QE) - the final ocular fixation before movement initiation - is a crucial perceptual-cognitive skill. Indeed, an extended QE permits athletes to achieve high performances, aiding optimal attentional control, particularly in situations in which athletes are "under pressure." Such situations are common in sport, especially when time runs out, and even just a few points can mean the difference between victory and defeat. Although QE has been widely investigated across several sports and tasks, no previous studies have considered both the role of time pressure and performance pressure on QE. The current study aimed to comprehend the effect of tough sport situations on QE characteristics. Accordingly, we tested basketball players (competitive-élites and semi-élites) in free throw trials, manipulating both the time available to perform the task and the relevance of the performance. The results showed that time pressure and performance pressure impaired QE characteristics, regardless of expertise levels. Also, time pressure led to a decrease in free throw accuracy. Interestingly, the match between task demands and the ability to cope seemed to play a role on QE, especially in the competitive-élite players, with negative QE characteristics (short and late) when task demands exceeded the ability to cope. These findings suggest that QE research and QE training protocols should account for time pressure, performance pressure, and the players' perceived ability to cope with the requested task.     

Similar effects of attention directed to acoustic and tactile stimuli on prepulse inhibition of acoustic startle

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) is assumed to index automatic and controlled processing. In three experiments (n= 32, 22, and 30) participants were asked to judge the duration of a prepulse in comparison with a stimulus presented 4000 ms before the prepulse. A distracter was presented simultaneously with the prepulse to increase the cognitive demands of the task. PPI was assessed at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 30-150 ms, and 420 ms. The prepulse was either a tone (60 dB) or a tactile stimulus (21 kPa), and startle was elicited by 95 dB white noise. Directing attention to the prepulse increased PPI at SOAs of 60 ms and longer in all experiments, but the sensory modality to which attention was directed played only a minor role. We conclude that directing attention to both acoustic and tactile prepulses increased PPI.