Identity specific adaptation with composite faces

A composite face, made from the top half of a celebrity face and the bottom half of an unfamiliar face, appears to be a single, “new” face (e.g., Young, Hellawell, & Hay, 1987). Composite faces were used within the face identity aftereffect (FIAE) paradigm, in which prolonged exposure to a face reduces sensitivity to it (adaptation). Adaptation occurred both with an intact face and with composites containing its upper half, but only when composites were explicitly recognized during the adaptation phase. Unrecognized composites produced no adaptation. These findings imply that the FIAE is a relatively high-level perceptual effect, given that identical stimuli either did or did not produce adaptation depending on whether or not they were recognized. They also suggest a perceptual locus for the “composite face effect”.     

Recognition of psychopathology with religious content by clergy members: a case vignette study

Clergy members (CMs) frequently offer support and counselling for people with mental health problems. The current study aims to obtain insight into the ability among CMs to recognise psychopathology and need for psychiatric treatment. A random sample of CMs (N?=?143) and a control sample of mental health professionals (MHPs, N?=?73), were compared as to their evaluations of four vignettes. CMs considered the psychiatric states to be related to religious or spiritual problems to a similar degree as they did for the non-psychiatric states. Sensitivity of CMs with regard to the need of psychiatric care for the psychiatric states was modest (66%) and differed significantly from MHPs (96%). Specificity of the CMs was 89%, which was significantly lower than the MHPs (97%). The CMs did recognise psychopathology with religious content but clearly to a lower extent than MHPs. Requests by CMs for education about recognising psychopathology may be considered as justified.     

The social unconscious in clinical work

An analyst who is unaware of the constraints of social facts and forces will be insensitive to their unconscious recreation within therapeutic situations, and unable to provide space for patients to imagine how their identities have been formed at particular social and political junctures. The concepts of the social unconscious and of equivalence are defined and located within the traditions of Group Analysis and British Object Relations Theory. A model of maturity is outlined, the central element of which is the willingness and ability to take the role of citizen. These ideas are illustrated with clinical vignettes from psychoanalysis and group analysis.     

The changing meaning of sport during forced immigrant youths' acculturative journeys

ObjectivesTo facilitate intercultural understanding by centralizing forced immigrant youths' voices in the knowledge development phase of a community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) project. The aim of this paper is to reveal the role of sport in forced immigrant youths' acculturative journeys in different communities.MethodologyWe utilized ‘get-to-know-you’ arts-based conversational interviews (m time = 38 min) held at the onset of a community-based participatory action research project. A polyphonic (i.e., multi-voiced) vignette is used to portray an interpretive account of the stories told by 22 refugee and asylum seeking (i.e., forced immigrant) youth (m age – 13.4 years) developed through a reflexive thematic analysis.ResultsThe three-scene polyphonic vignette stories the role sport has played, and continues to play, in forced immigrant youths' life journeys. The opening scene brings to light stories related to home country sport involvement. The second scene depicts how sport was engaged in during their journey to their current host community. The third scene completes the story focusing on how youth engage in sport during resettlement in their host Canadian community.ConclusionsThe meaning of sport, and what it means to be safe in sport, changes over the course of forced immigrant youths' acculturative journeys. Feeling safe in sport offers a unique opportunity for youth to feel a sense of sharing their acculturative journey with those around them.     

重估测谎决策的Bayes推断试验

谎与非谎的情绪反应没有独立的客观标准,以Polygrapy构成技术的测谎缺乏稳定的效度。本研究尝试运用Bayes方法分析一项实测案例,计算两名被试的低显性测谎反应结果,使准确判决有谎的概率由机会水平50％分别调整到可明确分辩的74％和49％,从决策分析角度为改良测谎程序和提高测谎效率提供了一种新的操作思路。     

Development of clinical vignettes to assess healthcare decision-making capacity in elderly with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease

IntroductionCognitive impairment can constrict healthcare decision-making capacity, as it affects the ability to understand, appreciate, and reason with information, as well as communication abilities. Therefore, decision-making capacity of elders with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease should be carefully assessed when patients are asked to make decisions regarding their health. Vignettes are particularly relevant to assess healthcare decision capacity, since they can come close to real life situations and improve statistical reliability of capacity assessment instruments.ObjectiveThis paper describes the construction and development process of three hypothetical vignettes, to be included in a new Portuguese assessment tool of healthcare decision-making capacity (CAI-Health).MethodFor vignettes’ development, examples from other assessment tools were first reviewed to summarize their text length, language complexity and health information contained. Most prevalent causes of mortality and morbidity in Portuguese elders were then identified, in order to select the health issues to include in CAI-Health’ vignettes. Seven vignettes were developed, and three were selected to be included in CAI-Health. After vignette's selection, these were reviewed by three experienced medical experts, during a focus group.ConclusionVignettes final version include cases of increased complexity, presenting situations of mild cognitive impairment, lung tumor and knee arthrosis.     

The cognitive architecture for chaining of two mental operations

A simple view, which dates back to Turing, proposes that complex cognitive operations are composed of serially arranged elementary operations, each passing intermediate results to the next. However, whether and how such serial processing is achieved with a brain composed of massively parallel processors, remains an open question. Here, we study the cognitive architecture for chained operations with an elementary arithmetic algorithm: we required participants to add (or subtract) two to a digit, and then compare the result with five. In four experiments, we probed the internal implementation of this task with chronometric analysis, the cued-response method, the priming method, and a subliminal forced-choice procedure. We found evidence for an approximately sequential processing, with an important qualification: the second operation in the algorithm appears to start before completion of the first operation. Furthermore, initially the second operation takes as input the stimulus number rather than the output of the first operation. Thus, operations that should be processed serially are in fact executed partially in parallel. Furthermore, although each elementary operation can proceed subliminally, their chaining does not occur in the absence of conscious perception. Overall, the results suggest that chaining is slow, effortful, imperfect (resulting partly in parallel rather than serial execution) and dependent on conscious control.     

Location representation in enclosed spaces: What types of information afford young children an advantage?

It has been suggested that young children can only reorient, locating a target object, when the geometry of an enclosed space provides distinctive shape information [e.g., Hermer, L., & Spelke, E. (1994). A geometric process for spatial reorientation in young children. Nature, 370, 57-59]. Recently, however, young children were shown to specify location in a square-shaped space, where geometry is uninformative, so long as scale-like information was available on the walls of the space [Huttenlocher, J., & Lourenco, S. F. (2007a). Coding location in enclosed spaces: Is geometry the principle? Developmental Science, 10, 741-746]. Here we build on this work by examining more closely what types of cues afford 18- to 24-month-olds an advantage in locating a target object following disorientation. Their performance was assessed when linear scale-like information was presented either in isolation or in composite form. It was found that, even in isolation, young children searched at the appropriate locations, with added benefit when presented as a composite. We suggest that linear scale-like dimensions, especially when available in composite form, play a critical role in supporting location representation in young children.     

Behavioral and ERP measures of holistic face processing in a composite task

Holistic processing of faces is characterized by encoding of the face as a single stimulus. This study employed a composite face task to examine whether holistic processing varies when attention is restricted to the top as compared to the bottom half of the face, and whether evidence of holistic processing would be observed in event-related potentials. Analyses of behavioral data showed that spatial misalignment of the face halves disrupted holistic processing and enhanced detection of repeated attended halves. Effects of misalignment on the N170, VPP and N250 ERP components resembled effects of face inversion. Attention to the top half of the face was associated with faster P1, N170, VPP, and P2 latencies than attending to the bottom, suggesting automatic processing of the eye region. Further, N170 latency effects suggested that structural encoding of the face is facilitated during holistic processing. N250 latency effects reflected task difficulty. Finally, an overall right hemispheric asymmetry was most pronounced when holistic face processing was greatest. Results are discussed in light of recent proposals that holistic face processing is a subtype of configural face processing.