Human–Computer Interaction in Face Matching

Automatic facial recognition is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in security contexts such as passport control. Currently, Automated Border Crossing (ABC) systems in the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) require supervision from a human operator who validates correct identity judgments and overrules incorrect decisions. As the accuracy of this human–computer interaction remains unknown, this research investigated how human validation is impacted by a priori face‐matching decisions such as those made by automated face recognition software. Observers matched pairs of faces that were already labeled onscreen as depicting the same identity or two different identities. The majority of these labels provided information that was consistent with the stimuli presented, but some were also inconsistent or provided “unresolved” information. Across three experiments, accuracy consistently deteriorated on trials that were inconsistently labeled, indicating that observers’ face‐matching decisions are biased by external information such as that provided by ABCs.     

THE USE OF THE ANALYST AND THE SENSE OF BEING REAL: THE CLINICAL MEANING OF WINNICOTT'S “THE USE OF AN OBJECT”

“The Use of an Object and Relating through Identifications” (1968) represents Donald Winnicott's theoretical and clinical legacy. The author develops this concept from a clinical point of view, through the analysis of a woman with psychotic functioning. He reflects upon the dramatic quality of risks inherent in the processes linked to the use of the object with seriously disturbed patients. He explores different meanings of the analyst's survival, linking it to the analyst's response. The processes of the use of the object—that is, the encounter between the patient's potential destructiveness and the analyst's capacity to respond through his own judicious subjectivity—let the patient experience the analyst's capacity to keep his own subjectivity, authenticity, and creativity alive. It is starting from the traces of this live object that patients gradually form their own personal sense of being real.     

A PARTICIPATIVE MANAGEMENT APPROACH FOR IMPROVING DIRECT-CARE STAFF PERFORMANCE IN AN INSTITUTIONAL SETTING

The present study evaluated a participative management approach for increasing the frequency of interactions between institutional staff and severely/profoundly retarded residents. The participative management approach involved teaching staff how to use self-monitoring, standard setting, self-evaluation, and self-reinforcement procedures. These procedures were then used by staff with minimal involvement of supervisory personnel. Although supervisors provided feedback and praise to staff for using these self-management behaviors, feedback and praise were never dispensed contingent on staff interactions with residents. Results indicated that during the participative management program there was an increase in staff interactions that were contingent on appropriate resident behavior. The increase in this type of staff interaction was accompanied by an increase in appropriate resident behavior. Follow-up data on both staff and resident behaviors, although showing moderating trends, suggested generally good maintenance of the initial behavior changes. Acceptability data suggested that staff were quite receptive to the program. The advantages of participative management procedures for improving staff performance in residential settings are discussed.     

Synchrony in mother-infant vocal interactions revealed through timed event sequences

This report extends a previous cross-cultural study of synchrony in mother-infant vocal interactions (Bornstein et al., 2015) to immigrant samples. Immigrant dyads from three cultures of origin (Japan, South Korea, South America) living in the same culture of destination (the United States) were compared to nonmigrant dyads in those same cultures of origin and to nonmigrant European American dyads living in the same culture of destination (the United States). This article highlights an underutilized analysis to assess synchrony in mother-infant interaction and extends cross-cultural research on mother-infant vocal interaction. Timing of onsets and offsets of maternal speech to infants and infant nondistress vocalizations were coded separately from 50-min recorded naturalistic observations of mothers and infants. Odds ratios were computed to analyze synchrony in mother-infant vocal interactions. Synchrony was analyzed in three ways -- contingency of timed event sequences, mean differences in contingency by acculturation level and within dyads, and coordination of responsiveness within dyads. Immigrant mothers were contingently responsive to their infants’ vocalizations, but only Korean immigrant infants were contingently responsive to their mothers’ vocalizations. For the Japanese and South American comparisons, immigrant mothers were more contingently responsive than their infants (but not robustly so for South American immigrants). For the Korean comparison, mean differences in contingent responsiveness were found among acculturation groups (culture of origin, immigrant, culture of destination), but not between mothers and infants. Immigrant dyads’ mean levels of responsiveness did not differ. Immigrant mothers’ and infants’ levels of responsiveness were coordinated. Strengths and flexibility of the timed event sequential analytic approach to assessing synchrony in mother-infant interactions are discussed, particularly for culturally diverse samples.     

Affective Synchrony in Dual‐ and Single‐Smoker Couples: Further Evidence of “Symptom‐System Fit”?

Couples in which one or both partners smoked despite one of them having a heart or lung problem discussed a health-related disagreement before and during a period of laboratory smoking. Immediately afterwards, the partners in these 25 couples used independent joysticks to recall their continuous emotional experience during the interaction while watching themselves on video. A couple-level index of affective synchrony, reflecting correlated moment-to-moment change in the two partners' joystick ratings, tended to increase from baseline to smoking for 9 dual-smoker couples but decrease for 16 single-smoker couples. Results suggest that coregulation of shared emotional experience could be a factor in smoking persistence, particularly when both partners in a couple smoke. Relationship-focused interventions addressing this fit between symptom and system may help smokers achieve stable cessation.     

Are Conservatives Less Likely to be Prosocial Than Liberals? From Games to Ideology,Political Preferences and Voting

Do political preferences reflect individual differences in interpersonal orientations? Are conservatives less other‐regarding than liberals? On the basis of past theorising, we hypothesised that, relative to individuals with prosocial orientations, those with individualistic and competitive orientations should be more likely to endorse conservative political preferences and vote for conservative parties. This hypothesis was supported in three independent studies conducted in Italy (Studies 1 and 2) and the Netherlands (Study 3). Consistent with hypotheses, a cross‐sectional study revealed that individualists and competitors endorsed stronger conservative political preferences than did prosocials; moreover, this effect was independent of the association between need for structure and conservative political preferences (Study 1). The predicted association of social value orientation and voting was observed in both a four‐week (Study 2) and an eight‐month (Study 3) longitudinal study. Taken together, the findings provide novel support for the claim that interpersonal orientations, as measured with experimental games rooted in game theory, are important to understanding differences in ideology at the societal level. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Relationships between leaders' and subordinates' emotion regulation and satisfaction and affect at work

The study examined relationships between leaders' emotion regulation and leaders' and subordinates' work-related outcomes. Fifty-one school directors and 281 teachers reported on their strategies of emotion regulation (reappraisal, suppression), job satisfaction, and affect at work. For subordinates, suppression was negatively related to job satisfaction and was positively related to negative affect and emotional exhaustion, and reappraisal was positively related to job satisfaction and negatively to negativ affect. In contrast, multilevel analyses found that directors' use of reappraisal was neg atively related to subordinates' job satisfaction, and directors' use of suppression wa positively related to subordinates' positive affect. Leaders' suppression interacted wit group cohesion to predict subordinates' negative affect. This is one of the first studies to find evidence for the possible tension between leaders' emotion regulation competencie and organizational-role interests.     

The Relationships Between Japanese Interpersonal Conflict Styles and Their Language Expressions

ABSTRACT

The present study investigated the influence of interpersonal conflict management styles on language expressions and the differences in expressions in same-sex relational categories based on specific in-group-out-group classifications. Questionnaires were administered to 367 university students in Japan. After reading a scenario, participants reported on actual language use and gave ratings on an interpersonal conflict management scale. The results revealed that Japanese change their expressions, along with psychological styles, depending on the relational target. They also indicated psychological constructs were related to their equivalent expressions. The results suggested that future research should take into consideration the potential differences in behavior and interaction posture inherent in various relational and situational categories.     

Being Forgotten: Implications for the Experience of Meaning in Life

ABSTRACT

Two studies investigated the effects of being forgotten on the target of memory. In Study 1, undergraduate women (N = 96) who had completed a lab session two days prior, were randomly assigned to be remembered, forgotten, complimented, or to a control group. In the absence of effects on mood or social self-esteem, being forgotten resulted in lower meaning in life. In Study 2, participants (N = 47) who had completed a group exercise were informed two days later that no one remembered them, that everyone remembered them, or that no one wanted to work with them. Being forgotten led to lower meaning in life than being remembered but did not differ from being excluded. Being forgotten may be considered a type of incipient ostracism that influences meaning in life but not mood or state social self-esteem.     

Potentiation and overshadowing of shape by wall color in a kite-shaped maze using rats in a foraging task

The interaction between redundant geometric and featural cues in open field search tasks has been examined widely with results that are not always consistent. Cheng (1986) found evidence that when searching for food in rectangular environments, rats used the geometrical characteristics of the environment rather than local featural cues, suggesting that geometry had overshadowed featural cues. More recently, Graham et al. (2006) and Pearce et al. (2006) found that wall color facilitated (potentiated) learning about the shape of the environment by rats in a kite-shaped water maze. The first experiment in the present research replicated the paradigm used by Graham et al. and Pearce et al. using rats in a foraging situation, but with conditions similar, and found the same results, potentiation of shape by color. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed overshadowing instead of potentiation of shape by wall color under the same conditions except that the wall colors of the test environment were not the same as those used during training. The results are consistent with an analysis of the role of associations formed between wall color and geometry in such situations (Rhodes et al., 2009) and extend our understanding of how featural and spatial cues interact.