Vocal Features of Conversational Sarcasm: A Comparison of Methods

This study investigated vocal cues that differentiate sarcastic utterances from non-sarcastic utterances. Utterances were drawn from videotapes of participant interviews and arranged on a master tape for analysis. Utterances that were identified as sarcastic by speakers and recognized as sarcastic by listeners were randomly arranged with utterances identified and recognized as non-sarcastic by the same participants. Both sarcastic and non-sarcastic utterances were analyzed by two methods–acoustic analysis and perceptual coding. The acoustic analysis proved slightly more successful than the perceptual coding in discriminating between sarcastic and non-sarcastic utterances. The acoustic analysis indicated that fundamental frequency, frequency range, length of utterance, and total amount of sound significantly discriminated sarcastic from non-sarcastic utterances. The perceptual coding method revealed that pitch range, length of utterance, and total amount of sound significantly discriminated sarcastic from non-sarcastic utterances. Moderate correlations were found between the acoustic and perceptual variables.     

Concept empiricism: a methodological critique

Thanks to Barsalou's, Damasio's, Glenberg's, Prinz' and others' work, neo-empiricism is gaining a deserved recognition in the psychology and philosophy of concepts. I argue, however, that neo-empiricists have underestimated the difficulty of providing evidence against the amodal approach to concepts and higher cognition. I highlight three key problems: the difficulty of sorting out amodal predictions from neo-empiricist predictions, the difficulty of finding experimental tasks that are not best solved by imagery and the difficulty of generalizing findings concerning a given cognitive process in a given context to other cognitive processes or other contexts. Finally, solutions to these three problems are considered.     

The effect of cognitive load and hyperarousal on negative intrusive memories

Clinical theories of post-traumatic stress suggest that encoding processes at the time of a trauma are critical in determining whether intrusive memories will develop. Potential mechanisms that might influence the development of intrusive memories were studied, as was objective memory performance. In an analogue design, 65 participants were randomised to three conditions (cognitive load, hyperventilation, and control), and then watched a film of traumatic content. Intrusive memories were recorded during the experimental phase and at 1-week follow-up. Support was found for the prediction that verbal cognitive load and hyperventilation would facilitate intrusion development immediately following exposure to the trauma film; however, this was not maintained at follow-up. Consistent with cognitive models of post-traumatic stress, thought suppression and the distress associated with intrusive experiences mediated the relationship between distress caused by the film and intrusions at 1-week follow-up. Objective memory testing indicated that the three experimental groups showed similar recall and recognition performance for the content of the film; however, relative to the control group, individuals in the cognitive load condition were significantly less able to place film scenes in the correct order.     

Motivational influences on compliance with and consequences of instructions to suppress stereotypes

Two experiments investigated differences in compliance with instructions to suppress stereotypes as a function of prejudice-related motivations. In Experiment 1, only participants identified as high in motivation to control prejudice [Dunton, B. C., & Fazio, R. H. (1997). An individual difference measure of motivation to control prejudiced reactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 316-326] complied with suppression instructions. These participants experienced post-suppression rebound effects, but only if they were also high in prejudice. In Experiment 2, only participants identified as high in external motivation to respond without prejudice [Plant, E. A., & Devine, P. G. (1998). Internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 811-832] complied with instructions to suppress. These participants later experienced stereotype rebound effects, but only if they were also low in internal motivation to respond without prejudice. These findings suggest that motivational factors play an important role in determining not only the outcome of suppression, but also the choice to attempt suppression in the first place.     

Motion-induced blindness does not affect the formation of negative afterimages

Aftereffects induced by invisible stimuli constitute a powerful tool to investigate what type of neural information processing can occur in the absence of visual awareness. This approach has been successfully used to demonstrate that awareness of oriented gratings or translating stimuli is not necessary to obtain a robust orientation-specific or motion-specific aftereffect. We exploit motion-induced blindness (MIB, Bonneh, Cooperman, & Sagi, 2001) to investigate the related question of the influence of visual awareness on the formation of negative afterimages. Our results show that MIB does not affect the persistence and intensity of afterimages. Thus, there is no significant contribution to the formation of afterimages beyond the sites mediating MIB.     

Playing on the typewriter, typing on the piano: manipulation knowledge of objects

Two experiments investigated sensory/motor-based functional knowledge of man-made objects: manipulation features associated with the actual usage of objects. In Experiment 1, a series of prime-target pairs was presented auditorily, and participants were asked to make a lexical decision on the target word. Participants made a significantly faster decision about the target word (e.g. ‘typewriter’) following a related prime that shared manipulation features with the target (e.g. ‘piano’) than an unrelated prime (e.g. ‘blanket’). In Experiment 2, participants' eye movements were monitored when they viewed a visual display on a computer screen while listening to a concurrent auditory input. Participants were instructed to simply identify the auditory input and touch the corresponding object on the computer display. Participants fixated an object picture (e.g. “typewriter”) related to a target word (e.g. ‘piano’) significantly more often than an unrelated object picture (e.g. “bucket”) as well as a visually matched control (e.g. “couch”). Results of the two experiments suggest that manipulation knowledge of words is retrieved without conscious effort and that manipulation knowledge constitutes a part of the lexical-semantic representation of objects.     

The interplay between perceptual organization and categorization in the representation of complex visual patterns by young infants

The relation between perceptual organization and categorization processes in 3- and 4-month-olds was explored. The question was whether an invariant part abstracted during category learning could interfere with Gestalt organizational processes. A 2003 study by Quinn and Schyns had reported that an initial category familiarization experience in which infants were presented with visual patterns consisting of a pacman shape and a complex polygon could interfere with infants' subsequent good continuation-based parsing of a circle from visual patterns consisting of a circle and a complex polygon. However, an alternative noninterference explanation for the results was possible because the pacman had been presented with greater frequency and duration than had the circle. The current study repeated Quinn and Schyns's procedure but provided an equivalent number of familiarization trials and duration of study time for the infants to process the pacman during initial familiarization and the circle during subsequent familiarization. The results replicated the previous findings of Quinn and Schyns. The data are consistent with the interference account and suggest that a cognitive system of adaptable feature creation can take precedence over organizational principles with which a perceptual system comes pre-equipped.     

How to suppress obsessive thoughts

Thought suppression (i.e. consciously trying to avoid certain thoughts from entering consciousness) has been argued to be an inadequate strategy in case of unwanted intrusions. That is, thought suppression seems to result in more rather than less intrusions. Although this experimental finding has been explained in terms of failing attempts to distract oneself from the target thought, the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI; a scale that measures chronic thought suppression tendencies) does not address the means by which respondents try to suppress unwanted thoughts. To examine which strategies of mental control people use to suppress unwanted thoughts, obsessive-compulsive disorder patients (N=47) completed the WBSI, the Thought Control Questionnaire, and two measures of psychopathology. Results suggest that the crucial mechanism in thought suppression may not be distraction, but self-punishment.     

Developmental changes in the processing of hierarchical shapes continue into adolescence

The present study was designed to trace the normal development of local and global processing of hierarchical visual forms. We presented pairs of hierarchical shapes to children and adults and asked them to indicate whether the two shapes were the same or different at either the global or the local level. In Experiments 1 (6-year-olds, 10-year-olds, adults) and 2 (10-year-olds, 14-year-olds, adults), we presented stimuli centrally. All age groups responded faster on global trials than local trials (global precedence effect), but the bias was stronger in children and diminished to the adult level between 10 and 14 years of age. In Experiment 3 (10-year-olds, 14-year-olds, adults), we presented stimuli in the left or right visual field so that they were transmitted first to the contralateral hemisphere. All age groups responded faster on local trials when stimuli were presented in the right visual field (left hemisphere); reaction times on global trials were independent of visual field. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that by 10 years of age the hemispheres have adult-like specialization for the processing of hierarchical shapes, at least when attention is directed to the global versus local level. Nevertheless, their greater bias in Experiments 1 and 2 suggests that 10-year-olds are less able than adults to modulate attention to the output from local versus global channels-perhaps because they are less able to ignore distractors and perhaps because the cerebral hemispheres are less able to engage in parallel processing.     

Developmental changes in face processing skills

Expertise in processing differences among faces in the spacing among facial features (second-order relations) is slower to develop than expertise in processing the shape of individual features or the shape of the external contour. To determine the impact of the slow development of sensitivity to second-order relations on various face-processing skills, we developed five computerized tasks that require matching faces on the basis of identity (with changed facial expression or head orientation), facial expression, gaze direction, and sound being spoken. In Experiment 1, we evaluated the influence of second-order relations on performance on each task by presenting them to adults (N=48) who viewed the faces either upright or inverted. Previous studies have shown that inversion has a larger effect on tasks that require processing the spacing among features than it does on tasks that can be solved by processing the shape of individual features. Adults showed an inversion effect for only one task: matching facial identity when there was a change in head orientation. In Experiment 2, we administered the same tasks to children aged 6, 8, and 10 years (N=72). Compared to adults, 6-year-olds made more errors on every task and 8-year-olds made more errors on three of the five tasks: matching direction of gaze and the two facial identity tasks. Ten-year-olds made more errors than adults on only one task: matching facial identity when there was a change in head orientation (e.g., from frontal to tilted up). Together, the results indicate that the slow development of sensitivity to second-order relations causes children to be especially poor at recognizing the identity of a face when it is seen in a new orientation.