Age differences in vocal emotion perception: on the role of speaker age and listener sex

Older adults have greater difficulty than younger adults perceiving vocal emotions. To better characterise this effect, we explored its relation to age differences in sensory, cognitive and emotional functioning. Additionally, we examined the role of speaker age and listener sex. Participants (N?=?163) aged 19–34 years and 60–85 years categorised neutral sentences spoken by ten younger and ten older speakers with a happy, neutral, sad, or angry voice. Acoustic analyses indicated that expressions from younger and older speakers denoted the intended emotion with similar accuracy. As expected, younger participants outperformed older participants and this effect was statistically mediated by an age-related decline in both optimism and working-memory. Additionally, age differences in emotion perception were larger for younger as compared to older speakers and a better perception of younger as compared to older speakers was greater in younger as compared to older participants. Last, a female perception benefit was less pervasive in the older than the younger group. Together, these findings suggest that the role of age for emotion perception is multi-faceted. It is linked to emotional and cognitive change, to processing biases that benefit young and own-age expressions, and to the different aptitudes of women and men.     

Adaptive Anchoring Model: How Static and Dynamic Presentations of Time Series Influence Judgments and Predictions

When attempting to predict future events, people commonly rely on historical data. One psychological characteristic of judgmental forecasting of time series, established by research, is that when people make forecasts from series, they tend to underestimate future values for upward trends and overestimate them for downward ones, so‐called trend‐damping (modeled by anchoring on, and insufficient adjustment from, the average of recent time series values). Events in a time series can be experienced sequentially (dynamic mode), or they can also be retrospectively viewed simultaneously (static mode), not experienced individually in real time. In one experiment, we studied the influence of presentation mode (dynamic and static) on two sorts of judgment: (a) predictions of the next event (forecast) and (b) estimation of the average value of all the events in the presented series (average estimation). Participants' responses in dynamic mode were anchored on more recent events than in static mode for all types of judgment but with different consequences; hence, dynamic presentation improved prediction accuracy, but not estimation. These results are not anticipated by existing theoretical accounts; we develop and present an agent‐based model—the adaptive anchoring model (ADAM)—to account for the difference between processing sequences of dynamically and statically presented stimuli (visually presented data). ADAM captures how variation in presentation mode produces variation in responses (and the accuracy of these responses) in both forecasting and judgment tasks. ADAM's model predictions for the forecasting and judgment tasks fit better with the response data than a linear‐regression time series model. Moreover, ADAM outperformed autoregressive‐integrated‐moving‐average (ARIMA) and exponential‐smoothing models, while neither of these models accounts for people's responses on the average estimation task.     

Geopolitical Forecasting Skill in Strategic Intelligence

Extending research by the authors on intelligence forecasting, the forecasting skill of 3622 geopolitical forecasts extracted from strategic intelligence reports was examined. The codable subset of forecasts (N = 2013) was expressed with verbal probabilities (e.g., likely) and translated to numeric probability equivalents. This subset showed very good calibration and discrimination, but also underconfidence. There was no support for the hypothesis that forecasting skill was good mainly because of the general ease of forecasting topics. First, forecasting skill was as good among authoritative key judgments as in the general set. Second, forecasts that were assigned high degrees of certainty, indicative of ease, (p ≤ 0.05 or p ≥ 0.95) did not discriminate as well as less certain forecasts (0.05 < p < 0.95), and these subsets did not differ in calibration. Sensitivity and benchmarking tests further revealed that if the 1609 uncodable forecasts were all assigned forecast probabilities of .5 (i.e., if all followed a “cautious ignorance” rule), skill characteristics would still show a large effect size improvement over a variety of guesswork strategies. The findings support a cautiously optimistic assessment of forecasting skill in strategic intelligence and indicate that such skill is not primarily attributable to the selection of easy forecasting topics. However, the large proportion of uncodable cases suggests that intelligence forecasts could be improved by avoiding imprecise language that affects not only the codability but also, in all likelihood, the interpretability and indicative value of forecasts for intelligence consumers. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

积极情绪提高背景线索学习的适应性

背景线索的学习缺乏适应性, 这种缺乏表现在两个方面：其一是难以在已习得的场景表征上捆绑一个新目标位置(Re-learning), 也就是场景表征的更新受阻; 其二是在习得一组场景表征后, 难以学习另一组全新场景(New-learning)。研究表明, 在旧场景表征上捆绑一个新目标位置的能力可能与注意范围大小有关, 而学习全新场景则需要重置学习功能。积极情绪可以有效扩大注意范围, 并改善对旧有认知模式的固着, 因此积极情绪启动将有可能提升背景线索学习的适应性。本研究采用效价为中性和积极的情绪性图片来启动对应的情绪, 探索旧场景捆绑新目标位置时和学习全新场景时, 背景线索的学习情况, 验证积极情绪是否可以提高背景线索学习中的适应性。实验发现, 积极情绪无法促进旧场景上捆绑新目标位置的背景线索学习(Re-learning), 但是可以促进全新场景的学习(New-learning)。该结果说明, 积极情绪可以提高被试的场景学习能力进而促进对全新场景的学习, 却无法减少由表征相似性引起的旧表征的自动检索, 进而无法改善旧表征的更新过程。     

Nervous Instability and Genius: Military and Political Leaders

Participants (N = 106) performed an affective priming task with facial primes that varied in their skin tone and facial physiognomy, and, which were presented either in color or in gray-scale. Participants' racial evaluations were more positive for Eurocentric than for Afrocentric physiognomy faces. Light skin tone faces were evaluated more positively than dark skin tone faces, but the magnitude of this effect depended on the mode of color presentation. The results suggest that in affective priming tasks, faces might not be processed holistically, and instead, visual features of facial priming stimuli independently affect implicit evaluations.     

A contextual approach on sex-related biases in pain judgements: The moderator effects of evidence of pathology and patients’ distress cues on nurses’ judgements of chronic low-back pain

Although women report feeling more pain than men, their pain is often underdiagnosed and undertreated. By proposing a gender-based theoretical conceptualisation, we argue that such sex-related biases may be enhanced or suppressed by contextual variables pertaining to the clinical situation, the perceiver or the patient. Consequently, we aimed to explore the moderator role of two clinically relevant variables in a chronic low-back pain (CLBP) scenario: diagnostic evidence of pathology (EP) and pain behaviours conveying distress. One-hundred and twenty-six female nurses (M?=?35.33, SD?=?7.64) participated in an experimental between-subjects design, 2 (patient's sex)?×?2 (EP: present vs. absent)?×?2 (pain behaviours: with vs. without distress). Independent variables were operationalised by vignettes depicting a patient with CLBP. Nurses judged the patient's pain on several dimensions: (1) credibility; (2) disability; (3) severity of the clinical situation; (4) psychological attributions and (5) willingness to offer support. Main findings showed that judgements of women's pain were influenced by EP, while judgements of men's pain were not. Moreover, nurses showed biases against men, but only in the presence of EP. The influence of distress cues was less consistent. Theoretical and practical implications are drawn.     

Forecasting Elections from Voters' Perceptions of Candidates' Ability to Handle Issues

When deciding for whom to vote, voters should select the candidate they expect to best handle issues, all other things equal. A simple heuristic predicted that the candidate who is rated more favorably on a larger number of issues would win the popular vote. This was correct for nine out of ten U.S. presidential elections from 1972 to 2008. We then used simple linear regression to relate the incumbent's relative issue ratings to the actual two‐party popular vote shares. The resulting model yielded out‐of‐sample forecasts that were competitive with those from the Iowa Electronic Markets and established quantitative models. The issue‐index model has implications for political decision makers, as it can help to track campaigns and to decide which issues to focus on. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A descriptive study of emotion concepts using dimensional models of core affect / Un estudio descriptivo de los conceptos emocionales desde los modelos dimensionales de los estados afectivos

Abstract

The study of emotions from a dimensional perspective has allowed for important steps towards the understanding of human emotional experiences. However, there are still many questions to be addressed. One, of special relevance, refers to which emotion concepts we use to refer to different emotional experiences. Thus, the primary purpose of this research was to identify which emotion concepts we use in our daily life to refer to eight specific core affects identified by the combination of valance (positive and negative), arousal (activated and deactivated) and time perspective (anticipatory and retrospective). Further, we focused on the degree of specificity of those emotion concepts and whether the levels of specificity vary among different core affects. Our results evidenced that the specificity and breadth of our emotional vocabulary varies between different core affects.     

Forgiveness as a mediator of the relationship between PTSD and hostility in survivors of childhood abuse

This paper argues that emotional inferences about characters in a text are not as specific as previously assumed (DeVega, Diaz, & Leon, 1997; DeVega, Leon, & Diaz 1996; Gernsbacher, Goldsmith, & Robertson, 1992; Gernsbacher, Hollada, & Robertson, 1998; Gernsbacher & Robertson, 1992). The emotional information inferred by readers does not differentiate between emotions that are similar, though not identical. In both Experiments 1 and 2, participants read the stories used by Gernsbacher et al. (1992). Results from Experiment 1 (off-line) show that participants judged several emotions consistent with the same story. In Experiment 2 (on-line), participants took longer to read target sentences containing emotions mismatching the stories, but there was no difference between target sentences containing different matching emotions as determined by Experiment 1. Results from Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that the emotional information readers infer from the stories is too broad to determine a specific emotion. The results are consistent with the idea that a general emotional response is evoked, which is compatible with one or more specific emotions.