Angry faces are more resistant to forgetting than are happy faces: directed forgetting effects on the identity of emotional faces

Using the item-method directed forgetting paradigm (i.e. intentionally forgetting specified information), we examined directed forgetting of facial identity as a function of facial expression and the sex of the expresser and perceiver. Participants were presented with happy and angry male and female faces cued for either forgetting or remembering, and were then asked to recognise previously studied faces from among a series of neutral faces. For each recognised test face, participants also recalled the face’s previously displayed emotional expression. We found that angry faces were more resistant to forgetting than were happy faces. Furthermore, angry expressions on male faces and happy expressions on female faces were recognised and recalled better than vice versa. Signal detection analyses revealed that male faces gave rise to a greater sensitivity than female faces did, and male participants, but not female participants, showed greater sensitivity to male faces than to female faces. Several theoretical implications are discussed.     

Infants' ability to match dynamic phonetic and gender information in the face and voice.

Six experiments tested young infants' sensitivity to vowel and gender information in dynamic faces and voices. Infants were presented with side-by-side displays of two faces articulating the vowels /a/ or /i/ in synchrony. The heard voice matched the gender of one face in some studies and the vowel of one face in other studies and, in some studies, vowel and gender were placed in conflict. Infants of age 4.5 months showed no evidence of matching face and voice on the basis of gender, but were able to ignore irrelevant gender information and match on the basis of the vowel. Robust evidence of the ability to match on the basis of gender was not evident until 8 months of age. This set of findings suggests that, when identical stimuli are used, gender matching does not emerge until a later age than does phonetic matching. Results are discussed in relation to key theories of intermodal development.     

抑郁情绪大学生反应抑制的眼动特点

本研究采用反眼动实验范式,通过BDI和 SDS量表筛选11名抑郁情绪组和12名正常对照组被试,以高兴、中性和悲伤面孔图片作为实验材料,旨在探讨抑郁情绪大学生对情绪刺激的眼动抑制能力。结果发现：抑郁情绪组的正确眼跳反应时慢于正常组;反朝向眼跳任务中,抑郁情绪组在情绪面孔图片,尤其是悲伤面孔图片上的错误率比正常组高。研究表明,抑郁情绪个体的认知加工速度慢于正常个体,且对情绪面孔,尤其对悲伤面孔存在抑制缺陷。     

Perception and Expressing Habits of Smiling and Angry Expressions Modulated by Facial Physical Attractiveness in Asian Female Persons

In this study, we investigated the effects of facial physical attractiveness on perception and expressing habit of smiling and angry expressions. In experiment 1, 20 participants rated 60 photo subjects’ smiling and angry expressions of uncontrolled physical expression configuration. The results showed that for the angry faces, the perceived expression intensity and the expression naturalness in the attractive group were significantly stronger than those in the unattractive group; for the smiling faces, this attractiveness bias was not observed. In experiment 2, using artificial expressions made by an identical expression template, interestingly, the perceived expression intensity and the expression naturalness of the smiling faces in the attractive group were stronger than those in the unattractive group, while the impression strength of anger between the two groups was approximately the same. A comparison of the two observations suggests that facial physical attractiveness can enhance the perceived intensity of a smiling expression but not an angry expression, and that the inconsistencies between the two experiments are due to the difference of expressing habits between unattractive and attractive persons. These results have implications as regards the effect of facial attractiveness on the expressing habits of expression senders and the person’s development of social skills.     

Is the sunny side up and the dark side down? Effects of stimulus type and valence on a spatial detection task

In verbal communication, affective information is commonly conveyed to others through spatial terms (e.g. in “I am feeling down”, negative affect is associated with a lower spatial location). This study used a target location discrimination task with neutral, positive and negative stimuli (words, facial expressions, and vocalizations) to test the automaticity of the emotion-space association, both in the vertical and horizontal spatial axes. The effects of stimulus type on emotion-space representations were also probed. A congruency effect (reflected in reaction times) was observed in the vertical axis: detection of upper targets preceded by positive stimuli was faster. This effect occurred for all stimulus types, indicating that the emotion-space association is not dependent on sensory modality and on the verbal content of affective stimuli.     

愉快面孔识别优势及其认知神经机制

愉快面孔识别优势表现为被试对高兴面孔比对其他情绪面孔的识别正确率更高、反应时更短。大量研究以简笔画和面孔图片为材料, 在情绪分类任务和视觉搜索任务中均发现这一优势。该优势存在诊断性价值假说、情绪独特性假说和出现频率假说三种不同的理论解释。近年来, 研究者采用ERP技术发现这一优势形成于反应选择阶段, 但其起始阶段尚无一致结论。未来可借助fMRI技术进一步研究其认知神经机制。     

A Case Study of the Coping Power Program for Angry and Aggressive Youth

This paper illustrates the application of the Coping Power program with an 11-year-old boy and his father. Coping Power is a manualized preventive intervention for school-age children at-risk for disruptive and delinquent behavior. Cognitive-behavioral techniques are taught in separate child and parent groups to improve children’s social and emotional competencies. This case study highlights the core content of the Coping Power child and parent intervention components, the contextual social cognitive risk factors that the program targets, and the empirical support for the program’s effectiveness.     

识别名人与陌生人面孔的功能磁共振成像

探讨名人与陌生人身份判断的脑功能。6名被试参加实验,运用功能磁共振技术采集数据,AFNI软件进行统计处理。实验结果显示,名人面孔身份识别主要激活了额颞区和梭状回等,陌生人面孔识别主要激活了脑岛和梭状回。实验表明,熟悉名人面孔与陌生人面孔识别有其不同的区域;都有梭状回的视觉加工,但是激活的程度不同。     

Can holistic processing be learned for inverted faces?

The origin of "special" processing for upright faces has been a matter of ongoing debate. If it is due to generic expertise, as opposed to having some innate component, holistic processing should be learnable for stimuli other than upright faces. Here we assess inverted faces. We trained subjects to discriminate identical twins using up to 1100 exposures to each twin in different poses and images. In the upright orientation, twin discrimination was supported by holistic processing. Removal of a single face feature had no effect on performance, and a composite effect (Young, A. W., Hellawell, D., & Hay, D.C. (1987). Configurational information in face perception. Perception 16 (6), 747-759) was obtained. In the inverted orientation, however, above chance identification ability relied on (a) image specific learning, or (b) tiny local feature differences not noticed in the upright faces. The failure to learn holistic processing for inverted faces indicates that, in contrast to the situation for objects (Tarr, M.J., & Pinker, S. (1989). Mental rotation and orientation-dependence in shape recognition. Cognitive Psychology 21 (2), 233-282), orientation specificity of face processing is highly stable against practice.     

Making a Political Statement or Refusing to Grow Up—Reflections on the Situation of the Academic Youth in Postwar British Literature

The author attempts to apply the psychoanalytic concept of “prolonged adolescence” to two literary works, both of which are embedded in England’s postwar social and political climate. The discussion of John Wain’s Hurry on Down ([1953] 1979) and John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger ([1956] 1989), by necessity, involves a look at those factors responsible for shaping the cultural “mood” in those days. However, the author’s primary concern lies with how two particular (fictional) individuals, or antiheroes, deal with the frustration, which, although generally felt among contemporary academia, in their cases seems to hide a much deeper layer of mental insecurity and instability. In fact, we come to feel that the characters have not achieved a proper sense of identity (“self”) and are, from the point of view of maturity, delayed and, hence, “unfitted” to cope adequately with the external world. Having long achieved formal adulthood, they seem to have gotten “stuck” somewhere along the passage of growing up. Essential papers by Sigmund Freud and his daughter Anna, as well as a very early paper on the topic by Siegfried Bernfeld, are, among others, taken into account, as is the profound research done by Peter Blos on the subject in question.