Adult attachment avoidance and automatic affective response to sad facial expressions

The present work represents the first study to investigate the relationship between adult attachment avoidance and anxiety and automatic affective responses to basic facial emotions. Subliminal affective priming methods allowed for the assessment of unconscious affective reactions. An affective priming task using masked sad and happy faces, both of which are approach‐related facial expressions, was administered to 30 healthy volunteers. Participants also completed the Relationship Scales Questionnaire and measures of anxiety and depression. Attachment avoidance was negatively associated with affective priming due to sad (but not happy) facial expressions. This association occurred independently of attachment anxiety, depressivity, and trait anxiety. Attachment anxiety was not correlated with priming due to sad or happy facial expressions. The present results are consistent with the assumption that attachment avoidance moderates automatic affective reaction to sad faces. Our data indicate that avoidant attachment is related to a low automatic affective responsivity to sad facial expressions.     

Emotions in sport: Perceived effects on attention,concentration, and performance

This study explored attentional patterns associated with positive and negative emotions during sport competition, and athletes' perceptions of the consequences of these attentional changes for concentration and performance. Sixty‐nine athletes completed the Sport Emotion Questionnaire following a national softball competition. They also retrospectively reported their perceptions of how emotions influenced their attention, concentration, and sport performance. Excitement and happiness were more closely associated with concentration than anxiety, dejection, and anger. Although excitement demanded more attention than the negative emotions, the positive emotions were perceived as more likely to lead to a performance‐relevant focus and automatic physical movements, both of which were beneficial for concentration and performance. Emotional intensity increased these effects.     

Parent-school relationships and children's academic and social outcomes in public school pre-kindergarten

Two dimensions of parent-school relationships, parental school involvement and parents' perceptions of teacher responsiveness to child/parent, were examined in state-funded pre-kindergarten classrooms in a large urban school district. Children's social and academic outcomes were individually assessed in the fall and spring. Hierarchical Linear Modeling analyses revealed that parental school involvement positively predicted children's social skills (d = .55) and mathematics skills (d = .36), and negatively predicted problem behaviors (d = .47). Perceived teacher responsiveness to child/parent was positively related to children's early reading (d = .43), and social skills (d = .43), and negatively to problem behaviors (d = .61). All analyses controlled for quality of teacher interaction with children in the classroom, parental home involvement, parental education level, and child race/ethnicity.     

Emotion and object processing in Parkinson’s disease

The neuropsychological literature on the processing of emotions in Parkinson’s disease (PD) reveals conflicting evidence about the role of the basal ganglia in the recognition of facial emotions. Hence, the present study had two objectives. One was to determine the extent to which the visual processing of emotions and objects differs in PD. The other was to assess the impact of cognitive load on the processing of these types of information. Thirty-one patients with idiopathic PD (IPD) under dopamine replacement therapy (DRT) were compared to 30 control subjects on emotion and object recognition tasks. Recognition of objects was more accurate and faster than recognition of facial expressions of emotion, for both groups of subjects. In a second experiment using an N-back procedure with the same stimuli—a more demanding task with a higher cognitive load—patients with IPD were as accurate as control subjects in detecting the correct sequential presentation of stimuli, but were much slower in their decision responses. This indicates that IPD patients under DRT are not impaired in encoding emotion or object information, but that they have difficulty with the processing demands of the N-back task. Thus, patients with IPD appear to be more sensitive to cognitive load than to type of information, whether facial emotions or objects. In this perspective, one must consider that a deafferented dopaminergic system has problems processing more complex information before one can posit the existence of deficits affecting a specific type of information.     

青少年网络道德与其网络偏差行为的关系

青少年已经成为中国互联网的最大用户群体,他们在使用互联网中表现出的偏差行为与道德的关系值得关注。该研究使用问卷法探讨了496名青少年的网络道德特点与网络偏差行为表现以及二者之间的关系。结果发现:(1)青少年的网络道德表现较积极,网络道德认知、情感和意向之间存在显著正相关;(2)青少年的网络偏差行为不算严重,但男生的网络过激行为和网络色情行为显著多于女生,且网络过激行为随着年级升高而减少:其中网络攻击性、易怒、敌意和冲突水平都随着年级的增长而呈下降趋势;(4)青少年的网络道德认知和意向对网络偏差行为有反向预测作用,网络道德情感不能预测其网络偏差行为表现。网络道德越积极,表现出来的网络偏差行为越少。     

EXPERIENTIAL NARRATIVES OF RAPE AND TORTURE

Many Guatemalan women suffered extreme sexual violence during the latter half of the twentieth century. Learning of this violence can evoke hatred in persons who love and respect women—hatred for the men who perpetrated the violence and also for other men around the world who victimize women in this way. Hatred is a common response to a perceived evil, and it might in some cases be a fitting response, but it is important to subject one's emotions to critical moral reflection. A key task of ethics is to encourage persons to cultivate good habits of being moved. This essay analyzes the way in which two different texts manage, through the skillful presentation of experiential narratives, to help readers acknowledge the hatred they might feel, but also to think twice about the hatred to which they consent.     

AGNOSTIC MEDITATIONS ON BUDDHIST MEDITATION

I first attempt a taxonomy of meditation in traditional Indian Buddhism. Based on the main psychological or somatic function at which the meditative effort is directed, the following classes can be distinguished: (1) emotion‐centered meditation (coinciding with the traditional samatha approach); (2) consciousness‐centered meditation (with two subclasses: consciousness reduction/elimination and ideation obliteration); (3) reflection‐centered meditation (with two subtypes: morality‐directed reflection and reality‐directed observation, the latter corresponding to the vipassanā method); (4) visualization‐centered meditation; and (5) physiology‐centered meditation. In the second part of the essay I tackle the problem of the epistemic validity and happiness‐engendering value of Buddhist meditation. In my highly conjectural view, the claim that meditation represents an infallible tool for realizing the (Supreme) Truth as well as a universally valid method for attaining the highest forms of happiness is largely based on the crēdō effect, that is, a placebolike process. I do not deny that meditation may have some positive effects on mental and physical health or that its practice may bring changes to the mind. Meditation may be a valuable alternative approach in life and clinical treatment, but it is far from being a must or a panacea.     

Young and Older Adults' Expression of Emotional Experience: Do Autobiographical Narratives Tell a Different Story?

Though autobiographical remembering is a common means of emotional expression in everyday life, rarely have autobiographical narratives been used to assess emotion. Studies rely instead on retrospective scalar measures. In this study, 87 young (M = 20) and older (M = 62) adults' scalar reports and narratives of the salience, frequency, and intensity of emotional reactions to the OJ Simpson verdict announcement were compared. Scalar measures and autobiographical narratives sometimes tell different stories about certain aspects of emotion. Supporting theory, scalars measures, and narratives both indicate greater salience of emotion in late life. In contrast to expectation, older adults more frequently expressed negative affect in their narratives, but not in scalars measures. Both types of measures did, however, show a higher intensity of sadness in older adults. Theories of emotion and aging may benefit from incorporating the role of memory, and reactions to specific negative life events.     

群体共享情绪的放大效应

相比独自经历情绪事件,在群体中与他人共享情绪事件会放大个体的情绪体验,该效应被称之为群体共享情绪的放大效应。以往研究为群体共享情绪放大效应提供了部分间接的实验证据,但以往的理论,如群体共同关注理论和情绪传染理论,并不能对该效应做出很好的解释。基于社会评估理论和共享现实理论提出的评估–证实–放大模型可较好地解释群体共享情绪的放大效应。未来研究可在真实互动的群体情境中检验群体共享情绪放大效应及评估–证实–放大模型。     

学前儿童用“人为不介入原理”区分生物、非生物能力的发展

本研究采用访谈法,考查4～6岁儿童对生物的“人为不介入原理”的理解。研究结果表明：1．学前儿童没有表现出明显的“泛灵论”倾向。2．学前儿童对“人为不介入原理”的理解随年龄增长而呈现提高趋势,多数6岁儿童已经能够利用这一原理区分生物和非生物。3．学前儿童对不同领域刺激物的认知表现出不平衡性,对动物的认知优先发展,植物次之,对人造物认知的发展落后于对生物认知的发展。4．学前儿童表现出初步的分类概念。