道德信息对面孔吸引力判断的无意识调节

抽象语言信息是否能够影响知觉?本研究在审美领域对此进行考察,探索无意识获取的道德信息是否影响个体对相应面孔吸引力的知觉判断。结果发现个体对面孔吸引力的知觉判断受到内隐道德信息的调节,且调节效应与面孔本身吸引力水平无关; 另外,面孔审美判断的反应时受到道德美丑和面孔吸引力的共同影响,尤其当两类信息相矛盾时被试需要更长的时间进行判断。研究结果表明抽象的社会道德信息可以对面孔吸引力的知觉判断产生自上而下的调节。     

Development of body emotion perception in infancy: From discrimination to recognition

Research suggests that infants progress from discrimination to recognition of emotions in faces during the first half year of life. It is unknown whether the perception of emotions from bodies develops in a similar manner. In the current study, when presented with happy and angry body videos and voices, 5-month-olds looked longer at the matching video when they were presented upright but not when they were inverted. In contrast, 3.5-month-olds failed to match even with upright videos. Thus, 5-month-olds but not 3.5-month-olds exhibited evidence of recognition of emotions from bodies by demonstrating intermodal matching. In a subsequent experiment, younger infants did discriminate between body emotion videos but failed to exhibit an inversion effect, suggesting that discrimination may be based on low-level stimulus features. These results document a developmental change from discrimination based on non-emotional information at 3.5 months to recognition of body emotions at 5 months. This pattern of development is similar to face emotion knowledge development and suggests that both the face and body emotion perception systems develop rapidly during the first half year of life.     

语义联系对关联再认神经机制的调节

已有研究显示,关联再认可记录到分别反映双重加工模型的两阶段（即熟悉和回忆）的ERP成分（即FN400和LPC成分）,且具有高语义联系配对的关联再认可通过整合在基于熟悉加工的基础上完成。然而,不同语义联系对关联再认神经机制的影响及单个项目的熟悉和回忆加工的调节作用尚未揭示。为此,本研究比较了主题相关和类别相关图形关联再认的波形波幅异同,并分析了单个项目的熟悉和回忆加工对配对识别的影响。结果显示,主题相关和类别相关条件的旧配对、重组配对和“旧+新”配对均记录到反映熟悉加工的FN400成分,主题相关条件的旧配对、重组配对和“旧+新”配对均记录到反映回忆加工的LPC成分,类别相关条件的旧配对记录到LPC成分。表明关联再认的神经机制受语义联系所调节,单个项目的熟悉程度可影响配对识别时的神经机制,上述结论支持双重加工模型。     

Increasing the salience of fluency cues does not reduce the recognition memory impairment in Alzheimer's disease!

In Alzheimer's disease (AD), it is now well established that recollection is impaired from the beginning of the disease, whereas findings are less clear concerning familiarity. One of the most important mechanisms underlying familiarity is the sense of familiarity driven by processing fluency. In this study, we attempted to attenuate recognition memory deficits in AD by maximizing the salience of fluency cues in two conditions of a recognition memory task. In one condition, targets and foils have been created from the same pool of letters (Overlap condition). In a second condition, targets and foils have been derived from two separate pools of letters (No‐Overlap condition), promoting the use of letter‐driven visual and phonetic fluency. Targets and foils were low‐frequency words. The memory tasks were performed by 15 patients with AD and 16 healthy controls. Both groups improved their memory performance in the No‐Overlap condition compared to the Overlap condition. Patients with AD were able to use fluency cues during recognition memory as older adults did, but this did not allow to compensate for dysfunction of recognition memory processes.     

Facial expressions as performances in mime

That facial expressions are universal emotion signals has been supported by observers agreeing on the emotion mimed by actors. We show that actors can mime a diverse range of states: emotions, cognitions, physical states, and actions. English, Hindi, and Malayalam speakers (N?=?1200) viewed 25 video clips and indicated the state conveyed. Within each language, at least 23 of the 25 clips were recognised above chance and base rate. Facial expressions of emotions are not special in their recognisability, and it is miming that may be the universal human ability.     

A sound effect: Exploration of the distinctiveness advantage in voice recognition

Two experiments are presented, which explore the presence of a distinctiveness advantage when recognising unfamiliar voices. In Experiment 1, distinctive voices were recognised significantly better, and with greater confidence, in a sequential same/different matching task compared with typical voices. These effects were replicated and extended in Experiment 2, as distinctive voices were recognised better even under challenging listening conditions imposed by nonsense sentences and temporal reversal. Taken together, the results aligned well with similar results when processing faces, and provided a useful point of comparison between voice and face processing.     

Auditory driving and affective influences

Past research has shown that variations in musical tempo influence the perceived rate of visual motion. The goal here was to investigate whether this effect is influenced by audiovisual affect. Participants were presented with montages (slideshows) of positive or negative scenes accompanied by positive or negative music whose rate was either the same as, or 15% faster or slower than that of the montage. The results of a subsequent recognition task showed a higher false alarm rate to faster and slower visual scenes in the presence of accelerated and decelerated soundtracks, respectively. Moreover, the magnitude of these effects significantly increased when music–montage pairs displayed a positive and negative affect, respectively. In contrast, variations in visual rate exerted no influence on auditory rate recognition. These findings have implications for audiovisual art forms as well as theories of cross‐modal perception.     

It is written all over your face: Socially rejected people display microexpressions that are detectable after training in the Micro Expression Training Tool (METT)

Social rejection is a powerful negative emotional experience, yet rejected people often appear stoic and unmoved. That is, their macroexpressions of emotion are not accurate reflections of their emotional states. Yet, there is reason to believe that rejected people exhibit involuntary microexpressions of negative emotion. We contrasted people's macroexpressions of emotion with their microexpressions subsequent to an acceptance or rejection experience. Observers coded microexpressions after being trained with the Micro Expression Training Tool. Rejected participants expressed more sad and angry microexpressions than did accepted participants. This research demonstrates that socially rejected people display negative microexpressions that are detectable by observers trained in the Micro Expression Training Tool.     

Reducing the Negative Effect of the Retention Interval on the Composite Face Recognition

Our memories are quite fragile. We sometimes recognize something unseen as something seen before. This error often causes serious problems, such as the misidentification of composite faces in a criminal investigation. In such a scene, people occasionally claim to have seen a face that is actually a composite face consisting of facial parts separately seen before; this error is called the memory conjunction error. Although the likelihood of the memory conjunction error increases over time, previous studies suggest that it could be suppressed by the number of response options, which are expected to affect the criterion for the “Old” response. Our results show that the presence of three response options reduced the memory conjunction error. Additionally, providing information about the existence of composite faces affected the sensitivity for detecting old faces, whereas three response options affected the criterion. This study might contribute to the improvement of procedures for eyewitness testimony.