Detection of emotional expressions in rapidly changing facial displays in high- and low-socially anxious women

Facial information and attention to facial displays are distributed over spatial as well as temporal domains. Thus far, research on selective attention to (dis)approving faces in the context of social anxiety has concentrated primarily on the spatial domain. Using a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm, the present study examined the temporal characteristics of visual attention for happy and angry faces in high- (n=16) and low-socially anxious individuals (n=17), to test whether also in the temporal domain socially anxious individuals are characterized by threat-confirming attentional biases. Results indicated that presenting angry faces as the first target (T1) did not aggravate the detection of the emotional expression of the second target (T2). Yet, participants generally showed superior detection of the emotional expression of T2, if T2 was an angry face. Casting doubt on the role of such attenuated attentional blink for angry faces in social anxiety, no evidence emerged to indicate that this effect was relatively strong in high-socially anxious individuals. Finally, the presentation of an angry face as T2 resulted in a relatively hampered identification of a happy-T1. Again, this "backward blink" was not especially pronounced in high-socially anxious individuals. The present anger superiority effects are consistent with evolutionary models stressing the importance of being especially vigilant for signals of dominance. Since the effects were not especially pronounced in high-anxious individuals, the present study adds to previous findings indicating that socially anxious individuals are not characterized by a bias in the (explicit) detection of emotional expressions [Philippot, P., & Douilliez, C. (2005). Social phobics do not misinterpret facial expression of emotion. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 43, 639-652].     

Anxiety-related biases in children's avoidant responses to a masked angry face

While anxious children often show escape and withdrawal behaviours towards threats, few studies have experimentally assessed avoidance. The present study examined whether children with high levels of anxiety showed more avoidant responses to a neutral conditioned cue (CS+) that was paired with an unconditioned threat stimulus (UCS), a masked angry facial expression. Thirty-six 10 and 11 year-olds participated in a task, which involved choosing between two CS card stimuli of different colours to win points. Whilst both cards awarded the same number of points, one colour was systematically paired with a masked angry face (CS+), whilst the other colour was paired with a masked neutral face (CS-). Children with higher anxiety scores had an overall tendency to choose the card associated with the neutral face, with some evidence suggesting that this tendency emerged gradually across trials. These results suggest a relationship between anxiety and stimulus-response learning for CS+-UCS associations that support behavioural avoidance.     

面孔识别动态增益效应研究综述

近年来,研究者围绕动态面孔识别中的动态增益效应开展了一系列的研究。本文围绕面孔熟悉程度和面孔的活动类型两个方面对与动态增益效应有关的一系列动态面孔认知研究进行了总结,并对不同研究的差异进行了比较和分析。最后,对动态面孔认知规律、眼动模式和脑机制等研究方向上的发展进行了展望。     

DO INFANTS SHOW GENERALIZED IMITATION OF GESTURES?

Two experiments were conducted to investigate generalized imitation of manual gestures in 1- to 2-year-old infants. In Experiment 1, 6 infants were first trained four baseline matching relations (e.g., when instructed "Do this", to raise their arms after they saw the experimenter do so). Next, four novel gestures that the infants did not match in probe trials were selected as target behaviors during generalized imitation Test 1; models of these gestures were presented on unreinforced matching trials interspersed with intermittently reinforced baseline matching trials. None of the infants matched the target behaviors. To ensure that these behaviors were in the infants' motor skills repertoires, the infants were next trained to produce them, at least once, under stimulus control that did not include an antecedent model of the target behavior. In repeat generalized imitation trials (Test 2), the infants again failed to match the target behaviors. Five infants (3 from Experiment 1) participated in Experiment 2, which was identical to Experiment 1 except that, following generalized imitation Test 1, the motor-skills training was implemented to a higher criterion (21 responses per target behavior), and in a multiple-baseline, across-target-behaviors procedure. In the final generalized imitation test, 1 infant matched one, and another infant matched two target behaviors; the remaining 17 target behaviors still were not matched. The results did not provide convincing evidence of generalized imitation, even though baseline matching was well maintained and the target behaviors were in the infants' motor skills repertoires, raising the question of what are the conditions that reliably give rise to generalized imitation.     

USE OF CHAINING TO INCREASE COMPLEXITY OF ECHOICS IN CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

Echoics are a critical target of language intervention for children with autism, because a well‐established echoic repertoire on the part of the child allows the clinician to use vocal modeling as a flexible, low‐effort prompting procedure during teaching. In this study, we implemented a chaining procedure to increase the complexity of echoics in 2 children with autism and 1 child with developmental delay. The procedure was effective for all 3 participants, and gains were maintained after treatment was withdrawn in most cases.     

THE INFLUENCE OF MATCHING AND MOTOR‐IMITATION ABILITIES ON RAPID ACQUISITION OF MANUAL SIGNS AND EXCHANGE‐BASED COMMUNICATIVE RESPONSES

Establishing a relation between existing skills and acquisition of communicative responses may be useful in guiding selection of alternative communication systems. Matching and motor‐imitation skills were assessed for 6 children with developmental disabilities, followed by training to request the same set of preferred items using exchange‐based communication and manual signs. Three participants displayed both skills and rapidly acquired both communicative response forms. Three others displayed neither skill; 1 mastered exchange‐based responses but not manual signs, and neither of the other 2 easily acquired either response form.     

Children's perception and understanding of (dis)similarities among dynamic bodily/facial expressions of happiness, pleasure, anger, and irritation

The current study examined the abilities of children (6 and 8 years of age) and adults to freely categorize and label dynamic bodily/facial expressions designed to portray happiness, pleasure, anger, irritation, and neutrality and controlled for their level of valence, arousal, intensity, and authenticity. Multidimensional scaling and cluster analyses showed that children (n = 52) and adults (n = 33) structured expressions in systematic and broadly similar ways. Between 6 and 8 years of age, there was a quantitative, but not a qualitative, improvement in labeling. When exposed to rich and dynamic emotional cues, children as young as 6 years can successfully perceive differences between close expressions (e.g., happiness, pleasure), and can categorize them with clear boundaries between them, with the exception of irritation, which had fuzzier borders. Children’s classifications were not reliant on lexical semantic abilities and were consistent with a model of emotion categories based on their degree of valence and arousal.     

Reduction of appeasement‐related affect as a concomitant of diazepam‐induced aggression: evidence for a link between aggression and the expression of self‐conscious emotions

Aggressive responding following benzodiazepine ingestion has been recorded in both experimental and client populations, however, the mechanism responsible for this outcome is unclear. The goal of this study was to identify an affective concomitant linked to diazepam‐induced aggression that might be responsible for this relationship. Thirty males (15 diazepam and 15 placebo) participated in the Taylor Aggression Paradigm while covertly being videotaped. The videotapes were analyzed using the Facial Action Coding System with the goal of identifying facial expression differences between the two groups. Relative to placebo participants, diazepam participants selected significantly higher shock settings for their opponents, consistent with past findings using this paradigm. Diazepam participants also engaged in significantly fewer appeasement expressions (associated with the self‐conscious emotions) during the task, although there were no group differences for other emotion expressions or for movements in general. Aggr. Behav. 35:203–212, 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Imitation of transitive and intransitive actions in healthy individuals

A handful of patients have been described as being impaired in performing transitive gestures, despite being still able to perform intransitive gestures. This impairment need not be explained by assuming different mechanisms; rather, it can be due to transitive actions being more difficult. In this study we tested whether neurologically healthy participants had greater difficulties in imitating transitive actions with respect to intransitive actions. Consistent with the prediction, subjects imitated intransitive better than transitive gestures. The ease of imitation of intransitive actions supports the complexity account of apraxic impairments.     

Patterns of brain-electrical activity during declarative memory performance in 10-month-old infants

This study of infant declarative memory concurrently examined brain-electrical activity and deferred imitation performance in 10-month-old infants. Continuous electroencephalogram (EEG) measures were collected throughout the activity-matched baseline, encoding (modeling) and retrieval (delayed test) phases of a within-subjects deferred imitation task. Infants were divided into two memory performance groups based on the exhibition of ordered-recall after a 24-h delay. Whereas no group differences were found in EEG collected during encoding, performance-group differences in EEG were present during retrieval. Infants who successfully displayed ordered-recall showed a pattern of increasing EEG from baseline to task at anterior temporal scalp locations, whereas infants showing no ordered-recall displayed no changes in EEG from baseline to task. These findings are discussed with respect to the biobehavioral developments underlying declarative memory abilities.