Production of spontaneous and posed facial expressions in patients with Huntington's disease: Impaired communication of disgust

Several studies have reported impairment in the recognition of facial expressions of disgust in patients with Huntington's disease (HD) and preclinical carriers of the HD gene. The aim of this study was to establish whether impairment for disgust in HD patients extended to include the ability to express the emotion on their own faces. Eleven patients with HD, and 11 age and education matched healthy controls participated in three tasks concerned with the expression of emotions. One task assessed the spontaneous production of disgust-like facial expressions during the smelling of offensive odorants. A second assessed the production of posed facial expressions during deliberate attempts to communicate emotion. The third task evaluated HD patients’ ability to imitate the specific facial configurations associated with each emotion. Foul odours induced fewer disgust-like facial reactions in HD patients than in controls, and patients’ posed facial expressions of disgust were less accurate than the posed disgust expressions of controls. The effect was selective to disgust; patients had no difficulty posing expressions of other emotions. These impairments were not explained by compromised muscle control: HD patients had no difficulty imitating the facial movements required to display disgust. Viewed together with evidence of difficulty in other aspects of disgust in HD, the findings suggest that a common substrate might participate in both the processing and the expression of this emotion.     

民族本质论对民族认同和刻板印象的影响

The simple understanding of ethnicity by lay people is called the lay people’s theory of ethnicity, two theories are used to interpret the ethnicity by lay people in their everyday life. One of the theories contends that ethnicity is determined by nonmalleable, deep-seated essence and the essence would give rise to stable personality traits and abilities across situations, this is called the essentialist theory of ethnicity. The other theory, however, denies the real existence of ethnic essence, ethnicity is a social construction that is arbitrarily created due to social and political reasons in historical contexts, which is termed the social constructivist theory. Some western studies have shown that people have different interpretation about ethnicity cause different group perceptions and group relations. It is necessary to test and extend these results in another social background, like the Chinese one. First, 351 students from different ethnic groups participated in Study 1. They completed a questionnaire aimed at assessing their attitudes towards inter-group perception, ethnic identity, lay people’s theory of ethnicity, and out-group contact attitude. The results showed that: (1) the stronger essentialist belief a participant has, the more sensitive he or she is about group difference; (2) essentialist theory affects people’s inter-group identity, i.e. the deeper one believes in essentialism, the tenser he or she feels about in-group identity and bias, the more passive attitude is hold towards out-group contact. Second, 104 Han students participated in Study 2. An experimental method was used to test stereotyping differences against the minorities in relationship to lay people’s ethnic theories. Participants were randomly assigned to read the article advocating the essentialist view of ethnicity or the article advocating the social constructionist view of ethnicity. The result illustrates that: participants in the essentialist ethnicity condition showed stronger stereotyped impressions, especially negative stereotyping than did those in the social constructionist condition, but participants in the two conditions did not differ significantly on their positive stereotyping. In conclusion, the essentialist theory of ethnicity has a great influence on ethnic identity and ethnic stereotyping. Practical implications of these results imply that lay people’s theory of ethnicity can be used as a vehicle for reducing prejudice. Specifically, we can teach people to hold more social constructivist belief and less essentialist belief.     

Mirror neurons and their function in cognitively understood empathy

The current renewal of interest in empathy is closely connected to the recent neurobiological discovery of mirror neurons. Although the concept of empathy has been widely deployed, we shall focus upon one main psychological function it serves: enabling us to understand other peoples’ intentions. In this essay we will draw on neuroscientific, psychological, and philosophical literature in order to investigate the relationships between mirror neurons and empathy as to intention understanding. Firstly, it will be explored whether mirror neurons are the neural basis of our empathic capacities: a vast array of empirical results appears to confirm this hypothesis. Secondly, the higher level capacity of reenactive empathy will be examined and the question will be addressed whether philosophical analysis alone is able to provide a foundation for this more abstract level of empathy. The conclusion will be drawn that both empirical evidence and philosophical analysis can jointly contribute to the clarification of the concept of empathy.     

Do infants provide evidence that the mirror system is involved in action understanding?

The mirror neuron theory of action understanding makes predictions concerning how the limited motor repertoire of young infants should impact on their ability to interpret others’ actions. In line with this theory, an increasing body of research has identified a correlation between infants’ abilities to perform an action, and their ability to interpret that action as goal-directed when performed by others. In this paper, I will argue that the infant data does by no means unequivocally support the mirror neuron theory of action understanding and that alternative interpretations of the data should be considered. Furthermore, some of this data can be better interpreted in terms of an alternative view, which holds that the role of the motor system in action perception is more likely to be one of enabling the observer to predict, after a goal has been identified, how that goal will be attained.     

The Impact of Abuse and Learning Difficulties on Emotion Understanding in Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

Children's affective experiences and cognitive abilities have an impact on emotion understanding. However, their relative contribution, as well as the possibility of an interaction between them, has rarely been examined. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the influence of severe abuse and learning difficulties on simple and complex components of emotion understanding in late childhood and early adolescence. A total of 28 older children and young adolescents were selected for the study. Half of the participants had suffered from severe abuse, and half of these abused children additionally had learning disabilities. The remaining half of the sample had no history of abuse but were matched with the abused children on learning difficulties, age and gender. The participants’ emotion understanding was assessed with the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC). Results showed that (a) learning difficulties but not abuse had an impact on emotion understanding, (b) there was no interaction effect of abuse and learning difficulties on emotion understanding, and (b) the observed effects of learning difficulties were most apparent for the understanding of relatively complex components of emotion and not for simple components. The results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications.     

The Speech and Vocalization Patterns of Boys with ADHD Compared with Boys with Dyslexia and Boys Without Learning Disabilities

The domain-specific hypothesis of L. Cosmides (1989) and L. Cosmides and J. Tooby (1989, 1992) positing that conditional logic has its origin in the evolution of social exchange and in the detection of potential cheaters was tested against a more domain-general hypothesis positing that adult reasoning is logical and that errors in conditional reasoning arise from misunderstandings, not from a lack of logicality. The results of 5 experiments with undergraduate students (n = 682 for Experiments 1-4; n = 188 for Experiment 5), which involved a series of selection tasks that yielded specific predictions about participant performance, were not consistent with the cheater detection hypothesis. Findings supported the misunderstandings hypothesis and imply that adults possess general-purpose logical competence versus domain-specific modules.     

Charting the Attributes of God: The Common Ground of Three Religions according to Ramon Llull (1232–1316)

The Open Letter written by 138 major representatives of Islam to the leaders of the Christian churches, on 13 October 2007, came as something of a surprise. Perhaps more surprisingly, in 1283, the Catalan theologian, Ramon Llull, wrote imaginatively of exactly such a letter in one of his novels, thus demonstrating that the interfaith question is not just a problem of our modern times, which became acute only on September 11. On the contrary, the churches have always been conscious of this interfaith context. Yet methods of tackling the problem have differed widely down the centuries and among Christian traditions. The solution proposed by Ramon Llull and analysed in this article starts from the common acceptance of the attributes of God in all three monotheistic religions. It deserves our attention not only as an interesting historical example but also as a way of avoiding some of our current problems and impasses.     

Perceptions of mental healthcare consumers regarding their conditions

Distress is experienced, understood and communicated differently across various cultures. The aim of the study was to investigate the role of culture, religion and spirituality in patients’ understanding of and coping with mental problems. A quantitative survey was done at a psychiatric institution. A questionnaire was designed to explore patients’ cultural and religious beliefs about mental illness, and how these beliefs and perceptions influenced their actions in search for recovery. Questionnaires were completed by 94 patients. The majority of participants were Christian (79.8%), followed by African traditionalists (17.0%). Seventy-two per cent believed that faith in God, and 34.4% that help from religious leaders, could contribute to mental wellness. Approximately a third (29.0%) believed that by keeping their ancestors happy, they would be protected from sickness and bad luck. Mental healthcare providers’ sensitivity to cultural and religious beliefs will translate into a more comprehensive management plan, ensuring a satisfying therapeutic relationship.     

Relationship between Social Cognition and Temperament in Preschool‐aged Children

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between temperament and social cognition, including theory of mind and emotion understanding, in 34 preschool‐aged children (aged 3–4 years). Theory of mind was measured with a belief–desire reasoning assessment, and emotion understanding was measured with an affective perspective‐taking task. Child temperament was provided by online parent report. Consistent with previous research, theory of mind correlated with shy and socially observant temperament. In contrast, emotion understanding was associated with attention focusing and low intensity pleasure (enjoyment of low arousal activities). Both theory of mind and emotion understanding were positively related to inhibitory control and negatively related to activity level. In sum, theory of mind and emotion understanding, while both associated with executive functioning, correlate with distinct social preference temperament dimensions. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Family as a source of support under stress: Benefits of greater breadth of family inclusion

Family has profound meaning and represents the most important ingroup for most people, yet, we know very little about how lay perceptions of family affect well-being. In the current work, we examined how lay theories about breadth of family inclusion (i.e., including a broader variety of entities in one’s definition of family) were related to family experiences and to well-being. In Study 1, we found that lay theories about family as including a wider variety of entities (i.e., greater breadth of inclusion) predicted more positive family evaluations, more positive qualities, and greater family importance. In Study 2, we found that greater breadth of family inclusion was associated with greater resilience in the face of stress. Finally, in Study 3 we used an experimental manipulation of breadth of family inclusion, establishing that broader views of family produced greater social needs fulfillment. Implications for the role of ingroup memberships and identities in promoting well-being are discussed.