Perceptual experience shapes our ability to categorize faces by national origin: A new other-race effect

People are better at recognizing own-race than other-race faces. This other-race effect has been argued to be the result of perceptual expertise, whereby face-specific perceptual mechanisms are tuned through experience. We designed new tasks to determine whether other-race effects extend to categorizing faces by national origin. We began by selecting sets of face stimuli for these tasks that are typical in appearance for each of six nations (three Caucasian, three Asian) according to people from those nations (Study 1). Caucasian and Asian participants then categorized these faces by national origin (Study 2). Own-race faces were categorized more accurately than other-race faces. In contrast, Asian American participants, with more extensive other-race experience than the first Asian group, categorized other-race faces better than own-race faces, demonstrating a reversal of the other-race effect. Therefore, other-race effects extend to the ability to categorize faces by national origin, but only if participants have greater perceptual experience with own-race, than other-race faces. Study 3 ruled out non-perceptual accounts by showing that Caucasian and Asian faces were sorted more accurately by own-race than other-race participants, even in a sorting task without any explicit labelling required. Together, our results demonstrate a new other-race effect in sensitivity to national origin of faces that is linked to perceptual expertise.     

The perception of (naked only) bodies and faceless heads relies on holistic processing: Evidence from the inversion effect

Faces and bodies are more difficult to perceive when presented inverted than when presented upright (i.e., stimulus inversion effect), an effect that has been attributed to the disruption of holistic processing. The features that can trigger holistic processing in faces and bodies, however, still remain elusive. In this study, using a sequential matching task, we tested whether stimulus inversion affects various categories of visual stimuli: faces, faceless heads, faceless heads in body context, headless bodies naked, whole bodies naked, headless bodies clothed, and whole bodies clothed. Both accuracy and inversion efficiency score results show inversion effects for all categories but for clothed bodies (with and without heads). In addition, the magnitude of the inversion effect for face, naked body, and faceless heads was similar. Our findings demonstrate that the perception of faces, faceless heads, and naked bodies relies on holistic processing. Clothed bodies (with and without heads), on the other side, may trigger clothes-sensitive rather than body-sensitive perceptual mechanisms.     

Child As Metaphor: Colonialism,Psy-Governance,and Epistemicide

This paper mobilizes transdisciplinary inquiry to explore and deconstruct the often-used comparison of racialized/colonized people, intellectually disabled people and mad people as being like children. To be childlike is a metaphor that is used to denigrate, to classify as irrational and incompetent, to dismiss as not being knowledge holders, to justify governance and action on others’ behalf, to deem as being animistic, as undeveloped, underdeveloped or wrongly developed, and, hence, to subjugate. We explore the political work done by the metaphorical appeal to childhood, and particularly the centrality of the metaphor of childhood to legitimizing colonialism and white supremacy. The article attends to the ways in which this metaphor contributes to the shaping of the material and discursive realities of racialized and colonized others, as well as those who have been psychiatrized and deemed “intellectually disabled”. Further, we explore specific metaphors of child-colony, and child-mad-“crip”. We then detail the developmental logic underlying the historical and continued use of the metaphorics of childhood, and explore how this makes possible an infantilization of colonized peoples and the global South more widely. The material and discursive impact of this metaphor on children’s lives, and particularly children who are racialized, colonized, and/or deemed mad or “crip”, is then considered. We argue that complex adult-child relations, sane-mad relations and Western-majority world relations within global psychiatry, are situated firmly within pejorative notions of what it means to be childlike, and reproduce multi-systemic forms of oppression that, ostensibly in their “best interests”, govern children and all those deemed childlike.     

Modelling audiovisual integration of affect from videos and music

Two experiments examined how affective values from visual and auditory modalities are integrated. Experiment 1 paired music and videos drawn from three levels of valence while holding arousal constant. Experiment 2 included a parallel combination of three levels of arousal while holding valence constant. In each experiment, participants rated their affective states after unimodal and multimodal presentations. Experiment 1 revealed a congruency effect in which stimulus combinations of the same extreme valence resulted in more extreme state ratings than component stimuli presented in isolation. An interaction between music and video valence reflected the greater influence of negative affect. Video valence was found to have a significantly greater effect on combined ratings than music valence. The pattern of data was explained by a five parameter differential weight averaging model that attributed greater weight to the visual modality and increased weight with decreasing values of valence. Experiment 2 revealed a congruency effect only for high arousal combinations and no interaction effects. This pattern was explained by a three parameter constant weight averaging model with greater weight for the auditory modality and a very low arousal value for the initial state. These results demonstrate key differences in audiovisual integration between valence and arousal.     

Do tests facilitate decision‐making performance on a transfer task?

Testing can improve later recall of information. However, much less is known about the potential use of testing in promoting the transfer of learning. In this study, we investigated whether testing improves decision‐making performance on a transfer task in a sample of 98 university students using a between‐subjects design. After studying several statements about a fictional disease under different learning conditions (restudy, free recall, and multiple‐choice), participants were asked to recall this information and subsequently make medical decisions concerning the fictional disease (i.e., the transfer task). The present study found no advantage of testing conditions over restudy condition on the 30‐min delayed memory task. However, participants in the active retrieval practice (i.e., free recall) group performed significantly better on the transfer task over those in both restudy and multiple‐choice groups. These results suggest free‐recall tests promote the transfer of learning.     

The learning benefits of teaching: A retrieval practice hypothesis

Teaching educational materials to others enhances the teacher's own learning of those to‐be‐taught materials, although the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. Here, we show that the learning‐by‐teaching benefit is possibly a retrieval benefit. Learners (a) solved arithmetic problems (i.e., they neither taught nor retrieved; control group), (b) taught without relying on teaching notes (i.e., they had to retrieve the materials while teaching; teaching group), (c) taught with teaching notes (i.e., they did not retrieve the materials while teaching; teaching without retrieval practice [TnRP] group), or (d) retrieved (i.e., they did not teach but only practised retrieving; retrieval practice group). In a final comprehension test 1 week later, learners in the teaching group, as did those in the retrieval practice group, outperformed learners in the TnRP and control groups. Retrieval practice possibly causes the learning benefits of teaching.     

Production on hold: delaying vocal production enhances the production effect in free recall

The Production Effect (PE) represents superior memory for produced (read aloud) relative to non-produced (silently read) items. Another method of improving memory is taking a test on the study material – the Testing Effect. We evaluated the combined influence of both effects on free recall memory, using delayed vocal production, in which study words were vocally produced only after their disappearance. Such procedure involves an initial instant test since participants had to vocally retrieve the words (rather than read them aloud). In five experiments, participants were presented with study words that they were instructed to learn by no-production (reading silently), immediate production (reading aloud), delayed reading aloud, or delayed vocal production (instant retrieval). The results showed superior recall for delayed production over all other conditions. We suggest that the source of this superiority is the desirable difficulty induced by the addition of the initial test (retrieval effort) to the vocal production. The novel delayed production condition forms a superior mnemonic.     

Does mediator use contribute to the spacing effect for cued recall? Critical tests of the mediator hypothesis

When study is spaced across sessions (versus massed within a single session), final performance is greater after spacing. This spacing effect may have multiple causes, and according to the mediator hypothesis, part of the effect can be explained by the use of mediator-based strategies. This hypothesis proposes that when study is spaced across sessions, rather than massed within a session, more mediators will be generated that are longer lasting and hence more mediators will be available to support criterion recall. In two experiments, participants were randomly assigned to study paired associates using either a spaced or massed schedule. They reported strategy use for each item during study trials and during the final test. Consistent with the mediator hypothesis, participants who had spaced (as compared to massed) practice reported using more mediators on the final test. This use of effective mediators also statistically accounted for some – but not all of – the spacing effect on final performance.