Face in profile view reduces perceived facial expression intensity: An eye-tracking study

Recent studies measuring the facial expressions of emotion have focused primarily on the perception of frontal face images. As we frequently encounter expressive faces from different viewing angles, having a mechanism which allows invariant expression perception would be advantageous to our social interactions. Although a couple of studies have indicated comparable expression categorization accuracy across viewpoints, it is unknown how perceived expression intensity and associated gaze behaviour change across viewing angles. Differences could arise because diagnostic cues from local facial features for decoding expressions could vary with viewpoints. Here we manipulated orientation of faces (frontal, mid-profile, and profile view) displaying six common facial expressions of emotion, and measured participants' expression categorization accuracy, perceived expression intensity and associated gaze patterns. In comparison with frontal faces, profile faces slightly reduced identification rates for disgust and sad expressions, but significantly decreased perceived intensity for all tested expressions. Although quantitatively viewpoint had expression-specific influence on the proportion of fixations directed at local facial features, the qualitative gaze distribution within facial features (e.g., the eyes tended to attract the highest proportion of fixations, followed by the nose and then the mouth region) was independent of viewpoint and expression type. Our results suggest that the viewpoint-invariant facial expression processing is categorical perception, which could be linked to a viewpoint-invariant holistic gaze strategy for extracting expressive facial cues.     

Timing recalibration in childhood Tourette syndrome associated with persistent pimozide treatment

In this study, we have tested the effects of the dopamine D₂ receptor blocker pimozide on timing performance in patients with Tourette syndrome (TS). Nine children with TS were tested off‐medication and following 3 months of daily treatment with pimozide. Subjects completed a time reproduction and a time production task using supra‐second temporal intervals. We show that pimozide improves motor timing performance by reducing the patients' variability in reproducing the duration of visual stimuli. On the other hand, this medication has no effect on the reproduction accuracy and on both variability and accuracy of the performance on the time production task. Our results suggest that pimozide might have improved motor timing variability as a result of its beneficial side effect on endogenous dopamine levels (i.e., normalization).     

The Impact of Asymmetric Partial Feedback on Response‐Bias

For many decisions we make, we are more likely to receive feedback about some outcomes than about others, and thus we must operate under conditions of asymmetric partial feedback. In this paper, we examine the effects of asymmetric partial feedback on decision making across three experiments. Experiment 1 examines the effects of four partial feedback schedules on decision making in a single‐attribute auditory detection task. Experiment 2 examines these same schedules in the context of a simulated experiment in which virtual participants perform a multi‐attribute choice task. Experiment 3 then examines effects of one partial feedback schedule representative of a real‐world decision‐making domain (personnel selection) using an ecologically informed multi‐attribute choice task. All three experiments reveal that asymmetric partial feedback primarily impacts on response‐bias, a parameter of signal detection theory. These findings can be explained in terms of decision makers' attempts to maximize accuracy and the fact that shifts in response‐bias will, under partial feedback, produce misleading impressions of greater accuracy. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Idiosyncratic effects of interviewer behavior on the accuracy of children's responses

Children are interviewed to provide information about past events in various contexts (e.g., police interviews, court proceedings, therapeutic interviews). During an interview, various factors may influence the accuracy of children's responses to questions about recent events. However, behavioral research in this area is limited. Sparling et al. (2011) showed that children frequently provided inaccurate responses to questions about video clips they just watched depending on the antecedents (i.e., the way a question was asked) and consequences (i.e., the response of the interviewer to their answers). In the current study, we replicated and extended the procedures reported by Sparling et al. and found that two of five children were sensitive to the various antecedents and consequences that we manipulated. Our findings indicate a need for more research in this area to determine the relevant environmental variables that affect children's response accuracy.     

Brief exposures: Male sexual orientation is accurately perceived at 50 ms

People have proved adept at categorizing others into social categories, at least when the categorical distinction is perceptually obvious (e.g., age, race, or gender). There remain many social groups whose boundaries are less clear, however. The current work therefore tested judgments of an ambiguous social category (male sexual orientation) from faces shown for durations between 33 ms and 10,000 ms. The sexual orientation of faces presented for 50 ms, 100 ms, 6500 ms, 10,000 ms, and at a self-paced rate (averaging 1500 ms), was categorized at above-chance levels with no decrease in accuracy for briefer exposures. Previous work showing impression formation at similar speeds relied on consensus to determine the validity of judgments. The present results extend these findings by providing a criterion for judgmental accuracy—actual group membership.     

The borderline empathy effect: Do high BPD individuals have greater empathic ability? Or are they just more difficult to “read”?

Clinical psychologists have suggested that patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are unusually accurate at “reading” other people. We investigated this claim by obtaining measures of trait accuracy and empathic accuracy in 38 same-sex dyads, each composed of one high BPD and one low BPD member. At first glance, the results suggested that the high borderline dyad members displayed both better trait accuracy and better empathic accuracy. Additional analyses revealed, however, that these effects were instead a consequence of the high BPD participants having more unusual, harder-to-predict personalities and more difficult-to-infer thoughts and feelings than those of their low BPD counterparts. We conclude that the relative empathic advantage displayed by high BPD individuals does not reflect greater ability; instead, they are simply more difficult to “read” than low BPD individuals are.     

计算机化自适应测验选题策略述评

计算机化自适应测验(computerized adaptive testing, CAT)是基于测量理论和计算机技术的一种测验模式。它根据考生的作答反应自适应地选择测验项目。选题策略是CAT的重要组成部分之一, 关系到测量效率、测验安全和测验信、效度等重要问题。根据CAT是否具有非统计约束对传统CAT和认知诊断CAT的选题策略进行了分类介绍, 未来研究应进一步提高选题策略的综合表现、深入探讨多级评分项目和认知诊断CAT的选题策略。     

团队心智模型相似性与正确性对团队创造力的影响

现代组织越来越依赖团队进行创造与创新活动, 团队创造力成为理论与实践共同关注的热点问题。最新理论指出, 与个体类似, 团队也是信息加工者, 团队决策实质上也是信息搜寻、编码、存储和提取的认知加工过程。从团队认知角度开展研究是团队创造力领域的新方向。鉴于此, 本研究从团队认知的角度出发, 探讨共享心智模型与团队创造力之间的关系。基于80个信息平台运行维护团队的数据, 研究结果表明, 心智模型的相似性与正确性均能影响团队创造力, 但方向正好相反。心智模型相似性负向预测团队创造力, 而心智模型正确性则正向预测团队创造力。两者还共同影响团队创造力, 当成员心智模型正确性高且相似性低时, 团队创造力最高; 而当成员心智模型彼此相似但错误时, 团队创造力最差。本研究首次将团队认知和团队创造力两个研究领域结合起来, 研究结果有望丰富和拓展两个领域研究成果。     

他评：一种有效的人格评价手段

他评法是一种有效的人格评价手段, 甚至在一些情境下比自评法更为有效。在现实准确性模型(the Realistic Accuracy Model, RAM)以及权重平均模型(the Weighted-average Model, WAM)的基础上, 对于影响他评准确性的因素进行了梳理, 涉及熟悉性、关系质量、特质可见度以及假设相似性等。针对目前研究中存在的问题, 提出要在中国文化背景下, 进一步拓展研究对象的取样范围, 在更多不同的情境下提高研究的生态效度, 同时采用更多的人格评价手段。     

Aerobic Fitness Is Associated With Cognitive Control Strategy in Preadolescent Children

The authors used a conditional accuracy function (CAF) method to compute the mean accuracy of multiple reaction time ranges, to investigate the association between aerobic fitness and the utilization of cognitive control strategy during preadolescence. Thirty-eight higher- and lower-fit children were grouped according to their cardiorespiratory capacity (VO_2max) and completed a modified flanker task. Seventeen young adults were recruited as a reference group of maturation. The results showed that higher-fit children exhibited an adult-like performance pattern, and demonstrated increased overall response accuracy compared to lower-fit children, with a disproportionally larger increase in individual responses when the time allowed for discriminative processing was constrained. These findings suggest that aerobic fitness is associated with enhanced cognitive control and development of a more proactive control strategy during flanker task in preadolescent children.