Emotional speech processing: disentangling the effects of prosody and semantic cues

To inform how emotions in speech are implicitly processed and registered in memory, we compared how emotional prosody, emotional semantics, and both cues in tandem prime decisions about conjoined emotional faces. Fifty-two participants rendered facial affect decisions (Pell, 2005a), indicating whether a target face represented an emotion (happiness or sadness) or not (a facial grimace), after passively listening to happy, sad, or neutral prime utterances. Emotional information from primes was conveyed by: (1) prosody only; (2) semantic cues only; or (3) combined prosody and semantic cues. Results indicated that prosody, semantics, and combined prosody-semantic cues facilitate emotional decisions about target faces in an emotion-congruent manner. However, the magnitude of priming did not vary across tasks. Our findings highlight that emotional meanings of prosody and semantic cues are systematically registered during speech processing, but with similar effects on associative knowledge about emotions, which is presumably shared by prosody, semantics, and faces.     

Honor Killing: Where Pride Defeats Reason

Honor killings are graceless and ferocious murders by chauvinists with an antediluvian mind. These are categorized separately because these killings are committed for the prime reason of satisfying the ego of the people whom the victim trusts and always looks up to for support and protection. It is for this sole reason that honor killings demand strict and stern punishment, not only for the person who committed the murder but also for any person who contributed or was party to the act. A positive change can occur with stricter legislation and changes in the ethos of the society we live in today.     

The Plausibility and Significance of Underdetermination Arguments

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - Underdetermination of theory choice claims that empirical evidence fails to provide sufficient grounds for choosing a theory over its rivals....     

Gamification and neuromarketing: A unified approach for improving user experience

Neuroscience and its offshoot as neuromarketing have helped marketers understand neuroscientific aspects of customers while gamification has helped them understand the psyche of consumers. Despite neuromarketing's many potential benefits to businesses, little academic work has been done on the field so far. Most studies have examined consumer shifts during and after pandemics without analyzing them from two critical perspectives: neuroscientific theories and psychology theories. As the two streams of knowledge lean on each other, their interdependence in the field of e-engagement needs exploration. The purpose of this study is to answer an important question – “How do marketers use gamification and neuromarketing to understand online engagement of consumers?”. We used a quantitative empirical research approach to assess the inter-relationship between neuromarketing and gamification. The study collected data from digital marketing strategists of retail firms to propose a theoretical framework for self-determination theory in successfully implementing new age technologies by plugging the cues of gamification and neuromarketing. The framework would be useful for retail firms to design digital marketing strategies for capturing the attention of consumers across different geographies. Findings indicated that, marketers are interested in neuromarketing for two main reasons: first, they think it can help them save money and improve their marketing plans, and second, they think that cutting-edge research techniques such as brain imaging can help them get more accurate findings.     

Performance in a substitution task and state anxiety following yoga in army recruits

140 men (M age = 30.3 yr., SD = 5.7) from the Indian army in north India participated in the study. They were naive to yoga and were assigned to yoga and breath awareness groups randomly, with 70 in each group. 20 healthy males of comparable age (M age = 33.7 yr., SD = 7.0) formed a comparison group. Their performance in a digit-letter substitution task and a state anxiety subscale was assessed immediately before and after two 45-min. sessions. The two groups of soldiers practiced either yoga or breath awareness. The comparison group listened to meditation music. Digit-letter substitution scores increased in both groups of army personnel and in the comparison group. State anxiety decreased after yoga and listening to meditation music, but not after breath awareness. This suggests that even in army personnel naive to yoga, a yoga-based intervention or listening to meditation music could reduce anxiety while increasing performance on an attention task.     

Long-term concentrative meditation and cognitive performance among older adults

ABSTRACT

Background: The general consensus that cognitive abilities decline with advancing age is supported by several studies that have reported that older adults perform more poorly on multiple tests of cognitive performance as compared to younger adults. To date, preventive measures against this cognitive decline have been mainly focused on dietary, physical, and lifestyle behaviors which could allow older adults to maintain their cognitive abilities into late life. However, much less stress has been laid on evaluating meditation as a preventive measure in such cases in spite of the fact that the role of meditation on attention has been proved in several studies. In the current study, we extend this preliminary idea, examining the practice of concentrative meditation and the differences in the cognitive performance of older adults who have or have not employed this practice long term. Methodology: This was a cross-sectional study comparing the cognitive performance of meditators and non-meditators in the geriatric age group. Twenty (age > 55 years) long-term practitioners of Vihangam Yoga meditation (>10 years of practice) were recruited in the present study and were applied six paper–pencil neuropsychological tests for assessment of short-term memory, perceptual speed, attention, and executive functioning. The tests used were: (1) the Digit Span test, (2) the Stroop Color Word test, (3) the Trailmaking test, (4) the Letter Cancellation Task, (5) the digit symbol substitution test, and (6) the Rule Shift Card Test. All the tests were also applied to 20 age- and education-matched geriatric adults who have not practiced the meditation technique. Results: Vihangam Yogis showed significantly better performances in all these tests of attention (p < .05) except for the digit backward test, where a trend (p = .08) was found in favor of meditators. Conclusion: Long-term Vihangam Yoga meditators have superior cognitive abilities than non-meditators in the old age group. This technique should be studied further for its ability to prevent age-related cognitive decline.     

Individual differences in hedonic capacity,depressed mood,and affective states predict emotional reactivity

Identifying factors that contribute to inter-individual differences in emotional reactivity is central to understanding the basic mechanisms that give rise to adaptive emotion reactivity and to disruptions that may occur in psychopathology. The current study related emotional reactivity in an unselected young adult sample (N?=?101) to individual difference factors relevant to emotional functioning and mood pathology, specifically anhedonia, depressed mood, and current affective state. To assess emotional reactivity, participants rated their emotional responses to 100 pictures from the International Affective Picture System. Increased self-reported anhedonia (i.e. reduced hedonic capacity) predicted blunted emotional reactivity to both positive and negative images, relative to neutral images, while elevated depressed mood predicted potentiated emotional reactivity to negative vs. neutral images. Anhedonia also accounted for far greater variance in emotional reactivity than depressed mood. Further, more positive affective state predicted potentiated reactivity to positive versus neutral images while more negative affective state predicted potentiated reactivity to negative versus neutral images beyond effects of anhedonia and depressed mood. The current study identified separable effects of anhedonia, depressed mood, and current affect on emotional reactivity.     

Relationship of Workplace Factors and Job Involvement of Healthcare Employees with Quality of Patient Care in Teaching and Non-teaching Hospitals

The present study examined the effects of certain hospital workplace factors on job involvement among healthcare employees at the paramedical levels and quality of patient care in public hospitals in North India. The sample consisted of paramedical healthcare employees (N = 200), from a medical college affiliated teaching hospital and public hospitals (non-teaching) run by the railway services. Data were analyzed statistically to examine the hypothesized differences between the two types of hospitals. Results showed that employee perceptions of the workplace factors, namely, participation in decision making, innovative practices, perceived organizational support and role efficacy were significantly different in the teaching and non-teaching hospitals. Stepwise regression analysis of the data revealed that the factor ‘innovative practices’ was a positive predictor of job involvement in the non-teaching hospitals but a negative predictor of in job involvement in the teaching hospital. Job involvement significantly mediated the relationship between the perception of workplace factors and quality of patient care only in the non-teaching hospitals. The present study has important implications for initiating changes in the hospital system, particularly in public hospitals, where no systematic study has yet been conducted to determine the effects of workplace factors on job involvement of healthcare professionals and the quality of patient care in India.     

Human trace fear conditioning: right-lateralized cortical activity supports trace-interval processes

Pavlovian conditioning requires the convergence and simultaneous activation of neural circuitry that supports conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US) processes. However, in trace conditioning, the CS and US are separated by a period of time called the trace interval, and thus do not overlap. Therefore, determining brain regions that support associative learning by maintaining a CS representation during the trace interval is an important issue for conditioning research. Prior functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research has identified brain regions that support trace-conditioning processes. However, relatively little is known about whether this activity is specific to the trace CS, the trace interval, or both periods of time. The present study was designed to disentangle the hemodynamic response produced by the trace CS from that associated with the trace interval, in order to identify learning-related activation during these distinct components of a trace-conditioning trial. Trace-conditioned activity was observed within dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (PFC), dorsolateral PFC, insula, inferior parietal lobule (IPL), and posterior cingulate (PCC). Each of these regions showed learning-related activity during the trace CS, while trace-interval activity was only observed within a subset of these areas (i.e., dorsomedial PFC, PCC, right dorsolateral PFC, right IPL, right superior/middle temporal gyrus, and bilateral insula). Trace-interval activity was greater in right than in left dorsolateral PFC, IPL, and superior/middle temporal gyrus. These findings indicate that components of the prefrontal, cingulate, insular, and parietal cortices support trace-interval processes, as well as suggesting that a right-lateralized fronto-parietal circuit may play a unique role in trace conditioning.