Consequences of socially sharing emotions: testing the emotion-response congruency hypothesis

We test the emotion-response congruency hypothesis, which predicts that the consequences of socially sharing one's negative emotions depend on the congruency between the shared emotion and the response that is obtained from the interaction partner. Experiment 1a shows that the response that people prefer is dependent on the specific emotion shared. Experiment 1b, however, reveals that the responses that interaction partners provide do not differ across emotions. Yet, and crucially, Experiment 2 shows that the outcomes of sharing are affected by the congruency between the response that people receive and the emotion they share, thus supporting the emotion-response congruency hypothesis. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Many stimuli are frightening,but some are more frightening than others: The contributions of preparedness,dangerousness, and unpredictability to making a stimulus fearful

The nonrandom distribution of situational fears has been explained by evolutionary survival relevance of specific fears. Thirty-eight stimuli were taken from the literature on preparedness and were scored on fearfulness, objective dangerousness, and spatiotemporal unpredictability by three separate groups of students. The same items were scored on survival relevance by 15 biologists. Fearfulness of cues significantly correlated not only with survival relevance but also, and even more strongly, with dangerousness and unpredictability. While the fear/survival relevance association virtually disappeared when the unpredictability contribution was partialed out, the fear/unpredictability correlation was only marginally affected when controlling for survival relevance. This suggests that nonrandomness of feared stimuli may result from the spatiotemporal unpredictability that is attributed to these stimuli. The current practice of using snakes and spiders as phobia-relevant, and flowers and mushrooms as neutral, cues was not justified by the ratings of the 15 independent experts.This study was supported in part by a grant from the Dutch Organization for Fundamental Research (ZWO/Psychon, 560-268-001).     

The development of general competence and domain-specific competencies

The development of competence was studied in a longitudinal sample of 98 children, with measurement points when the children were 7, 10, and 12 years old. Competence was defined in terms of adequate adaptation to developmental tasks, both on a general and on a domain-specijic level. The general form of competence was measured by ego-resiliency, reflecting fexibility and ability to solve developmental problems Domain-specific competencies were measured by school achievement and social preference. The results showed that ego-resiliency was related to the two domain-specific competencies, although the hypothesized causal direction from general competence to specific competencies was not supported. Both domain-specific competencies were found to have a feedback effect on ego-resiliency. This feedback effect was stronger for social preference. These results suggest a transactional relationship between general and domain-specific competencies, and point to the importance of domain-specific competencies (especially social preference by the peer group) in the development of general competence in the child.     

Effects of speaking upon the rate and variability of concurrent finger tapping in children

Tapping rate and variability were measured as 73 normal, right-handed children in Grades 1–4 engaged in speeded unimanual finger tapping with and without concurrent recitation. Speaking reduced the rate of tapping and increased its variability to a greater extent in younger children than in older children. Developmental changes in variability but not rate were attributable to a greater number of lengthy (>500 ms) pauses in the tapping of younger children. Speaking slowed the right hand more than the left, and the degree of this asymmetry was constant across grade levels. The right-hand effect for tapping rate was not attributable to lengthy pauses. In contrast, asymmetric increases in tapping variability occurred only among children in Grade 1 and only when lengthy pauses were included in the data. The results implicate three mechanisms of intertask interference: one involving capacity limitations, a second involving cross-talk between motor control mechanisms for speech and finger movement, respectively, and a third factor involving occasional diversion of attention from tapping to speaking. These mechanisms are discussed in relation to developmental changes in mental capacity.     

Locational representation in imagery: The third dimension

Six experiments were conducted to test the relative processing characteristics of picture-plane and three-dimensional imagery as indexed by tasks that required subjects to keep track of successive locations in multiunit visual displays. Subjects were shown symmetrical displays either drawn on cardboard or constructed with three-dimensional blocks. They then were required to imagine these matrices and follow pathways through a series of adjacent squares (blocks) within the matrices. The pathways were described by a series of verbal terms that indicated the direction of the next square (block) in the pathway. Subjects experienced difficulty in performing the task with picture-plane displays composed of as few as 16 squares (4×4), but they rarely made errors with a three-dimensional matrix of 27 blocks (3×3×3). Performance with the three-dimensional task dropped dramatically when the matrix size was increased to 4×4×4. The results replicated previous findings that the image processing capacity for location in two-dimensional imagery is about three units in each direction, and they indicate that adding the depth dimension increases the capacity for representation of spatial location in imagery.     

The recurrence ratio

The rationale for and method of computing a measure of stuttering recurrence that is superior to methods previously developed is presented. This measure, the recurrence ratio, contrasts especially with the traditional measure of “consistency,” the percentage measure, which yields misleading values.     

How do conspiratorial explanations differ from non-conspiratorial explanations? A content analysis of real-world online articles

The present research aims to identify unique characteristics of written conspiracy theories. In two pre-registered quantitative human-coded content analyses, we compared 36 pairs of conspiratorial and non-conspiratorial online articles about various events. As predicted, conspiratorial articles—compared to non-conspiratorial articles—contained less factual, more emotional and more threat-related information. Also, we predicted and found that conspiratorial articles presented more argumentation against the opposing standpoint and that they provided explanations that were more dispositional and less falsifiable. Contrary to our predictions, we did not consistently observe that conspiratorial articles presented less argumentation for their own standpoint. Also, we did not find consistent support that conspiratorial articles provided less information about the specific process or more information about the underlying goals of the respective events, or that conspiratorial explanations attributed the events to a lesser extent to situational factors. We discuss the relevance of our findings for the understanding of conspiracy theories.     

Certains aspects syntactiques d'une notion de modele: Relativisation d'une fonction logique de choix

Sans résuméLes chiffres entre parenthèses renvoient aux items de la Bibliographie.     

Linguistic Phenomena and Language Selection in the REM Dreams of German-English Bilinguals

Sixteen German-English bilinguals were studied in a sleep laboratory for four nonconsecutive nights each. Half were native English speakers living in Zürich, and half native German speakers living in Atlanta. Presleep thought samples were solicited each evening and REM dream reports each night; subjects judged the waking appropriateness of their imagined speech and language phenomena, and also identified waking sources of their dream imagery, the following mornings. Incidences of dreaming and of speech therein generally were similar to those of monolinguals. Whether sessions were conducted in German (two nights) or English (two nights) did directly influence language selection in subjects' dreams. Judged appropriateness of language selection to imagined events was very high for thought samples, and high for REM dreams. Sources for thought samples were generally consonant with the language dominant at study site; for REM dreams this relationship was considerably weaker. Judged waking appropriateness to imagined situations was more strongly related to language selection than was the language reference of the supposed sources of those situations.