Mixed Emotions Viewed from the Psychological Constructionist Perspective

Feeling bad is one thing, judging something to be bad another. This hot/cold distinction helps resolve the debate between bipolar and bivariate accounts of affect. A typical affective reaction includes both core affect (feeling good or bad) and judgments of the affective qualities of various aspects of the stimulus situation (which can have both good and bad aspects). Core affect is described by a bipolar valence dimension in which feeling good precludes simultaneously feeling bad and vice versa. Judgments of affective quality of opposite valence can occur simultaneously because the stimulus situation has many aspects. Affective reaction can also include an emotional meta-experience, which can, but rarely does, embrace simultaneous emotion categories of opposite valence.

Children With Autism Show Reduced Information Seeking When Learning New Tasks

Information-seeking behaviours occur when children look to adults in order to gain further information about a novel stimulus/situation. The current study investigated information seeking in children with developmental delays (DD) and those with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) during a simulated teaching situation. Twenty preschool-aged children with ASD and 15 children with DD were exposed to a series of videos where a teacher provided novel instructions and demonstrated novel actions. We found that children with DD, but not those with ASD, demonstrated information-seeking behaviours in response to instructions that exceeded their level of understanding. This suggests that children with DD may use information-seeking behaviours to compensate for their cognitive and language difficulties when novel actions are being taught, while the same is not true for children with ASD.

Facial expression recognition in Alzheimer’s disease: a longitudinal study

Facial recognition is one of the most important aspects of social cognition. In this study, we investigate the patterns of change and the factors involved in the ability to recognize emotion in mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Through a longitudinal design, we assessed 30 people with AD. We used an experimental task that includes matching expressions with picture stimuli, labelling emotions and emotionally recognizing a stimulus situation. We observed a significant difference in the situational recognition task (p ≤ 0.05) between baseline and the second evaluation. The linear regression showed that cognition is a predictor of emotion recognition impairment (p ≤ 0.05). The ability to perceive emotions from facial expressions was impaired, particularly when the emotions presented were relatively subtle. Cognition is recruited to comprehend emotional situations in cases of mild dementia.

Recognition of blurred images of facial emotional expression in apparent movement

We studied the influence of the apparent (stroboscopic) movements on the perception of facial expressions of basic expressions of defocused images. Varied factors were modality of expression, context, time of exposure and the degree of the face blurring. We found that under conditions of stroboscopic exposure, high-attractive face expressions (happiness, surprise) and a neutral face are most adequately perceived by observers, and the relative accuracy of their recognition in all stimulus situation does not change. Adequacy recognition of low-attractive expressions (disgust, sadness, fear and anger) depends on the duration of exposure of the face and the extent of its blurring. At low (20 pixels) and intermediate (40 pixels) levels of blur and reduced exposure times (up to 100 or 50 ms), the relative accuracy of recognition falls (the effect of stroboscopic masking), but strong (60 pixels) blurring and the minimum time (50 ms) exposure increase the relative accuracy (stroboscopic effect of sensitization). Stroboscopic effect sensitization indicates partial similarity of the influence of real and apparent changes in facial expressions to recognition of the emotional expression.

Personality terms of abuse in three cultures: type nouns between description and insult

In this study terms of abuse are investigated in three different cultures. Spontaneous verbal aggression is to a certain extent reminiscent of the values of a certain culture. One hundred and ninety‐two male subjects from Spain, Germany and the Netherlands were asked to write down terms of abuse that they would use given a certain stimulus situation, and in addition to give their rating of the offensive character of those terms. A total set of 830 useful expressions was thus collected. The frequencies of the expressions were established, and the total list of expressions was categorized in terms of what they were about. In Spanish abusive language is typically about family and relations, in Germany it is typically about anal aspects, and in the Netherlands it is mainly about genitals. Explanations are provided in terms of dimensions on which the three cultures differ. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

III. Basic Emotions, Complex Emotions, Machiavellian Emotions

According to the distinguished philosopher Richard Wollheim, an emotion is an extended mental episode that originates when events in the world frustrate or satisfy a pre-existing desire (Wollheim, 1999). This leads the subject to form an attitude to the world which colours their future experience, leading them to attend to one aspect of things rather than another, and to view the things they attend to in one light rather than another. The idea that emotions arise from the satisfaction or frustration of desires—the ‘match-mismatch’ view of emotion aetiology—has had several earlier incarnations in the psychology of emotion. Early versions of this proposal were associated with the attempt to replace the typology of emotion found in ordinary language with a simpler theory of drives and to define new emotion types in terms of general properties such as the frustration of a drive. The match-mismatch view survived the demise of that revisionist project and is found today in theories that accept a folk-psychological-style taxonomy of emotion types based on the meaning ascribed by the subject to the stimulus situation. For example, the match-mismatch view forms part of the subtle and complex model of emotion episodes developed over many years by Nico Frijda (Frijda, 1986). According to Frijda, information about the ‘situational antecedents’ of an emotion—the stimulus in its context, including the ongoing goals of the organism—is evaluated for its relevance to the multiple concerns of the organism. Evaluation of match-mismatch—the degree of compatibility between the situation and the subject's goals—forms part of this process.

Ambiguities in Colour Constancy and Shape from Shading

A new visual phenomenon—called the AMBEGUJAS phenomenon—is presented, together with some descriptive data from two initial exploratory experiments. The phenomenon is basically one of shape from shading, but ambiguous as to both shape and colour. There are two spontaneously alternating and mutually exclusive perceived 3-D shapes, and—as the most surprising observation—the colour impressions of these two shapes are markedly different. The stimulus situation is very simple with two differently coloured illuminations (with sharp edges) adjacently cast onto a flat, grey striped surface. In one 3-D shape almost the whole chromatic content disappears, and the surface goes towards its veridically grey colour. In the other the perceived object assumes the two illumination colours as clear surface colours. The decolorised percept is interpreted as a striking example of colour constancy: a perceptual solution with the classical ‘discounting of the illuminant’. Experiments show that the phenomenon is robust and appears in varying display layouts and different combinations of chromatic illuminations.

Brain Neurones Involved in the Control of Walking in the Cricket Gryllus Bimaculatus

The responses of single brain neurones to artificial calling song, to moving striped patterns and to air puffs were recorded while tethered crickets were walking on a sphere in such a way that their intended orientation to the stimuli could be measured. Local and descending brain neurones responsive to only one of the stimuli tested often encoded the directional information contained in the stimulus (e.g. the direction of the sound source or the direction of stripe movement). Brain neurones with little directional sensitivity responded with marked habituation to all stimuli, so that their responses primarily signalled changes in the overall stimulus situation. The responses of some neurones were stronger during walking than when the cricket was standing still. In the case of one descending neurone, which increased its level of activity shortly before and during the walking phases, the mean spike rate was correlated with the forward velocity. By altering the discharge rate of another descending neurone, it was possible to elicit walking in the manner typical of crickets. Maintenance and control of walking by such ‘command neurones’ is discussed.

Relationship between Cognitive Style and Emotional Behavior

In this research we examined the relationships among cognitive styles using the categorization of Bion and styles of modulation of emotional behavior (hostile content) explored with the Gottschalk, et al. method applied to the speech of 20 female and 10 male undergraduate students whose ages ranged from 20 to 35 years. Their verbalization was produced in a standard stimulus situation of 3 minutes duration. Analysis indicated a relationship between hostile attitude and cognitive styles. In particular, those who were relatively less hostile presented higher frequencies of processes classified by Bion as D2, which are characterized by an attitude of expectancy and waiting, with a tendency to defend internal psychological themas.