Synesthesia does not help to recover perceptual dominance following flash suppression

Grapheme-colour synesthesia occurs when letters or numbers elicit an abnormal colour sensation (e.g., printed black letters are perceived as coloured). This phenomenon is typically reported following explicit presentation of graphemes. Very few studies have investigated colour sensations in synesthesia in the absence of visual awareness. We took advantage of the dichoptic flash suppression paradigm to temporarily render a stimulus presented to one eye invisible. Synesthetic alphanumeric and non-synesthetic stimuli were presented to 21 participants (11 synesthetes) in achromatic and chromatic experimental conditions. The test stimulus was first displayed to one eye and then masked by a sudden presentation of visual noise in the other eye (flash suppression). The time for an image to be re-perceived following the onset of the suppressive noise was calculated. Trials where there was no flash suppression performed but instead mimicked the perceptual suppression of the flash were also tested. Results showed that target detection by synesthetes was significantly better than by controls in the absence of flash suppression. No difference was found between the groups in the flash suppression condition. Our findings suggest that synesthesia is associated with enhanced perception for overt recognition, but does not provide an advantage in recovering from a perceptual suppression. Further studies are needed to investigate synesthesia in relation to visual awareness.

Poor Disgust Suppression Is Associated with Increased Anxiety in Caregivers of People with Neurodegenerative Disease

Objectives Caregivers of persons with neurodegenerative disease have high rates of mental health problems compared to noncaregiving adults. Emotion regulation may play an important role in preserving caregivers’ mental health. We examined the associations between caregivers’ emotion regulation measured in several ways (ability, habitual use, and self-ratings) and their mental health symptoms. Method Ninety-one caregivers of persons with neurodegenerative disease participated in a laboratory-based assessment of emotion regulation. In two series of tasks, caregivers were given different instructions (no instruction, suppress) regarding altering their emotional behavioral responses to disgusting films and acoustic startle stimuli. Caregivers’ emotional behavior was measured via behavioral coding and caregivers rated “how much emotion” they showed during each task. Anxiety, depression, and habitual use of expressive suppression were measured via questionnaires. Results Poor emotion regulation in the disgust suppression condition (i.e., greater emotional behavior) was associated with greater anxiety. Associations were not found for the startle suppression condition, depression, or self-report measures of emotion regulation. Discussion Findings suggest that caregivers who are unable to suppress emotional behavior in response to disgusting stimuli may be at greater risk for anxiety. Given high levels of anxiety in caregivers, it may be useful to evaluate interventions that improve ability to downregulate emotional behavior.

Indian Dalit Literature Quest for Identity to Social Equality

India is one of the fastest growing countries in the world, yet, it is notorious for its rigid caste system. This paper examines the history of suppression, condition of the suppressed and origin of Dalit writings. It includes the study of movement and scope of Dalit literature. It is widely believed that all Dalit literary creations have their roots in the Ambedkarite thoughts. The paper also dissects the stark realities of Dalit and their commendable attempts to upraise socially. This literature shows dramatic accounts of socialpolitical experiences of Dalit community in the caste based society of India.It traces the conditions of the Indian social factors that surround the Dalits and their interactions with Dalits and non-Dalits. It explores how Dalit community struggled for equality and liberty. Due to strong Dalit movements as well as hammering on upper caste society through Dalit literature by writers and thinkers, and also by implementation of welfare schemes by Government, a positive approach toward equality is seen in social life of Dalit community nowadays. Discrimination on the basis of caste and gender are banned by law. This is a journey of oppressed from quest for identity to social equality through their literature.

Defensiveness and attempted thought suppression of negative material

High and low defensive individuals engaged in attempted thought suppression and non‐suppression after viewing an emotionally stressful piece of film. As a function of suppression and non‐suppression instructions, high and low defensive individuals differed from each other in the number of reported film‐related thoughts. Suppression instructions had greatest effects on low defensive individuals in reducing the number of reported film‐related thoughts. The effects of suppression instructions were not significant in reducing the number of film‐related thoughts for high defensive individuals. High defensive individuals also reported more neutral thoughts under the suppression condition compared with the non‐suppression condition. Low defensive individuals reported similar numbers of neutral thoughts under the two conditions. Effects of suppression instructions were investigated in a subsequent cognitive task that measured the level of interference produced by attempted suppression. Suppression instructions did not significantly effect the cognitive processing of participants. Theoretical and methodological implications for understanding the possible cognitive structures underlying attempted suppression are discussed in terms of the effects of defensiveness. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suppression of Negative and Neutral Thoughts

Testing a variant of Wegner's (1989) “thought suppression” paradigm, we had subjects identify a personally-relevant negative thought that had been troubling them recently. Subjects were then randomly assigned either to a negative target thought group or to a neutral target thought (“white bear”) group, and randomly assigned either to an initial suppression condition (followed by a free expression period) or an initial free expression condition (followed by a suppression period). The results revealed that subjects in the neutral thought group experienced a decline in thoughts about white bears throughout the course of the experiment, whereas subjects asked first to suppress a personally relevant negative thought experienced nearly a three-fold increase in its frequency of occurrence when later given permission to express it. These findings suggest that negatively valent thoughts may respond differently than neutral thoughts following attempts to suppress them.

Effects of Pronounceability and Articulatory Suppression on Phonological Learning

The effects of pronounceability and articulatory suppression on learning for the phonology of new vocabulary were studied, The 10 subjects remembered lists of either Japanese words or nonwords. All lists had 20 items; 10 of these were easy to pronounce and the rest were difficult to pronounce. The lists had to be remembered under two conditions, a silent control condition in which only the memory task was required and an articulatory suppression condition in which subjects were required to articulate continuously “1, 2, 3.” Analysis showed the advantage of recall performance for the easy items over that for the difficult ones in the control condition with the nonword lists. This effect of pronounceability disappeared under the condition of the articulatory suppression. These results were discussed in terms of phonological working memory and long-term phonological representation.