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Psychopathy is found to be associated with aggression. However, the role of "understanding the mental states of others" in this relation is not clearly understood yet. The current study aimed to increase our understanding of a specific ability of understanding the mental state of others, namely recognizing a faux pas, and understand the relation of this "social misstep" in self-reported aggressive behavior. The sample consisted of 105 individuals from the community (both males and females) who were tested with the Faux Pas test and several self-report questionnaires assessing triarchic psychopathic personality traits and aggression. We found a positive relationship between the triarchic constructs and self-reported proactive and reactive aggression. Additionally, although all psychopathy constructs were negatively related to self-reported empathy, only the boldness trait was negatively associated with faux pas recognition. No mediation effect of faux pas on the relation between psychopathy and aggression was found. Current findings underline the importance of differentiating different Theory of Mind and empathic abilities in relation to psychopathy and aggression, which is essential to develop effective interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits French sociologist Marcel Mauss' notion of 'techniques of the body' to analyze the emergence of corporeal and behavioral norms instituted to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Centering its analysis on the early stages of COVID's global spread, the article examines a range of everyday, micro-practices that reveal how the pandemic changed our awareness, uses, and assessments of our own and others' bodies. In a context where to not touch was to care, people often struggled to find a balance between maintaining social civility and sustaining collective health. Failure to adapt the body to pandemic conditions, or instances of COVID faux-pas, resulted in discomfort, embarrassment, or annoyance on the part of those who perceived this behavior as irresponsible, dangerous, and selfish. Changing bodily practices thus became subject to judgment in ways that sometimes obscured the uneven distribution of risk and protection afforded to differently privileged or vulnerable human communities as they grappled with the uncertain phenomenologies of pandemic living and dying. COVID-19 corporealities, both fleshly and virtual, thus reveal the conjoined articulation of the social, biological, cultural, moral, and psychological in our bodily movements, expressions, and assessments. In contrast to Mauss' theorization, many techniques of the body in the Covidscape were experienced as new, contextual, shifting, and improvised. They spoke to necessity and challenge of articulating a different relationship to the world and to others, enacted in the minute and mundane practices of everyday life, through which macro-level processes and forces are embodied and evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Supreme Court's decision in Unicolors, Inc. v. H&M Hennes & Mauritz, L.P., highlighting the implications for copyright registration and infringement in the textile industry. Topics include the fast fashion industry's speed of production, the validity of copyright registration, and the influence of the Court's ruling on copyright practices, including the rise of copyright trolls and the need for improvements in the registration process.

Objective Impairment of executive functions (EF) has been documented for decades in patients with alcohol use disorders (AUD), while more recent studies have also reported impaired theory of mind. Both have been associated with negative outcomes, particularly a high risk of relapse. However, the interrelatedness of EF and theory of mind impairments remains subject to debate. Method About 19 AUD outpatients and 20 healthy controls (HC) were asked to complete measures of motor inhibition, mental flexibility, and updating to assess EF, and the faux pas test to assess theory of mind. Results As expected, patients' mean performances on EF and faux pas measures were poorer than those of HC. Correlational analyses revealed that executive processes were differentially related to faux pas subscores. Additional single-case analyses corroborated the strong association between EF and faux pas interpretation, as patients with AUD mostly had congruent performances (i.e. both EF and faux pas impaired or both EF and faux pas preserved). Conclusions This study highlights the interrelatedness of EF and faux pas performances in AUD, but also emphasizes the incomplete overlap of the cognitive processes involved in these tasks, with heterogeneous patterns of association. Based on these findings, tailored cognitive rehabilitation programs that simultaneously target EF and faux pas recognition could be developed to favor patients' social inclusion and reduce the risk of relapse. Results also argue in favor of systematic screening for EF and theory of mind impairments among AUD patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Displays of ostentation were regarded as manly faux pas in nineteenth-century Guatemala City, a perspective shared by men of different ethnic and class origins, though gender norms were seldom uniformly enforced. When the Guatemalan export economy collapsed and a social crisis ensued in 1897, critics of the government blamed the excess and luxury of President José María Reyna Barrios for the economic turmoil. They argued that the president lacked manly self-restraint and had succumbed to his own vanity and sexual licentiousness. The emasculation of Reyna Barrios demonstrates how the boundaries of permissible gendered actions were constrained during a period of upheaval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Social functioning is often impaired in the ultra-high-risk (UHR) phase of psychosis. There is some evidence that empathy is also impaired in this phase and that these impairments may underlie difficulties in social functioning. The main aim of this study was to investigate whether cognitive and affective empathy are lower in people in the UHR phase of psychosis in comparison to healthy controls, and whether possible impairments have the same magnitude as in people with schizophrenia. A second aim was to examine whether there is a relationship between empathy and social functioning in individuals in the UHR phase. Method: Forty-three individuals at UHR for psychosis, 92 people with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder, and 49 persons without a psychiatric disorder completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE), and Faux Pas as instruments to measure empathy. The Time Use survey was used to measure social functioning. MAN(C)OVA was used to analyse differences between groups on empathy and social functioning, and correlations were calculated between empathy measures and social functioning for each group. Results: The UHR group presented significantly lower levels of self-reported cognitive empathy than the healthy controls, but not compared to patients with SSD, while performance-based cognitive empathy was unimpaired in the UHR group. On the affective measures, we found that people with UHR and patients with SSD had significantly higher levels of self-reported distress in interpersonal settings compared to healthy controls. In the UHR group, perspective-taking was negatively associated with time spent on structured social activities. In the SSD group, we found that structured social activities were positively associated with perspective-taking and negatively associated with personal distress in interactions with others. Lastly, in people without mental illness, social activities were positively associated with performance-based perspective-taking. Conclusion: Impairments in subjective cognitive empathy appear to be present in the UHR phase, suggesting that difficulties in interpreting the thoughts and feelings of others precede the onset of psychotic disorders. This can inform future interventions in the UHR phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about executive functions (EFs) associated with advanced theory of mind (ToM) abilities. We aimed to determine if advanced ToM abilities were reduced in individuals with subclinical traits of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), known as the "Broader Autism Phenotype" (BAP), and identify the EFs that predicted unimpaired performance on an advanced ToM task, the faux pas test. We assessed 29 participants (13 males) with the BAP who were relatives of children with ASD. Thirteen participants showed reduced ability to understand a faux pas. A discriminant function analysis correctly classified 79% of cases as impaired or unimpaired, with high sensitivity (80%) and specificity (77%), which was best predicted by language‐mediated EFs, including verbal generativity, working memory, cognitive inhibition, and flexibility. Autism Res 2020, 13: 921‐934. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Lay Summary: Little is known about the complex cognitive processes that enable accurate interpretation of another person's thoughts and emotions, known as "theory of mind." In relatives of individuals with autism, who had mild traits of autism themselves, approximately half had difficulty interpreting situations involving a social faux pas. Cognitive inhibition and flexibility, working memory, and verbal generativity were related to, and appeared to be protective for, unimpaired understanding of a faux pas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined emotion understanding and motor skills as predictors of children's understanding of faux pas. Faux paus situations are those in which someone causes unintentional offence or behaves inappropriately. Understanding of faux pas requires knowledge of social norms in specific situations as well as emotion understanding. Misunderstanding faux pas can prevent smooth social functioning. Fifty‐six children (aged 7; 0 to 9; 11 years) completed a measure of faux pas understanding, emotion understanding, and motor skills. Children's faux pas understanding, emotion understanding, and motor skills were all related to each other. However, when age, motor skills, and emotion understanding were entered into a regression to predict faux pas understanding, only motor skills predicted understanding of faux pas. The findings are discussed in relation to potential pathways between motor skills and social understanding. Highlights: We examined relations between emotion understanding (Test of Emotion Comprehension), motor skills (Movement Assessment Battery for Children), and faux pas.All three variables were related, but in a multiple regression with age, only motor skills predicted children's faux pas understanding.Motor skills may contribute to children's smooth social functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clothing and fashion play a prominent part in the presentation of key female characters in Indian television family dramas, referred to as saas-bahu serials.1 The purposeful sartorial branding of the characters is in touch with, as well as influencing, popular fashion off screen, which in turn further impacts the success of these serials. Geared towards daily viewership, such fashions remain excluded from serious consideration by the local and global fashion press that reduces them to guilt-inducing, style-less faux pas. However, through illustrating the innovation evident in the design of saas-bahu costumes, this article provides a framework and rationale for validating such instances of sartorial pleasure as well as recognising how these fashions have brought to the fore a previously unseen global network of fashion producers and consumers who are otherwise underrepresented in popular fashion media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research shows that the general population varies with regard to both autistic traits and theory of mind (ToM) ability. Other work has shown that autistic individuals may not underperform on ToM tests when the agent of evaluation is anthropomorphic rather than typically human. Two studies examined the relation between ToM and autistic trait profiles in over 650 adults using either the standard Faux Pas Recognition Test (FPT) or an anthropomorphized version of the FPT (FPTa). Results showed that autistic trait profiles were related to faux pas detection ability in the FPT but not the FPTa. Furthermore, while those with the broad autism phenotype scored significantly worse than those who were typically developed on the FPT, scores did not significantly differ on the FPTa. These findings add to a growing body of work suggesting that ToM ability is not at a global deficit in those on the autistic spectrum, but may relate to the mindreading of specifically human agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gaffes are actions or events that are treated as problematic in subsequent news coverage through the production of what we term here 'gaffe-announcements'. In an analysis of news media interviews conducted with members of the Trump administration during its first 100 days, we examine how interviewees respond to interviewer gaffe-announcements. Interviewees are seen to challenge the making of an announcement, to attempt to rework the ontological status of infelicitous talk, or to introduce the views of others who view the prior talk as felicitous. These responses lead in subsequent turns to reformulation of the gaffe-announcement, rejection of the response, or the views introduced being treated as irrelevant. These forms of response allow interviewees to avoid accepting that gaffes have occurred and allow the interviews to continue in line with normative expectations but discussion continues on matters that are treated as negative and detrimental to the interests of the administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Recently, motivation has been found to attenuate the age-related decline in Theory of Mind (ToM) performance (i.e. faux pas recognition). However, whether or not this effect could be generalized to other ToM tasks is still unknown. In the present study, we investigated whether and how motivation could enhance older adults' performance and reduce age differences in ToM tasks (Faux Pas vs. Animation task) that differ in familiarity. Method: Following a previous paradigm, 171 Chinese adults (87 younger adults and 84 older adults) were recruited, and we experimentally manipulated the level of perceived closeness between participants and the experimenter before administering the ToM tasks in order to enhance participants' motivation. Results: Results showed that, for the Faux Pas task, we replicated previous findings such that older adults under the enhanced motivation conditions performed equally well as younger adults. Conversely, for the Animation task, younger adults outperformed older adults, regardless of motivation. Discussion: These results indicate that motivation can enhance older adults' performance in ToM tasks, however, this beneficial effect cannot be generalized across ToM tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of mind enables understanding of ourselves and other people around us as beings who have a mental world, a world of desires, needs, thoughts, intentions and beliefs. Theory of mind is a form of intersubjectivity based on symbolic thoughts and speech. With regard to the fact that the development of theory of mind does not end at the age of six, a special test has been developed which should asses that ability at a later age. One such test is recognizing faux pas stories. Faux pas is a more advanced theory of mind task, and it measures the ability of having an insight into more complex mental states present in unintentional insults. The goal of this paper is to check reliability and discrimination of the faux pas test. The research showed that questions are discriminative, but also that some cultural adjustment should be done.

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The article analyzes the film "Get Out" directed by Jordan Peele. Particular focus is given to the theme of underlying racial attitudes against protagonist Chris, who experiences racial faux pas and micro-aggressions by his girlfriend's wealthy white family. The author touches up on implicit bias in context of unconscious racism and prejudices against African-Americans by majority of white Americans, as portrayed in the film.

Scholars, journalists, pundits and others have criticized the racist, anti-queer, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and xenophobic rhetoric that pervades the Trump campaign and presidency. At the same time, commentators have expended a vast number of words analyzing Trump's character: why does he do the things he does? We ask, how do the latter (analyses of Trump's character) help explain the former (Trump's racist statements)? Through a close rhetorical analysis of 50 diverse examples of Trump criticism, we reveal four prevailing characterizations or "archetypes" of Trump: Trump the Acclaim-Seeker, Trump the Sick Man, Trump the Authoritarian, and Trump the Idiot. Each archetype explains Trump's racism in a different way, with significant consequences for social critique. For example, the Trump the Idiot archetype dismisses his racist statements as a series of terrible gaffes, whereas Trump the Authoritarian explains them as an actualization of white supremacy. We trace the benefits and tradeoffs of each archetype for resisting white supremacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political diaries of Ulla Lindström caused a great sensation when published in 1969, three years after her resignation as Swedish minister without portfolio. She was the only woman minister in the Swedish government from 1954 to 1966, and her career had, according to the press, been characterized by faux pas or, as one reviewer of her diaries wrote: “(t)he silly Ulla /…/ of the botches, bodges, and gaffes.” He added that he himself had helped to write her down “with both malice and recklessness.” He was, however, not the only journalist putting down Ulla Lindström. A particular discourse or way of describing Ulla Lindström’s political persona was developed in the Swedish press during Lindström’s ministerial career. She started as the good-looking “pin-up girl” of the Parliament and ended up as the “shrew” of the party, the faux pas queen who was too talkative and thus in need of a muzzle. She was constructed as deviant, both as a woman and as a politician. In her political diaries Ulla Lindström herself compared the way she and her male colleagues were portrayed in the press. In my paper I will compare Lindström’s own political persona with the persona created in the press asking what was behind the creation of the “faux pas queen”. Genuskrockar och fadäser. Statsrådet Ulla Lindströms politiska dagböcker. Swedish abstract: Såsom åtskillig forskning visat har det varit svårt för politiskt aktiva kvinnor att förena de motstridiga krav som ställts på dem som handlingskraftiga politiker och ”riktiga” kvinnor. Inom massmedieforskning används ofta ordet persona för att beskriva den personlighet som en politiker iscensätter på den offentliga arenan, en politisk persona. Problemet för politiker är att det i massmedia ofta skapas en annan persona än den som politikern själv iscensätter, så beskriver t ex en forskare hur en ”false persona” av Hillary Rodham Clinton skapades under den så kallade Whitewateraffären (Cit efter van Zoonen 2005:100). Pressens bild av Ulla Lindström som ett pratigt och beskäftigt statsråd, vars karriär präglades av grodor, fadäser och klavertramp, kan ses som ett sätt att ”skapa” en politisk persona och med den en diskurs; ett specifikt sätt att tala och skriva om regeringens enda kvinnliga minister åren 1954-66. När Ulla Lindström efter sin avgång 1966 publicerade de politiska dagböcker hon fört under sin statsrådstid var ett av hennes motiv sannolikt att hon ville ge sin version, dvs skapa sin egen politiska persona som motvikt mot den bild som skapats av henne i pressen. I mitt bidrag skall jag ge exempel på hur Ulla Lindström skapades som politisk persona och hur hon själv såg på eller tolkade den bild som gavs av henne.

The paper examines Maternal Health and recently concluded Millennium Development Goal 5(MGD5) and why there were obstacle(s) to its success in Nigerian society and the need for integrated interventions for the newly developed Sustainable Development Goals. Culture, poverty and lack of political will act as major causes for nonperformance of the (MGD5). The main reasons for this among other things are low utilization of quality of maternal healthcare services, negative opinion of important referents, social, cultural, physical and economic barriers such as patriarchy, long distances, high transport and other indirect costs. The review therefore examined the existing level of maternal and child mortality/morbidity within the extant literatures/statistical abstracts and it was found out that inadequate health care/maternity centres, paucity of physicians and insufficient budgetary allocation were stumbling blocks to effective maternal health and success of MDG5. It is therefore suggested that government should make available functional primary health care facilities including maternity centres equipped with up to date infrastructures which would be funded equitably to facilitate patronage and easy access to both rural and urban residents. Effort should be made to retain trained professionals in all ramifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2013, after six years of consultation, an Australian Labor government launched the national cultural policy document,Creative Australia.In July 2013, a Coalition government was elected, Senator George Brandis became Minister for the Arts, and the policy was dumped. With it went cross-party consensus about funding rationales and measurement strategies, with disastrous consequences for the cultural sector. This cautionary tale of gaffes, pay-back and abrupt changes of direction, highlights the fragility of policy memory that condemns artists and arts managers to a never-ending reinvention of the evidentiary wheel. Our paper examines the problem of collective understanding (“world”) in cultural policy-making in Australia, exacerbated not only by the short-term electoral cycles which undermine long-term cultural outcome timescales, but by a fixation on what Hannah Arendt calls “the peculiar and ingenious replacement of common sense with strict logicality”. Evidence of value is only meaningful when it occurs in a policy memory that can fully avow it and respond in appropriate ways. Measurement methods are over-determined by epistemology and by experience. We argue that the balance between these determinants of effective cultural policy-making has been lost. An emphasis on numerical data – especially economic data – has forced arguments for culture into a decontextualised register of quantitative proof. Recent events in Australia suggest that different, more direct ways of engaging with cultural policy-making are required for the problem of collective understanding to be successfully assayed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Evidence in the literature suggests that there is an impairment of social cognition in schizophrenia. Theory of Mind (ToM) is defined as one's ability to understand others' wishes, beliefs, intentions, and other psychological states and thereby to judge others' behavior, as an essential component of social cognition. However, there have been limited studies on social cognition, especially ToM in adolescent onset schizophrenia (AOS). The current study aims to investigate ToM abilities in adolescent schizophrenia according to various ToM subcomponents (cognitive ToM and affective ToM) and various ToM orders (first order and second order). Methods: This study examines ToM in 35 adolescent schizophrenic patients and 35 healthy adolescents using the "Yoni task" and "Faux Pas Recognition test" to assess their affective and cognitive ToM abilities. Results: In the Yoni task, patients with AOS showed differences in ToM abilities either on a different order or under different conditions. The Faux Pas Recognition task results revealed that AOS patients were not always able to recognize a faux pas or understand complicated emotions under the faux pas scenario. Furthermore, as indicated by the correlation analysis, neither cognitive ToM nor affective ToM was related to the patients' symptoms, disease duration, dose of medication, or intelligence quotient (IQ). Conclusion: Our findings showed AOS impairment in the performance of ToM tasks. It seemed that impairment in second-order-ToM is more serious. Moreover, these deficits are largely independent of symptom clusters, disease duration, dose of medication, and IQ. It can be speculated that ToM dysfunction may be a hallmark of adolescent schizophrenia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Developmental concepts of 'Theory of Mind' (ToM) suggest that this cognitive domain is an innate human capacity requiring input from the social environment to mature. Research suggests substantial individual differences in ToM, depending on childhood experiences, genetics, and the presence or absence of a neuropsychiatric disorder. None of the existing ToM tests for adult populations have been made available in Portuguese. Accordingly, the main objective of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Portuguese versions of the Faux Pas (FP) Recognition Test and the ToM Picture Stories Task. Sampling and Methods: Both tests were given to a sample of 200 Portuguese adults (125 women and 75 men) aged between 18 and 60 years. Results and Conclusions: The psychometric analyses of the results indicate that the Portuguese version of the FP Recognition Test is appropriate for use in research and clinical settings, providing a composite score that reliably measures the ability to infer the thoughts and feelings of others in a 'faux pas' situation (Cronbach's α = 0.82). However, the ToM Picture Stories Task did not show acceptable psychometric qualities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examined whether high socially anxious individuals overestimate the cost of committing social blunders due to the mental heuristic known as the focusing illusion, specifically that they may focus on salient blunder-related information without considering other inconspicuous blunder-unrelated information. Two hundred and fifty-nine undergraduate participants across the social anxiety spectrum imagined and estimated costs associated with committing hypothetical blunders. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (1) No defocusing; (2) indirect defocusing; (3) direct defocusing; and (4) indirect plus direct defocusing. Indirect defocusing involved participants generating factors that they thought would influence how they would be judged such that they could potentially consider the impact of blunder-unrelated information on others' judgments. Direct defocusing involved participants being directly provided with blunder-unrelated information as part of the hypothetical blunder descriptions. Results revealed that direct defocusing lowered perceived costs across social anxiety levels, whereas indirect defocusing did not induce participants to consider blunder-unrelated information and did not reduce perceived costs. Novel treatment approaches to reduce cost estimates of blunders for social anxiety disorder are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the phenomenon of the ‘microphone gaffe’ in the context of sports broadcast talk. This peculiar communicative event is characterized by the public mediation of live talk to media audiences without the speakers being aware that they are actually on air. Adopting a general pragmatic perspective, this paper analyses the microphone gaffe in terms of its specific participation framework and discusses its humorous potential. It is argued that the key element underlying these communicative situations consists of the momentary non-acknowledgement of the media audiences by the speakers. The audience, repositioned as non-participants, actually find themselves in the role of the ‘eavesdropper’ on a private conversation. On the production side of the communicative scheme, the mistaken belief in enjoying this momentary ‘private’ speech event is accompanied by a shift of footing, where the commentators’ institutional identities become replaced with their non-public personas, evidenced by forms of backstage talk that contrasts with their frontstage performance. This paper proposes that in case of microphone gaffes, humorous effect arises from the various incongruities between the actual and the presumed footings, as well as from the subsequent recontextualizations that enclose the original communicative act within an additional communicative level. The aim of the paper is to propose and elaborate a general theoretical framework for the analysis of unintended humour in media discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that patients with psychosis show impaired theory of mind (ToM). However, much remains to be understood as to whether ToM deficits occur in the premorbid or post-onset period of psychosis. Our primary aim was to examine empirically impairment on ToM tasks in a group of individuals with clinical high risk (CHR) of psychosis. Fifty CHR participants identified through the Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes and 52 age-/education-matched controls were assessed with a complete standard neuropsychological battery (the MCCB, MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery) and a social cognition assessment (Faux Pas Test, FPT). We then examined the association of baseline FPT performance with conversion to psychosis at 12-month follow-up. Compared with controls, the CHR group showed significantly poorer performances on the FPT and most MCCB domains. Significant positive correlations were found between faux pas detection and the MCCB domains of Attention/Vigilance and Working Memory in CHR participants when controlling for age and years of education. Mean scores on the FPT in 14 converters who were diagnosed with full-blown psychosis within 12 months were significantly lower than they were for non-converters. Impairments in ToM ability are acquired earlier in the prodromal stage of psychosis, along with general cognition (such as memory function) deficits. Declines in ToM ability may overlap with the progress of psychosis (the gradual loss insight), sharing similar neural substrates, and reflected by impairments in basic cognitive function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

43 typically-developed adults and 35 adults with ASD performed a cartoon faux pas test. Adults with ASD apparently over-detected faux pas despite good comprehension abilities, and were generally slower at responding. Signal detection analysis demonstrated that the ASD participants had significantly greater difficulty detecting whether a cartoon depicted a faux pas and showed a liberal response bias. Test item analysis demonstrated that the ASD group were not in agreement with a reference control group (n = 69) about which non-faux pas items were most difficult. These results suggest that the participants with ASD had a primary problem with faux pas detection, but that there is another factor at work, possibly compensatory, that relates to their choice of a liberal response criterion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system leading to physical and cognitive disability. The impact of the disease on social cognition has only come to light quite recently. The aim of this study was to evaluate the social cognition abilities of MS patients and their links with characteristics of the disease, such as physical disability, cognitive impairment and disease duration.The performances of a group of 64 MS patients were compared with that of 30 matched healthy individuals in facial emotion recognition and Faux Pas tasks as well as on a battery of standardized neuropsychological tests.The MS patients performed worse than the control group in the recognition of the expressions of fear and anger and in the interpretation of faux pas. The impairment in social cognition increased with overall disease course. Executive impairment did not correlate with the performance in the social cognition tests.Our results show that emotional impairment is observed at early stages of the disease in the absence of cognitive dysfunction, even if social cognition abilities worsen with the progression of MS. These data highlight the need to attempt to identify these impairments in clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The current article discusses the importance of increasing racial-ethnic and socioeconomic diversity in cognitive developmental research. It begins with discussion of the implications of the underrepresentation of ethnic minority children in cognitive developmental research. It goes on to suggest reasons underlying these omissions, such as the cost of effective recruitment methods, fear of committing cultural faux pas, and lack of expertise interacting with such populations. Finally, recommendations for addressing such limitations are provided via examples of successful and innovative methodological techniques used in prior research with ethnic minority children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD) include cognitive deficits and impairment in the recognition of emotions. Recently, a number of studies have investigated theory of mind (ToM) deficits in PD. In this meta-analysis of 18 studies, the ToM performance of 487 non-demented individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) was compared with 459 healthy controls. Meta-regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between ToM deficits and demographical and clinical features in PD, including medication, stage of the illness and neurocognition. PD was associated with significant ToM impairment ( d = 0.83) in both verbal and visual tasks. In individual task analyses, PD patients performed worse than controls in both faux pas recognition ( d = 0.55) and reading the mind from the eyes ( d = 0.67) tests. Severity of ToM impairment was significantly associated with cognitive impairment. Impairments in social cognitive abilities, including ToM, may be important contributors to the functional impairments observed in PD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project examined comedic representations of US Vice President Joe Biden to analyze persona rhetoric in a media environment filled with circulating personae, or the many roles both created by and attributed to such figures. While sometimes supportive of the politician's intended roles, we found that circulating personae can disrupt the first persona, complicate the invitations and control exerted over the second persona, propel strategic and non-strategic authorships deflecting or silencing a third persona, and provide an undertow of multiple meanings supplementing a fourth persona. Several implications are drawn, including how circulating personae may neuter roles important to political rhetoric and public culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a study designed to clarify and extend previous research on social blunders in social anxiety, 32 participants with social anxiety disorder (SAD), 25 anxious control (AC) participants with anxiety disorders other than SAD, and 25 healthy control (HC) participants with no history of anxiety problems estimated the costs of hypothetical blunders committed by either themselves or by others. Participants with SAD rated the costs of their own imagined blunders as highly inflated relative to both AC and HC participants. In contrast, for blunders participants imagined others committing, only SAD and healthy control participants’ cost estimates differed from one another. Moreover, concerns about revealing self-flaws – and, in particular, about appearing socially incompetent – accounted for significant, unique variance in SAD participants’ exaggerated cost estimates of self blunders, over and above symptoms of social anxiety and depression. These results enhance our understanding of how and why socially anxious individuals negatively appraise social blunders and help to clarify the potential function and role of social mishap exposures in the treatment of SAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]