Search

The article focuses on the concept of Intentionalism, a thesis stating that the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences depends on the content of perceptual representations. It explores the ambiguity in Intentionalism; addressing the implicit assumption of One-to-One Intentionalism; where the dependence relation links the phenomenal character of one perceptual experience to its representational content; and aim to formulate and defend Many-to-One Intentionalism.

We write in response to an article published in this journal by Andrew Ortony titled "Are All 'Basic Emotions' Emotions? A Problem for the (Basic) Emotions Construct." The author claimed that "for all its elevated status as a basic emotion, surprise fails to satisfy the minimal requirements that [he] proposed for something to be an emotion, and if it is not an emotion, it cannot possibly be a basic emotion." Although we acknowledge the concerns brought forth by Ortony, we respectfully disagree with his conclusion about surprise. To make a case against the assertion that surprise is valence-free, we summarize an extensive body of work showing that surprise is indeed valenced—in a specific manner (i.e., ambiguously valenced)—and that it meets all of Ortony's criteria for an emotion. In other words, rather than being described as neither positive nor negative, this emotion is either positive or negative. We consider the data with respect to surprise as a basic emotion, and we dispute the definitions of basic emotions as "widely divergent." Future work is needed to continue defining an emotion, and a basic emotion, but we believe this is a worthy effort toward shaping a still evolving field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two tendencies co-exist within the field of analytical psychology. The first is to locate Jung's psychology within the established bounds of official science (by for example insisting on its implicit consistency with orthodox scientific findings). The second is to make claims that Jung's psychology is extra- (or super-) scientific. It seems to me however that neither approach can do justice to the difficulty of the problem Jung has set us. In order to develop a third approach I place Jung's problematic engagement with science into a creative encounter with the philosophical ideas of Deleuze & Guattari. The French philosophers distinguish two contrasting ways of doing science: "Royal" or "state" science privileges the fixed, stable and constant. "Nomad" or "minor" science emphasizes the malleable, fluid, and metamorphic nature of being. These are not alternatives but "ontologically, a single field of interaction" (Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 367). When it comes to Jung's writings on science, the irredeemable ambiguity of his psychology shows up in what appear to be two contradictory approaches. One highlights the intrinsically scientific nature of his project and insists upon his empiricism. The other takes the form of a profound and relentless critique of the materialistic, reductive and rationalistic assumptions Jung finds behind the scientific approach. My suggestion here is that the dynamic tension between these two opposing visions of science that forms the crucial condition for the on-going individuation of his psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article stems from an interest taken in discussing the usage of the terms ambivalence and ambiguity, which are very present in Psychology's publications and savoir faire. It is important to reiterate that in common sense and even in scientific publications these terms are often used as synonyms or notions of little conceptual delimitation. The relevance of such differentiation is proposed once these notions participates of the emergence of the new in human subjective experience, and, in a methodological approach, ambiguity and ambivalence are dimensions that leads the researcher goes beyond a repetitive sterile description of the subject's speech, moving towards new perspectives of the psychological data. This paper aims to retrieve the qualifying power of such notions by making a broader reflection on the functions of language in the production of interpretive realities. We also propose to bring up a reflection about ambiguity in the construction of meaning and to reiterate ambivalences as inherent to human nature, its affective record and the process of human becoming. As a way to explain the proposed themes, we will analyse an excerpt from the documentary "Últimas Conversas", produced by the Brazilian filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho, in which high school students from public state schools in Rio de Janeiro tell their stories, speaking of dreams and shared challenges. The character Rafaela was selected for this article because of the emergence of unspeakable emotions from her narrative about an expected future as a promise of reconciliation with the alterity of her life story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper refers to three issues: the effective way to reach the truth, the inconclusive and equivocal (interpretative) nature of truth, and the axiological involvement of developmental psychology. The first issue can be resolved by arguing for the need to connect a good theory with a thoughtful research program. The second thesis finds its confirmation in that the critique and reconsideration of what was previously established are the essence of scientific investigations. Finally, the issue of the role played by values in developmental psychology will be analysed on four levels: the first deals with theories and concepts of values; the second with values as the object of psychological investigations; the third points to how values enter the research process itself; and the fourth refers to how concepts and theories in psychology become filled with axiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual emotion analysis (VEA) has attracted great attention recently, due to the increasing tendency of expressing and understanding emotions through images on social networks. Different from traditional vision tasks, VEA is inherently more challenging since it involves a much higher level of complexity and ambiguity in human cognitive process. Most of the existing methods adopt deep learning techniques to extract general features from the whole image, disregarding the specific features evoked by various emotional stimuli. Inspired by the Stimuli-Organism-Response (S-O-R) emotion model in psychological theory, we proposed a stimuli-aware VEA method consisting of three stages, namely stimuli selection (S), feature extraction (O) and emotion prediction (R). First, specific emotional stimuli (i. e., color, object, face) are selected from images by employing the off-the-shelf tools. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time to introduce stimuli selection process into VEA in an end-to-end network. Then, we design three specific networks, i. e., Global-Net, Semantic-Net and Expression-Net, to extract distinct emotional features from different stimuli simultaneously. Finally, benefiting from the inherent structure of Mikel’s wheel, we design a novel hierarchical cross-entropy loss to distinguish hard false examples from easy ones in an emotion-specific manner. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches on four public visual emotion datasets. Ablation study and visualizations further prove the validity and interpretability of our method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beck's (1976) theoretical account of emotional vulnerability predicts that individuals who are vulnerable to anxiety will exhibit a cognitive processing bias for the threatening interpretation of ambiguous information. As anxiety direction (Jones, 1995) may best account for individual differences, the aim of this study was to establish whether such processing bias is a function of anxiety interpretation. Anxiety facilitators and debilitators underwent a modified Stroop test by reacting to neutral and ambiguous word types in neutral, positive, and negative mood conditions. A significant 3-way interaction, F(4, 60) = 3.02, p < .05, was evident, with the reaction time of facilitators being slowest for ambiguous words in the positive mood condition and debilitators being slowest for ambiguous words in the negative mood condition. The findings illustrate the important role that anxiety interpretation plays in the mechanism involved in the processing of ambiguous information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the discourse of statements of the leaders of two Greek political parties commemorating the restoration of Greek democracy on 24 July 1974; the ruling party New Democracy and the opposition, Coalition of the Radical Left. We focus on how these leaders act as entrepreneurs of their identities by constructing their ingroups in broad or narrow terms and their outgroups in vague or specific terms. These constructions were ventured during a period of relative political stability (2008) and instability (2012), and we focus on how ingroup prototypes and group boundaries are narrated across Greece's past, present and future in ambiguous or concrete terms. The study aligns the social identity approach to political leadership with studies on political discourse and ‘the rhetoric of we’. We view commemorative statements as historical charters and respond to calls for discourse analysis to take greater account of historical context. The findings suggest concrete hypotheses about how leaders with different amounts of political support might define, as identity entrepreneurs, who ‘we’ are, and who ‘we’ are not in democratic contexts marked by stability or crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers in hospitals are a unique phenomenon. Their students are sick, hospitalized children with a range of physical, emotional, and cognitive needs. Teachers are expected to be dynamic, flexible, creative, open-minded, and efficient to function in the most appropriate manner. However, a recent study showed that these teachers tend to procrastinate on some of the most common tasks that teachers perform on a daily basis in the regular school system. The present study was an initial investigation into the reasons for procrastination in teachers who work in two hospitals in Israel. Thirty-two teachers were interviewed. The findings indicated that the primary reason for procrastination among teachers in the hospital was professional role ambiguity, with emotional factors and situational determinants which were identified. Future research should further explore reasons for procrastination in the workplace, in general, and its association with professional role ambiguity specifically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construct: Induction into the Gold Humanism Honor Society (GHHS) during medical school is recognized as an indicator of humanistic orientation and behavior. Various attitudes and interpersonal orientations including empathy and patient-centeredness have been posited to translate into behaviors constituting humanistic care. Background: To our knowledge there has never been a longitudinal, multi-institutional empirical study of the attitudinal and interpersonal orientations correlated with GHHS membership status. Approach: We used the American Medical Association Learning Environment Study (LES) data set to explore attitudinal correlates associated with students whose behaviors are recognized by their peers as being exceptionally humanistic. Specifically, we examined whether empathy, patient-centeredness, tolerance of ambiguity, coping style, and perceptions of the learning environment are associated with GHHS membership status. We further considered to what extent GHHS members arrive in medical school with these attitudinal correlates and to what extent they change and evolve differentially among GHHS members compared to their non-GHHS peers. Between 2011 and 2015, 585 students from 13 North American medical schools with GHHS chapters participated in the LES, a longitudinal cohort study using a battery of validated psychometric measures including the Jefferson Scale of Empathy, Patient-Practitioner Orientation Scale and Tolerance of Ambiguity Questionnaire. In the final survey administration, students self-identified as GHHS inductees or not (non-GHHS). T tests, effect sizes, and longitudinal generalized mixed-effects models examined the differences between GHHS and non-GHHS students. Results: Students inducted into GHHS scored significantly higher on average over 4 years than non-GHHS inductees on clinical empathy, patient-centered beliefs, and tolerance of ambiguity. GHHS students reported higher levels of empathy and patient-centeredness at medical school matriculation. This difference persists in the 4th year of medical school and when controlling for time, race, gender, and school. Conclusions: GHHS inductees enter medical school with different attitudes and beliefs than their non-GHHS classmates. Although humanistic attitudes and beliefs vary over time during students' 4 years, the gap between the two groups remains constant. Medical schools may want to consider selecting for specific humanistic traits during admissions as well as fostering the development of humanism through curricular interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a self-paced reading study on German sluicing, Paape (Paape, 2016) found that reading times were shorter at the ellipsis site when the antecedent was a temporarily ambiguous garden-path structure. As a post-hoc explanation of this finding, Paape assumed that the antecedent’s memory representation was reactivated during syntactic reanalysis, making it easier to retrieve. In two eye tracking experiments, we subjected the reactivation hypothesis to further empirical scrutiny. Experiment 1, carried out in French, showed no evidence in favor in the reactivation hypothesis. Instead, results for one out of the three types of garden-path sentences that were tested suggest that subjects sometimes failed to resolve the temporary ambiguity in the antecedent clause, and subsequently failed to resolve the ellipsis. The results of Experiment 2, a conceptual replication of Paape’s (Paape, 2016) original study carried out in German, are compatible with the reactivation hypothesis, but leave open the possibility that the observed speedup for ambiguous antecedents may be due to occasional retrievals of an incorrect structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communicating scientific uncertainty about public health threats is ethically desirable but challenging due to its tendency to promote avoidance of choice options with unknown probabilities-a phenomenon known as "ambiguity aversion." This study examined this phenomenon's potential magnitude, its responses to different communication strategies, and its mechanisms. In a factorial experiment, 2701 adult laypersons in Spain read one of three versions of a hypothetical newspaper article describing a pandemic vaccine-preventable disease (VPD), but varying in scientific uncertainty about VPD risk and vaccine effectiveness: No-Uncertainty, Uncertainty, and Normalized-Uncertainty (emphasizing its expected nature). Vaccination intentions were lower for the Uncertainty and Normalized-Uncertainty groups compared to the No-Uncertainty group, consistent with ambiguity aversion; Uncertainty and Normalized-Uncertainty groups did not differ. Ambiguity-averse responses were moderated by health literacy and mediated by perceptions of vaccine effectiveness, VPD likelihood, and VPD severity. Communicating scientific uncertainty about public health threats warrants caution and further research to elucidate its outcomes, mechanisms, and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our stage in life has profound influences on our emotions. A well-established age-related positivity effect is putatively related to time perspectives—older adults have a limited time perspective and a greater motivation to experience positivity than young adults. Ambiguous emotions (e.g., surprised expressions) have both a positive and negative meaning, offering a highly relevant model for examining this developmental trend. Indeed, there are stable, trait-like individual differences in valence bias, or the tendency to interpret surprise as positive or negative, with a developmental trend toward positivity (older adults are more positive than young adults, who are more positive than children). However, little research has determined the extent to which the bias can be shifted. In three experiments, we found that ambiguity ratings were sensitive to time perspectives, even within a population of college students, and that this effect is relatively long-lasting. Results extend socioemotional selectivity theory and demonstrate that our life stage may have profound effects on otherwise stable emotional responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, cognitive biases and physiological arousal have each been proposed as mechanisms through which paediatric anxiety develops and is maintained over time. Preliminary studies have found associations between anxious interpretations of ambiguity, physiological arousal, and avoidance, supporting theories that link cognition, psychophysiology, and behaviour. However, little is known about the relationship between youths’ resolutions of ambiguity and physiological arousal during acute stress. Such information may have important clinical implications for use of verbal self-regulation strategies and cognitive restructuring during treatments for paediatric anxiety. In this brief report, we present findings suggesting that anxious, but not typically developing, youth select avoidant goals via non-threatening resolution of ambiguity during a stressor, and that this resolution of ambiguity is accompanied by physiological reactivity (heart rate, heart rate variability, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia). We propose future empirical research on the interplay between interpretation bias, psychophysiology, and child anxiety, as well as clinical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the association between psychopathy and decision-making in laboratory tasks have revealed mixed results. These might be due to an insufficient consideration of the different aspects related to both psychopathy and decision-making. Here we measured different facets of psychopathy in a non-clinical sample using the triarchic psychopathy measure. Decision-making was assessed using a task that measured risk taking in both gain and loss domains under different levels of probability and ambiguity. Boldness was positively associated with risk taking in a gain context; Disinhibition was positively associated with risk taking in a loss context, especially under a high loss probability level. These results provide a differentiated picture of the relation between psychopathy-related traits and decision-making, which might be useful for the interpretation of results of previous studies and the design of future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore family boundary ambiguity in the parent–child relationships of transgender youth. Background: Transgender youth may perceive a lack of clarity about whether parents will accept their authentic gender expression, continue to support them physically and emotionally, and regard them as a member of the family. Uncertainty about being in or out of the family and whether family relationships endure is stressful and can lead to psychological distress, a sense of ambiguous loss, and frozen grief. Method: Ethnographic content analysis was conducted based on interviews with 90 transgender youth recruited from community centers in 10 regions across 3 countries. Results: Narratives revealed that transgender youth experienced family boundary ambiguity related to relational ambiguity, structural ambiguity, and identity ambiguity. Each experience of ambiguity obscured whether participants remained in the family and interpersonally connected to their parents. Conclusion: Transgender youth actively navigated complex and ambiguous parent–child relationships whereby participants attempted to reconcile their need for authentic gender expression combined with their need for family connectedness and acceptance. Implications: Family clinicians, educators, and policymakers are urged to consider family and transgender resilience through a lens of ambiguous loss and to promote a gender‐affirmative life‐span approach to clinical care for transgender individuals and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In disciplines such as moral psychology and media theory, investigations of moral clarity versus ambiguity in narratives are increasingly important. Untested mechanisms have been proposed for how moral clarity and ambiguity might affect audiences. Based on literature regarding joint action and coordinated experiences, we reason that morally clear narratives elicit coordinated responses across audience members, which should increase within-group cooperation. By contrast, we reason that morally ambiguous narratives elicit divergent, uncoordinated responses across audience members, and this experience decreases cooperation. We conducted three independent studies (one using short text narratives, one using feature-length films, and one using morally and emotionally neutral stimuli). Results indicate that moral clarity is indeed associated with subsequently higher levels of group cooperation than moral ambiguity, and the effect cannot be attributed to changes in affect or moral priming. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background and Objectives: Patients with schizophrenia reveal impaired decision-making strategies causing social, financial and health care problems. The extent to which deficits in decision-making reflect intentional risky choices in schizophrenia is still under debate. Based on previous studies we expected patients with schizophrenia to reveal a riskier performance on the GDT and to make more disadvantageous decisions on the IGT.Methods: In the present study, we investigated 38 patients with schizophrenia and 38 matched healthy control subjects with two competing paradigms regarding feedback: (1) The Game of Dice Task (GDT), in which the probabilities of winning or losing are stable and explicitly disclosed to the subject, to assess decision-making under risk and (2) the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which requires subjects to infer the probabilities of winning or losing from feedback, to investigate decision-making under ambiguity.Results: Patients with schizophrenia revealed an overall riskier performance on the GDT; although they adjusted their strategy over the course of the GDT, they still made significantly more disadvantageous choices than controls. More positive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia indicated by higher PANSS positive scores were associated with riskier choices and less use of negative feedback. Compared to healthy controls, they were not impaired in net score but chose more disadvantageous cards than controls on the first block of the IGT.Limitations: Effects of medication at the time of testing cannot be ruled out.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia make riskier decisions and are less able to regulate their decision-making to implement advantageous strategies, even when the probabilities of winning or losing are explicitly disclosed. The dissociation between performance on the GDT and IGT suggests a pronounced impairment of executive functions related to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between individual psychological characteristics (i.e. innovativeness, locus of control, self-confidence, propensity to take risk, need for achievement and tolerance for ambiguity) and entrepreneurial intention.Design/methodology/approach A total of 676 undergraduate students from Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) have participated in the survey. The data were analysed using partial least square technique version 2.0.Findings The results have shown that innovativeness, self-confidence, propensity to take risk, need for achievement and tolerance for ambiguity are positively related to entrepreneurial intention among undergraduate students. However, locus of control is not significantly related to entrepreneurial intention.Research limitations/implications Although samples of the research are quite large, this research only involves undergraduates in UMS. Therefore, findings obtained are not generalized because the results do not include other educational institutions in Malaysia. On the implication aspect, this research might give some views among undergraduates to embark in business after graduating.Practical implications In spite of that, students should be encouraged and equipped with innovativeness, self-confidence, propensity to take risk, need for achievement and tolerance for ambiguity to interpret successful entrepreneurial role models and identification of business prospects for their future career.Originality/value The findings of the research may extend existing knowledge in the entrepreneurial field as well as to provide valuable information to policy maker in strengthening and redesigning suitable curriculum not only at the university level, but also in pre-school by giving entrepreneurial awareness on how this knowledge will transform us into an entrepreneurial society that can create wonders for human kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on human appetitive conditioning using food rewards can benefit from including psychophysiological outcome measures. The present study tested whether the skin conductance response can function as a measure of differential responding in an appetitive conditioning paradigm including an acquisition and extinction phase, and examined which time window during a trial is most sensitive to conditioning effects. As a secondary aim, the effects of ambiguous vs. non-ambiguous contingency instructions on conditioned responses (skin conductance responses, US expectancies, chocolate desires, and CS evaluations) were assessed. Results indicated differential skin conductance responses in an anticipatory time window and during unexpected omission of the US in early extinction. Interestingly however, anticipatory responses were only found for participants who received ambiguous contingency instructions – possibly indicating a call for additional processing resources in response to the ambiguous CS +. Further, ambiguous instructions slowed the extinction of US expectancies but did not influence chocolate desires and CS evaluations. It is concluded that skin conductance can function as a sensitive measure of differential responding in appetitive conditioning, though its sensitivity might depend on the specific task context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tests were performed to learn whether exposure to news about crimes committed by dark-skinned criminals increases impulsive facial-threat perceptions of meeting dark-skinned strangers in a subsequent situation (media-priming hypothesis), but only when the facial displays are ambiguous (ambiguity hypothesis). The assumption is that news stereotypes prime the “dark-skinned criminal” stereotype, which, in turn, influences subsequent face processing. An experiment with two groups was used to test this prediction. Participants allocated to the treatment group (n = 53) read about crimes committed by dark-skinned criminals. In contrast, for the control group (n = 52), cues indicating skin color were not mentioned at all. As predicted, the treatment increased the perceived facial threat of dark-skinned strangers, but only when the facial displays were ambiguous. Given the importance of the face in social interaction, I discuss important, real-world implications for recipients as well as for journalists and media organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of studies are investigating the way that aesthetic experiences are generated across different media. Empathy with a perceived human artist has been suggested as a common mechanism []. In this study, people heard 30 s excerpts of ambiguous music and poetry preceded by neutral, positively valenced, or negatively valenced information about the composer's or author’s intent. The information influenced their perception of the excerpts—excerpts paired with positive intent information were perceived as happier and excerpts paired with negative intent information were perceived as sadder (although across intent conditions, musical excerpts were perceived as happier than poetry excerpts). Moreover, the information modulated the aesthetic experience of the excerpts in different ways for the different excerpt types: positive intent information increased enjoyment and the degree to which people found the musical excerpts to be moving, but negative intent information increased these qualities for poetry. Additionally, positive intent information was judged to better match musical excerpts and negative intent information to better match poetic excerpts. These results suggest that empathy with a perceived human artist is indeed an important shared factor across experiences of music and poetry, but that other mechanisms distinguish the generation of aesthetic appreciation between these two media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current study, we examined the role of intelligence and executive functions in the resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity using an individual differences approach. Data were collected from 174 adolescents and adults who completed a battery of cognitive tests as well as a sentence comprehension task. The critical items for the comprehension task consisted of object/subject garden paths (e.g.,While Anna dressed the baby that was small and cute played in the crib), and participants answered a comprehension question (e.g.,Did Anna dress thebaby?) following each one. Previous studies have shown that garden-path misinterpretations tend to persist into final interpretations. Results showed that both intelligence and processing speed interacted with ambiguity. Individuals with higher intelligence and faster processing were more likely to answer the comprehension questions correctly and, specifically, following ambiguous as opposed to unambiguous sentences. Inhibition produced a marginal effect, but the variance in inhibition was largely shared with intelligence. Conclusions focus on the role of individual differences in cognitive ability and their impact on syntactic ambiguity resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we report the results of two self-paced reading experiments that investigated working memory capacity effects on the processing of globally ambiguous relative clauses by advanced Korean second language (L2) learners of English. Consistent with previous monolingual literature on the processing of temporary ambiguity, we found that working memory capacity was a factor that also affected the processing of globally ambiguous relative clauses. High working memory capacity was positively correlated with a processing disadvantage reflected as slower reading times at the region where the ambiguity becomes detectable, and longer response times to decide on a correct disambiguation for the target structure. Furthermore, a similar pattern was also found in the same participants’ processing of L2 ambiguity. We conclude that for highly advanced L2 learners, the processing strategies employed for ambiguous structures are not qualitatively different between the same individual’s first language (L1) and L2, but rather differ across readers of different working memory capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous literature has explained older individuals’ disadvantageous decision-making under ambiguity in the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) by reduced emotional warning signals preceding decisions. We argue that age-related reductions in IGT performance may also be explained by reductions in certain cognitive abilities (reasoning, executive functions). In 210 participants (18–86 years), we found that the age-related variance on IGT performance occurred only in the last 60 trials. The effect was mediated by cognitive abilities and their relation with decision-making performance under risk with explicit rules (Game of Dice Task). Thus, reductions in cognitive functions in older age may be associated with both a reduced ability to gain explicit insight into the rules of the ambiguous decision situation and with failure to choose the less risky options consequently after the rules have been understood explicitly. Previous literature may have underestimated the relevance of cognitive functions for age-related decline in decision-making performance under ambiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surprised expressions are interpreted as negative by some people, and as positive by others. When compared to fearful expressions, which are consistently rated as negative, surprise and fear share similar morphological structures (e.g. widened eyes), but these similarities are primarily in the upper part of the face (eyes). We hypothesised, then, that individuals would be more likely to interpret surprise positively when fixating faster to the lower part of the face (mouth). Participants rated surprised and fearful faces as either positive or negative while eye movements were recorded. Positive ratings of surprise were associated with longer fixation on the mouth than negative ratings. There were also individual differences in fixation patterns, with individuals who fixated the mouth earlier exhibiting increased positive ratings. These findings suggest that there are meaningful individual differences in how people process faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verbs with multiple senses can show varying argument structure frequencies, depending on the underlying sense. When acknowledge is used to mean ‘recognise’, it takes a direct object (DO), but when it is used to mean ‘admit’ it prefers a sentence complement (SC). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether people with aphasia (PWA) can exploit such meaning-structure probabilities during the reading of temporarily ambiguous sentences, as demonstrated for neurologically healthy individuals (NHI) in a self-paced reading study (Hare et al., 2003). Eleven people with mild or moderate aphasia and eleven neurologically healthy control participants read sentences while their eyes were tracked. Using adapted materials from the study by Hare et al. target sentences containing an SC structure (e.g. He acknowledged (that) his friends would probably help him a lot ) were presented following a context prime that biased either a direct object (DO-bias) or sentence complement (SC-bias) reading of the verbs. Half of the stimuli sentences did not contain that so made the post verbal noun phrase ( his friends) structurally ambiguous. Both groups of participants were influenced by structural ambiguity as well as by the context bias, indicating that PWA can, like NHI, use their knowledge of a verb's sense-based argument structure frequency during online sentence reading. However, the individuals with aphasia showed delayed reading patterns and some individual differences in their sensitivity to context and ambiguity cues. These differences compared to the NHI may contribute to difficulties in sentence comprehension in aphasia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Listeners must adapt to differences in speech rate across talkers and situations. Speech rate adaptation effects are strong for adjacent syllables (i.e., proximal syllables). For studies that have assessed adaptation effects on speech rate information more than one syllable removed from a point of ambiguity in speech (i.e., distal syllables), the difference in strength between different types of ambiguity is stark. Studies of word segmentation have shown large shifts in perception as a result of distal rate manipulations, while studies of segmental perception have shown only weak, or even nonexistent, effects. However, no study has standardized methods and materials to study context effects for both types of ambiguity simultaneously. Here, a set of sentences was created that differed as minimally as possible except for whether the sentences were ambiguous to the voicing of a consonant or ambiguous to the location of a word boundary. The sentences were then rate-modified to slow down the distal context speech rate to various extents, dependent on three different definitions of distal context that were adapted from previous experiments, along with a manipulation of proximal context to assess whether proximal effects were comparable across ambiguity types. The results indicate that the definition of distal influenced the extent of distal rate effects strongly for both segments and segmentation. They also establish the presence of distal rate effects on word-final segments for the first time. These results were replicated, with some caveats regarding the perception of individual segments, in an Internet-based sample recruited from Mechanical Turk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces a special issue of Theory and Psychology on liminal hotspots. A liminal hotspot is an occasion during which people feel they are caught suspended in the circumstances of a transition that has become permanent. The liminal experiences of ambiguity and uncertainty that are typically at play in transitional circumstances acquire an enduring quality that can be described as a "hotspot". Liminal hotspots are characterized by dynamics of paradox, paralysis, and polarization, but they also intensify the potential for pattern shift. The origins of the concept are described followed by an overview of the contributions to this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the behavioral phenomenon of ambiguity aversion in relation to the notion of deterrence in the U.S. juvenile justice system. The treatment of the right to counsel during juvenile intake proceedings is addressed. The views of economist Daniel Ellsberg on ambiguity aversion are noted. The frequency of detection of delinquent behavior by U.S. juveniles is mentioned.

When vision and proprioception are rendered incongruent during a hand localisation task, vision is initially weighted more than proprioception in determining location, and proprioception gains more weighting over time. However, it is not known whether, under these incongruency conditions, particular areas of space are also weighted more heavily than others, nor whether explicit knowledge of the sensory incongruence (i.e. disconfirming the perceived location of the hand) modulates the effect. Here, we hypothesised that both non-informative inputs coming from one side of space and explicit knowledge of sensory incongruence would modulate perceived location of the limb. Specifically, we expected spatial weighting to shift hand localisation towards the weighted area of space, and we expected greater weighting of proprioceptive input once perceived location was demonstrated to be inaccurate. We manipulated spatial weighting using an established auditory cueing paradigm (Experiment 1, n = 18) and sensory incongruence using the 'disappearing hand trick' (Experiment 2, n = 9). Our first hypothesis was not supported-spatial weighting did not modulate hand localisation. Our second hypothesis was only partially supported-disconfirmation of hand position did lead to more accurate localisations, even if participants were still unaware of their hand position. This raised the possibility that rather than disconfirmation, a simple movement of the hand in view could update the sensory-motor system, by immediately increasing the weighting of proprioceptive input relative to visual input. This third hypothesis was then confirmed (Experiment 3, n = 9). These results suggest that hand localisation is robust in the face of differential weighting of space, but open to modulation in a modality-specific manner, when one sense (vision) is rendered inaccurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grief, loss, and social injustice are vital elements in the distinct yet intersecting stories of sexual assault and post-assault survivorship. Yet survivors must frequently cope in isolation or in programs and therapeutic settings informed by literature that does not consistently account for grief and loss as central to their experiences. Utilizing a feminist framework, I review and critique literature on sexual assault survivorship and loss with focus on factors related to disenfranchisement and suffocated grief among young adult females. I also explore how these factors further complicate grief and mourning processes. Implications for socially just and culturally appropriate research and practice with bereaved sexual assault survivors are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans are able to estimate light field properties in a scene in that they have expectations of the objects' appearance inside it. Previously, we probed such expectations in a real scene by asking whether a "probe object" fitted a real scene with regard to its lighting. But how well are observers able to interactively adjust the light properties on a "probe object" to its surrounding real scene? Image ambiguities can result in perceptual interactions between light properties. Such interactions formed a major problem for the "readability" of the illumination direction and diffuseness on a matte smooth spherical probe. We found that light direction and diffuseness judgments using a rough sphere as probe were slightly more accurate than when using a smooth sphere, due to the three-dimensional (3D) texture.We here extended the previous work by testing independent and simultaneous (i.e., the light field properties separated one by one or blended together) adjustments of light intensity, direction, and diffuseness using a rough probe. Independently inferred light intensities were close to the veridical values, and the simultaneously inferred light intensity interacted somewhat with the light direction and diffuseness. The independently inferred light directions showed no statistical difference with the simultaneously inferred directions. The light diffuseness inferences correlated with but contracted around medium veridical values. In summary, observers were able to adjust the basic light properties through both independent and simultaneous adjustments. The light intensity, direction, and diffuseness are well "readable" from our rough probe. Our method allows "tuning the light" (adjustment of its spatial distribution) in interfaces for lighting design or perception research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers in distance education are interested in observing and modelling of learner's personality profile, and adapting their learning experiences accordingly. When learners read and interact with their reading materials, they do unselfconscious activities like annotation which may be key feature of their personalities. Annotation activity requires the reader to be active, to think critically and to analyse what has been written, and to make specific annotations in the margins of the text. These traces are reflected through underlining, highlighting, scribbling comments, summarizing, asking questions, expressing confusion or ambiguity, and evaluating the content of reading. In this paper, the authors present a semi-automatic approach to build learners' personality profiles based on their annotation traces yielded during active reading sessions. The experimental results show the system's efficiency to measure, with reasonable accuracy, the scores of learner's personality traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When making decisions in everyday life, we often have to choose between uncertain outcomes. Economic studies have demonstrated that healthy people tend to prefer options with known probabilities (risk) than those with unknown probabilities (ambiguity), which is referred to as "ambiguity aversion." However, it remains unclear how patients with schizophrenia behave under ambiguity, despite growing evidence of their altered decision-making under uncertainty. In this study, combining economic tools and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we assessed the attitudes toward risk/ambiguity and investigated the neural correlates during decision-making under risk/ambiguity in schizophrenia. Although no significant difference in attitudes under risk was observed, patients with schizophrenia chose ambiguity significantly more often than the healthy controls. Attitudes under risk and ambiguity did not correlate across patients with schizophrenia. Furthermore, unlike in the healthy controls, activation of the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex was not increased during decision-making under ambiguity compared to under risk in schizophrenia. These results suggest that ambiguity aversion, a well-established subjective bias, is attenuated in patients with schizophrenia, highlighting the need to distinguish between risk and ambiguity when assessing decision-making under these situations. Our findings, comprising important clinical implications, contribute to improved understanding of the mechanisms underlying altered decision-making in patients with schizophrenia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In social environments the smile can be driven by different motives and convey different emotions. This makes a smiling face ambiguous and amenable to alternative interpretations. We investigated how social anxiety is related to trustworthiness evaluation of morphed dynamic smiling faces depending on changes in the eye expression. Socially anxious and non-anxious participants judged the un/trustworthiness of people with different smiles. Social anxiety was related to reduced trustworthiness of (a) faces with a neutral mouth unfolding to a smile when the eyes were neutral at the beginning or end of the dynamic sequence, and (b) faces with a smiling mouth when happy eyes slightly changed towards neutrality, surprise, fear, sadness, disgust, or anger. In contrast, social anxiety was not related to trustworthiness judgments for non-ambiguous expressions unfolding from neutral (eyes and mouth) to happy (eyes and mouth) or from happy to neutral. Socially anxious individuals are characterized by an interpretation bias towards mistrusting any ambiguous smile due to the presence of non-happy eyes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental information available to our senses is incomplete and to varying degrees ambiguous. It has to be disambiguated in order to construct stable and reliable percepts. Ambiguous figures are artificial examples where perception is maximally unstable and alternates between possible interpretations. Tiny low-level changes can disambiguate an ambiguous figure and thus stabilize percepts. The present study compares ERPs evoked by ambiguous stimuli and disambiguated stimulus variants across three visual categories: geometry (Necker cube), motion (stroboscopic alternative motion stimulus, SAM) and semantics (Boring's old/young woman). We found that (a) disambiguated stimulus variants cause stable percepts and evoke two huge positive ERP excursions (Cohen's effect sizes 1-2), (b) the amplitudes of these ERP effects are inversely related to the degree of stimulus ambiguity, and (c) this pattern of results is consistent across all three tested visual categories. This generality across visual categories points to mechanisms at a very abstract (cognitive) level of processing. We discuss our results in the context of a high-level Bayesian inference unit that evaluates the reliability of perceptual processing results, given a priori incomplete, ambiguous sensory information. The ERP components may reflect the outcome of this reliability estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although more than 2 million service members have experienced deployment since 2001, predictors of postdeployment family functioning remain unclear. Utilizing the Contextual Model of Family Stress (Boss, 2002), this study examined military-related factors (e.g., rank, component, combat exposure, postdeployment time at home, cumulative length of deployments), boundary ambiguity, and family- and deployment-related ambivalence as predictors of family functioning during reintegration. Service members ( N = 228) from multiple branches of the U.S. military participated in a national survey related to family relationships and support programming. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that service members from lower ranks, who were home for longer periods of time, and who endorsed higher degrees of boundary ambiguity and family-related ambivalence reported poorer family functioning. Results emphasize the relevance of boundary ambiguity and family-related ambivalence to the reintegration process and can inform prevention and intervention efforts that promote family well-being in the military population during the critical postdeployment period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neil Armstrong insisted that his quote upon landing on the moon was misheard, and that he had said one small step for a man, instead of one small step for man. What he said is unclear in part because function words like a can be reduced and spectrally indistinguishable from the preceding context. Therefore, their presence can be ambiguous, and they may disappear perceptually depending on the rate of surrounding speech. Two experiments are presented examining production and perception of reduced tokens of for and for a in spontaneous speech. Experiment 1 investigates the distributions of several acoustic features of for and for a. The results suggest that the distributions of for and for a overlap substantially, both in terms of temporal and spectral characteristics. Experiment 2 examines perception of these same tokens when the context speaking rate differs. The perceptibility of the function word a varies as a function of this context speaking rate. These results demonstrate that substantial ambiguity exists in the original quote from Armstrong, and that this ambiguity may be understood through context speaking rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present meta-analysis was to quantify the effects that stress has on decisions made under uncertainty. We hypothesized that stress increases reward seeking and risk taking through alterations of dopamine firing rates and reduces executive control by hindering optimal prefrontal cortex functioning. In certain decision situations, increased reward seeking and risk taking is dysfunctional, whereas in others, this is not the case. We also assumed that the type of stressor plays a role. In addition, moderating variables are analyzed, such as the hormonal stress response, the time between stress onset and decisions, and the participants' age and gender. We included studies in the meta-analysis that investigated decision making after a laboratory stress-induction versus a control condition (k = 32 datasets, N = 1829 participants). A random-effects model revealed that overall, stress conditions lead to decisions that can be described as more disadvantageous, more reward seeking, and more risk taking than nonstress conditions (d = .17). In those situations in which increased reward seeking and risk taking is disadvantageous, stress had significant effects (d = .26), whereas in other situations, no effects were observed (d = .01). Effects were observed under processive stressors (d = .19), but not under systemic ones (d = .09). Moderation analyses did not reveal any significant results. We concluded that stress deteriorates overall decision-making performance through the mechanisms proposed. The effects differ, depending on the decision situation and the type of stressor, but not on the characteristics of the individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many recent discussions have focused on the role of replication in psychological science. In this article, we examine three key issues in evaluating the conclusions that follow from results of studies at least partly aimed at replicating previous results: the evaluation and status of exact versus conceptual replications, the statistical evaluation of replications, and the robustness of research findings to potential existing or future “non-replications.” In the first section of the article, we discuss the sources of ambiguity in evaluating failures to replicate in exact as well as conceptual replications. In addressing these ambiguities, we emphasize the key role of psychometric invariance of the independent and dependent variables in evaluations of replications. In the second section of the article, we use a meta-analytic framework to discuss the statistical status of replication attempts. We emphasize meta-analytic tools that have been used too sparingly, especially in evaluation of sets of studies within a single article or focused program of research. In the final section of the article, we extend many of these meta-analytic tools to the evaluation of the robustness of a body of research to potential existing or future failures to replicate previous statistically significant results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interpretation of emotionally ambiguous words, sentences, or scenarios can be altered through training procedures that are collectively called cognitive bias modification for interpretation (CBM-I). In three experiments, we systematically manipulated the nature of the training in order to discriminate betweenemotional primingandambiguity resolutionaccounts of training effects. In Experiment 1 participants completed word fragments that were consistently related to either a negative or benign interpretation of an ambiguous sentence. In a subsequent semantic priming task they demonstrated an interpretation bias, in that they were faster to identify relatedness of targets that were associated with the training-congruent meaning of an emotionally ambiguous homograph. We then manipulated the training sentences to show that interpretation bias was eliminated when participants simply completed valenced word fragments following unrelated sentences (Experiment 2), or completed fragments that were related to emotional but unambiguous sentences (Experiment 3). Only when participants were required to actively resolve emotionally ambiguous sentences during training did changes in interpretation emerge at test. Findings suggest that CBM-I achieves its effects by altering a production rule that aids the selection of meaning from emotionally ambiguous alternatives, in line with anambiguity resolutionaccount. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychological stressors are on the rise in today’s work systems. Work psychologists are trained to analyze and evaluate such stressors and to derive effective interventions to promote healthy working conditions. However, the general working conditions for work psychologists in Austria are deficient. The present study investigates how precarious employment manifests in work psychologists and identifies its impact on the individual level. N = 122 work psychologists participated in an online study. An insecure and undefined occupational profile was found to be associated with an increased experience of role ambiguity, which, in turn, impaired psychological well-being. These results highlight the importance of a clearly defined occupational profile for work psychologists. We discuss viable approaches to improve working conditions for work psychologists in Austria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this courageous and conceptually rich article, Joye Weisel-Barth shares her experience with her patient, Lara, in which a spontaneous, well-intended decision at a moment of heightened emotional connection led, unpredictably, to later events which caused the treatment to collapse. Weisel-Barth’s article invites reflection regarding both the complexity and risks involved in the analytic therapist’s greater participatory freedom—a core element in contemporary relational thinking, broadly defined. I consider what happened between Weisel-Barth and Lara from four points-of-view. The first has to do withthe mutuality-asymmetry dialecticfirst named by Lew Aron (1991), developed more fully by Wally Burke (1992), and later canoninzed by Irwin Hoffman (1998). The second concerns what Madeleine and Willy Baranger (1961–1962) first recognized as thenecessary ambiguityof the analytic situation. Related to that is thenecessary complexity of the analyst’s subjectivity-as-analyst.And the fourth set of considerations, informed by Rachel Peltz’s (2012) article, “Ways of Hearing: Getting Inside Psychoanalysis,” concerns what it means to “go in close” in an analytic relationship, with particular reference to contemporary relational and Bionian approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In many research domains, researchers have employed gradually morphing pictures to study perception under ambiguity. Despite their inherent utility, only a limited number of stimulus sets are available, and those sets vary substantially in quality and perceptual complexity. Here we present normative data for 40 morphing picture series. In all sets, line drawings of pictures of common objects are morphed over 15 iterations into a completely different object. Objects are either morphed from an animate to an inanimate object (or vice versa) or morphed within the animate and inanimate object categories. These pictures, together with the normative naming data presented here, will be of value for research on a diverse range of questions, from perceptual processing to decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although some studies reported specifically self-face processing deficits in patients with schizophrenia disorder (SZ), it remains unclear whether these deficits rather reflect a more global face processing deficit. Contradictory results are probably due to the different methodologies employed and the lack of control of other confounding factors. Moreover, no study has so far evaluated possible daily life self-face recognition difficulties in SZ. Therefore, our primary objective was to investigate self-face recognition in patients suffering from SZ compared to healthy controls (HC) using an "objective measure" (reaction time and accuracy) and a "subjective measure" (self-report of daily self-face recognition difficulties).Method: Twenty-four patients with SZ and 23 HC performed a self-face recognition task and completed a questionnaire evaluating daily difficulties in self-face recognition. Recognition task material consisted in three different faces (the own, a famous and an unknown) being morphed in steps of 20%.Results: Results showed that SZ were overall slower than HC regardless of the face identity, but less accurate only for the faces containing 60%-40% morphing. Moreover, SZ and HC reported a similar amount of daily problems with self/other face recognition. No significant correlations were found between objective and subjective measures (p > 0.05).Limitations: The small sample size and relatively mild severity of psychopathology does not allow us to generalize our results.Conclusions: These results suggest that: (1) patients with SZ are as capable of recognizing their own face as HC, although they are susceptible to ambiguity; (2) there are far less self recognition deficits in schizophrenia patients than previously postulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing literature has shown that war veterans' posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms are associated with a higher level of distress in their female partners. However, less agreement exists regarding the sources of this distress and the mechanism by which this process occurs. The current study examined the consequences of Israeli war veterans' PTSD on their female partners, as manifested by the females' PTSD symptoms, mental health status, and functioning, while taking into account females' earlier traumatic events. Using the theory of ambiguous loss, it also suggested boundary ambiguity as a mediating variable by which the PTSD of the male veteran is transmitted to his female partner. Participants were 300 men who had served in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War and their female partners. Results revealed direct associations between males' PTSD and their female partners' PTSD, functioning, and mental health. In addition, boundary ambiguity mediated the association between males' PTSD and females' adjustment. Finally, females' own earlier traumatic events were directly associated with their own PTSD symptoms. Implications of this model for intervention and research are further discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strong social and legal norms in the United States discourage the overt expression of bias against ethnic and racial minorities, increasing the attributional ambiguity of Whites' positive behavior to ethnic minorities. Minorities who suspect that Whites' positive overtures toward minorities are motivated more by their fear of appearing racist than by egalitarian attitudes may regard positive feedback they receive from Whites as disingenuous. This may lead them to react to such feedback with feelings of uncertainty and threat. Three studies examined how suspicion of motives relates to ethnic minorities' responses to receiving positive feedback from a White peer or same-ethnicity peer (Experiment 1), to receiving feedback from a White peer that was positive or negative (Experiment 2), and to receiving positive feedback from a White peer who did or did not know their ethnicity (Experiment 3). As predicted, the more suspicious Latinas were of Whites' motives for behaving positively toward minorities in general, the more they regarded positive feedback from a White peer who knew their ethnicity as disingenuous and the more they reacted with cardiovascular reactivity characteristic of threat/avoidance, increased feelings of stress, heightened uncertainty, and decreased self-esteem. We discuss the implications for intergroup interactions of perceptions of Whites' motives for nonprejudiced behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of prevalent pressure to inhibit prejudice, racial minorities may wonder whether White people's nonprejudiced behavior is primarily motivated by personal commitments to egalitarianism (i.e., internal motivation) or superficial efforts to appear nonprejudiced (i.e., external motivation). The present work investigated whether minority group members chronically suspicious of White people's motives (i.e., those who believe White people are more externally than internally motivated), are more accurate than those who are less suspicious in detecting the motives behind White individuals' pleasant behavior toward minorities. Minority participants viewed four videos of White targets engaging in dyadic interracial interactions with a Black peer and evaluated the White targets' motivations. Compared to those low in suspicion, those high in suspicion were more accurate at assessing White targets' actual levels of external motivation. Hence, suspicion seems to carry some functional benefit as it attunes minority-group members to Whites' externally motivated positivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Men in their roles as fathers, husbands, community and religious leaders may play a pivotal part in the continuation of female genital mutilation (FGM). However, the research on their views of FGM and their potential role in its abandonment are not well described.Methods: We undertook a systematic review of all publications between 2004 and 2014 that explored men's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours in regards to FGM, as well as their ideas about FGM prevention and abandonment.Results: We included twenty peer-reviewed articles from 15 countries in the analysis. Analysis revealed ambiguity of men's wishes in regards to the continuation of FGM. Many men wished to abandon this practice because of the physical and psychosexual complications to both women and men. Social obligation and the silent culture between the sexes were posited as major obstacles for change. Support for abandonment was influenced by notions of social obligation, religion, education, ethnicity, urban living, migration, and understanding of the negative sequelae of FGM. The strongest influence was education.Conclusion: The level of education of men was one of the most important indicators for men's support for abandonment of FGM. Social obligation and the lack of dialogue between men and women were two key issues that men acknowledged as barriers to abandonment. Advocacy by men and collaboration between men and women's health and community programs may be important steps forward in the abandonment process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]