Individuals with schizophrenia consistently display social functioning deficits with underlying emotion recognition impairments. Simulation of otherâs emotional expressions facilitates recognition. Emotional states are comprised of phenomenological, physiological, and expressive components working in a coordinated manner; and perception of anotherâs emotional expression activates the motor, somatic, and cognitive states associated with the expression, aiding the perceiver in recognizing the otherâs emotional state. A series of studies was conducted to investigate emotion recognition deficits in patients with schizophrenia and demographically matched controls from an embodied perspective. Inpatients with schizophrenia displayed significant socio-emotional recognition deficits compared to controls, and failed to utilize socially relevant information (e.g. emotional state) when making social trait judgments. Outpatients exhibited poorer recognition accuracy on a dynamic emotional gait perception task despite their intact visual scanning behavior. Although normal scanning behavior in outpatients suggests attentional benefits of dynamic cues inherent in gait stimuli, attending to the salient aspects of an emotional expression did not automatically confer recognition. Outpatients also displayed altered responses to social and non-social emotional scenes compared to controls. Physiological arousal and facial musculature associated with negative emotional states were increased irrespective of the emotional valence of the scene. This suggests significant aberrations in the multi-faceted emotional experiences in schizophrenia. Finally, simulation and embodiment of emotions were indirectly assessed through the measurement of facial musculature activity during viewing of dynamic facial emotional expressions. Counter to expectations, both controls and outpatients displayed similar facial musculature activity irrespective of the emotion expressed by the face stimulus. In one condition, outpatients showed greater facial musculature activity than controls regardless of the expression. Taken together, these studies point to a breakdown in the simulation of emotional states in others, possibly due to a less sensitivity when distinguishing internal emotional states. With more ânoiseâ in this system, individuals with schizophrenia must rely on more frontally-mediated abilities to understand otherâs emotional states. Such a conceptualization provides an opportunity for new treatments of this intractable disorder.

Music conductors use hand-arm gestures to shape the sound that their musicians produce. Six series of experiments are conducted in order to understand the nature of such cross-modal links between observed hand gestures and their accompanying vocal responses using several experimental manipulations to a simple cross-modal task. The task involved adults watching video clips of four different types of hand gestures (referred to as flicks, punches, floats and glides, following Laban and Lawrence, 1947), and producing the syllable /da/ repeatedly along with the observed gestures. Experiment 1 explored the specific cross-modal links between the kinematic features of the movement and acoustic features of accompanying vocal sounds. Experiment 2 explored the role of instruction and how automatic or deliberate the gesture-sound correspondence is. Experiment 3 explored the role of music background, and whether such associations stem from music experience or from everyday life experience. Experiment 4 explored whether perceiving the velocity patterns of the gestures provides sufficient basis for such coupling. Experiment 5 explored the role of auditory feedback and whether gesture-sound coupling is driven auditorily or through the vocal-motor system. And finally, experiment 6, a motor practice study, explored the role of gestural motor practice as a potential motor-based mechanism mediating/enhancing this visual-to-auditory mapping. Results showed a strong and intrinsic coupling between visual and auditory processes, especially for time and intensity related features, that does not entirely depend on a deliberate/learned cognitive strategy (experiment 2), musical background (experiment 3), featural body representations (experiment 4), or auditory feedback (experiment 5); and one that is strengthened by the absence of auditory feedback with increased attention to vocal-motor representations for sounds (experiment 5), and by motor practice of observed movements, which activates the brain regions involved in executing the movements (experiment 6).

The present line of research sought to examine mechanisms by which disgust may confer risk for anxiety within a developmental framework. The first aim was to develop and validate the Child Disgust Scale (CDS), a measure of disgust propensity designed specifically for children. Factor analyses revealed that a two-factor (i.e., Disgust Avoidance and Disgust Affect) bifactor model was the best fit for the data. The CDS was also shown to be adequately reliable and a valid measure of disgust proneness in children. The second aim examines the extent to which disgust proneness, as assessed by the CDS, and maternal disgust propensity, predicted the acquisition of maladaptive beliefs towards a novel animal that had been paired with disgust-related information. Results revealed that children were more avoidant of a disgust-paired animal compared to a clean-paired animal, especially among those reporting increased fear. Although trait Disgust Avoidance predicted fear acquisition, maternal disgust propensity did not moderate the association between disgust propensity and fear/disgust acquisition. Lastly, the effectiveness of a disgust-specific exposure intervention for specific phobia was examined. Results showed that repeated exposure to disgust-eliciting, but threat-irrelevant, stimuli in multiple contexts reduced phobic symptoms among injection-fearful individuals. Furthermore, this effect was comparable to exposure to threat-relevant stimuli. The present research provides insight into the measurement, mechanism(s), and modification of disgust as it relates to symptoms of anxiety-related disorders.

The aim of the proposed study is to examine the effects of the transition into new motherhood and the differences in these effects among American and French primiparous mothers. The study establishes the societal pressures and cultural expectations placed on the motherhood role, historically and to the present day, and presents possible sources for maternal guilt, role strain, and a sense of loss of individuated self in the transition to new motherhood. This mixed methods study uses semi-structured interviews, vignettes, the Job-Family Role Strain Scale, and the Motherhood Salience Scale to determine the effects of the transition into the new mother role. American mothers, compared with French mothers, are expected to feel more societal pressure related to motherhood, practice more intensive mothering, feel more “Supermom” pressure, feel more role strain related to work-family balance, feel more maternal guilt, place motherhood higher on their identity salience hierarchy, and feel more of a loss of individuated self. This research may provide a fuller understanding of the motherhood role and how the shift into new motherhood is felt cross-culturally.

Abstract The purpose of this study is to further explore the psychological influence that music has on emotional well-being and elicited behavioral response in consumers. Thus, this study asks if music in advertisements affects consumer well-being and behavior, and if certain music elicits a more positive emotional and motivational behavioral response. It also aims to answer if a certain type of music can elicit a more positive behavioral response based on the type of product. This study consisted of two waves of participant research. The first wave will evaluate basic participant demographics as well as ask participants what product (car brand) they prefer in order to develop a neutral baseline of participant groups and eliminate potential product brand bias for the second wave of research. The following week (wave 2) participants were asked to view one of six ad conditions consisting of various music (upbeat vs. classical vs. none) and car brands (Mercedes vs. Jeep). After viewing the advertisement participants were to and complete a series of scales including the Music Semantic Differential Scale (Kellaris & Kent 1993), The Affect Grid (Russell & Mendelsohn, 1989), and the Measures of Motivational Preference Scale test to assess emotional and behavioral response. [Prev. sentence much too long and difficult to follow.] Upbeat music is expected to elicit the most positive emotional response as compared to no music or classical music pairings. Upbeat music is also expected to elicit the greatest motivational behavioral response toward product ads than classical or no music. However, classical music may provide the greatest motivational behavioral response only when paired with the higher-end car brand. These results would signify how important music is in developing a psychological emotional and behavioral response towards certain brand advertisements.

Estimates of the number of heroin addicts in the United States vary between 200,000 and 500,000. Although differences of opinion exist as to the numbers of heroin addicts, there is little argument about the cost of supporting their addiction. Hundreds of millions of dollars are lost each year through criminal activities perpetrated to support addictions. No price can be assessed for the addict's misery, suffering, poor health, and even sometimes his untimely death.

Four perceptual training programs were incorporated into an individualized kindergarten curriculum for disadvantaged children. One program stressed general auditory and visual perceptual skills, a second auditory skills specific to decoding, a third visual skills specific to decoding, and a fourth auditory and visual skills specific to decoding. Each of the four treatment groups were taught by the same teachers. Post-tests included IQ, auditory and visual measures of reading readiness, and two learning rate tests, the Murphy-Durrell learning rate test which uses a look-say instructional method, and a parallel learning rate test constructed by the investigator using a linguistic instructional approach. Although there was a significant difference between groups at the end of the treatment period, no group or groups outperformed the others on all post-test measures. The auditory visual specific skill group registered significantly greater gains than the other three groups on IQ, and scored significantly higher than the auditory group on visual but not auditory reading post-tests. There was no interaction effect between treatment group and IQ level, auditory perception level or visual perception level as measured by the pre-tests. The investigator hypothesized that groups trained in specific visual skills would outperform the others on the Murphy-Durrell Learning rate test, and that the groups trained in specific auditory skills would outperform the others on the Linguistic Learning rate test. This hypothesis was not supported. A trend in the direction of the hypothesis suggested that a longer training period may have produced more definitive results.

A long-standing debate is whether awareness is dissociable from attention. Previous work in support of a dissociation between stimulus-driven attention and awareness has used spatial-cueing paradigms. A critical review of these previous works show that they either had logical shortcomings or did not meet conditions of complete perceptual unawareness. One study, however, met all criteria for conclusive evidence of stimulus-driven attention in the absence of awareness (Mulckhuyse et al., 2007). Here, I experimentally replicated their findings. However, when parsing out the data in a cue-localization drive, an alternative explanation for their findings can be evoked without appealing to the deployment of stimulus-driven attention without awareness. Instead, it is possible that differential awareness of cues across experimental conditions may be sufficient to explain the claims of stimulus-driven attention without awareness in this prior work. Taken together with my critical review of the literature, my findings lead me to conclude that there is currently no compelling evidence that stimulus-driven attention can occur without awareness of the attention-capturing stimulus.

Although research on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) continues to increase, there is not yet a cure for the disorder. There is a lack of consensus regarding most effective treatments, much less an accepted treatment plan or course. Families may feel alone and lost in the treatment decision process. In order to best assist caregivers, psychologists must understand the selections caregivers make, their sources of information, and what influences them in their decision-making process. With this knowledge, clinicians may best effect change in caregiver choice by encouraging informed decision-making and use of empirically-based interventions. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to examine the choices that caregivers make in terms of treatment for their children with ASD, the sources from which they obtain information about interventions, and the child and caregiver characteristics that predict evidence-based practice versus complementary and alternative medicine use. Caregivers of children or adolescents with ASD completed an online survey that included questions about these factors and a parent-report measure of ASD symptom severity. Results of treatment selections and sources of information were fairly consistent with extant research. However, the results of regression analyses indicated that only respondent education statistically significantly contributed to predicting hours of CAM treatment, whereas only subject symptom severity of ASD statistically significantly contributed to predicting hours of EBP treatments. Additional results, discussion, future directions, and limitations of the study are provided.

Many American students struggle with reading, particularly in the area of comprehension. As such, early identification of reading difficulties, use of evidenced-based interventions, and monitoring of student reading progress over time is essential. Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) is a technically adequate, efficient tool whose features and design make it a good candidate for early identification and progress monitoring purposes, especially within a response to intervention framework. However, there is still some uncertainty regarding the utility of reading CBM as progress monitoring tools. Specifically, the literature has suggested that variability in the difficulty of CBM materials may influence how well these tools measure student growth over time. The present study aimed to reduce CBM variability by using field-testing and rank-ordering of performance means to create two equivalent second-grade reading CBM passage sets. These sets were derived from larger pools of extant, commercially-available passage sets. One passage set included oral reading fluency and story recall tasks. The second passage set was comprised of Maze tasks. These passage sets were then used to monitor progress in second-grade students who were at-risk for reading problems. Scores from each type of task were also used to determine which was the best predictor of student performance in reading comprehension. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze student growth on CBM measures, as well as predict reading comprehension. Results indicated that only Maze tasks were sensitive to individual student growth over the study, and were the strongest predictors of reading comprehension in this sample compared to oral reading fluency and recall. Implications, limitations, and future directions are also discussed.