Emotion perception from vocal cues: Testing the influence of emotion intensity and sex on in-group advantage.

The present study examined individuals' ability to identify emotions being expressed in vocal cues depending on the accent of the speaker as well as the intensity of the emotion being expressed. Australian and Canadian participants listened to Australian and Canadian speakers express pairs of emotions that fall within the same emotion family but vary in intensity (e.g., anger vs. irritation). Accent of listener was unrelated to emotion recognition. Instead, performance varied more based on emotion intensity and sex; Australian and Canadian participants generally found high intensity emotions easier to recognize compared to low intensity emotions as well as emotion conveyed by females compared to males. Participants found it particularly difficult to recognize the expressed emotion of Australian males. The results suggest the importance of considering the context in which emotion recognition is embedded. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Validation of Affective Sentences: Extending Beyond Basic Emotion Categories.

We use nonverbal and verbal emotion cues to determine how others are feeling. Most studies in vocal emotion perception do not consider the influence of verbal content, using sentences with nonsense words or words that carry no emotional meaning. These online studies aimed to validate 95 sentences with verbal content intended to convey 10 emotions. Participants were asked to select the emotion that best described the emotional meaning of the sentence. Study 1 included 436 participants and Study 2 included 193. The Simpson diversity index was applied as a measure of dispersion of responses. Across the two studies, 38 sentences were labelled as representing 10 emotion categories with a low degree of diversity in participant responses. Expanding current databases beyond basic emotion categories is important for researchers exploring the interaction between tone of voice and verbal content, and/or people's capacity to make subtle distinctions between their own and others' emotions.

Did You Just Lie to Me? Deception Detection in Face to Face versus Computer Mediated Communication.

Individuals' deception detection ability during either a face-to-face (FtF) interaction or through computer-mediated communication (CMC) was explored under more naturalistic conditions where they were not forewarned that deception may be involved. Participants discussed a social issue either in a room together or by instant messaging from separate rooms. Prior to discussion, some participants were asked to deceive their partner regarding their actual opinion on the issue. Results showed that mode of communication did not influence participants' deception detection accuracy rate, nor their truth bias. Regardless of mode of communication, deceptive participants experienced the same level of physiological arousal as the non-deceivers. In contrast, deceivers reported experiencing higher levels of anxiety but only in the FtF condition. Findings highlight how for different communication modalities, a multitude of interactive factors may influence deception detection.

Executive Functioning and External Symbols: The Role of Symbolic Understanding and Psychological Distancing.

Preschool children can use external symbols to aid their executive functioning (EF). The purpose of the current study was to investigate how symbols boost EF, specifically investigating the role of psychological distancing and symbolic understanding. Preschoolers were assessed on their level of symbolic understanding and completed two EF tasks. Half the children completed the first EF task using symbols, and all children completed the second EF task without the aid of symbols. Results indicated that children in the symbol group at first did significantly worse while they were using the symbols compared to the control group, though their performance improved over time. Control group performance was significantly worse in the second EF task. Symbolic understanding was sometimes related to EF performance for children in the symbol group but not the control group. The current research highlights the complexity of symbol use to influence cognitive functioning.

Eliciting emotion ratings for a set of film clips: A preliminary archive for research in emotion.

Film clips are commonly used to elicit subjectively experienced emotional states for many research purposes, but film clips currently available in databases are out of date, include a limited set of emotions, and/or pertain to only one conceptualization of emotion. This work reports validation data from two studies aimed to elicit basic and complex emotions (amusement, anger, anxiety, compassion, contentment, disgust, fear, happiness/joy, irritation, neutrality, pride, relief, sadness, surprise), equally distributed according to valence (positive, negative) and intensity (high, low). Participants rated film clips according to the degree of experienced emotion, and for valence and arousal. Our findings initiate an iterative archive of film clips shown here to discretely elicit 11 different emotions. Although further validation of these film clips is needed, ratings provided here should assist researchers in selecting potential film clips to meet the aims of their work.

Communication, compassion, and computers: Adolescents' and adults' evaluations of online and face-to-face deception.

We explored Canadian adolescents', emergent adults', and adults' understandings of deception in computer mediated communication (CMC) compared to face to face (FtF). Participants between 13 and 50 years read vignettes of different types of questionable behaviour that occurred online or in real life, and were asked to judge whether deception was involved, and the acceptability of the behaviour. Age groups evaluated deception similarly; however, adolescents held slightly different views from adults about what constitutes deception, suggesting that the understanding of deception continues to develop into adulthood. Furthermore, CMC behaviour was rated as more deceptive than FtF in general, and participants scoring higher on compassion perceived vignettes to be more deceptive. This study is a step towards better understanding the relationships between perceptions of deception across adolescence into adulthood, mode of communication, and compassion, and may have implications for how adults communicate with youth about deception in CMC and FtF contexts.

A Preliminary Investigation into Effects of Linguistic Abstraction on the Perception of Gender in Spoken Language.

We investigated the role that linguistic abstraction may play in people's perceptions of gender in spoken language. In the first experiment, participants told stories about their best friend and romantic partner. Variations in linguistic abstraction and gender-linked adjectives for describing their close others were examined. Participants used significantly more abstract language to describe men compared to women, possibly reflecting a gender stereotype associated with the dispositionality factor of linguistic abstraction. In a second experiment, a new group of participants judged the gender of the protagonists from the stories generated in Experiment 1, after the explicit linguistic gender cues were removed. Consistent with the dispositionality factor, linguistic abstraction moderated the effects of the gender stereotypicality of the context (masculine, feminine, or neutral) on participants' gender judgments. Discussion focuses on the implications of the results for the communication of gender stereotypes and the effects of linguistic abstraction in more naturalistic language.

Does future-oriented thinking predict adolescent decision making?

A number of theorists, as well as plain common sense, suggest that future-oriented thinking (FOT) should be involved in decision making; therefore, the development of FOT should be related to better quality decision making. FOT and quality of the decision making were measured in adolescents as well as adults in 2 different experiments. Though the results of the first experiment revealed an increase in quality of decision making across adolescence into adulthood, there was no relationship between FOT and decision making. In the second experiment, FOT predicted performance on a more deliberative decision-making task independent of age, but not performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Performance on the IGT was instead related to emotion regulation. The study's findings suggest that FOT can be related to reflective decision making but not necessarily decision making that is more intuitive.

Intentional forgetting: note-taking as a naturalistic example.

In the present study, we examined whether note-taking as a memory aid may provide a naturalistic example of intentional forgetting. In the first experiment, participants played Concentration, a memory card game in which the identity and location of pairs of cards need to be remembered. Before the game started, half of the participants were allowed to study the cards, and the other half made notes that were then unexpectedly taken away. No significant differences emerged between the two groups for remembering identity information, but the study group remembered significantly more location information than did the note-taking group. In a second experiment, we examined whether note-takers would show signs of proactive interference while playing Concentration repeatedly. The results indicated that they did not. The findings suggest that participants adopted an intentional-forgetting strategy when using notes to store certain types of information.

Children's informational reliance during inconsistent communication: the public-private distinction.

This study examined whether children recognize that when there is a discrepancy between what is expressed in public versus what is expressed in private, the private expression is more indicative of the true state of affairs. Participants (3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds) were shown a video in which a girl expressed that she liked the refreshments her friend had made when the friend was present but expressed dislike when the friend was not present. The results of the first two experiments revealed that older children were significantly more likely to rely on private information than on public information to interpret the inconsistent messages, whereas 3-year-olds were not. In the third experiment, older children performed better when the inconsistency occurred in the nonverbal domain compared with the verbal domain. The finding that even 4-year-olds show some signs of understanding the private-public distinction is remarkable given that previous research on inconsistent communication indicated that children's understanding typically comes much later. Possible explanations for this discrepancy are discussed.

Children's note taking as a mnemonic tool.

When given the opportunity to take notes in memory tasks, children sometimes make notes that are not useful. The current study examined the role that task constraints might play in the production of nonmnemonic notes. In Experiment 1, children played one easy and one difficult memory game twice, once with the opportunity to make notes and once without that opportunity. More children produced functional notations for the easier task than for the more difficult task, and their notations were beneficial to memory performance. Experiment 2 found that the majority of children who at first made nonmnemonic notations were able to produce functional notations with minimal training, and there was no significant difference in notation quality or memory performance between spontaneous and trained note takers. Experiment 3 revealed that the majority of children could transfer their training to a novel task. The results suggest that children's production of nonmnemonic notes may be due in part to a lack of knowledge regarding what task information is important to represent or how to represent it in their notes rather than to an inability to make functional notes in general.

Preschoolers can recognize violations of the Gricean maxims.

Grice (Syntax and semantics: Speech acts, 1975, pp. 41-58, Vol. 3) proposed that conversation is guided by a spirit of cooperation that involves adherence to several conversational maxims. Three types of maxims were explored in the current study: 1) Quality, to be truthful; 2) Relation, to say only what is relevant to a conversation; and 3) Quantity, to provide as much information as required. Three- to five-year-olds were tested to determine the age at which an awareness of these Gricean maxims emerges. Children requested the help of one of two puppets in finding a hidden sticker. One puppet always adhered to the maxim being tested, while the other always violated it. Consistently choosing the puppet that adhered to the maxim was considered indicative of an understanding of that maxim. The results indicate that children were initially only successful in the Relation condition. While in general, children performed better at first in the Quantity condition compared with the Quality condition, 3-year-olds never performed above chance in the Quantity condition. The findings of the present study indicate that preschool children are sensitive to the violation of the Relation, Quality, and Quantity maxims at least under some conditions.

Are eyes windows to a deceiver's soul? Children's use of another's eye gaze cues in a deceptive situation.

Three experiments examined 3- to 5-year-olds' use of eye gaze cues to infer truth in a deceptive situation. Children watched a video of an actor who hid a toy in 1 of 3 cups. In Experiments 1 and 2, the actor claimed ignorance about the toy's location but looked toward 1 of the cups, without (Experiment 1) and with (Experiment 2) head movement. In Experiment 3, the actor provided contradictory verbal and eye gaze clues about the location of the toy. Four- and 5-year-olds correctly used the actor's gaze cues to locate the toy, whereas 3-year-olds failed to do so. Results suggest that by 4 years of age, children begin to understand that eye gaze cues displayed by a deceiver can be informative about the true state of affairs.

"Remember where you last saw that card": children's production of external symbols as a memory aid.

Four experiments examined the age at which children start to use external symbols to aid their memory and how external symbol use affects both their memory performance and information allocation strategies. In Experiment 1, children in Grades 1, 3, 5, and 7 played a memory card game (Concentration) twice, once with the opportunity to make notes to aid performance and once without the opportunity. Grades I and 3 students tended to produce nonmnemonic notations, whereas Grades 5 and 7 students were more likely to produce functional, adultlike notations that aided performance in the task. In Experiments 2a and 2b, unexpected removal of children's notations led to a decrease in performance. suggesting that the spontaneously produced notations were being used as an external store rather than as an aid to encoding information. Experiment 3 examined whether all information was placed in external storage or if some types of information remained in memory. Grade 7 students who had their notations unexpectedly taken away were able to recognize the identity of the cards they had previously seen but had more difficulty remembering their locations. They appeared to place the location information mainly in external storage while retaining the identity information in memory. These results suggest that in mid-childhood, children begin to distribute information actively between internal and external memory storage.