Increased motor cortex excitability for concealed visual information

Deceptive behaviour involves complex neural processes involving the primary motor cortex. The dynamics of this motor cortex excitability prior to lying are still not well understood. We sought to examine whether corticospinal excitability can be used to suggest the presence of deliberately concealed information in a modified version of the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT). Participants pressed keys to either truthfully or deceitfully indicate their familiarity with a series of faces. Motor-evoked-potentials (MEPs) were recorded during response preparation to measure muscle-specific neural excitability. We hypothesised that MEPs would increase during the deceptive condition not only in the lie-telling finger but also in the suppressed truth-telling finger. We report a group-level increase in overall corticospinal excitability 300 ms following stimulus onset during the deceptive condition, without specific activation of the neural representation of the truth-telling finger. We discuss cognitive processes, particularly response conflict and/or automated responses to familiar stimuli, which may drive the observed non-specific increase of motor excitability in deception

Serial Position Effects in Short-term Visual Memory: A SIMPLE Explanation?

A version of Sternberg’s (1966) short-term, visual memory recognition paradigm with pictures of unfamiliar faces as stimuli was used in three experiments to assess the applicability of the distinctiveness based SIMPLE model proposed by Brown, Neath & Chater (2002). Initial simulations indicated that the amount of recency predicted increased as the parameter measuring the psychological distinctiveness of the stimulus material (c) increased, and that the amount of primacy was dependent on the extent of proactive interference from previously presented stimuli. The data from experiment 1, which used memory lists of four and five faces varying in visual similarity confirmed the predicted, extended recency effect. However, changes in visual similarity were not found to produce changes in c. In Experiments 2 and 3, the conditions that influence the magnitude of c were explored. These revealed that both the familiarity of the stimulus class before testing, and changes in familiarity due to perceptual learning, influenced distinctiveness as indexed by the parameter c. Overall the empirical data from all three experiments were well-fit by SIMPLE

DOES BRAND EXTENSION IMPACT PARENT BRAND: A CASE OF JOHNSON, UK

Purpose of study: The main purpose of this study is to check the impact of brand extensions on brand image. For this purpose Johnson is selected as parent brand for current research. The targeted brand extensions are Johnson shampoo, Johnson’s isotonic drinks, Johnson’s sports wear and Johnson’s suntan lotion. Research Methodology: sample was selected from Bradford, UK. Sample consists of graduate students including males as well as female. Total sample size is 60 and data was collected through self administered questionnaires. For each brand 15 respondents were selected. Convenient sampling was selected as sampling technique. Results: Results show that Johnson’s have high brand awareness and perceived quality. While there is negative correlation results for brand fit on brand image for those product extensions which are not in same brand category i.e. Johnson’s sportswear and Johnson’s isotonic drinks. Conclusion: It is concluded from study results that launching new product in same parent brand category have high chance of success while in different category is risk.Brand Extension, Brand Fit, Johnson, Product extensions, marketing.

Angry expressions strengthen the encoding and maintenance of face identity representations in visual working memory

This work was funded by a BBSRC grant (BB/G021538/2) to all authors.Peer reviewedPreprin

How do you say ‘hello’? Personality impressions from brief novel voices

On hearing a novel voice, listeners readily form personality impressions of that speaker. Accurate or not, these impressions are known to affect subsequent interactions; yet the underlying psychological and acoustical bases remain poorly understood. Furthermore, hitherto studies have focussed on extended speech as opposed to analysing the instantaneous impressions we obtain from first experience. In this paper, through a mass online rating experiment, 320 participants rated 64 sub-second vocal utterances of the word ‘hello’ on one of 10 personality traits. We show that: (1) personality judgements of brief utterances from unfamiliar speakers are consistent across listeners; (2) a two-dimensional ‘social voice space’ with axes mapping Valence (Trust, Likeability) and Dominance, each driven by differing combinations of vocal acoustics, adequately summarises ratings in both male and female voices; and (3) a positive combination of Valence and Dominance results in increased perceived male vocal Attractiveness, whereas perceived female vocal Attractiveness is largely controlled by increasing Valence. Results are discussed in relation to the rapid evaluation of personality and, in turn, the intent of others, as being driven by survival mechanisms via approach or avoidance behaviours. These findings provide empirical bases for predicting personality impressions from acoustical analyses of short utterances and for generating desired personality impressions in artificial voices

Changing an Unfavorable Employer Reputation: The Roles of Recruitment Message-Type and Familiarity with Employer

An unfavorable employer reputation can impair an organization’s ability to recruit job seekers. The present research employed a four-week longitudinal experimental design to investigate whether recruitment messages can positively change an existing unfavorable employer reputation. Two hundred and twenty-two (222) job seekers rated their perceptions of an organization before and after being randomly assigned to receive a series of high- or low-information recruitment messages. As expected, job seekers receiving high-information messages changed their perceptions more than job seekers who were exposed to low-information messages. In addition, job seekers’ initial familiarity with the employer was negatively related to change in their perceptions of employer reputation. Finally, there was some evidence that job seekers’ familiarity with the employer influenced the impact of different recruitment messages. Implications for research and practice are discussed