Spontaneous trait inferences: Faces, races, and the inferences we encode because of them

Spontaneous trait inferences have been the focus of impression formation research for nearly a century. Spontaneous trait inferences impact the judgments and decisions we make about these objects and people particularly when the group membership of that object or person is meaningful to us, such as their race/ethnicity. Research on extralist cues has suggested the spontaneous trait interferences act via the encoding specificity principle: only items stored can be retrieved, and the effectiveness of retrieval depends on the contextual information that is stored with the word in episode memory. Other research suggests that stereotypes may disrupt the spontaneous inferences process. However, no research has been conducted to investigate the degree to which racial stereotypes may impact the spontaneous trait-inferencing process based on face-type. This present research presented participants with a variety of behavioral sentences paired with photographs of people. Participants then saw a trait probe word that was related to the behavior sentence. The behavior sentences varied in the degree to which they may be considered stereotypical of African American individuals. The faces presented also varied in the degree to which they will be considered prototypical of an African American face. I expected that the degree to which a face is considered to be prototypical of race would influence the stereotypical associations that were activated. I expected that the activation of stereotypical knowledge would impact the speed at which people responded to the trait probe word. However, the results suggest that all African American faces, regardless of face-type, were categorized similarly and elicited similar inferencing responses. Implications from this present research could suggest that no matter how representative a face may be of a racial category, if that face is categorized within a particular race, there may similar consequences in the initial impression formation stages for all faces. Implications from the research will aid in the development of bias prevention by illustrating the ways in which people encode information about others and their behaviors

Change blindness: eradication of gestalt strategies

Arrays of eight, texture-defined rectangles were used as stimuli in a one-shot change blindness (CB) task where there was a 50% chance that one rectangle would change orientation between two successive presentations separated by an interval. CB was eliminated by cueing the target rectangle in the first stimulus, reduced by cueing in the interval and unaffected by cueing in the second presentation. This supports the idea that a representation was formed that persisted through the interval before being 'overwritten' by the second presentation (Landman et al, 2003 Vision Research 43149–164]. Another possibility is that participants used some kind of grouping or Gestalt strategy. To test this we changed the spatial position of the rectangles in the second presentation by shifting them along imaginary spokes (by ±1 degree) emanating from the central fixation point. There was no significant difference seen in performance between this and the standard task [F(1,4)=2.565, p=0.185]. This may suggest two things: (i) Gestalt grouping is not used as a strategy in these tasks, and (ii) it gives further weight to the argument that objects may be stored and retrieved from a pre-attentional store during this task

Multilingual clients’ experience of psychotherapy

The present study focuses on the experiences of 182 multilingual clients who had been exposed to various therapeutic approaches in various countries. An on-line questionnaire was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The analysis of feedback from clients with multilingual therapists showed that clients use or initiate significantly more code-switching (CS) than their therapists, and that it typically occurs when the emotional tone is raised. Gender was unrelated to CS frequency. CS is used strategically when discussing episodes of trauma and shame, creating proximity or distance. CS allows clients to express themselves more fully to the therapist, adding depth and nuance to the therapy. The therapist’s multilingualism promotes empathy and clients’ own multilingualism constitutes an important aspect of their sense of self. Multilingual clients benefit from a therapeutic environment where multilingualism is appreciated, and where they can use CS

Can we ID from CCTV? Image quality in digital CCTV and face identification performance

CCTV is used for an increasing number Of purposes, and the new generation of digital systems can be tailored to serve a wide range of security requirements. However, configuration decisions are often made without considering specific task requirements, e.g. the video quality needed for reliable person identification. Our Study investigated the relationship between video quality and the ability of untrained viewers to identify faces from digital CCTV images. The task required 80 participants to identify 64 faces belonging to 4 different ethnicities. Participants compared face images taken from a high quality photographs and low quality CCTV stills, which were recorded at 4 different video quality bit rates (32, 52, 72 and 92 Kbps). We found that the number of correct identifications decreased by 12 (similar to 18%) as MPEG-4 quality decreased from 92 to 32 Kbps, and by 4 (similar to 6%) as Wavelet video quality decreased from 92 to 32 Kbps. To achieve reliable and effective face identification, we recommend that MPEG-4 CCTV systems should be used over Wavelet, and video quality should not be lowered below 52 Kbps during video compression. We discuss the practical implications of these results for security, and contribute a contextual methodology for assessing CCTV video quality

Unintentional retrieval of stereotype congruent memories

The present study investigated the prediction that the stereotype physical attractiveness produces automatic memory, this means automatic encoding and retrieval of stereotype congruent information. Furthermore, subjects' relationship between automatic memory and explicit prejudice was explored. Forty-seven subjects participated in a novel implicit memory test. After conceptual priming, they judged the valence of "face-trait word" pairs, in old and new stimuli. Reaction times and self-reported prejudice levels were recorded. Results confirmed automatic memory. However, participants failed to exhibit better automatic memory for stereotype congruent stimuli than for stereotype incongruent stimuli. Significant interactions showed that participants unintentionally retrieved positive and negative traits together with attractive faces faster. A positive trend was found between subjects' automatic memory for stereotype prejudice information and their explicit prejudice attitude. The findings support automaticity of memory

The Role of Consciousness in Memory

Conscious events interact with memory systems in learning, rehearsal and retrieval (Ebbinghaus 1885/1964; Tulving 1985). Here we present hypotheses that arise from the IDA computional model (Franklin, Kelemen and McCauley 1998; Franklin 2001b) of global workspace theory (Baars 1988, 2002). Our primary tool for this exploration is a flexible cognitive cycle employed by the IDA computational model and hypothesized to be a basic element of human cognitive processing. Since cognitive cycles are hypothesized to occur five to ten times a second and include interaction between conscious contents and several of the memory systems, they provide the means for an exceptionally fine-grained analysis of various cognitive tasks. We apply this tool to the small effect size of subliminal learning compared to supraliminal learning, to process dissociation, to implicit learning, to recognition vs. recall, and to the availability heuristic in recall. The IDA model elucidates the role of consciousness in the updating of perceptual memory, transient episodic memory, and procedural memory. In most cases, memory is hypothesized to interact with conscious events for its normal functioning. The methodology of the paper is unusual in that the hypotheses and explanations presented are derived from an empirically based, but broad and qualitative computational model of human cognition

Speaking in Tongues: Language and National Belonging in Globalizing Europe

In contemporary Europe, the problematic concept of the nation has been recuperated to fasten subjects to political space. Under the impact of globalization, marked by increasing rates of human mobility and concurrent security concerns, European Union states have begun to push for cohesive measures to reclaim their national sovereignty. Revised immigration laws and refugee policies are publicly supported, presumably to keep the nation safe. At the same time, European countries advocate for openness and permeable borders to attract foreign capital investment. In the national interior, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments have come to coexist with the outward dissemination of promotional images of a white Europe. With a focus on such explosive forms of racialization, I investigate how assertions of nationhood have been pushed into the center of public attention. My research suggests that European national borders are increasingly mapped out through the medium of language, thereby producing new mechanisms both for membership and exclusion. With a turn to German cultural politics, I examine how regimes of nationality and imaginaries of citizenship are forged by a racialization of the national language. Under the impact of global capitalism, the European Union, and German unification, ethnolinguistic signposts have emerged as a medium for reconstituting subjectivities and sovereignties. In a united Germany, I argue, national identity politics have become language politics, a terrain marked by a fear of linguistic estrangement and a popular preoccupation with preserving an authentic cultural interior. The nation is configured as a speech community of ethnic Germans. Based on long-term research in Germany, my ethnographic evidence derives from a diversity of political fields: the citizenship debates, immigration policies, German language reform, and the formation of German literary societies, which render visible the phantasm of language purity and the fear of linguistic difference. Through this article, my analysis reveals that national language politics in Europe are located on an imaginary landscape of intensely charged concepts: nation, nature, and race

The Influence of Stereotype on Maintenance and Retrieval Errors: Does Working Memory Capacity Matter?

I explored the influence of stereotypes on performance in cognitive tasks as a function of individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) in a multi-part study. First, I established that low and high WMC persons maintain equivalent knowledge of common racial stereotypes. Next, I tested whether stereotype-based responses in cognitive tasks that require controlled processing are influenced by individual differences in WMC. Given that stereotypical associations are automatic and cognitively efficient, I predicted that without sufficient resources to suppress these associations, persons with low relative to high WMC will be more susceptible to the influence of stereotype-consistent errors on tasks which have been demonstrated to induce performance differences in low and high WMC persons (Unsworth & Engle, 2007). Engaging WMC is not required in all cognitive tasks; thus, low and high WMC persons were not expected to perform differently on tasks that rely on more automatic processes. Results provided general support for predictions as persons with more inherently limited cognitive resources committed a higher number of stereotype-consistent errors when performing a maintenance task and accurately recalled fewer stereotype-consistent words when performing a retrieval task. However, persons completing inhibition and familiarity tasks, which are methodologically similar to the maintenance and retrieval tasks but involve less controlled cognitive processes, performed similarly regardless of WMC

Expertise and the own-age bias in face recognition

Previous research has shown that we recognise faces similar in age to ourselves better than older or younger faces (e.g. Anastasi & Rhodes, 2006). The primary aim of this thesis was to investigate this phenomenon in young adults and children to gain further insight into the underlying perceptual, cognitive and/or social mechanisms involved in this apparent “own-age bias” (OAB) in face recognition. Chapter one confirmed that an OAB was present in both young adults and children, and the remaining chapters sought to address why this pattern may exist by drawing on the plethora of research into why a similar, potentially analogous bias occurs: the own-race bias (ORB). The ORB is the phenomenon that we are more accurate at recognising faces of our own race than those belonging to a different, less familiar race (see Meissner & Brigham, 2001 for review). Perhaps the best known explanation of the ORB is the Contact Hypothesis. This suggests that the own-race memory advantage is due to the fact that people tend to have more experience with faces from their own race and, as a direct result, develop greater expertise at recognising them (e.g. Chiroro & Valentine, 1995). The second chapter sought to investigate whether a similar explanation could be applied to the OAB, and found supporting evidence for this claim. The remaining studies examined what it is about contact with an age group that results in the superior recognition for faces of that age. By investigating perceptual expertise, social-categorisation and motivational explanations of the OAB, this thesis concluded that both quantity and quality of contact play an important role in the development of this bias. The findings of this thesis seem to be most consistent with a perceptual expertise account of the own-age bias in face recognition. However, it also seems likely that motivation to attend to faces (particularly with the goal of individuation) is likely to be a driving factor of this bias