An investigation of left/right driving rules on deviations while walking

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.When traversing through an aperture, such as a doorway, people characteristically deviate towards the right. This rightward deviation can be explained by a rightward attentional bias which leads to rightward bisections in far space. It is also possible, however, that left or right driving practices affect the deviation. To explore this possibility, Australian (left-side drivers) and Swiss (right-side drivers) participants (n = 36 & 34) walked through the middle of an aperture. To control for the sway of the body, participants started with either their left or right foot. Sway had a significant effect on participants’ position in the doorway and the amount of sway was greater for Australians—perhaps due to national differences in gait. There was a significant rightward deviation for the Swiss, but not for the Australians. It is suggested that driving practices have a small additive effect on rightward attentional biases whereby the bias is increased for people who drive on the right and reduced in people who drive on the left

Universal Patterns in Color-Emotion Associations Are Further Shaped by Linguistic and Geographic Proximity

Many of us "see red," "feel blue," or "turn green with envy." Are such color-emotion associations fundamental to our shared cognitive architecture, or are they cultural creations learned through our languages and traditions? To answer these questions, we tested emotional associations of colors in 4,598 participants from 30 nations speaking 22 native languages. Participants associated 20 emotion concepts with 12 color terms. Pattern-similarity analyses revealed universal color-emotion associations (average similarity coefficientr= .88). However, local differences were also apparent. A machine-learning algorithm revealed that nation predicted color-emotion associations above and beyond those observed universally. Similarity was greater when nations were linguistically or geographically close. This study highlights robust universal color-emotion associations, further modulated by linguistic and geographic factors. These results pose further theoretical and empirical questions about the affective properties of color and may inform practice in applied domains, such as well-being and design.Peer reviewe

Dataset_Study_1.xlsx

See article in PLOS ONE, in press (2016):<p><i>"Pro Free Will Priming Enhances “Risk-Taking” Behavior in the Iowa Gambling Task, but not in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task: Two Independent Priming Studies."</i></p><p> </p><p>Yann Schrag, Alessandro Tremea, Cyril Lagger, Noé Ohana, Christine Mohr</p

Mentalizing skills do not differentiate believers from non-believers, but credibility enhancing displays do

The ability to mentalize has been marked as an important cognitive mechanism enabling belief in supernatural agents. In five studies we cross-culturally investigated the relationship between mentalizing and belief in supernatural agents with large sample sizes (over 67,000 participants in total) and different operationalizations of mentalizing. The relative importance of mentalizing for endorsing supernatural beliefs was directly compared with credibility enhancing displays–the extent to which people observed credible religious acts during their upbringing. We also compared autistic with neurotypical adolescents. The empathy quotient and the autism-spectrum quotient were not predictive of belief in supernatural agents in all countries (i.e., The Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States), although we did observe a curvilinear effect in the United States. We further observed a strong influence of credibility enhancing displays on belief in supernatural agents. These findings highlight the importance of cultural learning for acquiring supernatural beliefs and ask for reconsiderations of the importance of mentalizing

A Fiber Optic Concentration Sensor

<p>GEN = gender (1 = female, 2 = male), AGE = age, REL = religiosity, AQ = Autism Spectrum Quotient, R1—R14 = religiosity items (see supplementary material online), Q1 –Q50 = item 1–50 of the Autism Spectrum Quotient (see supplementary material online). The lines represent the inter-item correlations, thicker lines represent larger correlations and correlation lines start from <i>r</i> = .15. Green lines are indicative of positive correlations, red lines of negative correlations.</p

Insufficient Coping Behavior under Chronic Stress and Vulnerability to Psychiatric Disorders

Epidemiological data indicate that 75% of subjects with major psychiatric disorders have their onset in the age range of 17-24 years. An estimated 35-50% of college and university students drop out prematurely due to insufficient coping skills under chronic stress, while 85% of students receiving a psychiatric diagnosis withdraw from college/university prior to the completion of their education. In this study we aimed at developing standardized means for identifying students with insufficient coping skills under chronic stress and at risk for mental health problems. A sample of 1,217 college students from 3 different sites in the U.S. and Switzerland completed 2 self-report questionnaires: the Coping Strategies Inventory "COPE" and the Zurich Health Questionnaire "ZHQ" which assesses "regular exercises", "consumption behavior", "impaired physical health", "psychosomatic disturbances", and "impaired mental health". The data were subjected to structure analyses by means of a Neural Network approach. We found 2 highly stable and reproducible COPE scales that explained the observed inter-individual variation in coping behavior sufficiently well and in a socio-culturally independent way. The scales reflected basic coping behavior in terms of "activity-passivity" and "defeatism-resilience", and in the sense of stable, socio-culturally independent personality traits. Correlation analyses carried out for external validation revealed a close relationship between high scores on the defeatism scale and impaired physical and mental health. This underlined the role of insufficient coping behavior as a risk factor for physical and mental health problems. The combined COPE and ZHQ instruments appear to constitute powerful screening tools for insufficient coping skills under chronic stress and for risks of mental health problems

Demographical variables for Study 1 to Study 4.

<p>Demographical variables for Study 1 to Study 4.</p

Logistic regression analysis for variables predicting religiosity by atheists (N = 240) and theists (N = 168) in Study 3, controlling for background variables.

<p>Logistic regression analysis for variables predicting religiosity by atheists (N = 240) and theists (N = 168) in Study 3, controlling for background variables.</p