This study examined whether instructional humor (IH) was not just another type of seductive detail when covariates such as humor pre-disposition, prior-knowledge, and working memory capacity were controlled. Participants were students (N = 228) from universities who were randomly assigned two stimuli conditions in the classic experimental design.…

Typically developing adults with low and high Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) scores made rapid social evaluations of neutral faces when these were primed by briefly presented emotional faces. High AQ participants rated neutral faces as more threatening than low AQ participants, regardless of the prime condition. Both groups rated target neutral…

Insects are the most abundant and diverse group of animals on Earth. Though as a group they do far more ecological good than harm, previous studies have shown that human attitudes toward insects are mainly negative. Attitudes have affective (emotions) and cognitive (beliefs, mental representations) components that interact to influence behavior.…

This article introduces a novel hypothesis regarding amygdala function in psychopathy. The first part of this article introduces the concept of psychopathy and describes the main cognitive and affective impairments demonstrated by this population; that is, a deficit in fear-recognition, lower conditioned fear responses and poor performance in…

Objective: This study compared affect recognition abilities between adults with and without ADHD. Method: The sample consisted of 51 participants (34 men, 17 women) divided into 3 groups: ADHD-combined type (ADHD-C; n = 17), ADHD-predominantly inattentive type (ADHD-I; n = 16), and controls (n = 18). The mean age was 34 years. Affect recognition…

The current study examined the association between dimensions of perfectionism and levels of academic achievement and affect in school-aged children. A sample of 223 students (90 boys, 133 girls) from regular, gifted, and arts programs completed measures of self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism, perceived academic competence, and…

Effects of systematic desensitization and anxiety management training in reducing test anxiety and generalizing to other anxieties were compared. Both desensitization and anxiety management training produced significant reduction of text anxiety, but by follow-up, anxiety management training produced significantly more test-anxiety reduction on…

The processing of the emotional signals of others is fundamental for normal socialization and interaction. Reduced responsiveness to the expressions of sadness and fear has been implicated in the development of psychopathy (Blair, 1995). The current study investigates the ability of boys with psychopathic tendencies to process auditory affect…

Objective: To examine prevalence rates of psychopathology in children with velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS). Method: One hundred fifty-four children ages 6 to 15 participated in our between-group design with three samples, 84 children with VCFS (37 girls, 47 boys), 32 sibling controls (18 girls, 14 boys), and 38 community controls (12 girls, 26…

A cross-national study examined what Japanese, Chinese, and American infants communicated to naive observers in various contexts when facial information was not available. Found that cultural differences were manifested primarily in deviations from expected responses to situations; Chinese and Japanese were not rated as more surprised in the…

The authors investigated the effects of attention to novelty, fear-anxiety, and age on 3 measures of conduct problems. They found several main and interaction effects. The results indicated the presence of the hypothesized 3-way interaction for 2 dependent measures (i.e., conduct problem, socialized aggression); the 3rd dependent measure (i.e.,…

Compares the extent to which adolescents worry about nuclear war to their frequency of worry about other issues. Looks at the empirical relationships among worry and grade level, gender, trait emotionality, and drug use. Results indicate that adolescents worry more often about school performance and social interactions than about nuclear war.…