Interest in and research on disgust has surged over the past few decades. The field, however, still lacks a coherent theoretical framework for understanding the evolved function or functions of disgust. Here we present such a framework, emphasizing 2 levels of analysis: that of evolved function and that of information processing. Although there is…

Attention can be oriented to different spatial locations yielding faster processing of attended compared to unattended stimuli. Similarly attention can be oriented to a semantic category such as "animals" or "tools". Words from the attended category will also be recognized faster than words from an unattended category. Here, we asked whether it is…

The current study investigated potential emotional priming effects on Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) scale scores. Participants included 98 college students who completed a personal narrative intended to induce temporary mood states, the MMPI-2, and a mood rating inventory. Results of the mood manipulation indicated that…

In order to determine the processing stage that is responsible for the effect of mood states on the breadth of attentional focus, we recorded event-related potentials from 18 students who performed a flanker task involving adjacent letters. To induce a specific mood state, positive, neutral, or negative affective pictures were presented repeatedly…

A large and growing number of studies support the notion that arousing positive emotional states expand, and that arousing negative states constrict, the scope of attention on both the perceptual and conceptual levels. However, these studies have predominantly involved the manipulation or measurement of conscious emotional experiences (e.g.,…

The way in which emotion interacts with cognition has been of great interest to researchers for hundreds of years. Emotion has been shown to play an important role in attention, learning and memory. However, the way in which emotion influences the basic process of word learning in infancy has largely been ignored. In the current paper, the…

Animated pedagogical agents with characteristics such as facial expressions, gestures, and human emotions, under an interactive user interface are attractive to students and have high potential to promote students' learning. This study proposes a convenient method to add an embodied empathic avatar into a computer-aided learning program; learners…

Recent research has looked at whether the expectancy of an emotion can account for subsequent valence specific laterality effects of prosodic emotion, though no research has examined this effect for facial emotion. In the study here (n = 58), we investigated this issue using two tasks; an emotional face perception task and a novel word task that…

Numerous studies have demonstrated that Huntington's disease mutation-carriers have deficient explicit recognition of isolated facial expressions. There are no studies, however, which have investigated the recognition of facial expressions embedded within an emotional body and scene context. Real life facial expressions are typically embedded in…

Evidence from diverse literatures supports the viewpoint that two modes of self-regulation exist, a lower-order system that responds quickly to associative cues of the moment and a higher-order system that responds more reflectively and planfully; that low serotonergic function is linked to relative dominance of the lower-order system; that how…

The authors provide an in-depth examination of the historical background, cultural values, family roles, and community contexts of Korean Americans as an aid to both researchers and clinicians in developing cultural competence with this particular group. First, the concept of cultural competence is defined. A brief history of Korean immigration…

The impact of 2 types of learning experiences on children's perception of multimodal emotion cues was examined. Children (aged 7-12 years) were presented with conflicting facial and vocal emotions. The effects of familiarity were tested by varying whether emotions were presented by familiar or unfamiliar adults. The salience of particular…

This study examined hostile intent and causal, critical self-referent attributions for ambiguous peer cues to examine the hypothesis that these latter interpretations would be uniquely associated with symptoms of depression, social anxiety, and loneliness. Critical self-referent attributions were assessed in 116 kindergarteners (Study 1) and 159…

Although eating is considered an automatic physiologic process, many children experience feeding difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for assessment, treatment and prevention of feeding difficulties in children. Identification and treatment of any factors actively interfering with feeding success is a critical…