It has been proposed that two major axes, dominance and trustworthiness, characterize the social dimensions of face evaluation. Whether evaluation of faces on these social dimensions is restricted to conscious appraisal or happens at a preconscious level is unknown. Here we provide behavioral evidence that such preconscious evaluations exist and…

The rapid visual detection of other people in our environment is an important first step in social cognition. Here we provide evidence for selective sensitivity of the human visual system to upright depictions of conspecifics. In a series of seven experiments, we assessed the impact of stimulus inversion on the detection of person silhouettes,…

While much research has examined the development of facial recognition abilities, less is known about the ability of individuals with and without autism to categorize facial gender. The current study tested gender categorization abilities in high-functioning children (5-7 and 8-12 years), adolescents (13-17 years), and adults (18-53 years) with…

Phonation is a fundamental feature of human communication. Control of phonation in the context of speech-language disturbances has traditionally been considered a characteristic of lesions to subcortical structures and pathways. Evidence suggests however, that cortical lesions may also implicate phonation. We carried out acoustic and perceptual…

Listeners perceive speech sounds relative to context. Contextual influences might differ over hemispheres if different types of auditory processing are lateralized. Hemispheric differences in contextual influences on vowel perception were investigated by presenting speech targets and both speech and non-speech contexts to listeners' right or left…

Perceptual narrowing in the visual, auditory, and multisensory domains has its developmental origins during infancy. The current study shows that experimentally induced experience can reverse the effects of perceptual narrowing on infants' visual recognition memory of other-race faces. Caucasian 8- to 10-month-olds who could not discriminate…

How do young infants discover word meanings? We have theorized that caregivers educate infants' attention (cf. Gibson, J.J., 1966) by synchronizing the saying of a word with a dynamic gesture displaying the object/referent (Zukow-Goldring, 1997). Detecting an amodal invariant across gesture and speech brackets the word and object within the…

Objectives: As physicians are being trained to adapt their practices to the needs and experience of patients, initiatives to standardize care have been gaining momentum. The resulting conflict can be addressed through a practice-based learning and improvement (PBL) program that develops competency in using treatment guidelines as decision aids and…

In this article, we report the results of a survey that accessed the perceptions of family studies and family therapy international master's and doctoral students across the United States. Our goals included giving collective voice to the experience of international students and gathering their suggestions for improving programs. Themes that…

A central feature of human psychology is our pervasive tendency to divide the social world into "us" and "them". We prefer to associate with those who are similar to us over those who are different, preferentially allocate resources to similar others, and hold more positive beliefs about similar others. Here we investigate the developmental…

This article describes a feminist intervention to raise awareness about, and problematize, the pervasive experience of silencing, as reported by women, people of color, students, people identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ), people with national origins outside of North America, and people with disabilities, within…

Psychology has made advances in rectifying its historical negation of women's perspectives, as evidenced by a steady increase in women's scholarship and distinctly feminist works. However, in community psychology, the scope and magnitude of works generated both by and about women from a feminist framework have not kept pace with discourse on the…

Interviews and observations were conducted in five schools using a Response to Instruction and Invention framework to investigate (a) changes in role-expectations and functions for educators, (b) perceptions about their changing roles, and (c) skills needed to be effective in this systemic effort to improve literacy instruction for all students.…

The exact roles of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in conditional choice behavior are unknown and a visual contextual response selection task was used for examining the issue. Inactivation of the mPFC severely disrupted performance in the task. mPFC inactivations, however, did not disrupt the capability of perceptual discrimination for visual…

Purpose: To investigate the clinical utility of the Children's Auditory Processing Performance Scale (CHAPPS; Smoski, Brunt, & Tannahill, 1992) to evaluate listening ability in 12-year-old children referred for auditory processing assessment. Method: This was a prospective case control study of 97 children (age range = 11;4 [years;months] to…