In terms of sexual intercourse, the very last people we think about are our kin. Imagining inbreeding intercourse, whether it involves our closest kin or not, induces aversion in most people who ...invoke inbreeding depression problems or cultural considerations. Research has focused on the disgust felt when facing inbreeding intercourse between close kin but little is known about other responses. In this study, we considered the influence of fitness costs on aversive reactions by including disgust and emotional reaction as well as moral judgment and attitudes toward inbreeding: higher costs should induce a stronger aversive reaction. The fitness costs were manipulated by two factors: (i) the degree of the participants' involvement in the story (themselves, a sib or an unknown individual), and (ii) the degree of relatedness between the two inbreeding people (brother/sister, uncle-aunt/niece-nephew, cousin). To test this hypothesis, 140 women read and assessed different inbreeding stories varying in the fitness costs incurred. Findings showed that the higher the fitness costs were, the greater the aversive reaction was in an overall way. First, our results fitted with previous studies that tested the influence of fitness costs on disgust. Second, and more interestingly, findings went further by examining overall aversion, showing that fitness costs could influence emotions felt as well as attitudes and behaviors toward inbreeding people. The higher the fitness costs were, the less inbreeding people were perceived as moral and the more they were considered as a nuisance. However, results regarding avoidance were more nuanced.
Illustrated books hold a special place in children's early literacy development. However, blind children have little access to them and there is no guarantee that they can easily understand tactile ...pictures. There are several designs of tactile illustrations, each leading to different identification performances. Our study aimed to compare three designs of tactile illustration in two populations (36 blindfolded sighted children and 18 blind children) in order to better understand the factors that influence haptic recognition of tactile pictures. On the one hand, we assessed the advisability of using new technology such as pin array tablets which showed encouraging results. On the other hand, we questioned the need for a figurative shape in tactile pictures when information about texture was already provided. The main result of our study is that when given texture information, blind children do not seem to need additional information to associate a picture with a word.
Some previous studies have revealed that while congenitally blind people have a tendency to refer to visual attributes ('verbalism'), references to auditory and tactile attributes are scarcer. ...However, this statement may be challenged by current theories claiming that cognition is linked to the perceptions and actions from which it derives. Verbal productions by the blind could therefore differ from those of the sighted because of their specific perceptual experience. The relative weight of each sense in oral descriptions was compared in three groups with different visual experience Congenitally blind (CB), late blind (LB) and blindfolded sighted (BS) adults.
Participants were asked to give an oral description of their mother and their father, and of four familiar manually-explored objects. The number of visual references obtained when describing people was relatively high, and was the same in the CB and BS groups ("verbalism" in the CB). While references to touch were scarce in all groups, the CB referred to audition more frequently than the LB and the BS groups. There were, by contrast, no differences between groups in descriptions of objects, and references to touch dominated the other modalities.
The relative weight of each modality varies according to the cognitive processes involved in each task. Long term memory, internal representations and information acquired through social communication, are at work in the People task, seem to favour visual references in both the blind and the sighted, whereas the congenitally blind also refer often to audition. By contrast, the perceptual encoding and working memory at work in the Objects task enhance sensory references to touch in a similar way in all groups. These results attenuate the impact of verbalism in blindness, and support (albeit moderately) the idea that the perceptual experience of the congenitally blind is to some extent reflected in their cognition.
This study aims at assessing and comparing two different methods for learning new vocabulary words in a foreign language. Learning vocabulary with images as non-verbal aids was compared to learning ...vocabulary with real objects. The Rwandan children who participated in this study learnt French as a third language. They took part in training sessions to learn different French words either seeing the corresponding image or holding the corresponding object. The training program was implemented in a Rwandan primary school with children of different ages (from five to 10 years old). The results showed that the words associated to objects that were held by the children during learning were better memorized than the words associated with images. The global memory performance was lower for the youngest children; however, learning with objects proved to be superior over learning with images for all ages. Taken together, the findings underscore that learning vocabulary with real objects is particularly efficient and support the idea that the embodied theory of language is a key element to effectively master a foreign language.
•We compared two learning conditions aimed at developing vocabulary words learning in a foreign language•Rwandan children (from five to 10 years) learnt French new words as third language•Learning with real object led to higher memorization rate than learning with pictures•The superiority of learning with objects over learning with images was obtained for all ages.•These results add new outlook in the field of embodied language
Various objects and artifacts incorporate representations of faces, encompassing artworks like portraits, as well as ethnographic or industrial artifacts such as masks or humanoid robots. These ...representations exhibit diverse degrees of human-likeness, serving different functions and objectives. Despite these variations, they share common features, particularly facial attributes that serve as building blocks for facial expressions-an effective means of communicating emotions. To provide a unified conceptualization for this broad spectrum of face representations, we propose the term "
drawing upon Peirce's semiotic concepts. Additionally, based on these semiotic principles, we posit that facial icons function as indexes of emotions and intentions, and introduce a significant anthropological theory aligning with our proposition. Subsequently, we support our assertions by examining processes related to face and facial expression perception, as well as sensorimotor simulation processes involved in discerning others' mental states, including emotions. Our argumentation integrates cognitive and experimental evidence, reinforcing the pivotal role of facial icons in conveying mental states.
Birth order supposedly influences individuals’ cooperative attitudes: firstborns are more family-oriented and favor their kin, while laterborns are more likely to turn to non-kin. However little ...direct experimental evidence exists concerning costly resource sharing between full siblings. The present study investigates sharing decisions with respect to a monetary resource by full sisters when either: (i) interacting with an unknown individual or (ii) their sister. A total of 112 sisters from 56 different families participated in an economic experiment regarding the distribution of an actual monetary reward. In line with kin selection theory, the results showed that participants favor their sister over strangers. Additionally, firstborns invested more costly resources in their sister (than laterborns) while they knew that the latter did not.
•Birth order is supposed to influence individuals’ cooperative attitudes.•Little direct evidence exists concerning costly resource sharing between siblings.•We investigate sharing decisions with respect to money by full sisters.•Participants favor their sister over strangers.•Firstborns invest more in their sister while they knew that the latter did not.
The ability to detect phenotypic similarity or kinship in third-parties’ faces is not perfect, but better than chance. Still, some humans are better than others at this task. Yet researchers in ...kinship detection have difficulties in building up large and diverse datasets of high-quality pictures of related persons. The current experiments tested a novel method for circumventing this difficulty by using morphing techniques in order to generate a wide array of stimuli derived from a limited number of individual pictures. Six experiments tested various stimuli (standard protocol, mirrored face, other-sex face, other-ethnicity face, other-expression face and antiface). Our benchmarks are the similarity or kinship scores achieved by participants when faced with pictures of real siblings. We show that all stimuli, except the antiface, elicit detection scores similar to those elicited by real pictures of actual siblings. In addition, by exploring different experiment parameters (simultaneous or sequential task, kinship or similarity task) and some individual characteristics, these experiments provide a better understanding of kinship detection in third parties. The validation of our new method will allow widening the range of available stimuli to the research community, and even to develop new ecologically relevant experimental protocols that are hardly or not feasible with veridical images.
Differential effects of makeup on perceived age Russell, Richard; Batres, Carlota; Courrèges, Sandra ...
British journal of psychology,
February 2019, Volume:
110, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Makeup accentuates three youth‐related visual features – skin homogeneity, facial contrast, and facial feature size. By manipulating these visual features, makeup should make faces appear younger. We ...tested this hypothesis in an experiment in which participants estimated the age of carefully controlled photographs of faces with and without makeup. We found that 40‐ and especially 50‐year‐old women did appear significantly younger when wearing makeup. Contrary to our hypothesis, 30‐year‐old women looked no different in age with or without makeup, while 20‐year‐old women looked older with makeup. Two further studies replicated these results, finding that makeup made middle‐aged women look younger, but made young women look older. Seeking to better understand why makeup makes young women look older, we ran a final study and found evidence that people associate makeup use with adulthood. By activating associations with adulthood, makeup may provide an upward bias on age estimations of women who are not clearly adult. We propose that makeup affects social perceptions through bottom‐up routes, by modifying visual cues such as facial contrast, facial feature size, and skin homogeneity, and also through top‐down routes, by activating social representations and norms associated with makeup use.
The strength of sexual selection on secondary sexual traits varies depending on prevailing economic and ecological conditions. In humans, cross-cultural evidence suggests women's preferences for ...men's testosterone dependent masculine facial traits are stronger under conditions where health is compromised, male mortality rates are higher and economic development is higher. Here we use a sample of 4483 exclusively heterosexual women from 34 countries and employ mixed effects modelling to test how social, ecological and economic variables predict women's facial masculinity preferences. We report women's preferences for more masculine looking men are stronger in countries with higher sociosexuality and where national health indices and human development indices are higher, while no associations were found between preferences and indices of intra-sexual competition. Our results show that women's preferences for masculine faces are stronger under conditions where offspring survival is higher and economic conditions are more favorable.
Hormones are of crucial importance for human behavior. Cyclical changes of ovarian hormones throughout women's menstrual cycle are suggested to underlie fluctuation in masculinity preference for both ...faces and bodies. In this study we tested this hypothesis based on daily measurements of estradiol and progesterone throughout menstrual cycle, and multiple measurements of women's preference towards masculinity of faces and bodies of men. We expected that due to a large variation among daily hormonal levels we would not observe a direct effect of daily hormone levels, but rather that average levels of ovarian hormones throughout the cycle (a reliable marker of a probability of conception) would better predict women's preferences. We found a negative relationship between average progesterone levels and facial masculinity preference, but only among women who were in long-term relationships. There was no relationship between facial masculinity preference and either of the estradiol or progesterone daily levels. Similarly, only average levels of hormones were significantly related to facial symmetry preference. For women who were in relationships estradiol was positively related to symmetry preference, while for single women this relationship was opposite. For body masculinity preference there were no significant relationships with neither averaged nor daily hormonal levels. Taken together, our results further suggest that overall cycle levels of ovarian hormones (averaged for a cycle) are better predictors of facial masculinity and symmetry preference than daily levels assessed during preferences' tests. Importantly, including information about relationship status in the investigations of hormonal bases of preferences is crucial.
•Cyclical shifts of women's ovarian hormones were not related to shifts in masculinity preference.•Average progesterone levels were negatively related to masculinity preference in paired women.•Average estradiol levels were positively related to symmetry preference in paired women.•Both relationships were opposite for single women.•Daily hormone levels were not related neither to masculinity nor symmetry preference.•Average hormone levels are better predictors of women's preferences than hormone levels on a given day.
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