Do infants see emotional expressions in static faces?

To determine whether young infants discriminate photographs of different emotions on an affect-relevant basis or on the basis of isolated features unrelated to emotion, groups of 17-, 23-, and 29-week-olds were habituated to slides of 8 women posing either Toothy Angry, Nontoothy Angry, or Nontoothy Smiling facial expressions and were then shown 2 new women in the familiarized expression and in a novel Toothy Smiling expression. At all 3 ages, recovery to the novel Toothy Smiling faces occurred only after habituation to Nontoothy faces (whether smiling or angry), not after habituation to Toothy Angry faces, indicating that infants had been responsive to nonspecific features of the photographs (presence or absence of bared teeth) rather than to affectively relevant configurations of features. In a second experiment, 2 older age groups (35 and 41 weeks) also proved to be insensitive to affect-related aspects of still faces, though more so for angry than for happy expressions. It is suggested that the young infant's difficulty in extracting emotional information from static stimuli may be attributable to the absence of the critical invariants (dynamic, multimodally specified) that characterize naturalistic expressions of emotion.     

A Qualitative Exploration of Romantic Partners’ Motives for and Content of Communication with Friends Following Negative Relational Events

The purpose of this study was to explore young adults’ motives for and content of extradyadic interactions with friends following a negative relational event in a romantic relationship. Focus group discussions with young adults revealed the following partner motives: improving affect, managing uncertainty, obtaining clarity, and entertainment. In turn, friends were motivated by issues of honesty, friendship quality, and a desire to protect or comfort their friend. Both partners and friends discussed the use of a variety of negative, neutral, and positive message content. Results provide an exploratory look at extradyadic interactions that may have important implications for relationship functioning.     

Contents Volume 16 (2003)

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 16 (2003)     

Conditioned flavor preferences as a function of deprivation level: Preferences or aversions?

Rats tend to prefer flavors previously consumed under low deprivation to flavors previously consumed under high deprivation (Capaldi & Myers, 1982). We attempted to distinguish among possible associative explanations by determining whether this conditioning phenomenon was based upon conditioned preferences, conditioned aversions, or both. We compared preference for flavors presented exclusively under either high or low deprivation with preference for a neutral flavor. In Experiments 1A and 1B the neutral flavor was one that had been randomly paired with both high and low deprivation, whereas in Experiments 2 and 3 the neutral flavors had not been associated with either high or low deprivation. Our results strongly suggest that this conditioning phenomenon is based upon an actual increase in preference for the flavor consumed under low deprivation rather than on any form of aversion conditioning.     

The Great Media Debate and TPACK: A Multidisciplinary Examination of the Role of Technology in Teaching and Learning

This article bridges the fields of instructional design and teacher education, presenting and modernizing the media influence debate and synthesizing it with the technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) framework. Five modern technologies are presented as media comparison studies, analyzed from both the medium-as-variable and medium-and-method-as-variable perspectives, and highlighted in an example teaching and learning scenario analyzed for TPACK. The media debate is newly synthesized with TPACK, acknowledging the teacher as a critical variable in instructional success, and implications for research and teacher education and professional development are presented.     

‘A new discovery’ of Charles Hoole: method and practice in seventeenth-century English education

This article offers the first modern explication of the educational writings of Charles Hoole (1610–1667), arguing that his writings offer significant insight into the educational aims and methods of school instructors in seventeenth-century England. From attending to the needs of slow learners, to promoting learning games, to emphasising that children should be treated as rational actors, Hoole’s A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Schoole (1660) fused theoretical expositions on the aims of education with practical recommendations to schoolmasters on how to succeed in these aims. Hoole’s writings, as well as the earlier humanist pedagogical treatises of his peers, demonstrate that early and mid-seventeenth-century schoolmasters were already discussing and potentially implementing a number of educational initiatives that historians have traditionally credited to John Locke and later eighteenth-century educational theorists.