College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

In daily life, we frequently feel for objects without vision using our sense called Haptics. Much of the research that has been done focused on single-handed searches with no agreed-upon conclusion on whether two hands are better than one. Here, we asked if there is a clear advantage, disadvantage, or no difference in simultaneous bimanual compared to sequential unimanual search. Participants felt for a unique target amongst uniformed distractors with their left hand only, right hand only, and with both hands simultaneously. Additionally, we asked how performance might vary when the distinguishing feature of the unique target was the same or different between the hands. Simultaneous bimanual search showed significantly more efficient search than the sequential unimanual search. Surprisingly, there was no appreciable difference between performance when searching for targets with the same and different features. This suggests that the advantage of searching bimanually isn’t due to sensory redundancy or perceptual advantages from shared features. Future research will investigate the role that action coupling might play in the bimanual search advantage. These findings can apply to developments in robotics, prosthetics, and rehabilitation processes. Additionally, they can support our understanding of attentional deployment in understudied modalities like haptics. 

The present study examined people’s perceptions of others as a function of fashion choices, specifically Western wedding dresses. A total of 250 UC Riverside undergraduate participants viewed a series of pictures of the model’s silhouettes wearing Western-style wedding dresses and reported their perceptions (e.g., confident, original, shy, vain, fun) of the model in each picture. The wedding dresses varied in neckline (i.e., Sweetheart, V-Neck, Halter, High Neck) and silhouette (i.e., A-line, Mermaid, Fit and Flare, Ballgown). We found significant, reliable differences in how participants perceived the models as a function of dress silhouette and neckline. Specifically, participants perceived the models wearing the Fit and Flare silhouette to be especially confident, original, fun, and vain, but the models wearing the A-line silhouette to be the least confident, original, and fun. Furthermore, participants perceived the models wearing the V-neck neckline to be especially confident and vain, but the models wearing the High Neck to be the least confident, original, and fun. Additionally, the participants perceived the models wearing the Sweetheart neckline to be especially original, and fun, and the models wearing the Halter neckline especially confident. It is important to note that the Halter, High Neck, and Sweetheart all scored the same in the vain category. This research establishes a relationship between wedding dresses and social perceptions, which brides can use to select the dresses to convey their desired perceptions, and fashion shows and businesses can use to better serve their customers. 

Community violence exposure increases risk for fear-based disorders, such as anxiety, potentially due to disrupted recall of extinguished fear, whereby stimuli previously associated with threat continue to produce a fear response long after they have been deemed safe. However, this emerging work lacks adequate representation of youth from historically marginalized groups, despite their disproportionate exposure to community violence. As such, this study investigates whether such exposure is associated with neurological and behavioral indices of extinction recall in a sample of preadolescent Latina girls. 

Thirty-five predominantly Mexican-heritage Latina girls (MAge = 10.04, SD = 1.23, range = 8-12 years) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while completing an extinction recall task assessing their ability to retrieve related but competing memories of previously conditioned and extinguished threats. Following the fMRI scan, participants self-reported their community violence exposure using the Things I’ve Seen and Heard scale.

Relative to low community violence exposed youth, youth exposed to higher levels of community violence demonstrated significantly less ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) engagement in response to increasingly ambiguous conditioned stimuli and were also marginally more likely to misattribute threat to conditioned stimuli that were least likely to predict threat.

These preliminary results suggest community violence exposure may contribute to disruptions in extinction recall and elucidate a potential mechanism by which these experiences could elevate anxiety, particularly among an understudied group during a sensitive developmental period of heightened anxiety risk.

People with mental illness are often stereotyped as dangerous, unstable, or unreliable, and these stereotypes perpetuate prejudice against those who are already vulnerable. However, many of these stereotypes are Eurocentric due to a lack of diversity within psychology. The present, pre-registered research investigates whether depictions of mental illness are idiosyncratic to various racial/ethnic groups, or if these perceptions generalize across groups. Participants reported their endorsement of a series of mental illness descriptions (e.g., “This person spontaneously explodes in outbursts of anger”) as they apply to African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic/Latinxs, Caucasians, as well as to individuals with unspecified race/ethnicity. Exploratory factor analyses of these descriptions revealed three factors that describe mentally ill people — ashamed, self-destructive, irresponsible — and participants’ perceptions of mental illness on these three factors varied by racial/ethnic groups. Participants rated Asian Americans as more ashamed, but less self-destructive and irresponsible than other racial/ethnic groups. Conversely, participants rated Caucasians as less ashamed but more self-destructive and irresponsible than other racial/ethnic groups. Perceptions of mental illness did not differ between Hispanic/Latinxs and African Americans. Additional analyses indicate that, compared to Caucasian par- ticipants, non-Caucasian participants rated mentally ill members of their ingroup as more ashamed but less self-destructive and irresponsible. This research indicates that participants from different racial/ethnic groups vary in the extent to which they ascribe different facets of mental illness to their ingroup versus outgroups. Implications for Eurocentric versus more diverse perceptions of mental illness are discussed.

Our personalities color how we interpret others’ emotions. Some people have an increased tendency to identify others’ facial affect as negative or threatening, which may lead to the misinterpretation of social cues, poor responses in social settings, and could exacerbate feelings of stress or anxiety in social situations. Yet, studies linking personality traits on the Big Five Inventory (BFI), specifically neuroticism, to emotion recognition are mixed (Cunningham, 1977; Matsumoto et al., 2000). This study investigated the effect of neuroticism on people’s discriminability and speed when identifying others’ facial emotions. Participants (n = 37) judged the emotion of faces that were morphed along two emotion spectra: happiness to fear and happiness to anger. Responses determined participants’ negativity threshold, or the point on the spectrum where their judgment switched from happy to angry or fearful. We tested the hypothesis that people who scored high on the neuroticism scale of the BFI would detect negative emotions more readily than people scoring low on neuroticism. We also measured the influence of personality traits on response time. As expected, we observed that high neurotic people were more sensitive to negative facial affect than low neurotic people. This extends on the research finding that individuals high in neuroticism have high emotional reactivity to negative stimuli to include ambiguous facial expressions. However, contrary to our hypothesis, response time was not associated with neuroticism level. Together, our findings suggest that people high in neuroticism have an increased sensitivity to detect negative facial emotions. Future studies should test whether the misinterpretation of social cues leads to impoverished social connections.

Parenting behaviors greatly influence children’s ability to regulate their emotions and handle stressfulsituations. Stressful life events can be particularly problematic for children as they are less able toeffectively manage these situations. Parenting behaviors that are warm and focus on directly helpingthe child handle negative emotions may serve as protective factors against the negative effects ofstress on children’s regulatory abilities. The aim of this study was to explore the role of parentalwarmth and parents’ emotion-focused reactions as moderators of the effect of stress on children’semotion regulation. A total of 184 children between the ages of three to eleven years old (M = 7.66,SD = 2.30) participated in this study. Parents reported on their child’s emotion regulation, exposure tostressful life events, and on how they, as parents, deal with their child’s negative emotions. Parentalwarmth was coded from an interactive task. Results showed that parental warmth moderated therelation between stress and child emotion regulation, such that children of highly warm parentshad better emotion regulation even when experiencing high stress. Parents’ reactions to theirchild’s negative emotions moderated the effects of parental warmth on child emotion regulation,such that parental warmth was particularly important for children of parents who place less focuson their child’s emotions when they experience a negative event. Our findings partially supportedour hypotheses and offer new insight into the importance of parental warmth as a protective factoragainst the negative consequences of stress on children’s emotional functioning.

Cultural tightness refers to the strength of social norms and tolerance for norm violations within regions. In two studies, we investigated the link between cultural tightness and sociopolitical ideologies, beliefs, and personality traits within the United States and across 56 nations. We relied on two separate operationalizations of cultural tightness and aggregated self-reported sociopolitical ideologies, beliefs, and personality trait data from tens of thousands of geolocated internet respondents. Regression analyses suggest that more culturally tight U.S. states are less open, more conscientious, and higher in the need for certainty. Tighter states also more strongly endorse racial stereotyping, right-wing authoritarianism, and other system-justifying beliefs, but less weakly endorse egalitarianism. In addition, tighter nations are lower in extraversion and creativity. Taken together, we find that cultural tightness is a parsimonious predictor of regional psychological variation across many constructs within the United States and across nations.

OBJECTIVE: Elevated kurtosis values have been observed in subcortical grey matter structures of patients with neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we examined relationships between iron measures and kurtosis in iron-rich subcortical grey matter structures.Please check and confirm the affiliation 4 for the author "Xiaoping P. Hu".Affiliation 4 for Xiaoping P. Hu was incorrect since he is not associated with that department. We have removed this affiliation. Thanks!  MATERIALS AND METHODS: Multi-shell diffusion and multi-echo gradient echo acquisitions were used to derive mean kurtosis and iron measures (R₂* and magnetic susceptibility), respectively, in subcortical grey matter nuclei and white matter tracts in a discovery cohort (110 healthy older and 63 younger adults) and replication cohort (72 healthy older adults).Please confirm if the author names are presented accurately and in the correct sequence (Ilana J. Bennett and Xiaoping P. Hu). Also, kindly confirm the details in the metadata are correct.Thanks for asking. We've checked and the names are presented accurately and in the correct sequence. We have corrected some details in the metadata - adding an affiliation to Murphy Shao (Department of Physics) and removing the Materials Science and Engineering affiliation for Xiaoping P. Hu. Is it possible to add an orcid id for Vala Masjedizadeh? His Orcid ID is  0009-0009-3692-2553 Everything else looks okay RESULTS: Iron-rich grey matter regions exhibited higher mean kurtosis, R₂*, and magnetic susceptibility and white matter regions had lower mean kurtosis in the older adult group from the discovery cohort. In both cohorts, mean kurtosis was significantly correlated with R₂* and magnetic susceptibility in iron-rich grey matter nuclei. No association was seen between signal-to-noise ratio and mean kurtosis in any grey matter region, indicating that the increase in mean kurtosis was not due to reduced signal-to-noise. As keywords are mandatory for this journal, please provide 3-6 keywords.I'm not sure where to put the keywords so I'll reply to the query with the keywords. Our keywords are: kurtosis, iron, grey matter, aging CONCLUSION: Our findings indicate that kurtosis is associated with iron-sensitive metrics in iron-rich grey matter structures, suggesting that iron deposits may be contributing to kurtosis.

Cognitive decline, in healthy older adults without cognitive impairment or dementia, has been associated with numerous microstructural alterations in brain tissue using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Prior studies have primarily linked age-related cognitive decline to alterations in white matter tissue, but methodological advances in diffusion-weighted imaging (dMRI) data acquisition and modeling now allow for these analyses to be extended to gray matter tissue. Here, using a sample of 152 healthy adults (18-88 years of age), we used a multicompartment dMRI model to assess (1) age-related differences in gray matter microstructure of functionally defined networks and (2) whether microstructural alterations accounted for age-related differences in episodic memory and speed-dependent fluid cognition. We observed significant age-related alterations in gray matter tissue in the form of nonlinear, age-related increases and decreases in intracellular and dispersed diffusion, respectively, and linear increases in free diffusion. Free diffusion exhibited the most pronounced age-related effects, especially for frontoparietal relative to occipital regions. Dispersed diffusion in the dorsal attention network statistically mediated age-related differences in episodic memory performance. Moreover, higher intracellular diffusion in the default mode and ventral attention networks was related to worse fluid cognition performance, but only for adults > 51 years of age. These results suggest that healthy aging is accompanied by distinct profiles of gray matter microstructural alterations that negatively affect memory and speed-dependent cognition, the latter of which is more pronounced after midlife.