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The other-race effect (ORE) is a well-known phenomenon in which people discriminate and recognize faces from their ethnic group more accurately than faces from other ethnic groups. Holistic processing, or the mandatory tendency to process all parts of an object together, has been proposed as an explanation for the ORE. According to the holistic perspective of the ORE, other-race faces might be subject to weaker holistic processing than own-race faces. However, evidence for this hypothesis is inconsistent. Although it is generally assumed that holistic processing helps the individuation of objects, holistic processing may also come at a cost. Specifically, holistic processing may reduce the capacity to localize changes in the constituent parts of an object, but not in detecting changes to an object as a whole. In the present study, we examined change detection and change localization accuracy for Caucasian and African faces, and houses. Performance was better for change detection than change localization for Caucasian faces. While clear costs of holistic processing for Caucasian faces were thus found, the difference between change localization and change detection was not obvious for African faces. However, childhood exposure to other-race people correlated with change detection for African faces, but not with change localization for African faces. Our results thus show that holistic processing of other-race faces may depend on early contact with other-race people.

Early maladaptive schemas (EMS), as lifelong psychological structures, tend to be associated with psychopathological symptomatology. Previous research has suggested that schemas act as psychological vulnerabilities to stressful life situations, such as the present worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, anxiety and psychological distress have been documented as two of the main psychological symptoms associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the associations between specific EMS and COVID-19 anxiety remain unexplored. Therefore, this study aims to explore the relationships between EMS, COVID-19 anxiety as well as other mental health variables such as psychological well-being, distress and life satisfaction.In a cross-sectional design, 249 individuals (M = 34.2, SD = 12.0) completed several self-report measures.EMS from different schematic domains were positively associated with COVID-19 anxiety and psychological distress and negatively associated with psychological well-being and life satisfaction. An EMS hierarchical regression model predicted COVID-19 anxiety. Mistrustfulness and vulnerability to harm and illness mediated the relationships between COVID-19 anxiety, psychological distress and life satisfaction.According to these results, mistrustfulness and vulnerability to harm and illness can act as underlying variables for the decrease in mental health associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the experiential avoidance and psychological inflexibility model proposed by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, cognitive fusion is a core component of psychological disorders and mental health. Also, previous theorizations proposed that cognitive fusion may be independent of diagnosis, which means that it may also be present in the non-clinical population. However, evidence for this assumption is still sparse. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the relationships between cognitive fusion, symptomatology and psychological well-being in a non-clinical sample. The total sample consisted of 224 subjects (Mage = 30.6, SD = 11.5). Participants completed self-report questionnaires in a cross-sectional design. Results show medium to strong positive correlations between cognitive fusion and symptomatology and negative correlations between cognitive fusion and well-being. Furthermore, cognitive fusion was a significant mediator of the relationship between psychological well-being and symptomatology. Our results support the assumption that cognitive fusion, as a component of psychological inflexibility, may be a core transdiagnostic variable in mental health.

The bouba-kiki effect, or the symbolic association between certain speech sounds and rounded or angular shapes, is widely thought to be universal. However, two studies have failed to replicate this effect with neurotypical participants in the classical paradigm, one conducted in Papua New Guinea (Ross & Rogers, 1975), and the other conducted in Nepal (Styles & Gawne, 2017). As both experiments employed auditory stimuli inconsistent with the sound structure of the respective native language, Styles and Gawne (2017) proposed that pseudoword legality is a prerequisite for sound-symbolic associations to form. In this study, we conducted the first experimental test of this hypothesis, by assessing participants’ performance on the bouba-kiki task as a function of pseudoword phonotactic legality. Our results indicate that phonotactic violations may disrupt the bouba-kiki effect, albeit only when they cause the speech stimuli to be perceived as significantly strange (not “word-like”). We thus conclude that sound symbolism fails whenever phonotactic violations prevent the assemblance of the phonological representations of the target pseudowords.

Objective: The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was previously associated with psychopathological symptoms. However, the psychological mechanisms underlying these associations are largely unexplored. Previous studies suggested associations between metacognitive abilities (e.g., mastery) and symptomatology, which may have impacts on COVID-19 perceptions. This study aims to explore, using path analysis, the mediational role of Critical Distance (differentiation and decentration abilities) and Mastery on the relationships between COVID-19 perceptions and psychological well-being and distress. Methods: In a cross-sectional design, 227 participants (M = 34.21, SD = 10.9) filled self-report questionnaires. Results: Metacognitive abilities were negatively correlated with psychopathological symptoms. Both Critical Distance and Mastery mediated the path from COVID-19 perceived severity and anxiety to psychological distress and well-being. Critical Distance seems to augment Mastery which tends to increase psychological well-being and limited psychological distress. Conclusions: Metacognition seems to play a mediational role on the relationship between COVID-19 perceptions and mental health. Clinical psychologists and psychotherapists may enhance psychological interventions regarding COVID-19 psychopathological symptomatology by working on metacognitive Critical Distance and Mastery abilities. info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion

The COVID-19 pandemic imposed a set of drastic worldwide changes to and restrictions on daily life. Despite predictions of the harmful impacts of the pandemic on mental health, empirical data are lacking. This study sought to examine the relationship between individuals' perceptions about COVID-19 and scores on mental health indexes.In this cross-sectional study, 183 individuals answered self-report questionnaires. A new inventory based on the health belief model (HBM) developed in Portugal was explored with a factor analysis, which revealed two significant factors: COVID-19 anxiety and perceived severity of the disease.Results showed that anxiety about COVID-19 was positively correlated with psychological distress, somatization, and paranoid ideation and was negatively correlated with psychological well-being. COVID-19 anxiety mediated the relationship between symptomatology and mental health.Perceptions about COVID-19 seem to play pivotal roles in mental health. These results may inform interventions focused on reducing psychological distress and symptomatology and on increasing psychological well-being.

Loneliness may be a consequence of social distancing, a measure imposed by several governments to try to reduce the contagion of severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Despite being necessary, this measure may have thus caused a rise in mental health issues, leading to higher psychological distress and symptomatology. Thus, it is also important to explore how loneliness relates to the regulation of psychological needs. This study aims to explore the relationships between loneliness, symptomatology, and the regulation of psychological needs. 142 individuals (M age=32.7, SD=10.9), answered self-report questionnaires in a cross-sectional design. Results show that loneliness is positively correlated with symptomatology and difficulties in the regulation of psychological needs, with these relationships being mediated by psychological distress and psychological well-being. We discuss our results with a focus on loneliness and related psychopathological symptomatology, as they seem to be core factors in the regulation of psychological needs.

Holistic processing of visual words (i.e., obligatory encoding of/attending to all letters of a word) could be a marker of expert word recognition. In the present study, we thus examined for the first time whether there is a direct relation between the word-composite effect (i.e., all parts of a visual word are fully processed when observers perform a task on a word part) and fast access to the orthographic lexicon by visual word experts (i.e., fluent adult readers). We adopted an individual differences approach and used the word-frequency effect (i.e., faster recognition of high- than low-frequency words) in an independent lexical decision task as a proxy of fast access to lexical orthographic representations. Fluent readers with larger word-composite effect showed smaller word-frequency effect. This correlation was mainly driven by an association between a larger composite effect and faster lexical decision on low-frequency words, probably because these lexical representations are less stable and integrated/unitized, hence allowing differentiating among fluent readers. We thus showed that holistic processing of visual words is indeed related to higher efficiency in visual word recognition by skilled readers.

Submitted by Patricia Santos (psantos@ispa.pt) on 2020-12-18T00:38:40Z No. of bitstreams: 1 British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.pdf: 374823 bytes, checksum: 93fde2a7cc743ccd46e263c01e50bba8 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2020-12-18T00:38:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.pdf: 374823 bytes, checksum: 93fde2a7cc743ccd46e263c01e50bba8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2020 info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Holistic processing (HP) of faces is usually measured by the composite effect. While Weston and Perfect [2005. Effects of processing bias on the recognition of composite face halves. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 1038–1042. doi:10.3758/BF03206440] found that priming at the local level speeded recognition of components of faces, Gao et al. [2011. Priming global and local processing of composite faces: Revisiting the processing-bias effect on face perception. Attention Perception & Psychophysics, 73, 1477–1486. doi:10.3758/s13414-011-0109-7] found that only global priming had an effect on HP of faces. The two studies used different versions of the composite task (the partial design, which is considered to be prone on bias, and the complete design). However, the two studies also differed in other respects and it is difficult to know to what extent issues with the partial design contributed to the differing conclusions. In the present study, the HP indexed by the complete design measure was augmented by global priming. In contrast, no effect was observed in the partial design index. We claim that the partial design index reflects other factors besides HP, including response bias, and conclude that HP can be understood within the context of domain-general attentional processes.

Introduction: Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are a core symptom of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia but are also reported in 10–15% of the general population. Impairments in self-voice recognition are frequently reported in schizophrenia and associated with the severity of AVH, particularly when the self-voice has a negative quality. However, whether self-voice processing is also affected in nonclinical voice hearers remains to be specified. Methods: Thirty-five nonclinical participants varying in hallucination predisposition based on the Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale, listened to prerecorded words and vocalisations differing in identity (self/other) and emotional quality. In Experiment 1, participants indicated whether words were spoken in their own voice, another voice, or whether they were unsure (recognition task). They were also asked whether pairs of words/vocalisations were uttered by the same or by a different speaker (discrimination task). In Experiment 2, participants judged the emotional quality of the words/vocalisations. Results: In Experiment 1, hallucination predisposition affected voice discrimination and recognition, irrespective of stimulus valence. Hallucination predisposition did not affect the evaluation of the emotional valence of words/vocalisations (Experiment 2). Conclusions: These findings suggest that nonclinical participants with high HP experience altered voice identity processing, whereas HP does not affect the perception of vocal emotion. Specific alterations in self-voice perception in clinical and nonclinical voice hearers may establish a core feature of the psychosis continuum.

Holistic processing has been regarded as a hallmark of face perception, indicating the automatic and obligatory tendency of the visual system to process all face parts as a perceptual unit rather than in isolation. Studies involving lateralized stimulus presentation suggest that the right hemisphere dominates holistic face processing. Holistic processing can also be shown with other categories such as words and thus it is not specific to faces or face-like expertize. Here, we used divided visual field presentation to investigate the possibly different contributions of the two hemispheres for holistic word processing. Observers performed same/different judgment on the cued parts of two sequentially presented words in the complete composite paradigm. Our data indicate a right hemisphere specialization for holistic word processing. Thus, these markers of expert object recognition are domain general.