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BACKGROUND: Surgical sphincterotomy for chronic anal fissure can cause fecal incontinence. This has led to the investigation of nonsurgical treatment options that avoid permanent damage to the internal anal sphincter. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective, ongoing chart review with telephone follow-up of 88 patients treated for chronic anal fissure between November 1996 and December 2002. During the first half of the study period, patients were treated with topical nitroglycerin and pneumatic dilatation. With the availability of new therapies in June 1999, subsequent patients received topical nifedipine and botulinum toxin injections (30-100 units). Lateral anal sphincterotomy was reserved for patients who failed medical treatment. RESULTS: In 98% of patients the fissure healed with conservative nonsurgical treatment. The combination of nifedipine and botulinum toxin was superior to nitroglycerin and pneumatic dilatation with respect to both healing (94% v. 71%, p < 0.05) and recurrence rate (2% v. 27%, p < 0.01). There was no statistical difference between the number of dilatations and botulinum toxin injections needed to achieve healing. Three patients who received botulinum toxin reported mild transient flatus incontinence. At an average telephone follow-up of 27 months, 92% of patients reported having no pain or only mild occasional pain with bowel movements. CONCLUSIONS: Chronic anal fissures can be simply and effectively treated medically without the risk of incontinence associated with sphincterotomy. Topical nifedipine and botulinum toxin injections are an excellent combination, associated with a low recurrence rate and minimal side effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a glimpse of a face, people form trait impressions that operate as facial stereotypes, which are largely inaccurate yet nevertheless drive social behavior. Behavioral studies have long pointed to dimensions of trustworthiness and dominance that are thought to underlie face impressions due to their evolutionarily adaptive nature. Using human neuroimaging ( N  = 26, 19 female, 7 male), we identify a two-dimensional representation of faces' inferred traits in the middle temporal gyrus (MTG), a region involved in domain-general conceptual processing including the activation of social concepts. The similarity of neural-response patterns for any given pair of faces in the bilateral MTG was predicted by their proximity in trustworthiness-dominance space, an effect that could not be explained by mere visual similarity. This MTG trait-space representation occurred automatically, was relatively invariant across participants, and did not depend on the explicit endorsement of face impressions (i.e., beliefs that face impressions are valid and accurate). In contrast, regions involved in high-level social reasoning (the bilateral temporoparietal junction and posterior superior temporal sulcus; TPJ-pSTS) and entity-specific social knowledge (the left anterior temporal lobe; ATL) also exhibited this trait-space representation but only among participants who explicitly endorsed forming these impressions. Together, the findings identify a two-dimensional neural representation of face impressions and suggest that multiple implicit and explicit mechanisms give rise to biases based on facial appearance. While the MTG implicitly represents a multidimensional trait space for faces, the TPJ-pSTS and ATL are involved in the explicit application of this trait space for social evaluation and behavior., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (Copyright © 2024 the authors.)

Previous research has examined the real-time cognitive processes underlying perceivers' ability to resolve racial ambiguity into monoracial categorizations, but such processes for multiracial categorizations are less clear. Using a novel, three-choice mouse-tracking paradigm, we found that when perceivers categorized faces as multiracial their hand movements revealed an initial attraction to a monoracial category (study 1). Moreover, exposure to multiracial individuals moderated these effects. When measured (Study 2) or manipulated (Study 3), multiracial exposure reduced monoracial category activation and activation occurred for both morphed and real multiracial faces (Study 4). Together, the findings suggest that multiracial categorizations emerge from dynamic competition between relatively more accessible monoracial categories and a less-accessible multiracial category, which is attenuated through greater exposure to multiracial targets. This research is the first to chart out the real-time dynamics underlying multiracial categorizations and offers a new theoretical account of this increasingly common form of social categorization., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Initial impressions of others based on facial appearances are often inaccurate yet can lead to dire outcomes. Across four studies, adult participants underwent a counterstereotype training to reduce their reliance on facial appearance in consequential social judgments of White male faces. In Studies 1 and 2, trustworthiness and sentencing judgments among control participants predicted whether real-world inmates were sentenced to death versus life in prison, but these relationships were diminished among trained participants. In Study 3, a sequential priming paradigm demonstrated that the training was able to abolish the relationship between even automatically and implicitly perceived trustworthiness and the inmates' life-or-death sentences. Study 4 extended these results to realistic decision-making, showing that training reduced the impact of facial trustworthiness on sentencing decisions even in the presence of decision-relevant information. Overall, our findings suggest that a counterstereotype intervention can mitigate the potentially harmful effects of relying on facial appearance in consequential social judgments.

Family accommodation (FA) has been shown to relate to poorer treatment outcomes in pediatric obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), yet few studies have examined the trajectory of change in FA throughout treatment and its relation to treatment outcomes. This study examined change in FA in relation to change in symptom severity and impairment in 63 youth receiving a family-based intervention for early-onset OCD. FA, symptom severity and functional impairment were assessed at baseline, week 5, week 9, and post-treatment (week 14). Results suggested that changes in FA in the beginning stages of treatment preceded global symptom improvement (but not OCD specific improvement) whereas changes in functional impairment preceded changes in FA. In the latter half of treatment, changes in FA preceded improvement in global and OCD specific symptom severity as well as functional impairment. These findings highlight the importance of reducing FA, especially in the later stages of treatment, in order to optimize treatment outcomes in early-onset OCD., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

One takes one's word that p when a source vouches for p and one accepts the word of that source. If the source is reliable in this case, p is acceptable. The reliability of the source is a measure of its plausibility. If a source has the relevant competence, credibility, authority, that word is acceptable. Likewise, the word may be acceptable if accompanied by a cogent argument, but presumption may be misplaced. One may recognize a presumption for a statement when such recognition is not justified, the positive version of the fallacy. One may refuse to recognize a presumption for a statement when there really is a presumption for the statement, the negative version of the fallacy. The essay proceeds to explore various dimensions of when it is justified to take a source's word for a claim, and when it is justified to reject a claim from a source. The discussion ranges over considerations of sexism and race, cultural differences, and the relationship of presumptions to fallacies. Also considered is the role of trust in taking someone's word and the factors involved in trusting someone., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe author declare that they have no conflict of interest in its publication., (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2023, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.)

Advancing mechanism-focused research in implementation science is a priority given its potential to improve tailoring and efficiency of implementation strategies. Experimental therapeutics, or experimental medicine, offers an approach for mechanism testing that has been promoted by the NIH Science of Behavior Change and endorsed by the National Institute for Mental Health. This approach has been applied across the translational spectrum - with initial applications to biological research and more recent applications to psychosocial treatment development research. We describe further advancement of experimental therapeutics along the translational spectrum and describe how it is ideally suited to inform precision experimental tests of implementation strategy mechanisms, which we term precision implementation. Such an approach to mechanism testing will allow for identification of causal dose-response relationships between implementation strategies, presumed mechanisms, and implementation outcomes. We discuss the tension between the scientific rigor required to conduct mechanism-focused research using experimental therapeutics and the "real world" conditions in which implementation research takes place. We provide a series of example studies that show "beginning to end" application of this framework in research focused on provider implementation of an evidence-based intervention in routine clinical care settings., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Reducing negative impacts of stress, for example through mindfulness training, benefits physical and psychological well-being and is becoming ever more crucial owing to large-scale societal uncertainties (e.g., COVID-19). Whereas extensive research has focused on mindfulness-related reductions in self-reported negativity, essentially no research has targeted task-based behavioral outcomes throughout long-term mindfulness trainings. Responses to emotionally ambiguous signals (e.g., surprised expressions), which might be appraised as either positive or negative, provide a nuanced assessment of one's emotional bias across diverse contexts, offering unique leverage for assessing the effects of mindfulness. Here, we compared the effects of short- and long-term training via Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on ratings of faces with a relatively clear (angry, happy) and ambiguous (surprised) valence. Ratings became more positive for ambiguity from the start (Week 1) to end of training (Week 8; p < .001), but there were no short-term effects (from a single class session). This shift toward positivity continued through an additional 8-week follow-up (Week 16; p < .001). Notably, posttraining valence bias (Week 8) was uniquely predicted by the nonreactivity facet of mindfulness ( p = .01). Together, mindfulness promotes a relatively long-lasting shift toward positivity bias, which is uniquely supported by reduced emotional reactivity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Research on face impressions has often focused on a fixed, universal architecture, treating regional variability as noise. Here, we demonstrated a crucial yet neglected role of cultural learning processes in forming face impressions. In Study 1, we found that variability in the structure of adult perceivers' face impressions across 42 world regions ( N = 287,178) could be explained by variability in the actual personality structure of people living in those regions. In Study 2, data from 232 world regions ( N = 307,136) revealed that adult perceivers use the actual personality structure learned from their local environment to form lay beliefs about personality, and these beliefs in turn support the structure of perceivers' face impressions. Together, these results suggest that people form face impressions on the basis of a conceptual understanding of personality structure that they have come to learn from their regional environment. The findings suggest a need for greater attention to the regional and cultural specificity of face impressions.

Background: Evidence-based interventions (EBIs) for mental health disorders are underutilized in routine clinical practice. Exposure therapy for anxiety disorders is one particularly difficult-to-implement EBI that has robust empirical support. Previous research has examined EBI implementation determinants in publicly funded mental health settings, but few studies have examined EBI implementation determinants in private practice settings. Private practice clinicians likely face unique barriers to implementation, including setting-specific contextual barriers to EBI use. The policy ecology framework considers broad systemic determinants, including organizational, regulatory, social, and political contexts, which are likely relevant to EBI implementation in private practice settings but have not been examined in prior research., Methods: Qualitative interviews were conducted to assess private practice clinicians' perceptions of EBI implementation determinants using the policy ecology framework. Clinicians were asked about implementing mental health EBIs broadly and exposure therapy specifically. Mixed methods analyses compared responses from clinicians working in solo vs. group private practice and clinicians who reported high vs. low organizational support for exposure therapy., Results: Responses highlight several barriers and facilitators to EBI implementation in private practice. Examples include determinants related to organizational support (e.g., colleagues using EBIs), payer restrictions (e.g., lack of reimbursement for longer sessions), fiscal incentives (e.g., payment for attending training), and consumer demand for EBIs. There were notable differences in barriers faced by clinicians who work in group private practices compared to those working in solo practices. Solo private practice clinicians described ways in which their practice setting limits their degree of colleague support (e.g., for consultation or exposure therapy planning), while also allowing for flexibility (e.g., in their schedules and practice location) that may not be available to clinicians in group practice., Conclusions: Using the policy ecology framework provides a broad understanding of contextual factors that impact private practice clinicians' use of EBIs, including exposure therapy. Findings point to potential implementation strategies that may address barriers that are unique to clinicians working in private practice., (Copyright © 2022 Frank, Milgram, Freeman and Benito.)

Cesario claims that all bias research tells us is that people "end up using the information they have come to learn as being probabilistically accurate in their daily lives" (sect. 5, para. 4). We expose Cesario's flawed assumptions about the relationship between accuracy and bias. Through statistical simulations and empirical work, we show that even probabilistically accurate responses are regularly accompanied by bias.

Objective: A lack of universal definitions for response and remission in pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has hampered the comparability of results across trials. To address this problem, we conducted an individual participant data diagnostic test accuracy meta-analysis to evaluate the discriminative ability of the Children's Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (CY-BOCS) in determining response and remission. We also aimed to generate empirically derived cutoffs on the CY-BOCS for these outcomes., Method: A systematic review of PubMed, PsycINFO, Embase and CENTRAL identified 5,401 references; 42 randomized controlled clinical trials were considered eligible, and 21 provided data for inclusion (N = 1,234). Scores of ≤2 in the Clinical Global Impressions Improvement and Severity scales were chosen to define response and remission, respectively. A 2-stage, random-effects meta-analysis model was established. The area under the curve (AUC) and the Youden Index were computed to indicate the discriminative ability of the CY-BOCS and to guide for the optimal cutoff, respectively., Results: The CY-BOCS had sufficient discriminative ability to determine response (AUC = 0.89) and remission (AUC = 0.92). The optimal cutoff for response was a ≥35% reduction from baseline to posttreatment (sensitivity = 83.9, 95% CI = 83.7-84.1; specificity = 81.7, 95% CI = 81.5-81.9). The optimal cutoff for remission was a posttreatment raw score of ≤12 (sensitivity = 82.0, 95% CI = 81.8-82.2; specificity = 84.6, 95% CI = 84.4-84.8)., Conclusion: Meta-analysis identified empirically optimal cutoffs on the CY-BOCS to determine response and remission in pediatric OCD randomized controlled clinical trials. Systematic adoption of standardized operational definitions for response and remission will improve comparability across trials for pediatric OCD., (Copyright © 2021 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Recognition of others' identity through facial features is essential in life. Using both correlational and experimental approaches, we examined how person knowledge biases the perception of others' facial identity. When a participant believed any two individuals were more similar in personality, their faces were perceived to be correspondingly more similar (assessed via mousetracking, Study 1). Further, participants' facial representations of target individuals that were believed to have a more similar personality were found to have a greater physical resemblance (assessed via reverse-correlation, Studies 2 and 3). Finally, when participants learned about novel individuals who had a more similar personality, their faces were visually represented more similarly (Study 4). Together, the findings show that the perception of facial identity is driven not only by facial features but also the person knowledge we have learned about others, biasing it toward alternate identities despite the fact that those identities lack any physical resemblance., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Impressions of other people's faces (e.g., trustworthiness) have long been thought to be evoked by morphological variation (e.g., upturned mouth) in a universal, fixed manner. However, recent research suggests that these impressions vary considerably across perceivers and targets' social-group memberships. Across 4,247 U.S. adults recruited online, we investigated whether racial and gender stereotypes may be a critical factor underlying this variability in facial impressions. In Study 1, we found that not only did facial impressions vary by targets' gender and race, but also the structure of these impressions was associated with the structure of stereotype knowledge. Study 2 extended these findings by demonstrating that individual differences in perceivers' own unique stereotype associations predicted the structure of their own facial impressions. Together, the findings suggest that the structure of people's impressions of others' faces is driven not only by the morphological variation of the face but also by learned stereotypes about social groups.

Across multiple domains of social perception-including social categorization, emotion perception, impression formation and mentalizing-multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data has permitted a more detailed understanding of how social information is processed and represented in the brain. As in other neuroimaging fields, the neuroscientific study of social perception initially relied on broad structure-function associations derived from univariate fMRI analysis to map neural regions involved in these processes. In this review, we trace the ways that social neuroscience studies using MVPA have built on these neuroanatomical associations to better characterize the computational relevance of different brain regions, and discuss how MVPA allows explicit tests of the correspondence between psychological models and the neural representation of social information. We also describe current and future advances in methodological approaches to multivariate fMRI data and their theoretical value for the neuroscience of social perception., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press.)

This study tested whether a new training tool, the Exposure Guide (EG), improved in-session therapist behaviors (i.e., indicators of quality) that have been associated with youth outcomes in prior clinical trials of exposure therapy. Six therapists at a community mental health agency (CMHA) provided exposure therapy for 8 youth with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Using a nonconcurrent multiple baseline design with random assignment to baseline lengths of 6 to 16 weeks, therapists received gold-standard exposure therapy training with weekly consultation (baseline phase) followed by addition of EG training and feedback (intervention phase). The primary outcome was therapist behavior during in-session exposures, observed weekly using a validated coding system. Therapist behavior was evaluated in relation to a priori benchmarks derived from clinical trials. Additional outcomes included training feasibility/acceptability, therapist response to case vignettes and beliefs about exposure, and independent evaluator-rated clinical outcomes. Three therapists reached behavior benchmarks only during the EG (intervention) phase. Two therapists met benchmarks during the baseline phase; one of these subsequently moved away from benchmarks but met them again after starting the EG phase. Across all therapists, the percentage of weeks meeting benchmarks was significantly higher during the EG phase (86.4%) vs. the baseline phase (53.2%). Youth participants experienced significant improvement in OCD symptoms and global illness severity from pre- to posttreatment. Results provide initial evidence that adding the EG to gold-standard training can change in-session therapist behaviors in a CMHA setting., (Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Everyday social interactions hinge on our ability to resolve uncertainty in nonverbal cues. For example, although some facial expressions (e.g. happy, angry) convey a clear affective meaning, others (e.g. surprise) are ambiguous, in that their meaning is determined by the context. Here, we used mouse-tracking to examine the underlying process of resolving uncertainty. Previous work has suggested an initial negativity, in part via faster response times for negative than positive ratings of surprise. We examined valence categorizations of filtered images in order to compare faster (low spatial frequencies; LSF) versus more deliberate processing (high spatial frequencies; HSF). When participants categorised faces as "positive", they first exhibited a partial attraction toward the competing ("negative") response option, and this effect was exacerbated for HSF than LSF faces. Thus, the effect of response conflict due to an initial negativity bias was exaggerated for HSF faces, likely because these images allow for greater deliberation than the LSFs. These results are consistent with the notion that more positive categorizations are characterised by an initial attraction to a default, negative response.

This study measured therapist behaviors in relation to subsequent habituation within exposure tasks, and also tested their direct and indirect relationships (via habituation) with clinical outcomes of exposure therapy. We observed 459 videotaped exposure tasks with 111 participants in three clinical trials for pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (POTS trials). Within exposure tasks, therapist behaviors and patient fear were coded continuously. Outcomes were habituation and posttreatment change in symptom severity, global improvement, and treatment response. More therapist behaviors that encourage approach-and less use of accommodation, unrelated talk, and externalizing language-predicted greater subsequent habituation during individual exposure tasks (exposure-level), and also predicted improved patient clinical outcomes via higher "total dose" of habituation across treatment (patient-level indirect effect). For six of seven therapist behaviors analyzed, the relationship with subsequent habituation within exposure differed by patient fear (low, moderate, or high) at the time the behavior was used. Two therapist behaviors had direct effects in the opposite direction expected; more unrelated talk and less intensifying were associated with greater patient symptom reduction. Results shed light on the "black box" of in-session exposure activities and point to specific therapist behaviors that may be important for clinical outcomes. These behaviors might be best understood in the context of changing patient fear during exposure tasks. Future studies should test whether therapist behaviors can be experimentally manipulated to produce improvement in clinical outcomes., (Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Previous research has shown that social-conceptual associations, such as stereotypes, can influence the visual representation of faces and neural pattern responses in ventral temporal cortex (VTC) regions, such as the fusiform gyrus (FG). Current models suggest that this social-conceptual impact requires medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) feedback signals during perception. Backward masking can disrupt such signals, as it is a technique known to reduce functional connectivity between VTC regions and regions outside VTC. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), subjects passively viewed masked and unmasked faces, and following the scan, perceptual biases and stereotypical associations were assessed. Multi-voxel representations of faces across the VTC, and in the FG and mOFC, reflected stereotypically biased perceptions when faces were unmasked, but this effect was abolished when faces were masked. However, the VTC still retained the ability to process masked faces and was sensitive to their categorical distinctions. Functional connectivity analyses confirmed that masking disrupted mOFC-FG connectivity, which predicted a reduced impact of stereotypical associations in the FG. Taken together, our findings suggest that the biasing of face representations in line with stereotypical associations does not arise from intrinsic processing within the VTC and FG alone, but instead it depends in part on top-down feedback from the mOFC during perception., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press.)

Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov's valence-dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov's methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov's original analysis strategy, the valence-dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated dimensions, we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence-dominance model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed when we use different extraction methods and correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 5 November 2018. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7611443.v1 .

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and trichotillomania (hair pulling disorder, HPD) are both considered obsessive-compulsive and related disorders due to some indications of shared etiological and phenomenological characteristics. However, a lack of direct comparisons between these disorders, especially in pediatric samples, limits our understanding of divergent versus convergent characteristics. This study compared neurocognitive functioning between children diagnosed with OCD and HPD. In total, 21 children diagnosed with HPD, 40 diagnosed with OCD, and 29 healthy controls (HCs), along with their parents, completed self-/parent-report measures and a neurocognitive assessment battery, which included tasks of inhibitory control, sustained attention, planning, working memory, visual memory, and cognitive flexibility. A series of analyses of variance (or covariance) indicated significant differences between groups on tasks examining planning and sustained attention. Specifically, children in both the OCD and HPD groups outperformed HCs on a task of planning. Further, children with OCD underperformed as compared to both the HPD and HC groups on a task of sustained attention. No between group differences were found with respect to tasks of reversal learning, working memory, spatial working memory, visual memory, or inhibitory control. The implications these findings may have for future, transdiagnostic work, as well as limitations and future directions are discussed.

Researchers have noted the resemblance across core models of social cognition, in which trait inferences centre on others' intentions and abilities (for example, warmth, competence). Current views posit that this common 'trait space' originates from the adaptive utility of the dimensions, predicting a relatively fixed and universal architecture. In contrast, we hypothesize that perceivers learn conceptual knowledge of how traits correlate, which shapes trait inferences similarly across domains (for example, faces, person knowledge, stereotypes), from which a common trait space emerges. Here we show substantial overlap between the structures of perceivers' conceptual and social perceptual trait spaces, across perceptual domains (studies 1-4) and that conceptual associations directly shape trait space (study 5). Furthermore, we find evidence that conceptual trait space is learned from social perception and actual personality structure (studies 6 and 7). Our findings suggest conceptual trait associations serve as a cornerstone in social perception, providing broad implications for the study of social behaviour.

The perception of social categories, emotions, and personality traits from others' faces each have been studied extensively but in relative isolation. We synthesize emerging findings suggesting that, in each of these domains of social perception, both a variety of bottom-up facial features and top-down social cognitive processes play a part in driving initial perceptions. Among such top-down processes, social-conceptual knowledge in particular can have a fundamental structuring role in how we perceive others' faces. Extending the Dynamic Interactive framework (Freeman & Ambady, 2011), we outline a perspective whereby the perception of social categories, emotions, and traits from faces can all be conceived as emerging from an integrated system relying on domain-general cognitive properties. Such an account of social perception would envision perceptions to be a rapid, but gradual, process of negotiation between the variety of visual cues inherent to a person and the social cognitive knowledge an individual perceiver brings to the perceptual process. We describe growing evidence in support of this perspective as well as its theoretical implications for social psychology.

Humans reliably categorize configurations of facial actions into specific emotion categories, leading some to argue that this process is invariant between individuals and cultures. However, growing behavioral evidence suggests that factors such as emotion-concept knowledge may shape the way emotions are visually perceived, leading to variability-rather than universality-in facial-emotion perception. Understanding variability in emotion perception is only emerging, and the neural basis of any impact from the structure of emotion-concept knowledge remains unknown. In a neuroimaging study, we used a representational similarity analysis (RSA) approach to measure the correspondence between the conceptual, perceptual, and neural representational structures of the six emotion categories Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, and Surprise. We found that subjects exhibited individual differences in their conceptual structure of emotions, which predicted their own unique perceptual structure. When viewing faces, the representational structure of multivoxel patterns in the right fusiform gyrus was significantly predicted by a subject's unique conceptual structure, even when controlling for potential physical similarity in the faces themselves. Finally, cross-cultural differences in emotion perception were also observed, which could be explained by individual differences in conceptual structure. Our results suggest that the representational structure of emotion expressions in visual face-processing regions may be shaped by idiosyncratic conceptual understanding of emotion categories., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Background: Although mental health stigmatization has myriad pernicious consequences, it remains unknown whether mental disorders are stigmatized for the same reasons., Aims: This study identified the stigma-related beliefs that were associated with several common mental illnesses (Study 1), and the extent to which those beliefs predicted stigmatization (Study 2)., Methods: In Study 1, we used multidimensional scaling to identify the stigma-related beliefs attributed to nine common mental disorders (e.g. depression, schizophrenia). Study 2 explored whether beliefs commonly associated with depression predicted its stigmatization., Results: In Study 1, we found that the nine mental illnesses differed from each other on two dimensions: social desirability and controllability. In Study 2, we found that regardless of participants' own depression status, their perceptions that depression is controllable predicted depression-related stigmatization., Conclusions: Our results suggest that stigmatization toward different mental illnesses stem from combinations of different stigmatized beliefs.

The visual system is able to extract an enormous amount of socially relevant information from the face, including social categories, personality traits, and emotion. While facial features may be directly tied to certain perceptions, emerging research suggests that top-down social cognitive factors (e.g., stereotypes, social-conceptual knowledge, prejudice) considerably influence and shape the perceptual process. The rapid integration of higher-order social cognitive processes into visual perception can give rise to systematic biases in face perception and may potentially act as a mediating factor for intergroup behavioral and evaluative biases. Drawing on neuroimaging evidence, we review the ways that top-down social cognitive factors shape visual perception of facial features. This emerging work in social and affective neuroscience builds upon work on predictive coding and perceptual priors in cognitive neuroscience and visual cognition, suggesting domain-general mechanisms that underlie a social-visual interface through which social cognition affects visual perception., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Despite gains made in the study of childhood anxiety, differential diagnosis remains challenging because of indistinct boundaries between disorders and high comorbidity. This is certainly true for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) as they share multiple cognitive processes (e.g., rumination, intolerance of uncertainty, and increased attention to threat). Disentangling such cognitive characteristics and, subsequently, underlying mechanisms could serve to inform assessment and treatment practices, and improve prognoses., Methods: The current study sought to compare the cognitive performance (working memory, visuospatial memory, planning ability/efficiency, and cognitive flexibility), indexed by the Cambridge Neuropsychological Automated Battery (CANTAB) among three nonoverlapping groups of youth: (1) those diagnosed with OCD (n = 28), (2) those diagnosed with GAD, not OCD (n = 34), and (3) typically-developing controls (TDC) (n = 65)., Results: Results showed that OCD and GAD youth demonstrated neurocognitive deficits in planning ability/efficiency, cognitive flexibility, and visual processing when compared to TDC, with potential diagnostic specificity such that youth with GAD or OCD had unique deficits compared to TDC and to one another. Specifically, youth with OCD demonstrated significantly impaired planning ability compared to youth in the GAD and TDS groups, whereas youth with GAD demonstrated greater cognitive inflexibility and delayed visual processing compared to youth in the OCD and TDC groups., Conclusions: Future studies should expand upon these findings with more comprehensive assessment of cognitive functioning by including self- and parent-report forms, and neuroimaging to link behavioral findings with subjective ratings and neurocircuitry. Altogether, data can then inform future assessment and treatment targets., (© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Cutaneous melanoma circulating tumour cells (CTCs) are phenotypically and molecularly heterogeneous. We profiled the gene expression of CTC subpopulations immunomagnetic-captured by targeting either the melanoma-associated marker, MCSP, or the melanoma-initiating marker, ABCB5. Firstly, the expression of a subset of melanoma genes was investigated by RT-PCR in MCSP-enriched and ABCB5-enriched CTCs isolated from a total of 59 blood draws from 39 melanoma cases. Of these, 6 MCSP- and 6 ABCB5-enriched CTC fractions were further analysed using a genome-wide gene expression microarray. The transcriptional programs of both CTC subtypes included cell survival maintenance, cell proliferation, and migration pathways. ABCB5-enriched CTCs were specifically characterised by up-regulation of genes involved in epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), suggesting an invasive phenotype. These findings underscore the presence of at least two distinct melanoma CTC subpopulations with distinct transcriptional programs, which may have distinct roles in disease progression and response to therapy.

An emerging focus on the geometry of representational structures is advancing a variety of areas in social perception, including social categorization, emotion perception, and trait impressions. Here, we review recent studies adopting a representational geometry approach, and argue that important advances in social perception can be gained by triangulating on the structure of representations via three levels of analysis: neuroimaging, behavioral measures, and computational modeling. Among other uses, this approach permits broad and comprehensive tests of how bottom-up facial features and visual processes as well as top-down social cognitive factors and conceptual processes shape perceptions of social categories, emotion, and personality traits. Although such work is only in its infancy, a focus on corroborating representational geometry across modalities is allowing researchers to use multiple levels of analysis to constrain theoretical models in social perception. This approach holds promise to further our understanding of the multiply determined nature of social perception and its neural basis., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Over the past decade, mouse-tracking in choice tasks has become a popular method across psychological science. This method exploits hand movements as a measure of multiple response activations that can be tracked continuously over hundreds of milliseconds. Whereas early mouse-tracking research focused on specific debates, researchers have realized the methodology has far broader theoretical value. This more recent work demonstrates that mouse-tracking is a widely applicable measure across the field, capable of exposing the micro-structure of real-time decisions including their component processes and millisecond-resolution time-course in ways that inform theory. In the article, recent advances in the mouse-tracking approach are described, and comparisons with the gold standard measure of reaction time and other temporally-sensitive methodologies are provided. Future directions, including mapping to neural representations with brain-imaging and ways to improve our theoretical understanding of mouse-tracking methodology, are discussed.

Humans seamlessly infer the expanse of personality traits from others' facial appearance. These facial impressions are highly intercorrelated within a structure known as "face trait space." Research has extensively documented the facial features that underlie face impressions, thus outlining a bottom-up fixed architecture of face impressions, which cannot account for important ways impressions vary across perceivers. Classic theory in impression formation emphasized that perceivers use their lay conceptual beliefs about how personality traits correlate to form initial trait impressions, for instance, where trustworthiness of a target may inform impressions of their intelligence to the extent one believes the two traits are related. This considered, we explore the possibility that this lay "conceptual trait space"-how perceivers believe personality traits correlate in others-plays a role in face impressions, tethering face impressions to one another, thus shaping face trait space. In study 1, we found that conceptual and face trait space explain considerable variance in each other. In study 2, we found that participants with stronger conceptual associations between two traits judged those traits more similarly in faces. Importantly, using a face image classification task, we found in study 3 that participants with stronger conceptual associations between two traits used more similar facial features to make those two face trait impressions. Together, these findings suggest lay beliefs of how personality traits correlate may underlie trait impressions, and thus face trait space. This implies face impressions are not only derived bottom up from facial features, but also shaped by our conceptual beliefs., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Recent theoretical accounts argue that conceptual knowledge dynamically interacts with processing of facial cues, fundamentally influencing visual perception of social and emotion categories. Evidence is accumulating for the idea that a perceiver's conceptual knowledge about emotion is involved in emotion perception, even when stereotypic facial expressions are presented in isolation 1-4 . However, existing methods have not allowed a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between conceptual knowledge and emotion perception across individuals and emotion categories. Here we use a representational similarity analysis approach to show that conceptual knowledge predicts the representational structure of facial emotion perception. We conducted three studies using computer mouse-tracking 5 and reverse-correlation 6 paradigms. Overall, we found that when individuals believed two emotions to be conceptually more similar, faces from those categories were perceived with a corresponding similarity, even when controlling for any physical similarity in the stimuli themselves. When emotions were rated conceptually more similar, computer-mouse trajectories during emotion perception exhibited a greater simultaneous attraction to both category responses (despite only one emotion being depicted; studies 1 and 2), and reverse-correlated face prototypes exhibited a greater visual resemblance (study 3). Together, our findings suggest that differences in conceptual knowledge are reflected in the perceptual processing of facial emotion.

Objective: This study measured a variety of within-exposure fear changes and tested the relationship of each with treatment outcomes in exposure therapy., Method: We coded 459 videotaped exposure tasks from 111 participants in 3 clinical trials for pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD; POTS trials). Within exposures, fear level was observed continuously and alongside exposure process. Fear change metrics of interest were selected for relevance to mechanistic theory. Fear decreases were classified by function; nonhabituation decreases were associated with observed nonlearning processes (e.g., avoidance), whereas habituation decreases appeared to result from an internal and indirect process. Outcomes were posttreatment change in symptom severity, global improvement, and treatment response., Results: Greater cumulative habituation across treatment was associated with larger reductions in symptom severity, greater global improvement, and increased odds of treatment response. Fear activation, fear variability, and nonhabituation fear decreases did not predict any outcomes. Exploratory analyses examined fear changes during habituation and nonhabituation exposures; higher peak fear during nonhabituation exposures was associated with attenuated global improvement., Conclusions: Habituation is conceptually consistent with multiple mechanistic theories and should continue to be investigated as a practical marker of initial extinction learning and possible moderator of the relationship between fear activation and outcome. Results support the importance of functional and frequent fear measurement during exposures, and discussion considers implications of these findings for future studies aiming to understand learning during exposure and improve exposure delivery. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).)

In this review, we present the case for using computer mouse-tracking techniques to examine psychological processes that support (and hinder) self-regulation of eating. We first argue that computer mouse-tracking is suitable for studying the simultaneous engagement of-and dynamic interactions between-multiple perceptual and cognitive processes as they unfold and interact over a fine temporal scale (i.e., hundreds of milliseconds). Next, we review recent work that implemented mouse-tracking techniques by measuring mouse movements as participants chose between various food items (of varying nutritional content). Lastly, we propose next steps for future investigations to link behavioral features from mouse-tracking paradigms, corresponding neural correlates, and downstream eating behaviors.

Purpose: To evaluate the feasibility of using circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) for the management of uveal melanoma (UM)., Patients and Methods: Low-coverage whole-genome sequencing was used to determine somatic chromosomal copy number alterations (SCNAs) in primary UM tumors, ctDNA, and whole-genome amplified CTCs. CTCs were immunocaptured using an antimelanoma-associated chondroitin sulfate antibody conjugated to magnetic beads and immunostained for melanoma antigen recognised by T cells 1 (MART1)/glycoprotein 100 (gp100)/S100 calcium-binding protein β (S100β). ctDNA was quantified using droplet digital polymerase chain reaction assay for mutations in the GNAQ , GNA11 , PLCβ4 , and CYSLTR2 genes., Results: SCNA analysis of CTCs and ctDNA isolated from a patient with metastatic UM showed good concordance with the enucleated primary tumor. In a cohort of 30 patients with primary UM, CTCs were detected in 58% of patients (one to 37 CTCs per 8 mL of blood), whereas only 26% of patients had detectable ctDNA (1.6 to 29 copies/mL). The presence of CTCs or ctDNA was not associated with tumor size or other prognostic markers. However, the frequent detection of CTCs in patients with early-stage UM supports a model in which CTCs can be used to derive tumor-specific SCNA relevant for prognosis. Monitoring of ctDNA after treatment of the primary tumor allowed detection of metastatic disease earlier than 18 F-labeled fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography in two patients., Conclusion: The presence of CTCs in localized UM can be used to ascertain prognostic SCNA, whereas ctDNA can be used to monitor patients for early signs of metastatic disease. This study paves the way for the analysis of CTCs and ctDNA as a liquid biopsy that will assist with treatment decisions in patients with UM., Competing Interests: The following represents disclosure information provided by authors of this manuscript. All relationships are considered compensated. Relationships are self-held unless noted. I = Immediate Family Member, Inst = My Institution. Relationships may not relate to the subject matter of this manuscript. For more information about ASCO's conflict of interest policy, please refer to www.asco.org/rwc or ascopubs.org/po/author-center. Aaron BeasleyNo relationship to discloseTimothy IsaacsTravel, Accommodations, Expenses: PfizerMuhammad A. KhattakHonoraria: MSD Oncology, Novartis, Merck Serono Consulting or Advisory Role: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck Serono Speakers' Bureau: Merck Serono, MSD Oncology, Novartis Research Funding: MSD Oncology Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: MSD Oncology, Amgen, Merck SeronoJames B. FreemanNo relationship to discloseRichard AllcockNo relationship to discloseFred K. ChenSpeakers' Bureau: Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals Research Funding: Novartis (Inst) Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, AllerganMichelle R. PereiraNo relationship to discloseKyle YauNo relationship to discloseJacqueline BentelNo relationship to discloseTersia VermeulenNo relationship to discloseLeslie CalapreNo relationship to discloseMichael MillwardConsulting or Advisory Role: Roche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Novartis, Boehringer Ingelheim Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Roche, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZenecaMelanie R. ZimanResearch Funding: Merck Sharp & DohmeElin S. GrayResearch Funding: Merck Sharp & Dohme Patents, Royalties, Other Intellectual Property: Provisional patent on a blood test to detect melanoma based on auto-antibody detection Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Bio-Rad Laboratories, (© 2018 by American Society of Clinical Oncology.)

Facial appearance evokes robust impressions of other people's personality traits. Recent research suggests that the trait space arising from face-based impressions shifts due to context and social cognitive factors. We suggest a novel framework in which multiple bottom-up and top-down processes mutually determine a dynamic rather than fixed trait space., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Superior cognitive abilities are generally associated with positive outcomes such as academic achievement and social mobility. Here, we explore the darker side of cognitive ability, highlighting robust links between pattern detection and stereotyping. Across 6 studies, we find that superior pattern detectors efficiently learn and use stereotypes about social groups. This pattern holds across explicit (Studies 1 and 2), implicit (Studies 2 and 4), and behavioral measures of stereotyping (Study 3). We also find that superior pattern detectors readily update their stereotypes when confronted with new information (Study 5), making them particularly susceptible to counterstereotype training (Study 6). Pattern detection skills therefore equip people to act as naïve empiricists who calibrate their stereotypes to match incoming information. These findings highlight novel effects of individual aptitudes on social-cognitive processes. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).)

Perceivers form strong inferences of disposition from others' facial appearance, and these inferences guide a wide variety of important behaviors. The current research examines the possibility that similar-looking individuals are more likely to form groups with one another. We do so by testing a necessary downstream consequence of this process, examining whether the faces of individuals within groups more physically resemble one another than those in other groups. Across six studies, we demonstrate that individuals' group membership can be accurately classified both from ratings of members' faces, and from direct measurement of members' faces. Results provide insight into how affiliative groups initially form and maintain membership over time, as well as the perception of homogeneity of groups.