Visuo-spatial representations of the alphabet (so-called 'alphabet forms') may be as common as other types of sequence-space synaesthesia, but little is known about them or the way they relate to implicit spatial associations in the general population. In the first study, we describe the characteristics of a large sample of alphabet forms visualized by synaesthetes. They most often run from left to right and have salient features (e.g., bends, breaks) at particular points in the sequence that correspond to chunks in the 'Alphabet Song' and at the alphabet mid-point. The Alphabet Song chunking suggests that the visuo-spatial characteristics are derived, at least in part, from those of the verbal sequence learned earlier in life. However, these synaesthetes are no faster at locating points in the sequence (e.g., what comes before/after letter X?) than controls. They tend to be more spatially consistent (measured by eye tracking) and letters can act as attentional cues to left/right space in synaesthetes with alphabet forms (measured by saccades), but not in non-synaesthetes. This attentional cueing suggests dissociation between numbers (which reliably act as attentional cues in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes) and letters (which act as attentional cues in synaesthetes only).

Background The COVID-19 pandemic is taking a toll on people’s mental health, particularly as people are advised to adhere to social distancing, self-isolation measures, and government-imposed national lockdowns. Digital health technologies have an important role to play in keeping people connected and in supporting their mental health and well-being. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health and social services were already strained. Objective Our objective was to evaluate the 12-week outcomes of the digitally delivered Gro Health intervention, a holistic digital behavior change app designed for self-management of mental well-being, sleep, activity, and nutrition. Methods The study used a quasi-experimental research design consisting of an open-label, single-arm, pre-post intervention engagement using a convenience sample. Adults who had joined the Gro Health app (intervention) and had a complete baseline dataset (ie, 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale, Perceived Stress Scale, and 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire) were followed up at 12 weeks (n=273), including 33 (12.1%) app users who reported a positive COVID-19 diagnosis during the study period. User engagement with the Gro Health platform was tracked by measuring total minutes of app engagement. Paired t tests were used to compare pre-post intervention scores. Linear regression analysis was performed to assess the relationship between minutes of active engagement with the Gro Health app and changes in scores across the different mental health measures. Results Of the 347 study participants, 273 (78.67%) completed both the baseline and follow-up surveys. Changes in scores for anxiety, perceived stress, and depression were predicted by app engagement, with the strongest effect observed for changes in perceived stress score (F1,271=251.397; R2=0.479; P<.001). Conclusions A digital behavior change platform that provides remote mental well-being support can be effective in managing depression, anxiety, and perceived stress during times of crisis such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. The outcomes of this study may also support the implementation of remote digital health apps supporting behavior change and providing support for low levels of mental health within the community.

Although icons appear on almost all interfaces, there is a paucity of research examining the determinants of icon appeal. The experiments reported here examined the icon characteristics determining appeal and the extent to which processing fluency -the subjective ease with which individuals process information -was used as a heuristic to guide appeal evaluations. Participants searched for, and identified, icons in displays. The initial appeal of icons was held constant while ease of processing was manipulated by systematically varying the complexity and familiarity of the icons presented and the type of task participants were asked to carry out. Processing fluency reliably influenced users' appeal ratings and appeared to be based on users' unconscious awareness of the ease with which they carried out experimental tasks.

Abstract. Emotion perception studies typically explore how judgments of facial expressions are influenced by invariant characteristics such as sex or by variant characteristics such as gaze. However, few studies have considered the importance of factors that are not easily categorized as invariant or variant. We investigated one such factor, attractiveness, and the role it plays in judgments of emotional expression. We asked 26 participants to categorize different facial expressions (happy, neutral, and angry) that varied with respect to facial attractiveness (attractive, unattractive). Participants were significantly faster when judging expressions on attractive as compared to unattractive faces, but there was no interaction between facial attractiveness and facial expression, suggesting that the attractiveness of a face does not play an important role in the judgment of happy or angry facial expressions.

In the antisaccade task participants are required to overcome the strong tendency to saccade towards a sudden onset target, and instead make a saccade to the mirror image location. The task thus provides a powerful tool with which to study the cognitive processes underlying goal directed behaviour, and has become a widely used index of "disinhibition" in a range of clinical populations. Across two experiments we explored the role of top-down strategic influences on antisaccade performance by varying the instructions that participants received. Instructions to delay making a response resulted in a significant increase in correct antisaccade latencies and reduction in erroneous prosaccades towards the target. Instructions to make antisaccades as quickly as possible resulted in faster correct responses, whereas instructions to be as spatially accurate as possible increased correct antisaccade latencies. Neither of these manipulations resulted in a significant change in error rate. In a second experiment, participants made fewer errors in delayed pro and antisaccade tasks than in a standard antisaccade task. The implications of these results for current models of antisaccade performance, and the interpretation of antisaccade deficits in clinical populations are discussed.

Social information processing theories suggest that aggressive individuals may exhibit hostile perceptual biases when interpreting other’s behaviour. This hypothesis was tested in the present study which investigated the effects of physical aggression on facial expression identification in a sample of healthy participants. Participants were asked to judge the expressions of faces presented to them and to complete a self-report measure of aggression. Relative to low physically aggressive participants, high physically aggressive participants were more likely to mistake non-angry facial expressions as being angry facial expressions (misattribution errors), supporting the idea of a hostile predisposition. These differences were not explained by gender, or response times. There were no differences in identifying angry expressions in general between aggression groups (misperceived errors). These findings add support to the idea that aggressive individuals exhibit hostile perceptual biases when interpreting facial expressions.

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