No abstract

Time perception plays a fundamental role in human social activities, and it can be influenced in social situations by various factors, including facial attractiveness. However, in the eyes of observers of different genders, the attractiveness of a face varies. The current study aimed to explore whether gender modulates the effect of facial attractiveness on time perception. To account for individual differences in esthetic standards, the critical stimuli presented to each participant were selected from an image pool based on the participant’s own attractiveness judgments. In Experiment 1, men and women performed a stimuli selection task followed by a temporal reproduction task to measure their time perception of faces of different attractiveness levels and gender. To control for the potential influence of task order, Experiment 2 flipped the order of the selection and temporal tasks. Taken together, the experiments showed that both men and women exhibited longer reproduced durations for attractive opposite-sex faces than for unattractive opposite-sex faces; conversely, in the same-sex face condition, women still exhibited longer reproduced durations for attractive faces than for unattractive faces, whereas the effect of facial attractiveness on time perception among men tended to be smaller or even fail to reach significance. These results suggest that gender differences play an important role in the effect of facial attractiveness on time perception.

The most widely used measurements of mindfulness are the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) and the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). However, controversies exist regarding the application of these scales. Additionally, the neural mechanisms of dispositional mindfulness havebecome a topic of interest. In the current study, we used surface-based methodology to identify the brain regions underlying individual differences in dispositional mindfulness in a large non-clinical sampleand compared the two instruments for measuring the dispositional mindfulness. The results indicated that theMAAS scores were significantly associated with increased greymatter volumes in the right precuneus and the significant association between the precuneus and depression symptomatology was mediated by MAAS scores. Regarding the FFMQ, the Describing, Nonjudging, and Nonreactivity facets were selectively associated with the cortical volume, thickness and surface area of multiple prefrontal regions as well as the inferior parietal lobule. Importantly, Describing mediated the association between the dorsolateral PFC volume and the cognitive reappraisal strategies of emotion regulation. These resultssuggested that the MAASwere mainly associated with self-awareness, while the FFMQ facets were selectively involved in emotion regulation, attention control and self-awareness. Therefore, this study characterized the differences in inter-individual variability between the two typical measurements of dispositional mindfulnessand the correlations between those measurements and imaging analyses.

This study aimed to investigate the mechanisms underlying joke comprehension using event-related potentials (ERPs). Fourteen healthy college students were presented with the context of a story without its joke or nonjoke ending, and then, when the story ending was presented, they were asked to make a funny/unfunny judgment about these endings. The behavioral results showed that there was no significant difference between funny and unfunny items, which meant that subjects could understand funny items as easily as unfunny ones. However, the ERP results showed that funny items initially elicited a more negative ERP deflection (N350-450) over frontocentral scalp regions. Dipole analysis localized the generators in the left temporal gyrus and the left medial frontal gyrus; it is suggested that these areas might be involved in detecting the incongruent element in joke comprehension. Between 600 and 800 ms, funny items subsequently elicited a more negative ERP deflection (N600-800) over frontocentral scalp regions and a more positive ERP deflection (P600-800) over posterior scalp regions. Dipole analysis localized the generator in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), an area involved in the breaking of mental set/expectation and the forming of novel associations. Finally, funny items elicited a more positive ERP deflection (P1250-1400) over anterior and posterior scalp regions. Dipole analysis localized the generators in the middle frontal gyrus and the fusiform gyrus, areas that might be related to the affective appreciation stage in joke process. Unlike that of Coulson and Kutas (2001), the present study might support the hypothesis of a three stage model of humor processing (humor detection, resolution of incongruity and humor appreciation).

It has been widely demonstrated that a prolonged adaptation to a relatively long or short stimulus leads to a robust repulsive duration aftereffect. However, little is known about the rapid adaptation to stimulus duration. In this study, we investigated whether the duration aftereffect could also be induced by short-term adaptation to stimuli of both sub- and supra-second durations. To control for the internal reference for duration judgment, participants were adapted to a stimulus of medium duration, and then tested with both longer and shorter stimuli. We found that the duration aftereffect was only observed after long-term adaptation to stimuli of both sub- and supra-second durations, which suggests that the exposure time to the adaptor is a fundamental factor in determining the duration aftereffect. Our findings offer further evidence of the duration aftereffect, which in this study was dissociated from the anchor effect and high-level aftereffects.