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Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

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It has been shown that counterintuitive ideas from mythological and religious texts are more acceptable than other world knowledge violations. In the present experiment we explored whether this relates to the way they are interpreted. Participants were presented with verification questions that referred to either the literal or a metaphorical meaning of the sentence previously read, in a block-wise design. Both behavioral and electrophysiological results converged. At variance to the literal interpretation of the sentences, the induced metaphorical interpretation specifically facilitated (...) the integration of religious counterintuitions, whereas the semantic processing of non-religious counterintuitions was not affected by the interpretation mode. We suggest that religious ideas tend to operate like other instances of figurative language, such as metaphors, facilitating their acceptability despite their counterintuitive nature. (shrink)

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According to the shared signal hypothesis the impact of facial expressions on emotion processing partially depends on whether the gaze is directed toward or away from the observer. In autism spectrum disorder several aspects of face processing have been found to be atypical, including attention to eye gaze and the identification of emotional expressions. However, there is little research on how gaze direction affects emotional expression processing in typically developing individuals and in those with ASD. This question is investigated here (...) in two multimodal experiments. Experiment 1 required processing eye gaze direction while faces differed in emotional expression. Forty-seven children participated. Their Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule scores ranged from 0 to 6 in the experiment. Event-related potentials were sensitive to gaze direction and emotion, but emotion processing did not depend on gaze direction. However, for angry faces the gaze direction effect on the N170 amplitude, as typically observed in TD individuals, diminished with increasing ADOS score. For neutral expressions this correlation was not significant. Experiment 2 required explicit emotion classifications in a facial emotion composite task while eye gaze was manipulated incidentally. A group of 22 children with ASD was compared to a propensity score-matched group of TD children. The same comparison was carried out for a subgroup of nine children with ASD who were less trained in social cognition, according to clinician’s report. The ASD group performed overall worse in emotion recognition than the TD group, independently of emotion or gaze direction. However, for disgust expressions, eye tracking data revealed that TD children fixated relatively longer on the eyes of the stimulus face with a direct gaze as compared with averted gaze. In children with ASD we observed no such modulation of fixation behavior as a function of gaze direction. Overall, the present findings from ERPs and eye tracking confirm the hypothesis of an impaired sensitivity to gaze direction in children with ASD or elevated autistic traits, at least for specific emotions. Therefore, we conclude that multimodal investigations of the interaction between emotional processing and stimulus gaze direction are promising to understand the characteristics of individuals differing along the autism trait dimension. (shrink)

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Superior recognition of positive emotional facial expressions compared to negative expressions is well established. However, it is unclear whether this superiority effect differs between non-parents and parents, for whom emotion perception (EP) is an indispensable skill. Although EP has been shown to be modulated by the neuropeptide oxytocin, a central factor in the development of parental care, very little research has addressed the relationship between EP skills, the transition to parenthood, and plasma oxytocin levels. In the present study, we assessed (...) EP abilities with a test battery and measured plasma oxytocin in 77 non-parent and 79 parent couples and applied structural equation modelling to the data. The results showed increased happiness perception abilities in both parents and individuals with elevated oxytocin levels. Furthermore, non-parents showed superior abilities to recognise anger expressions. No significant associations were found regarding the perception of other basic emotion categories or with a general EP factor. The findings are consistent with previous research indicating that elevated oxytocin levels are associated with enhanced EP abilities. They also extend the existing literature by demonstrating that mothers and fathers, regardless of their oxytocin levels, exhibit increased EP superiority. (shrink)

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Faces are highly salient objects for humans, providing identity- and emotion-related information—basic cues for mastering social interactions. Despite extensive research on the recognition of facia...

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One stable marker of face perception appears to be left-side bias, the tendency to rely more on information conveyed by the left side of the face than the right. Previous studies have shown that left-side bias is influenced by familiarity and prior experience with face stimuli. Since other-race facial recognition is characterized by reduced familiarity, in contrast to own-race facial recognition, the phenomenon of left-side bias is expected to be weaker for other-race faces. Among Chinese participants, face inversion has been (...) found to eliminate the left-side bias associated with own-race faces. Therefore, it is of interest to know whether face inversion influences left-side bias for non-Chinese research participants and can be generalized across own- and other-race faces. This study assessed 65 Caucasian participants using upright and inverted chimeric Caucasian and Asian faces in an identity similarity-judgment task. Although a significant left-side bias was observed for upright own-race faces, this bias was eliminated by facial inversion, indicating that such a bias depends on the applicability of configural processing strategies. For other-race faces, there was no left-side bias in the upright condition. Interestingly, the inverted presentation yielded a right-side bias. These results show that while left-side bias is affected by familiarity differences between own- and other-race faces, it is a universal phenomenon for upright faces. Inverted presentation strongly reduces left-side bias and may even cause it to revert to right-side bias, suggesting that left-side bias depends on configural face processing. (shrink)

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