Is There a Relationship Between Body Mass Index and Eating Disorder Symptoms in Professional Male Fashion Models?

This study is the first to examine the utility of body mass index (BMI) as an indicator of eating disorder (ED) pathology and fitness for employment for professional male fashion models. We assessed the relationship between experimenter-measured BMI, muscle mass, body fat percentage, and ED severity (EDE-Q score) in male models and nonmodels. Except for higher eating concern, the two groups displayed similar EDE-Q scores after controlling for age.

Individual differences in emoji comprehension: Gender, age, and culture.

Emoji are an important substitute for non-verbal cues (such as facial expressions) in online written communication. So far, however, little is known about individual differences regarding how they are perceived. In the current study, we examined the influence of gender, age, and culture on emoji comprehension.

Individual differences in sarcasm interpretation and use: Evidence from the UK and China.

Sarcasm is commonly used in everyday language; however, little is currently known about cultural and individual differences in sarcasm interpretation and use, particularly across Western and Eastern cultures. To address these gaps in the literature, the present study investigated individual differences in sarcasm interpretation and use in the UK and China. Participants first rated literal and sarcastic comments regarding degree of perceived sarcasm, aggression, amusement, and politeness.

Syntactic prediction during self-paced reading is age invariant.

Controversy exists as to whether, compared to young adults, older adults are more, equally or less likely to make linguistic predictions while reading. While previous studies have examined age effects on the prediction of upcoming words, the prediction of upcoming syntactic structures has been largely unexplored. We compared the benefit that young and older readers gain when the syntactic structure is made predictable, as well as potential age differences in the costs involved in making predictions.

Emoji Identification and Emoji Effects on Sentence Emotionality in ASD-Diagnosed Adults and Neurotypical Controls.

We investigated ASD-diagnosed adults' and neurotypical (NT) controls' processing of emoji and emoji influence on the emotionality of otherwise-neutral sentences. Study 1 participants categorised emoji representing the six basic emotions using a fixed-set of emotional adjectives. Results showed that ASD-diagnosed participants' classifications of fearful, sad, and surprised emoji were more diverse and less 'typical' than NT controls' responses.

No evidence of word-level uncertainty in younger and older adults in self-paced reading.

In a self-paced reading study, we investigated whether older adults maintain a greater level of uncertainty about the identity of words in a sentence than younger adults, potentially due to deficits in visuo-perceptual processing of high-spatial frequencies associated with normal aging. In the experiment, 60 older adults and 60 younger adults read sentences in which an early preposition was either perceptually confusable with another word (; confusable with ) or not (), and in which the reading of a subsequent ambiguous verb (e.g.

Irony as a Test of the Presupposition-Denial Account: An ERP Study.

According to the Presupposition-Denial Account, complement set reference arises when focus is on the shortfall between the amount conveyed by a natural language quantifier and a larger, expected amount. Negative quantifiers imply a shortfall, through the denial of a presupposition, whereas positive quantifiers do not. An exception may be provided by irony.

Online representations of non-canonical sentences are more than good-enough.

Proponents of good-enough processing suggest that readers often (mis)interpret certain sentences using fast-and-frugal heuristics, such that for non-canonical sentences (e.g., ) people confuse the thematic roles of the nouns.

Examining the influence of perspective and prosody on expected emotional responses to irony: Evidence from event-related brain potentials.

Ironic language is typically more difficult to process and interpret than a literal equivalent, hence is assumed to serve several social and emotional functions not achieved by literal communication (such as politeness or introducing humor). Several factors may influence emotional responses to irony, such as the perspective from which the utterance is encountered (e.g.

Examining the role of context in written sarcasm comprehension: Evidence from eye-tracking during reading.

This article addresses a current theoretical debate between modular and interactive accounts of sarcasm processing, by investigating the role of context (specifically, knowing that a character has been sarcastic before) in the comprehension of a sarcastic remark. An eye-tracking experiment was conducted in which participants were asked to read texts that introduced a character as being either sarcastic or not and ended in either a literal or an unfamiliar sarcastic remark. The results indicated that when the character was previously literal, a subsequent sarcastic remark was more difficult to process than its literal counterpart.

The role of emoticons in sarcasm comprehension in younger and older adults: Evidence from an eye-tracking experiment.

We present an eye-tracking experiment examining moment-to-moment processes underlying the comprehension of emoticons. Younger (18-30) and older (65+) participants had their eye movements recorded while reading scenarios containing comments that were ambiguous between literal or sarcastic interpretations (e.g.

Emotional Processing of Ironic Versus Literal Criticism in Autistic and Nonautistic Adults: Evidence From Eye-Tracking.

Typically developing adults are able to keep track of story characters' emotional states online while reading. Filik et al. showed that initially, participants expected the victim to be more hurt by ironic comments than literal, but later considered them less hurtful; ironic comments were regarded as more amusing.

What is the difference between irony and sarcasm? An fMRI study.

Verbal irony is a figure of speech that communicates the opposite of what is said, while sarcasm is a form of irony that is directed at a person, with the intent to criticise. The current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with the aim of mapping the neural networks involved in the processing of sarcastic and non-sarcastic irony. Participants read short texts describing an interaction between two characters, which ended in either a literal, sarcastic, or non-sarcastic ironic comment.

Eating disorder symptomatology and body mass index are associated with readers' expectations about character behavior: Evidence from eye-tracking during reading.

Objective: Many theories have been put forward suggesting key factors underlying the development and maintenance of eating disorders, such as: unhealthy food-related cognitive biases, negative body attitude, and perfectionism; however, underlying cognitive processes associated with eating disorder symptomatology remain unclear. We used eye-tracking during reading as a novel implicit measure of how these factors may relate to eating disorder symptomatology.

Method: In two experiments, we monitored women's eye movements while they read texts in which the characters' emotional responses to food-, body image-, and perfectionism-related scenarios were described.

Electrophysiological dynamics of Chinese phonology during visual word recognition in Chinese-English bilinguals.

Silent word reading leads to the activation of orthographic (spelling), semantic (meaning), as well as phonological (sound) information. For bilinguals, native language information can also be activated automatically when they read words in their second language. For example, when Chinese-English bilinguals read words in their second language (English), the phonology of the Chinese translations is automatically activated.

New Body Scales Reveal Body Dissatisfaction, Thin-Ideal, and Muscularity-Ideal in Males.

The aim of the current study was to develop, test, and retest two new male body dissatisfaction scales: The Male Body Scale (MBS; consisting of emaciated to obese figures) and the Male Fit Body Scale (MFBS; consisting of emaciated to muscular figures). These scales were compared to the two most commonly used visually based indices of body dissatisfaction (Stunkard Figure Rating Scale, SFRS; and Somatomorphic Matrix, SM). Male participants rated which body figure on each scale most represented their current figure, then their ideal figure, and then rated which one of the three scales (MBS, MFBS, and SFRS) best represented their current and ideal body overall.

Task-dependent evaluative processing of moral and emotional content during comprehension: An ERP study.

Recently, we showed that when participants passively read about moral transgressions (e.g., adultery), they implicitly engage in the evaluative (good-bad) categorization of incoming information, as indicated by a larger event-related brain potential (ERP) positivity to immoral than to moral scenarios (Leuthold, Kunkel, Mackenzie, & Filik in Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience, 10, 1021-1029, 2015).

An eye-tracking investigation of written sarcasm comprehension: The roles of familiarity and context.

This article addresses a current theoretical debate between the standard pragmatic model, the graded salience hypothesis, and the implicit display theory, by investigating the roles of the context and of the properties of the sarcastic utterance itself in the comprehension of a sarcastic remark. Two eye-tracking experiments were conducted where we manipulated the speaker's expectation in the context and the familiarity of the sarcastic remark. The results of the first eye-tracking study showed that literal comments were read faster than unfamiliar sarcastic comments, regardless of whether an explicit expectation was present in the context.

Emotional responses to irony and emoticons in written language: Evidence from EDA and facial EMG.

While the basic nature of irony is saying one thing and communicating the opposite, it may also serve additional social and emotional functions, such as projecting humor or anger. Emoticons often accompany irony in computer-mediated communication, and have been suggested to increase enjoyment of communication. In the current study, we aimed to examine online emotional responses to ironic versus literal comments, and the influence of emoticons on this process.

Sarcasm and emoticons: Comprehension and emotional impact.

Most theorists agree that sarcasm serves some communicative function that would not be achieved by speaking directly, such as eliciting a particular emotional response in the recipient. One debate concerns whether this kind of language serves to enhance or mute the positive or negative nature of a message. The role of textual devices commonly used to accompany written sarcastic remarks is also unclear.