强迫倾向、内心体验的信心水平与知道感缺乏的关系

为探讨强迫倾向、内心体验的信心水平与知道感缺乏的关系,采用虚假生物反馈为内在状态的外部线索,以指导语操控被试内心体验的信心水平,考察高、低强迫倾向（high/low obsessive-compulsive tendencies, HOC/LOC）组在不同信心水平下依赖外部线索评价内在状态的情况。结果：(1)HOC组的知道感存在缺陷,表现为比LOC组更依赖外部线索评价内在状态;(2)HOC组的知道感缺乏受其信心水平的影响,低信心会加剧HOC组的知道感缺乏。本研究结果能为缓解HOC个体的怀疑及相关强迫症状提供帮助,并或许能为OCD认知和元认知治疗提供思路。     

The time windows of the sense of agency

The sense of agency depends on some internal cues that derive from action control, as well as external cues like contextual information and prior information (degree of contingency between an action and is effect). We assessed whether external agency cues are combined with internal agency cues to affect the sense of agency. In two experiments participants performed a movement (button press) that elicited, after a varying delay, an effect (ball appearing on a screen), and reported their sense of agency over the effect (full, partial or no-agency) while internal cues (premotor information) and external cues (contextual and prior information) were manipulated. We assessed the effect of agency cues on the delays at which the sense of agency varied. The delays were increased with premotor signals but were decreased with contextual information. These findings favour a model of integration of internal and external agency cues over time.     

Contributions of disease severity and perceptions of primary and secondary control to the prediction of psychosocial adjustment to Parkinson's disease.

Seventy-four people with Parkinson's disease (PD) completed questionnaires and were interviewed to determine the degree to which the severity of PD and perceptions of primary and secondary control over PD predicted psychosocial adjustment. Significant unique contributions to PD-related participation restrictions were made by disease severity (positive relationship) and perceived internal secondary control (negative relationship). Also, participation restrictions had a significant direct effect, and disease severity and perceived internal secondary control significant indirect effects, on both depressive symptomatology and life satisfaction. Results are consistent with theories that suggest the importance of enhancing internal secondary control processes in situations in which actual control over objective circumstances is limited, such as with chronic and progressive diseases like PD.     

The Effect of Anxiety Sensitivity and Gender on the Experience of Pain

The association between negative affectivity (NA) and health complaints is thought to reflect a stronger attentional focus on bodily sensations in high NA persons. Perceiving these sensations as rather threatening, high NA persons may scan their internal environment for impending signs of pain and trouble. Using an on-line registration of attentional deployment, we tested whether high NA persons were allocating more attentional resources to internal sensations and less to external stimuli compared to low NA persons. High and low NA participants (N = 68) performed a Stroop-like primary task during a number of trials in which: (1) only an internal; (2) only an external; or (3) both an internal and an external stimulus could occur. Internal stimuli consisted of 7.5% carbon dioxide administrations, causing slight increases in ventilation. An increase in time interval between successive tones served as the external stimulus. Participants were asked to press a button when they noticed one of both events. Results showed that high NA participants: (1) detected the effects of a first respiratory stimulus faster; (2) performed poorer on the tone task when anticipating a respiratory challenge; (3) performed slower on the Stroop task during respiratory stimuli. These findings may indicate that high NA participants show a stronger attentional bias to internal sensations.     

Working Together to Make Sense of the Past: Mothers' and Children's Use of Internal States Language in Conversations about Traumatic and Nontraumatic Events

Mother-child conversations about a devastating tornado and about 2 nontraumatic events were examined to determine whether there were (a) differences in use of internal states language when talking about traumatic and nontraumatic events and (b) similarities in mothers' and children's use of internal states language. At Session 1, which took place 4 months after the tornado, with conversational length controlled, there was no evidence of differential use of internal states language as a function of event for mothers or children. At Session 2, which took place 6 months later (10 months after the tornado), older children's narratives about the tornado were more saturated with internal states language, relative to their narratives about nontornado events. For both the traumatic and the nontraumatic events, there were cross-lagged correlations between maternal use of emotion language at Session 1 and children's use of emotion language at Session 2. The pattern of findings is consistent with the suggestion that mother-child conversations are one context for the socialization of language about emotional experiences.     

Effect of arousal on internal clock speed in real action and mental imagery.

The possible implication of an internal clock as a mechanism accounting for the temporal homology between actual and mental walking is studied. To observe this phenomenon, stressful sound stimuli were used to increase arousal, which is known to activate the internal clock. Seventeen participants performed three tasks: (1) a time production task, used as a reference task reflecting the internal clock speed; (2) an actual walking task; and (3) a mental walking task, all three in two sound conditions (no noise and noise). The results showed a significant effect of arousal on time in each task. The effect of noise, increasing the arousal level, was greater in time production and mental imagery tasks than in real action. In addition, the percentages of change between the two sound conditions for actual and mental walking time were not statistically different. These findings are further evidence of the existence of a timing process common to actual and mental walking. The data are consistent with the implication of an internal clock in both actual and mental walking.     

7-11-year-old children show an advantage for matching and recognizing the internal features of familiar faces: Evidence against a developmental shift

Adults are better at recognizing familiar faces from the internal facial features (eyes, nose, mouth) than from the external facial features (hair, face outline). However, previous research suggests that this “internal advantage” does not appear until relatively late in childhood, and some studies suggest that children rely on external features to recognize all faces, whether familiar or not. We use a matching task to examine face processing in 7-8- and 10-11-year-old children. We use a design in which all face stimuli can be used as familiar items (for participants who are classmates) and unfamiliar items (for participants from a different school). Using this design, we find an internal feature advantage for matching familiar faces, for both groups of children. The same children were then shown the external and internal features of their classmates and were asked to name or otherwise identify them. Again, both age groups identified more of their classmates correctly from the internal than the external features. This is the first time an internal advantage has been reported in this age group. Results suggest that children as young as 7 process faces in the same way as do adults, and that once procedural difficulties are overcome, the standard effects of familiarity are observed.     

Comparing the effects of conscious monitoring and conscious control on motor performance

We compared the effects of conscious monitoring and control on motor performance. Participants were instructed to adopt an internal or external focus of attention in different blocks of a darts task. For one group, the internal as well as external focus instructions emphasized monitoring. For another group, the instructions emphasized control in the two focus conditions. Furthermore, participants’ propensity for monitoring and control was gauged via two factors of the Movement Specific Reinvestment Scale (MSRS) (Masters, Eves, & Maxwell, 2005). These factors were Movement Self-Consciousness (MS-C) and Conscious Motor Processing (CMP), which measure propensity for conscious monitoring and control, respectively. Performance differences between the internal and external focus blocks were expressed as mean radial error (MRE). Results revealed a 3-way interaction between CMP, instruction type (monitoring versus control) and an order effect. Only in the conscious control-group, but not the conscious monitoring-group was there a 2-way interaction between CMP and order. In the conscious control-group, participants with high CMP scores showed worse performance in whichever focus block (internal or external) was presented last. There were no significant effects in the monitoring-group or of MS-C. These findings indicate that conscious control has a stronger effect on motor performance than conscious monitoring.     

Development and Validation of the Short Grit Scale (Grit–S)

Two experiments investigated the possibility that external statements in the Rotter I-E scale are more depressing in tone than internal statements, and thus depressed subjects may respond to external items due to item mood level rather than locus of control content. Results of Experiment 1 revealed that the external alternative was rated as more depressing than its internal counterpart for the majority Of the 23 I-E items (18 for females and 15 for males), while a small number of I-E items (3 for females and 6 for males) contained internal and external statements rated as balanced for depressing Content. For two I-E items the internal alternative was rated as more depressing. Results of Experiment 2 revealed that endorsement of external items was significantly related to self-reported depression for both total I-E score and for the item subset where external statements(as revealed in Experiment 1) were the more depressing of the item pair. External endorsement was not significantly related to depression for the I-E item subset where options are balanced for mood level, while endorsement of internal statements was related to depression only for the item subset where the internal option was rated as more depressing. These results were interpreted as supporting prior research which demonstrated mood response set using altered Rotter I-E scale items, Implications for use of the Rotter I-E scale in the study of depression were discussed.     

Prediction of locus of control stance from the earliest childhood memory

The study was designed to test whether data from the earliest childhood memory (EM) could predict a Rotter internal vs external locus of control stance. Main Study subjects were 215 undergraduates from introductory psychology classes. Those EMs which could be reliably scored and coded for control stance--153 of the 215 Main Study protocols--were examined for success at predicting Rotter control stance. A total of 127 of 153 control predictions were correct, which yielded a Chi Square of 67.51, p < .0005 for a 2 x 2 table. Further, all 5 EM content hypotheses, which were based on groupings of the 54 Pilot Study codes, yielded results significant at p < .05. These results were discussed as supporting the validity of EMs to predict control stance and as contributing to an understanding of the dynamic basis for and maintenance of a belief in internal vs external control.     

Assessment of self-conscious emotions: a Swedish psychometric and structure evaluation of the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA)

The Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA) is a well-established scenario-based questionnaire assessing self-conscious emotions, such as shame and guilt, which have been shown to be differentially associated with a variety of functional, motivational, behavioral and health outcomes. The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties and internal structure of a Swedish version of TOSCA in a sample of 361 healthy adults. The psychometric properties and internal consistency of the Swedish version were at level with the original US TOSCA version for shame, guilt and detachment. The internal structure of the Swedish version was acceptable for shame, guilt and detachment but contained shortcomings in assessment of externalization.     

Attribution Processes and Stages of Adult Life Development Among Adult University Students1

This study investigated the relationship between stages of adult life development and causal attributions for attending college among a sample of nontraditional students. It was hypothesized that the meaning of attending school is reflected in the kinds of attributions that are given for attending school. It was also hypothesized that internal attributions are more common at later stages of adult life development. The findings confirmed the existence of internal and external (career and situational) cognitive attributional dimensions, with the internal dimension being the strongest. Coherent stages of adult life development were identified, which corresponded to a transitional stage, an early adult stage, and a mid-adult stage. Students in the transitional stage were less likely to give external situational attributions, and students in the mid-life stage were more likely to give external situational attributions. There was also a tendency for internal attributions to increase during the mid-life phase, although the relationship was not highly significant. The findings are discussed in the context of attribution theory and adult life development theory as well as in terms of implications for educational policy.     

Index to Volume 117

In some individuals, noise appears to have an adverse effect on memory recall. This decrement may result from a shift in the memory strategy being employed. Studies have shown memory strategies used by persons with an internal locus of control differ from those used by persons with an external locus of control. The present investigation asked subjects who were classified as either internal or external in locus of control to recall words presented under conditions of noise and of quiet. Word recall was aided by providing subjects with potential memory strategies. Each word list included words from meaningful content categories (which favor a semantic strategy) and word pairs that rhymed (which favor a perceptual strategy). Though internal and external subjects did not differ in total words recalled, they did differ in their use of strategies. Whereas internal subjects' strategies were unaffected by noise, external subjects decreased their use of the higher level semantic memory strategy (content categories) and increased their use of lower level perpetual (rhymes) strategy in the noise condition. The results are discussed in terms of a differential arousal hypothesis.     

Analysis of a two-alternative force-choice signal detection theory model

A basic problem in psychophysics is recovering the mean internal response and noise amplitude from sensory discrimination data. Since these components cannot be estimated independently, several indirect methods were suggested to resolve this issue. Here we analyze the two-alternative force-choice method (2AFC), using a signal detection theory approach, and show analytically that the 2AFC data are not always suitable for a reliable estimation of the mean internal responses and noise amplitudes. Specifically, we show that there is a subspace of internal parameters that are highly sensitive to sampling errors (singularities), which results in a large range of estimated parameters with a finite number of experimental trials. Four types of singular models were identified, including the models where the noise amplitude is independent of the stimulus intensity, a situation often encountered in visual contrast discrimination. Finally, we consider two ways to avoid singularities: (1) inserting external noise to the stimuli, and (2) using one-interval forced-choice scaling methods (such as the Thurstonian scaling method for successive intervals).     

The causal influences of attributions on emotions: a procedural priming approach

According to attributional theories of emotion, feelings of guilt presuppose that the causes of a negative event are located within the individual (internal attribution), whereas feelings of anger presuppose that the causes of the eliciting event are located outside the individual (external attribution). This study tested whether these attributions in fact exert the claimed causal influence on emotional experiences. The study employed a procedural priming technique in which neutral events were repeatedly attributed either to oneself (internal attribution) or to another person (external attribution). Subsequently, participants were exposed to a negative event that was ambiguous as to its causes. The results reveal that the prior repeated use of internal attributions enhanced the tendency to experience guilt, whereas the repeated use of external attributions enhanced the tendency to experience anger. These findings support the assumption that attributions exert a causal influence on emotions.     

Effects of personality and situational variation in locus of control on cheating: determinants of the "congruence effect"

Thirty-two male and 32 female introductory psychology students were given the opportunity to falsely report success (i.e., to cheat) on a series of objectively unsolvable achievement tasks. Consistent with previous evidence, a Personality X Situational Locus of Control interaction effect, accounting for 24% of the variance, was found whereby persons classified as having generalized internal locus of control beliefs (internals) cheated more when the task was described as requiring skill while those with external control beliefs (externals) cheated more when chance presumably determined performance outcomes. Differing rates of task persistence, postperformance belief and affect ratings. and stated reasons for cheating (or not) were consistent with both affective and cognitive theories in explaining the cheating to conform to their status on the internal stable dimension of ability, externals were concerned with maintaining a belief in their status as fortunate individuals, also conceived as an internal stable attributional determinant. No sex differences in cheating or persistence behavior were found.     

Inhibition of Internal Attention to Positive and Negative Representations in Dysphoria

We developed the Internal–External Attention‐Switching Task, which measures the ability to inhibit internal attention and the ability to remove inhibition of internal attention. The Internal–External Attention‐Switching Task was administered to a sample of dysphoric and non‐dysphoric undergraduate or graduate students (N = 44). Difficulty in both inhibition of internal attention to negative representation and removal of this inhibition were shown to be general. Importantly, however, dysphoric individuals could not maintain internal attention or remove inhibition of internal attention to positive representations as easily as non‐dysphoric individuals could. Therefore, reduced attention to positive representations in dysphoric individuals may enable maintenance of their depressive mood.     

Development and Validation of the Xhosa Translations of the Beck Inventories: 2. Item Analysis,Internal Consistency and Factor Analysis

The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), and the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) were translated into Xhosa, a language widely spoken in South Africa to yield translated scales referred to as the XBDI-I (Xhosa BDI-II), the XBAI (Xhosa BAI) and the XBHS (Xhosa BHS). These scales were administered to a sample of 122 Xhosa respondents which included students and patients. The psychometric properties of the translated scales were comparable to those of the original English versions. Measures of internal consistency were as high as those for the validation studies in the USA and good item-scale correlations were obtained. This suggests that the translation yielded clinically useful scales which tap symptoms that are largely culturally universal.     

Some thoughts on the concept of the internal parental couple

Some patients are incapable of engaging in a relationship with a partner on a long-term basis. To explain these relationship issues, they invoke reasons that have to do with external reality rather than with their own internal reality. The authors present several clinical examples that have given rise to an initial attempt at theorizing the concept of the internal couple: some patients fail to internalize a positive representation in which they can see themselves as part of a couple. Psychoanalysts tend to think of the father and mother (or their internal representatives) as separate entities, differentiated and complementary, and not in terms of a single object that brings them together as an internal couple. In the author’s view, an internal parental couple is also internalized by the infant under the guise of various internal objects. The internal parental couple thus appears as a complex construction that goes beyond the mere addition of father plus mother. Underneath their neurotic veneer, these patients have severely damaged representations of internal parents and of the internal parental couple. Unable to identify with a stable and procreative internal parental couple, they tend also to attack the psychoanalytic couple. Early distortions in the oedipal sphere may be one cause of the stumbling-block they encounter on the way to introjecting a well-attuned couple-as-object and the idea of parenting.