Cognitive deficit or cognitive distortion in childhood depression

Three studies were conducted to evaluate cognitive disturbance and depression in children. In Study I, 47 sixth-grade children, including 17 who received a DSM-III diagnosis of depression, and their parents were independently interviewed with the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children, and they completed the Parent-Child Depression Inventory. Children completed the Children's Depression Inventory, the Matching Familiar Figures Test, and the My Standards Questionnaire. Results of Study 1 were consistent across raters and measures: Depression was associated with a negative style of processing self-evaluative information, while being unrelated to a processing deficit. A second study was initiated to replicate the results of Study 1 and to extend them to a wider age range of children. Thirty- eight third-, fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children, half of whom were depressed and half of whom indicated a minimum of depressive symptomatology on the Children's Depression Inventory, completed the Matching Familiar Figures Test and the My Standards Questionnaire. Results were very similar to those found in Study 1. A third study was conducted to test whether the self-perceptions of depressed children were accurately negative or negatively distorted, as judged against their teachers' observations of them. Results supported the hypothesis that depressed children exhibit a distorted style of processing self-evaluative information. The implications of the results for theory and treatment were discussed.This research was funded by the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, The University of Texas at Austin. The first two authors contributed equally to this investigation, and the order of their authorship was determined by the flip of a coin.     

Public panics: Problematic bodies in social space

This paper emerged from a three year study investigating the experience and management of Britain's night-time economy. In focus groups and interviews respondents spoke of their concern about uncivil behaviours on the streets after dark. Using public urination as one example of late-night incivility, I explore what it means to research a topic that circulates such themes as disgust, intimacy, and civility. However, in this paper I am not so much interested in the rights and wrongs of urinating in public, as in the discursive tensions that frame this topic, tensions which act to separate us along axes of moral/immoral, clean/dirty, male/female. In reference to the work of photographer Ellen Jong, who has photographed herself publicly urinating across various landscapes, the discussion turns to the notion of interest and disgust as ways of figuring the connections and disconnections that urinating in public elicits.     

Dissociating visual attention and effector selection in spatial precuing tasks

In this study the authors tested and rejected a recent proposal that response precuing effects depend on the spatial extent of the precues rather than on the number of response choices. Moreover, the authors tested and supported the hypothesis that the number of effectors in the response set is an important determinant of spatial precuing effects. Results of 4 experiments consistently showed that keypress responses generated a qualitatively different pattern of precuing effects than did pointing and detection responses. Together, the results establish a strong dissociation between planning pointing responses and planning keypress responses and suggest that precuing effects in 1-effector and multiple-effector visuomotor tasks are dominated by distinct and separate mechanisms, visual attention and effector selection, respectively.     

Multiphasic neuronal transfer functions for representing temporal structure

Neural network models of timing have struggled to account for animal timing capabilities using the accepted connectionist assumptions, in most cases without postulating the existence of explicit neuronal time-keeping mechanisms. Current ethological and physiological data, however, suggest that cellular oscillators form the foundation for animals’ temporal capacities. We propose that these oscillators could be used as temporal filters that capture the temporal structure of the animal’s experience. A model is presented that accounts for a number of the salient features of the feeding anticipatory response with only a single circadian filter. This model goes beyond current entrainment models in that it correctly predicts the relationship between the feeding period and the anticipatory interval. An alternative approach using multiple filters is examined that can account for animals’ ability to correctly anticipate two daily feeding times.     

Military service and moral obligation∗

The author investigates the view that there is a moral obligation to serve in the armed forces of the nation State of which one is a citizen resident (with special reference to young American men at the present time). It is conceded that under current law in this country there may be such a legal obligation, that many men may be obliged to render such service, and that under certain circumstances even a moral obligation to serve may also exist. What is denied is that any of the familiar theories of moral obligation is adequate in existing circumstances to establish this thesis in general. The result is either that a new theory of moral obligation must be developed to fit the current facts, or the present assessment of those facts must be fundamentally revised, or we must concede that draftees and men generally have no such moral obligation of service at all.     

Hemispheric asymmetry in the processing of negative and positive words: A divided field study

Research on the lateralisation of brain functions for emotion has yielded different results as a function of whether it is the experience, expression, or perceptual processing of emotion that is examined. Further, for the perception of emotion there appear to be differences between the processing of verbal and nonverbal stimuli. The present research examined the hemispheric asymmetry in the processing of verbal stimuli varying in emotional valence. Participants performed a lexical decision task for words varying in affective valence (but equated in terms of arousal) that were presented briefly to the right or left visual field. Participants were significantly faster at recognising positive words presented to the right visual field/left hemisphere. This pattern did not occur for negative words (and was reversed for high arousal negative words). These results suggest that the processing of verbal stimuli varying in emotional valence tends to parallel hemispheric asymmetry in the experience of emotion.     

Psychology in Pursuit of Justice: The Lives and Works of Emmanuel Levinas and Ignacio Martín-Baró

Psychological research and theory are inherently political and social practices. As such, these authors assert that social justice must be a primary concern of the psychological sciences. In case study format, the authors use the exceptional lives and works of continental philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and social psychologist Ignacio Martín-Baró to exemplify the recognition that justice must be centrally infused into psychological thought and practice. The life and work of philosopher Levinas is characterized by a concern for how Western philosophy has funded constructs of selfhood and identity that have created moral anemia and hampered our responsibility to others. Martín-Baró, a prominent Latin American researcher and educator, found research to be a powerful tool to expose oppressive social systems and widespread deception in an effort to end unjust practices, thereby affecting social change. Biographical material and details concerning their systems of research and thought will be used to illustrate what it means to engage in morally-just research and theorizing within the field of psychology.     

Googled assertion

Recent work in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science can help to explain why certain kinds of assertions—made on the basis of information stored in our gadgets rather than in biological memory—are properly criticizable in light of misleading implicatures, while others are not.     

Do sales and service compete? The impact of multiple psychological climates on frontline employee performance

This research examines how employees’ climate perceptions – or psychological climate – influence their performance of climate-related outcomes. We focus on two specific climates arguably most relevant to boundary-spanning organizations: service and sales climates. Building from the resource-allocation framework, the authors examine the way employees reconcile these multiple psychological climates. Polynomial regression and response surface modeling are used to test for the influence of these distinct climates on employee outcomes using a sample of 252 marketing employees and their 68 immediate supervisors. Specifically, the authors examine relationships between service and sales climates and the employee performance outcomes of customer satisfaction, helping behavior, effort, and sales performance. Results provide insight into the benefits and pitfalls of sales and service climates co-existing. Specifically we find that while sales effort is highest in climates that heavily favor sales, sales performance may exist in both sales-favored and service-favored climates (yet not in the presence of both). From a customer satisfaction perspective we find no significant impact of increasing sales climate in the presence of high service perceptions. These findings – both significant and non-significant – provide implications for future research in the realm of service-sales ambidexterity and interface as well as insight and direction for frontline managers.     

Genetic and Environmental Effects on Eudaimonic and Hedonic Well-Being: Evidence from a Post-Communist Culture

Prior behavioral genetic studies in positive psychology were entirely based on data from Western democracies, leaving the question open whether the magnitude of genetic effects on well-being indicators is similar in substantially different societal contexts. The aim of this study, therefore, was to investigate the structure of the genetic and environmental influences on happiness, life satisfaction, meaning in life, optimism, sense of coherence, and general well-being in a non-Western sample. Altogether, 100 monozygotic and 36 same-sex dizygotic twin pairs from Hungary (73 % female; M_age = 43 years, SD = 16 years) participated in the survey. Univariate classical twin modeling (ACE analysis) was performed using structural equation models. Heritability estimates of the positive psychological variables were largely variable, ranging from 0 % (happiness and meaning in life) to 67 % (life satisfaction). Also, estimates for the influence of common environment fell between 0 % (life satisfaction, sense of coherence, and well-being) and 60 % (meaning in life). Unshared environmental influences however, explained a moderate variance of all investigated variables (33–62 %). Most results were in line with previous findings from Western countries; however, some notable differences—e.g., lower hereditary influence for happiness or more robust role of shared environmental effects for optimism—were also established. These findings suggest that the communist and post-communist legacy did not produce drastic differences in the structure of heritability and environmental influences as compared to countries with longer traditions of democracy and economic prosperity.