Experienced disgust causes a negative interpretation bias: a causal role for disgust in anxious psychopathology

This paper reports the results of an experiment investigating the effect of induced disgust on interpretational bias using the homophone spelling task. Four groups of participants experienced a disgust, anxiety, happy or neutral mood induction and then completed the homophone spelling task which requires the participant to interpret ambiguous words presented through headphones. Both the disgust and anxiety groups interpreted significantly more threat/neutral homophones as threat than both the happy and neutral groups; the disgust group also interpreted significantly fewer positive/neutral homophones as positive than the happy group. These findings are consistent with the view that induced disgust causes a negative interpretational bias which is similar to that reported for anxiety. The results could not be interpreted in terms of the disgust induction concurrently raising levels of self-reported anxiety, but could be interpreted in terms of disgust maintaining existing levels of anxiety. The effect of disgust was to facilitate negative interpretations rather than emotional interpretations regardless of valence. These findings provide the basis for a causal role for disgust in anxious psychopathology. Because the effect is a non-specific emotion-congruent one, elevated disgust levels will result in a predisposition to interpret information in a threatening way across a broad range of anxious- and threat-relevant domains.     

Event-related FMRI study of context processing in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of patients with schizophrenia

Context processing is conceptualized as an executive function involved in voluntary, complex actions such as overcoming automatic responses. The present study tested the hypothesis that context-processing deficits in patients with schizophrenia are associated with a dysfunction of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 17 controls and 17 medicated patients performed a version of the AX task in which a learned, automatic response had to be inhibited. In controls, left DLPFC activity increased when preparing to overcome an automatic response, whereas patients with schizophrenia showed no differential activation. In controls, context processing appeared to be associated with the differential representation of cues associated with the need to provide top-down support for overcoming automatic responses. This mechanism appeared to be impaired in patients with schizophrenia.     

Psychometric characteristics of the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Inventory in South Africa

The psychometric properties of the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Inventory are reported, based on responses of 200 (88 men and 112 women) elementary science teachers in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Previous factor analytic studies of this inventory have identified a two-factor solution but this has not been investigated in a South African context. The reliability estimated as internal consistency (Cronbach alpha) was .87. Principal components analysis with varimax rotation indicated a two-factor solution accounting for 38.1% of variance, with Cronbach alphas of .92 and .73 for the Personal Science Teaching Efficacy Belief subscale (Factor 1) and the Science Teaching Outcome Expectancy subscale (Factor 2), respectively. Principal components analysis of the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Inventory yielded two conceptually meaningful components, similar to those reported in literature. Although one item did not meet the conditions for acceptance, this inventory may be useful in understanding science teachers' efficacy beliefs in South Africa. These particular findings are preliminary but hopeful. Studies using confirmatory analysis to address the cross-national invariance of this inventory are needed.     

Recent development of cognitive and neuropsychological assessment in Asian countries

There is a growing trend of research in neuropsychological assessment in Asia: The mean number of published studies increased from 1.8 in the 1980s to 16.0 in 2 recent years. About 40% of the studies reviewed concerned test development or adaptation, with the latter greatly outnumbering the former. To facilitate the test selection for clinical use, 36 clinical measures were evaluated based on some statistical criteria. The results showed that only 8 neuropsychological tests (5 Chinese, 2 Korean, and 1 Japanese) met the criteria. Given that Asian and Western populations differ on certain cognitive processes, future development of neuropsychological assessment measures in Asia should move from the adaptation of Western tests toward the construction of original tests with better ecological validity.     

Will the "secular priests" of bioethics work among the sinners?

In this paper I explore briefly the "secular priesthood" metaphor often applied to bioethicists. I next ask: if, despite our discomfort with the metaphor, we were to embrace the best aspects of the priesthood(s)--which I identify as the missionaries' willingness to work among sinners and lepers, at their own peril--would we be able to live up to that standard of bravery? I then draw a parallel with the fears of contagion currently be voiced (by Carl Elliott and others), with regard to bioethicists working in or near coporate settings. I argue that such fears may themselves have a number of deleterious effects, and I suggest several possible positive steps in response to that fear.     

The Budapest meeting 2005 intensified networking on ethics of science

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6-9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science.     

A mood-as-input account of perseverative checking: the relationship between stop rules, mood and confidence in having checked successfully

The present paper reports the results of two experiments designed to test predictions from the mood-as-input account of perseverative checking. Using an analogue checking task, both experiments showed that perseveration, as indicted by a range of measures relevant to compulsive checking, was affected by the configuration of the stop rule for the task and mood at the outset of checking. Perseveration was most significant in the condition that most closely resembled the characteristics of obsessive-compulsive checkers (negative mood combined with a stop rule that specifies that the task should be done as thoroughly as possible--namely, an 'as many as can' stop rule). The studies also indicated that confidence at having completed the checking task successfully was (1) significantly related to the use of 'as many as can' stop rules at the outset of checking, (2) mood ratings at the end of checking, and (3) checking perseveration generally. These findings provide support for a mood-as-input explanation of perseverative psychopathologies such as compulsive checking, and begin to cast some light on how anxiety-reduction and 'confidence' models of compulsive checking, might be explained within broader mechanisms of perseveration.     

The crucial role of tense for verb production

The case of an aphasic patient whose spontaneous speech contains very few lexical verbs is reported. Instead of sentences with lexical verbs, the patient produces many (grammatical) copular constructions. He also substitutes lexical verbs with the copula. Although this results in ungrammatical utterances, by doing so, a resemblance of sentence structure and a degree of grammaticality of his utterances are preserved. Although the patient is more impaired in naming action than object pictures, it is unlikely that lexical retrieval difficulties are solely responsible for the paucity of lexical verbs in his speech. A series of tests revealed a profound deficit in producing tense marking inflections and in understanding their significance. We argue that the unavailability of tense features is the primary reason for the lack of lexical verbs in his speech. An alternative possibility, that the tense deficit interacts with the verb retrieval deficit, is also discussed. The patient has a complex lesion and language profile, with features associated with both Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. However, since the study focuses on his verb and tense deficits and the grammaticality of his utterances, issues that are often discussed in relation to agrammatic Broca's aphasia, the literature that is relevant to these topics and to Broca's aphasia is reviewed, despite the different diagnostic profile of the patient.     

Natural concepts in a juvenile gorilla (gorilla gorilla gorilla) at three levels of abstraction

The extent to which nonhumans are able to form conceptual versus perceptual discriminations remains a matter of debate. Among the great apes, only chimpanzees have been tested for conceptual understanding, defined as the ability to form discriminations not based solely on simple perceptual features of stimuli, and to transfer this learning to novel stimuli. In the present investigation, a young captive female gorilla was trained at three levels of abstraction (concrete, intermediate, and abstract) involving sets of photographs representing natural categories (e.g., orangutans vs. humans, primates vs. nonprimate animals, animals vs. foods). Within each level of abstraction, when the gorilla had learned to discriminate positive from negative exemplars in one set of photographs, a novel set was introduced. Transfer was defined in terms of high accuracy during the first two sessions with the new stimuli. The gorilla acquired discriminations at all three levels of abstraction but showed unambiguous transfer only with the concrete and abstract stimulus sets. Detailed analyses of response patterns revealed little evidence of control by simple stimulus features. Acquisition and transfer involving abstract stimulus sets suggest a conceptual basis for gorilla categorization. The gorilla's relatively poor performance with intermediate-level discriminations parallels findings with pigeons, and suggests a need to reconsider the role of perceptual information in discriminations thought to indicate conceptual behavior in nonhumans.