Three dimensions of coping and a look at their evolutionary origin

Serious problems persist concerning the conceptualization and measurement of the coping construct. This study examines the properties and factor structure of the COPE questionnaire, one of the most widely used instruments to measure coping, in a sample of 471 patients. A series of exploratory factor procedures are applied at the item- and scale-level, and the resulting solutions are tested both by their congruence with previously published structures and by confirmatory techniques. Our finding of three robust, generalizable, and parsimonious second-order dimensions—Engagement, Disengagement, and Help-Seeking—challenges the original structure. The results are discussed from an evolutionary perspective, on the assumption that the recognition of coping as the activation of vestigial defenses may make a substantial contribution to clarifying its functions and organization.     

Numerical estimation in blind subjects: evidence of the impact of blindness and its following experience

Vision was for a long time considered to be essential in the elaboration of the semantic numerical representation. However, early visual deprivation does not seem to preclude the development of a spatial continuum oriented from left to right to represent numbers (J. Castronovo & X. Seron, 2007; D. Szücs & V. Csépe, 2005). The authors investigated the impact of blindness and its following experience on a 3rd property of the mental number line: its obedience to Weber's law. A group of blind subjects and a group of sighted subjects were submitted to 2 numerical estimation tasks: (a) a keypress estimation task and (b) an auditory events estimation task. Blind and sighted subjects' performance obeyed Weber's law. However, blind subjects demonstrated better numerical estimation abilities than did sighted subjects, especially in contexts involving proprioception, indicating the existence of better mapping abilities between the symbolic representations of numbers and their corresponding magnitude representations, obeying Weber's law (e.g., J. S. Lipton & E. Spelke, 2005). These findings suggest that blindness and its following experience with numbers might result in better accuracy in numerical processing.     

Semantic errors reconsidered in the procedural light of stack concepts

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of the stack concept in neuropsycholinguistics, a stack being a file with serially ordered elements. Number names (one, two, three, …) and the names of the days in the week may be viewed in this way. In a stack structure, any element is identified by two pieces of information: the particular stack to which it belongs and its position within that stack. Two experiments are reported that demonstrate a double dissociation. A deep dyslexic patient with agrammatism was found to sort stack elements on the basis of identity of position-within-stacks, while a fluent aphasic with semantic verbal paraphasias used another criterion, grouping together the items of the same stack. First revealed when handling number names, the two psycholinguistic procedures are also shown to be differentially operative with other linguistic material. Introducing the stack concept thus permits a procedural reinterpretation of some “semantic confusions,” particularly but not exclusively those dealing with quantities.     

Intellectual Humility as Attitude

Intellectual humility, I argue in this paper, is a cluster of strong attitudes (as these are understood in social psychology) directed toward one's cognitive make‐up and its components, together with the cognitive and affective states that constitute their contents or bases, which serve knowledge and value‐expressive functions. In order to defend this new account of humility I first examine two simpler traits: intellectual self‐acceptance of epistemic limitations and intellectual modesty about epistemic successes. The position defended here addresses the shortcomings of both ignorance and accuracy based accounts of humility.     

IMPACT OF PARENTAL BINGE EATING DISORDER: EXPLORING CHILDREN'S EMOTIONAL/BEHAVIORAL PROBLEMS AND THE QUALITY OF PARENT–CHILD FEEDING INTERACTIONS

This study examines psychopathological problems in children of parents with binge eating disorder (BED), particularly the effect of parental diagnosis on their offspring's psychopathology and the mediating power of the quality of parent–infant feeding interactions. Two hundred parents and their offspring were administered a questionnaire for the assessment of their children's psychopathology at 18 (T1) and 36 (T2) months of age. An observational measure to evaluate feeding interactions was administered at T1. Children with both parents with BED showed the highest affective, anxiety, oppositional/defiant, and autism spectrum problems, but no influence of paternal diagnosis was found on the offspring's psychopathology. Maternal BED had an influence on children's affective and autism spectrum problems, and diagnosis of BED in both parents had an effect on infants’ affective problems. Paternal BED had an effect on oppositional/defiant problems through the quality of father–infant interactions, and maternal BED had an effect on the offspring's affective and anxiety problems through the mediation of mother–infant interactions. These results suggest the importance of intervention programs focusing both on parental psychopathology and on mother–child and father–child feeding interactions in families with parents with BED.     

The precision of spatial selection into the focus of attention in working memory

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Attention helps manage the information held in visual working memory (vWM). Perceptual attention selects the stimuli to be represented in vWM, whereas internal...     

A systematic review of psychoneuroimmunology-based interventions

Psychoneuroimmunology-based interventions are used to attenuated disease progression and/or side effects of pharmacological treatment. This systematic review evaluates the different therapeutic and/or clinical psychoneuroimmunology-based interventions associated to both psychological, neuroendocrine and immunological variables. The review was conducted for all English, Portuguese and Spanish language articles published between 2005 and 2015. Independent investigators analyzed 42 studies concerning human psychoneuroimmunology-based interventions. Decreased levels of cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine (stress-related hormones) were associated to interventions like yoga, meditation, tai chi, acupuncture, mindfulness, religious/spiritual practices, cognitive behavior therapy, coping and physical exercises. Moreover, those interventions were also associated to reductions in inflammatory processes and levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines in cancer, HIV, depression, anxiety, wound healing, sleep disorder, cardiovascular diseases and fibromyalgia. Despite the associations between PNI variables and clinical/therapeutic interventions, only one study evidenced significant effects on a disease progression.     

“The Notion of Neutrality in Clinical Ethics Consultation”

Clinical ethics consultation (CEC), as an activity that may be provided by clinical ethics committees and consultants, is nowadays a well-established practice in North America. Although it has been increasingly implemented in Europe and elsewhere, no agreement can be found among scholars and practitioners on the appropriate role or approach the consultant should play when ethically problematic cases involving conflicts and uncertainties come up. In particular, there is no consensus on the acceptability of consultants making recommendations, offering moral advice upon request, and expressing personal opinions. We translate these issues into the question of whether the consultant should be neutral when performing an ethics consultation. We argue that the notion of neutrality 1) functions as a hermeneutical key to review the history of CEC as a whole; 2) may be enlightened by a precise assessment of the nature and goals of CEC; 3) refers to the normative dimension of CEC. Here, we distinguish four different meanings of neutrality: a neutral stance toward the parties involved in clinical decision making, toward the arguments offered to frame the discussion, toward the values and norms involved in the case, and toward the outcome of decision making, that is to say the final decision and action that will be implemented. Lastly, we suggest a non-authoritarian way to intend the term “recommendation” in the context of clinical ethics consultation.