Attachment patterns and emotion regulation strategies in the second year

With the aim of studying the relationship between methods of emotion regulation and quality of attachment we examined 39 infants with different patterns of attachment, of whom 20 were classified as secure (B), 12 as avoidant (A) and 7 as resistant (C), assessing the regulatory strategies adopted by them during the Strange Situation at 13 months. Secure infants used strategies of positive social engagement more than insecure avoidant infants, while resistant infants displayed greater negative social engagement and less object orientation than the other two groups. Avoidant infants adopted positive and negative hetero-regulatory strategies less than the other groups, also differing from resistant infants in their greater use of object regulatory strategies. There were no significant differences as regards self-comforting regulation. Thus, the findings showed how the most significant differences to emerge between the groups concerned hetero-regulatory strategies, developed by the infant in interaction with attachment figures, and regulatory strategies oriented towards objects. Further analysis showed how the use by part of each attachment group of the emotion regulation strategies varies, differentiating the episodes of the SSP according to their level of stress.     

Assessing human reorientation ability inside virtual reality environments: the effects of retention interval and landmark characteristics

The purpose of the present study was to assess the navigational behaviour of adult humans following a disorientation procedure that perturbed their egocentric frame of reference. The assessment was carried out in a virtual reality (VR) environment by manipulating the disorientation procedure, the retention interval, the relative positions of target and landmark. The results of experiment I demonstrated that adding a physical rotation to a virtual disorientation procedure did not yield an additional decrease in searching performance. The results of experiment II showed that shortening the delay between study and test phase decreased the errors more markedly for geometric than landmark ones. An orientation specificity effect due to the manipulation of the relative position between target and landmark was discussed across the experiments. In conclusion, VR seemed to be a valuable method for studying human reorientation. Moreover, the virtual experimental setting involved here promoted knowledge of the relationship between working memory and spatial reorientation paradigm.     

When affordances climb into your mind: Advantages of motor simulation in a memory task performed by novice and expert rock climbers

Does the sight of multiple climbing holds laid along a path activate a motor simulation of climbing that path? One way of testing whether multiple affordances and their displacement influence the formation of a motor simulation is to study acquired motor skills. We used a behavioral task in which expert and novice rock climbers were shown three routes: an easy route, a route impossible to climb but perceptually salient, and a difficult route. After a distraction task, they were then given a recall test in which they had to write down the sequence of holds composing each route. We found no difference between experts and novices on the easy and impossible routes, whereas on the difficult route, the performance of experts was better than that of novices. This suggests that seeing a climbing wall activates a motor, embodied simulation, which relies not on perceptual salience, but on motor competence. More importantly, our results show that the capability to form this simulation is modulated by individuals’ motor repertoire and expertise, and that this strongly impacts recall.     

Ferrajoli’s Argument for Structural Entrenchment

This paper engages with Ferrajoli’s contribution to the philosophical debate on constitutional democracy and in particular his conception of ‘structural entrenchment’, or the basis upon which one can defend the normativity of the Constitution as ‘higher law’, which can trump or limit legislation, without infringing democratic principles. Ferrajoli’s own understanding of ‘structural entrenchment’ is compared to Rawls’s and Dworkin’s arguments in support of it. Ferrajoli’s position is neither grounded on a philosophy of history, as in Rawls, nor on a version of moral realism, as for Dworkin, but on a formal understanding of the nature of fundamental rights, and in a conception of democratic sovereignty as ‘joint ownership.’     

Temperament and Character Inventory - Revised (TCI-R) 1 year after the earthquake of L’Aquila (Italy)

The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the impact of L’Aquila earthquake (Italy) on the Temperament and Character Inventory - Revised (TCI-R) administered 1 year after the earthquake to a community sample of 375 subjects exposed to the earthquake and 480 non-exposed. Exposed people showed variations in the adaptive response to stress with higher Persistence (P) and lower Harm Avoidance (HA) dimensions among adult and lower self directedness (SD) and higher Harm Avoidance (HA) in older people. No differences in young adults were seen. Temperament and character dimensions are sensitive to trauma exposure in different ways in different age groups.     

MK-801-Induced Disruptions of One-Trial Inhibitory Avoidance Are Potentiated by Stress and Reversed by Naltrexone

Five experiments were carried out to investigate opioid and NMDA receptor-mediated responses to one-trial inhibitory avoidance training in CD1 mice. In the first experiment immediate posttraining intraperitoneal administration of the noncompetitive N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist MK-801 impaired the performance of mice. The effects of MK-801 were time-dependent (they were absent in mice injected with the drug starting 120 min after training). No effect was evident in no-foot-shock groups, showing lack of proactive influence of the treatment on performance. In the second experiment preexposure of the mice to the testing apparatus decreased the effects of MK-801. In the the third experiment naltrexone antagonized the effects of MK-801, suggesting an involvement of opioid neurons. In the fourth experiment immediate posttraining immobilization stress exerted a potentiating effect on the performance of MK-801-injected animals. In the fifth experiment the potentiation of the impairing effect of MK-801 induced by immobilization stress was antagonized by naltrexone.     

Age-related Assessment of Postural Control Development: A Cross-sectional Study in Children and Adolescents

Abstract

The aim of this study was to outline an age-dependent range of posturography measures obtained from healthy children. One hundred and fifty healthy 4–18-year-old children underwent video Head Impulse Test and static posturography testing. Surface, length and power spectra values were compared between each group of pupils and 32 healthy adults. As well as a significant (p?<?0.025) increase in surface and length, when compared to healthy adults, increased values within the low/middle frequency domain and within the high frequency domain were also observed in 4–13 and 4–7-year-old children, respectively. In conclusion, although the nature of postural control development remains largely undetermined, this study represents a first attempt to outline an age-dependent normal range of the relative contribution of inputs in typically developing children.