A Descriptive Study of Pain and Quality of Life following Guillain-Barré Syndrome: One Year Later

Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is a debilitating immunopathy that afflicts approximately 5,000 patients annually in the United States, a number that represents roughly half of the incidence of spinal cord injuries (J. M., Meythaler, 1997). Of these 5,000 new cases per year, 4–15% will die, 20% will possess deficits in ambulation or require ventilator assistance more than one year later, and more than two-thirds will have persistent fatigue (J. M., Meythaler, 1997; Hughes et al., 2003). These figures suggest that GBS is currently a legitimate cause of long-term disability.Many secondary complications may follow GBS that include dysautonomia, deep vein thrombosis, anemia, immobilization, and pain and sensory involvement (J. M., Meythaler, 1997; J. M. Meythaler, M. J. De Vivo, and W. C. Braswell, 1997). These medical complications have not been studied systematically, and the psychosocial complication of pain following GBS has certainly been overlooked in the literature. The present paper utilized a limited sample of 18 patients (N = 18) with persistent motor deficits at least one year after onset of GBS. We examined their pain and perceived quality of life as part of an ongoing federally funded study which will ultimately attempt to determine if 4-aminopyridine (4-AP) significantly improves motor function in patients with residual weakness from GBS. Findings suggest that while most persons do not rate themselves as depressed one year after GBS onset, 22% of respondents did exceed the cutoff for clinical depression on the CES-D. Age and gender do not appear to be related to any component of pain in GBS; however, self-ratings of physical and mental health do appear to be significantly related to pain experience. The nature of this relationship was not determined, and merits further investigation in future studies.     

Developmental changes in the linguistic brain after puberty

The development of reading skills is a complex and very long-lasting process. In an influential study Booth et al. demonstrated age-related changes in the activation of a network of left hemisphere regions, including the inferior frontal area, the superior temporal gyrus, and the angular gyrus. Interestingly, they found that the angular gyrus, which is involved in the mapping between phonological and orthographic representation, is automatically activated in adults during visual orthographic tasks not requiring this operation.     

The Influence of Positive Affect on Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: Facilitating Enjoyment of Play,Responsible Work Behavior,and Self-Control

Two experiments demonstrated that positive affect fosters intrinsic motivation, as reflected by choice of activity in a free-choice situation and by rated amount of enjoyment of a novel and challenging task, but also promotes responsible work behavior in a situation where the work needs to be done. Where there was work that needed to be done, people in the positive-affect condition reduced their time on the enjoyable task, successfully completed the work task, but also spent time on the more enjoyable task. These results indicate that positive affect does foster intrinsic motivation, and enjoyment and performance of enjoyable tasks, but not at the cost of responsible work behavior on an uninteresting task that needs to be done. Implications for the relationship between positive affect and such aspects of self-regulation as forward-looking thinking and self-control are discussed.

A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: implications for the origins of sex differences

This article evaluates theories of the origins of sex differences in human behavior. It reviews the cross-cultural evidence on the behavior of women and men in nonindustrial societies, especially the activities that contribute to the sex-typed division of labor and patriarchy. To explain the cross-cultural findings, the authors consider social constructionism, evolutionary psychology, and their own biosocial theory. Supporting the biosocial analysis, sex differences derive from the interaction between the physical specialization of the sexes, especially female reproductive capacity, and the economic and social structural aspects of societies. This biosocial approach treats the psychological attributes of women and men as emergent given the evolved characteristics of the sexes, their developmental experiences, and their situated activity in society.     

Language-guided visual processing affects reasoning: The role of referential and spatial anchoring

Language is more than a source of information for accessing higher-order conceptual knowledge. Indeed, language may determine how people perceive and interpret visual stimuli. Visual processing in linguistic contexts, for instance, mirrors language processing and happens incrementally, rather than through variously-oriented fixations over a particular scene. The consequences of this atypical visual processing are yet to be determined. Here, we investigated the integration of visual and linguistic input during a reasoning task. Participants listened to sentences containing conjunctions or disjunctions (Nancy examined an ant and/or a cloud) and looked at visual scenes containing two pictures that either matched or mismatched the nouns. Degree of match between nouns and pictures (referential anchoring) and between their expected and actual spatial positions (spatial anchoring) affected fixations as well as judgments. We conclude that language induces incremental processing of visual scenes, which in turn becomes susceptible to reasoning errors during the language-meaning verification process.     

Prospective risk factors for subsequent exposure to potentially traumatic events

Abstract

In a sample of 1528 college students, we examined (1) whether several risk factors prospectively predicted exposure to potentially traumatic events (PTEs) over a 2-month period and (2) whether dependent events (i.e., those more likely to depend upon one's behavior or characteristics) and independent events were predicted by different risk factors. Logistic regression analyses indicated that overall subsequent PTE exposure was higher for women, those with more previous PTEs, and those who engaged in more binge drinking. Female gender and previous PTE exposure also predicted exposure to independent events. Subsequent dependent PTE exposure was predicted by more previous PTEs and binge drinking, and was somewhat higher in ethnic minority students. Implications for prevention efforts are discussed.     

The Prediction of Family Interaction from a Battery of Projective Techniques

This study first explored the adequacy of items on the Rorschach Rating Scale (RRS), which measures Rorschach constructs from a variety of scoring systems. Analyses determined that all items had an adequate capacity to differentiate people and none were clearly redundant. At the same time, the current version of the RRS requires good reading comprehension skills for accurate completion (13th grade level). Next, we developed two sets of RRS scales. Factor analysis of observer ratings (N = 234) indicated the RRS contained six broad, empirically derived factors. In addition, 19 conceptually derived scales were developed from the RRS item pool. Both sets of scales were evaluated for reliability and then compared to the Big Five model (B5M) of personality through a series of factor and regression analyses. Results indicated that RRS scales do not provide adequate definition of all B5M dimensions and B5M scales do not provide adequate definition of all RRS dimensions. We discuss the place of psychotic processes within a comprehensive model of personality and other implications from these findings.     

College Students' Judgments and Perceptions of Persons with AIDS From Different Risk Groups

In this analog study, 104 female and 75 male undergraduate students in the United States read 1 of 8 vignettes that described a person who had just received positive HIV antigen results. The vignettes were identical except for the sex of the person described and his or her risk-group membership (gay, heterosexual, injection-drug user, or hemophiliac). After reading the vignette, the participants completed questionnaires assessing (a) responsibility, blame, and personality characteristics of the person described in the vignette; and (b) their own homophobia and knowledge about AIDS. Results revealed that homophobia was a significant covariate that affected participants' perceptions of the person in the vignette. with homophobia as a covariate, the hemophiliac was judged the least harshly, followed by the heterosexual person, the gay person, and the injection-drug user. No gender differences were revealed. The injection-drug user was evaluated the most negatively on the personality characteristics; the other 3 groups were rated similarly. Analyses without homophobia as a covariate revealed significant gender differences, suggesting that prior research findings of gender differences on perceptions of persons with AIDS may be attributable more to differential levels of homophobia than to gender of the rater.