The Role of Anxiety Sensitivity and Mindful Attention in Anxiety and Worry About Bodily Sensations Among Adults Living With HIV/AIDS

The current study examined cognitive factors that may be relevant to understanding anxiety and worry about bodily sensations among an HIV/AIDS population. Specifically, this investigation tested the main and interactive effects of anxiety sensitivity and mindful attention on anxious arousal, bodily vigilance, interoceptive fear, and HIV symptom distress among 164 adults with HIV/AIDS. Results indicated that anxiety sensitivity was positively related to anxious arousal, bodily vigilance, and interoceptive fear, but not HIV symptom distress. Mindful attention was negatively related to anxious arousal, interoceptive fear, and HIV symptom distress, but not bodily vigilance. These main effects for anxiety sensitivity and mindful attention were evident after controlling for disease stage, years with HIV, and demographic variables. There were no interactive effects between anxiety sensitivity and mindful attention. Results are discussed in terms of the clinical implications for identifying and treating anxiety and worry about bodily sensations among adults with HIV/AIDS. Limitations of this study include the use of cross-sectional data and self-report assessments.     

A sensitive period for language in the visual cortex: distinct patterns of plasticity in congenitally versus late blind adults

Recent evidence suggests that blindness enables visual circuits to contribute to language processing. We examined whether this dramatic functional plasticity has a sensitive period. BOLD fMRI signal was measured in congenitally blind, late blind (blindness onset 9-years-old or later) and sighted participants while they performed a sentence comprehension task. In a control condition, participants listened to backwards speech and made match/non-match to sample judgments. In both congenitally and late blind participants BOLD signal increased in bilateral foveal-pericalcarine cortex during response preparation, irrespective of whether the stimulus was a sentence or backwards speech. However, left occipital areas (pericalcarine, extrastriate, fusiform and lateral) responded more to sentences than backwards speech only in congenitally blind people. We conclude that age of blindness onset constrains the non-visual functions of occipital cortex: while plasticity is present in both congenitally and late blind individuals, recruitment of visual circuits for language depends on blindness during childhood.     

College‐Level Choice of Latino High School Students: A Social‐Cognitive Approach

Latino students attend 2‐year colleges more often than 4‐year colleges. This has an impact on the rate of bachelor's degree attainment, because the transfer rate between the 2 levels is low. The author uses national data to identify predictors associated with college‐level choice and then uses social‐cognitive career theory ( Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994 ) to frame counseling implications. Los estudiantes Latinos se matriculan con más frecuencia en estudios universitarios de 2 años que en estudios de 4 años. Esto produce un impacto en el porcentaje de obtención de licenciaturas, porque la tasa de transferencia entre ambos niveles es baja. El autor emplea datos a nivel nacional para identificar predictores asociados con la elección del nivel de estudios universitarios, y después emplea la teoría social cognitiva de las carreras ( Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994 ) para formular las implicaciones para la consejería.     

The Role of Incentive Framing on Training and Transfer of Learning in a Visual Threat Detection Task

We examined the effects of different incentives on skill acquisition and transfer during threat detection in airline luggage screening. The incentives were presented within positive (gains) or negative (losses) frames, and points were given or taken away accordingly during training (with familiar targets) and transfer (to novel targets). During training, incentives exerted a more beneficial effect on skill acquisition than training without incentives. During transfer, incentives benefitted performance largely when presented as losses or penalties. Incentives framed as gains primed participants to say ‘yes’ more often leading to a high ratio of false positives; however, incentives framed as losses lead participants to become more selective in their ‘yes’ responses leading to a lower number of false positives but a comparable probability of correct detections. Interestingly, participants that received no training outperformed participants that received incentive‐based training, suggesting that incentives actually constrained rather than helped transfer of learning in this study. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Role of Implicit Measurement in the Assessment of Risky Behavior: A Pilot Study with African American Girls

With the aim of developing a novel strategy for identifying vulnerability for early sexual activity and adjustment problems, African American girls (n?=?39) completed partially structured scenarios in which female characters of similar age faced circumstances characterized by varying levels of risk. Most girls indicated that they believed the characters would have sex, regardless of their own sexual history or the level of risk in the scenario. However, the combination of girls’ sexual history and girls’ predictions of characters’ behavior in the scenario provided more information regarding the girls at greatest risk for adjustment problems. Implicit techniques offer an additional strategy for identifying girls most vulnerable to adjustment difficulties in the context of early sexual activity.     

Phonotactic acquisition in healthy preterm infants

Previous work has shown that preterm infants are at higher risk for cognitive/language delays than full‐term infants. Recent studies, focusing on prosody (i.e. rhythm, intonation), have suggested that prosodic perception development in preterms is indexed by maturational rather than postnatal/listening age. However, because prosody is heard in‐utero, and preterms thus lose significant amounts of prenatal prosodic experience, both their maturation level and their prosodic experience (listening age) are shorter than that of full‐terms for the same postnatal age. This confound does not apply to the acquisition of phonetics/phonotactics (i.e. identity and order of consonants/vowels), given that consonant differences in particular are only perceived after birth, which could lead to a different developmental pattern. Accordingly, we explore the possibility that consonant‐based phonotactic perception develops according to listening age. Healthy French‐learning full‐term and preterm infants were tested on the perception of consonant sequences in a behavioral paradigm. The pattern of development for full‐term infants revealed that 7‐month‐olds look equally at labial‐coronal (i.e. /pat/) compared to coronal‐labial sequences (i.e. /tap/), but that 10‐month‐olds prefer the labial‐coronal sequences that are more frequent in the French lexicon. Preterm 10‐month‐olds (having 10 months of phonetic listening experience but 7 months of maturational age) behaved as full‐term 10‐month‐olds. These results establish that preterm developmental timing for consonant‐based phonotactic acquisition is based on listening age (experience with input). This questions the interpretation of previous results on prosodic acquisition in terms of maturational constraints, and raises the possibility that different constraints apply to the acquisition of different phonological subcomponents.     

What Valentine Announcements Reveal about the Romantic Emotions of Men and Women

Gender differences in the expression of romantic emotions were investigated by analyzing the content of 300 Valentine’s Day announcements. The emotions studied were love, praise, commitment, and fidelity, as expressed by dating and married individuals. Women emphasized love and fidelity relatively more than men did; men emphasized praise and commitment relatively more than women did. Relationship status influenced the gender differences; most interesting is that dating men expressed commitment, but not fidelity. Social-cultural and evolutionary perspectives are considered in the interpretation of the findings.     

Dialectic and dialogue in the hermeneutics of Paul Ricœur and H.G. Gadamer

The present paper uses the theme of dialectic and dialogue to begin unraveling the similarities and differences between the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur and H.G. Gadamer. Ricoeur is shown to distance himself from Heidegger by insisting on a dimension of explanation and distanciation (which he sometimes identifies with Plato's `descending dialectic') that cannot be reduced to, or absorbed by, understanding and appropriation. This same move, however, leads him to reject Platonic dialogue, with the attendant prioritizing of oral conversation over the written text, as a model for hermeneutics. Ricoeur therefore sees in Gadamer's recourse to such a model a regression to the problematic position of Heidegger. Yet the conception of philosophy as dialectical and dialogical which Gadamer finds in Plato is capable of responding to Ricoeur's objections. Where the fundamental difference between the hermeneutics of Ricoeur and Gadamer emerges is in the question of whether experience is fundamentally dialectical and whether language is inherently dialogical.     

La représentation sociale des droits de l'homme: Une recherche internationale sur l'étendue et les limites de l'universalité

La perception des violations des droits de l'homme par de jeunes individus insérés dans des contextes nationaux différents est-elle organisée selon des principes comparables à ceux d'experts ou d'institutions internationales? La présente étude contribue à élucider cette question en la situant dans le champ de la psychologie sociale. La représentation sociale des droits humains a été analysée par le biais d'un questionnaire standardisé soumis à des sujets de quatre pays (Costa Rica, France, Italie et Suisse) âgés de 13 à 20 ans. Les résultats montrent que les individus partagent dans une large mesure une conception institutionnelle des droits humains. De fortes variations à l'intérieur et entre les contextes nationaux apparaissent néanmoins, en particulier dans la délimitation des libertés individuelles et du contrôle étatique.