Specifying the impulsivity of female inmates with borderline personality disorder

Impulsivity is regarded as a core feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD; M. C. Zanarini, J. G. Gunderson, & F. R. Frankenburg, 1989) despite lack of evidence from laboratory research (D. M. Dougherty, J. M Bjork, H. C. G. Huckabee, F. G. Moeller, & A. C. Swann, 1999). This study examined impulsivity in incarcerated women with BPD using a passive avoidance task (J. P. Newman & W. A. Schmitt, 1998) and the Impulsiveness-Monotony Avoidance-Detachment inventory (IMD; D. Schalling, 1978). As predicted, incarcerated women diagnosed with BPD committed more passive avoidance errors and reported more impulsivity on the IMD than controls. These findings identify disinhibition as a potentially important component of the impulsivity that characterizes BPD. Specifying the impulsive behavior identified with BPD may contribute to the effective assessment and management of the disorder.     

Utilization of emotion cues in male and female offenders with antisocial personality disorder: results from a lexical decision task

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) diagnoses have demonstrated good reliability and validity in male offenders. However, there is a paucity of research assessing utilization of emotion cues in ASPD individuals and the extent to which correlates of ASPD in males generalize to females. This investigation examined emotion utilization in incarcerated men and women with and without ASPD using a lexical decision task with emotional and neutral words. The performance of male offenders with ASPD was similar to that of male controls, whereas women with ASPD demonstrated greater emotional facilitation than female controls. Moreover, the number of violent crimes committed by female inmates with ASPD was related to emotion facilitation, suggesting a link between their sensitivity to emotion cues and antisocial behavior.     

Structure and stimulus familiarity: a study of memory in chess-players with functional magnetic resonance imaging

A grandmaster and an international chess master were compared with a group of novices in a memory task with chess and non-chess stimuli, varying the structure and familiarity of the stimuli, while functional magnetic resonance images were acquired. The pattern of brain activity in the masters was different from that of the novices. Masters showed no differences in brain activity when different degrees of structure and familiarity where compared; however, novices did show differences in brain activity in such contrasts. The most important differences were found in the contrast of stimulus familiarity with chess positions. In this contrast, there was an extended brain activity in bilateral frontal areas such as the anterior cingulate and the superior, middle, and inferior frontal gyri; furthermore, posterior areas, such as posterior cingulate and cerebellum, showed great bilateral activation. These results strengthen the hypothesis that when performing a domain-specific task, experts activate different brain systems from that of novices. The use of the experts-versus-novices paradigm in brain imaging contributes towards the search for brain systems involved in cognitive processes.     

Communication strategies to promote spiritual well-being among people with dementia

Declining communication skills in dementia threaten a person's sense of self. Building on enduring capabilities, pastoral visitors can significantly enhance spiritual well-being through the use of individualized, person-centered strategies. This article outlines the primary spiritual needs of older adults with dementia and some general strategies to improve communication based on enduring abilities. Detailed examples illustrate how these personhood-centered strategies can meet spiritual needs by connecting with individuals with dementia through life stories and through helping them to participate in religious life.     

Why distinctive information reduces false memories: evidence for both impoverished relational-encoding and distinctiveness heuristic accounts

Two accounts explain why studying pictures reduces false memories within the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm (J. Deese, 1959; H. L. Roediger & K. B. McDermott, 1995). The impoverished relational-encoding account suggests that studying pictures interferes with the encoding of relational information, which is the primary basis for false memories in this paradigm. Alternatively, the distinctiveness heuristic assumes that critical lures are actively withheld by the use of a retrieval strategy. When participants were given inclusion recall instructions to report studied items as well as related items, they still reported critical lures less often after picture encoding than they did after word encoding. As the impoverished relational-encoding account suggests, critical lures appear less likely to come to mind after picture encoding than they do after word encoding. However, the results from a postrecall recognition test provide evidence in favor of the distinctiveness heuristic.     

An examination of the value of the generation effect for learning new material

The generation effect involves an improvement in memory when learners must complete or modify materials. Several researchers have suggested that this effect involves enhanced access to learners' existing memory representations; therefore, the effect should be less effective with meaningless, low meaningful, or unfamiliar material. In the present study, the authors conducted 4 experiments in which legal nonwords were used, and they found no generation effect. In another 2 experiments in which familiar clichés were contrasted with new sentences and with unfamiliar sentences from textbooks, the results showed a greatly reduced generation effect for the new, unfamiliar material. Those findings suggest that memory strategies that depend on the generation effect will have limited effectiveness when they are applied to new or unfamiliar material.     

Experimental tests of an attitudinal theory of the gender gap in voting

This research examined the hypothesis that gender gaps in voting stem from differences in the extent to which men and women agree with candidates' issue stances. Two initial experiments portraying candidates by their sex and attitudes and a third experiment that also included information about political party produced the predicted attitudinal gender-congeniality effect: Participants of each sex reported greater likelihood, compared with participants of the other sex, of voting for the candidate who endorsed positions typically favored more by their own sex than the other sex. In addition, this gender-congeniality effect was present among Republican and independent participants but absent among Democratic participants because Democratic men as well as women favored candidates who advocated the positions typically favored by women. Interpretation invoked the importance of group interest based on gender as an influence on women's voting.     

Potential Mediators in Parenting and Family Intervention: Quality of Mediation Analyses

Parenting and family interventions have repeatedly shown effectiveness in preventing and treating a range of youth outcomes. Accordingly, investigators in this area have conducted a number of studies using statistical mediation to examine some of the potential mechanisms of action by which these interventions work. This review examined from a methodological perspective in what ways and how well the family-based intervention studies tested statistical mediation. A systematic search identified 73 published outcome studies that tested mediation for family-based interventions across a wide range of child and adolescent outcomes (i.e., externalizing, internalizing, and substance-abuse problems; high-risk sexual activity; and academic achievement), for putative mediators pertaining to positive and negative parenting, family functioning, youth beliefs and coping skills, and peer relationships. Taken as a whole, the studies used designs that adequately addressed temporal precedence. The majority of studies used the product of coefficients approach to mediation, which is preferred, and less limiting than the causal steps approach. Statistical significance testing did not always make use of the most recently developed approaches, which would better accommodate small sample sizes and more complex functions. Specific recommendations are offered for future mediation studies in this area with respect to full longitudinal design, mediation approach, significance testing method, documentation and reporting of statistics, testing of multiple mediators, and control for Type I error.