Experimental comparison of dyspnea and pain

Dyspnea and pain are similarly unpleasant, alarming physical sensations, but studies examining both sensations in combination are lacking. In the present study, dyspnea was induced in 7 healthy volunteers by breathing through inspiratory resistive loads and the effects were compared with those of a heat pain stimulus. End-tidal partial pressures of carbon dioxide (PET_CO2), inspiratory time (Ti), breathing frequency (f), experienced unpleasantness, and intensity were measured. No difference was observed between dyspnea and pain in experienced intensity and unpleasantness (p >.05). During dyspneic stimulation, slightly higherTi was found than for pain (p<.08). PET_CO2 showed slight increases during the dyspneic versus the baseline and painful conditions (ΔPET_CO2=1.5 and 1.3 mmHg, respectively;p<.01 andp<.05). This study shows that the effects of dyspnea and heat pain can be compared within one experiment; both stimuli can be presented with similar intensity and unpleasantness, which is a prerequisite for comparing responses to them. The changes in PET_CO2 between our conditions were minimal, allowing an application of the present design to future fMRI studies.     

Father-infant interaction, paternal ideas about early child care, and their consequences for the development of children's self-recognition

In this longitudinal study, the authors addressed intracultural variation on fathers' interactions with their 3-month-old infants, their ideas about parental care, and the timing of their children's self-recognition at the age of 18-20 months. Participants were 24 middle-class German fathers and their firstborn children. Two behavioral clusters emerged: a more proximal parenting style with extensive body contact and a more distal parenting style with extensive object stimulation. Fathers in the distal cluster had significantly more education than did fathers in the proximal cluster. Children who had experienced more distal parenting were more likely to recognize themselves in a mirror than were children with more proximal parenting. The authors discuss the results with respect to fathers' influence on child development and patterns of intracultural variation.     

Refining the Openness–Performance Relationship: Construct Specificity,Contextualization, Social Skill,and the Combination of Trait Self- and Other-Ratings

Scholars have raised concerns that openness to experience has ambiguous relationships with performance. In this study, we examine both openness and one of its more narrow dimensions, learning approach. In addition, the research context was made narrow (i.e., higher education academic performance in science), and social skill was interactively combined with peer- and self-rated personality in the prediction of academic performance (i.e., grades). We found that those high on learning approach, but not openness, 1 year later performed better academically than those lower on learning approach. Furthermore, for those high and average on social skill, increased peer-rated learning approach was associated with higher performance. Finally, the combination of self- and other-ratings of learning approach was a better predictor of academic performance than the combination of self- and other-ratings of openness. The relationship of openness with academic performance benefits from narrowing predictors and criteria, framing the study within a relevant context, accounting for social skill, and combining self- and other trait ratings.     

Beyond Single-Mindedness: A Figure-Ground Reversal for the Cognitive Sciences

A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists.     

Anne‐Thérèse de Lambert on Aging and Self‐Esteem

This article studies Madame de Lambert's early eighteenth‐century views on aging, and especially the aging of women, by contextualizing them in a twofold way: (1) It understands them as a response to La Rochefoucauld's skepticism concerning aging, women, and the aging of women; (2) It understands them as being closely connected to a long series of scattered remarks concerning esteem, self‐esteem, and honnêteté in Lambert's moral essays. Whereas La Rochefoucauld describes aging as a decline of intellectual, emotional, and physical powers and is suspicious of the mechanisms of esteem and self‐esteem, Lambert develops a view of aging as offering the chance to become more independent of the judgment of others, especially the chance for women to become more independent of the judgment of men. As she argues, aging offers women the possibility of cultivating genuinely estimable intellectual and emotional qualities that attract the justified esteem essential for a stable friendship, as well as the opportunity to develop a form of self‐esteem that is based on respect for one's own capacities of judgment.     

Beat the Heat: Effects of a Motivational Self-Talk Intervention on Endurance Performance

The study examined the effects of a motivational self-talk intervention on endurance cycling performance in hot conditions. Participants were 16 physically active adult men. After a baseline VO₂ peak assessment and two training sessions, participants completed a 30 min cycling trial in a hot environment (35°C, 45% relative humidity) while maintaining a steady rate of perceived exertion. Participants of the intervention group produced greater power output during the final third of the trial. Findings suggest that the self-talk strategy seems to have compromised the aversive effects of the demanding environmental conditions and provide support for the psychobiological model of endurance performance.     

Leader Inquisitiveness,Political Skill,and Follower Attributions of Leader Charisma and Effectiveness: Test of a moderated mediation model

Given the variability in personality's relationship with leadership and the use of personality measures in leader selection and assessment, we examine the joint influence of leader trait inquisitiveness and leader political skill on subordinate perceptions of leader charisma and effectiveness. Findings indicate a positive main effect of political skill on charisma, the positive relationship between inquisitiveness and charisma is moderated by heightened political skill, and charisma mediates the relationship between the inquisitiveness by political skill interaction and perceived effectiveness. The moderated mediation results of our study suggest that organizations should not only select creative and imaginative leaders, but also select those who are politically skilled or provide political skill training.     

Pain modulation during drives through cold and hot virtual environments.

Evidence exists that virtual worlds reduce pain perception by providing distraction. However, there is no experimental study to show that the type of world used in virtual reality (VR) distraction influences pain perception. Therefore, we investigated whether pain triggered by heat or cold stimuli is modulated by "warm "or "cold " virtual environments and whether virtual worlds reduce pain perception more than does static picture presentation. We expected that cold worlds would reduce pain perception from heat stimuli, while warm environments would reduce pain perception from cold stimuli. Additionally, both virtual worlds should reduce pain perception in general. Heat and cold pain stimuli thresholds were assessed outside VR in 48 volunteers in a balanced crossover design. Participants completed three 4-minute assessment periods: virtual "walks " through (1) a winter and (2) an autumn landscape and static exposure to (3) a neutral landscape. During each period, five heat stimuli or three cold stimuli were delivered via a thermode on the participant's arm, and affective and sensory pain perceptions were rated. Then the thermode was changed to the other arm, and the procedure was repeated with the opposite pain stimuli (heat or cold). We found that both warm and cold virtual environments reduced pain intensity and unpleasantness for heat and cold pain stimuli when compared to the control condition. Since participants wore a head-mounted display (HMD) in both the control condition and VR, we concluded that the distracting value of virtual environments is not explained solely by excluding perception of the real world. Although VR reduced pain unpleasantness, we found no difference in efficacy between the types of virtual world used for each pain stimulus.     

Country-specific or convergent? A typology of immigrant policies in Western Europe

This article raises the question as to whether European immigrant policies are shaped by country-specific traditions of nation-state building or whether, on the contrary, they are converging toward the same policy goals. On the basis of four case studies of 30 years of policy development (United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Netherlands), the authors develop a broad typology of immigrant policies in Western Europe. This typology shows that in the shadow of the debate on different “integration models”, Western European countries have implemented a whole range of similar immigrant policies. However, in policy fields touching the core of historically established notions of how state and society should relate to each other—notably the struggle against discrimination and the opening of public institutions to immigrants—significant differences persist.