Factors of the psychopathic personality inventory: criterion-related validity and relationship to the BIS/BAS and five-factor models of personality

Psychopathy is a personality disorder that includes interpersonal-affective and antisocial deviance features. The Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) contains two underlying factors (fearless dominance and impulsive antisociality) that may differentially tap these two sets of features. In a mixed-gender sample of undergraduates and prisoners, we found that PPI fearless dominance was related to low Behavioral Inhibition System activity, high Behavioral Activation System (BAS) activity, expert prototype psychopathy scores, and primary psychopathy. Impulsive antisociality was related to high BAS activity and all psychopathy measures. High Extraversion and Openness and low Neuroticism and Agreeableness predicted fearless dominance, whereas high Neuroticism and low Agreeableness and Conscientiousness predicted impulsive antisociality. Although low levels of Agreeableness predicted both PPI factors, their differential relations with other five-factor model traits highlight differences in the way psychopathy manifests itself. Consistent with movements toward assessing personality disorder using the five-factor model, the authors report regression-based equations for the clinical assessment of these psychopathy dimensions using the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R).     

A Prevalence Study on Internalizing Problems Among Primary School Children in Hong Kong

Studies in Hong Kong indicated that there is a tendency for young children to use internalizing as a means to cope with their daily difficulties. Mother–child relationship has been seen as a factor affecting a child’s adaptive coping skills. In this study, we explored the prevalence of internalizing problems among primary school children in Hong Kong, as well as the mother–child relationship that contribute to children’s internalizing problems. Data used to assess the internalizing behavior among 1598 primary school children were collected from their mothers. The estimated prevalence of internalizing problem was 11.4%. This prevalence was based on the cutoff point for internalizing disorders according to the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). The CBCL internalizing score was significantly correlated with mother–child relationship as measured using the Parent–Child Relationship Questionnaire (PCRQ). Results from the PCRQ indicated that children’s internalizing problems were positively correlated with mother’s use of verbal punishment and rejection as well as their possessiveness and protection on their children. On the other hand, a nurturing and intimate relationship between mother and child was an important factor contributing to the development of mentally healthy children. Implications of this study and suggestions for further research were discussed.     

Towards a neural basis of auditory sentence processing

Functional dissociations within the neural basis of auditory sentence processing are difficult to specify because phonological, syntactic and semantic information are all involved when sentences are perceived. In this review I argue that sentence processing is supported by a temporo-frontal network. Within this network, temporal regions subserve aspects of identification and frontal regions the building of syntactic and semantic relations. Temporal analyses of brain activation within this network support syntax-first models because they reveal that building of syntactic structure precedes semantic processes and that these interact only during a later stage.     

Grammar overrides frequency: evidence from the online processing of flexible word order

We show that online processing difficulties induced by word order variations in German cannot be attributed to the relative infrequency of the constructions in question, but rather appear to reflect the application of grammatical principles during parsing. Event-related brain potentials revealed that dative-marked objects in the initial position of an embedded sentence do not elicit a neurophysiologically distinct response from subjects, whereas accusative-marked objects do. These differences are predictable on the basis of grammatical distinctions (i.e. underlying linguistic properties), but not on the basis of frequency information (i.e. a superficial linguistic property). We therefore conclude that the former, but not the latter, guides syntactic integration during online parsing.     

The Influence of Families on Early Adolescent School Connectedness: Evidence That This Association Varies with Adolescent Involvement in Peer Drinking Networks

School connectedness is central to the long term well-being of adolescents, and high quality parent–child relationships facilitate school connectedness. This study examined the extent to which family relationship quality is associated with the school connectedness of pre- and early teenagers, and how this association varies with adolescent involvement in peer drinking networks. The sample consisted of 7,372 10–14 year olds recruited from 231 schools in 30 Australian communities. Participants completed the Communities that Care youth survey. A multi-level model of school connectedness was used, with a random term for school-level variation. Key independent variables included family relationship quality, peer drinking networks, and school grade. Control variables included child gender, sensation seeking, depression, child alcohol use, parent education, and language spoken at home. For grade 6 students, the association of family relationship quality and school connectedness was lower when peer drinking networks were present, and this effect was nonsignificant for older (grade 8) students. Post hoc analyses indicated that the effect for family relationship quality on school connectedness was nonsignificant when adolescents in grade 6 reported that the majority of friends consumed alcohol. The results point to the importance of family-school partnerships in early intervention and prevention.     

The effects of emotional arousal and gender on the associative memory deficit of older adults

In this study we assessed the potential moderating roles of stimulus type (emotionally arousing) and participants’ characteristics (gender) in older adults’ associative memory deficit. In two experiments, young and older participants studied lists that included neutral and emotionally arousing word pairs (positive and negative) and completed recognition tests for the words and their associations. In Experiment 1, the majority of the word pairs were composed of two nouns, whereas in Experiment 2 they were composed of adjective–noun pairs. The results extend evidence for older adults’ associative deficit and suggest that older and younger adults’ item memory is improved for emotionally arousing words. However, associative memory for the word pairs did not benefit (and even showed a slight decline) from emotionally arousing words, which was the case for both younger and older adults. In addition, in these experiments, gender appeared to moderate the associative deficit of older adults, with older males but not females demonstrating this deficit.     

Navigating Public Prejudices: The Impact of Media and Attitudes on High-Profile Female Political Leaders

Predictions from the stereotype content model (SCM; Fiske et al. 2002) that suggest high-status career women are perceived as competent but cold were tested with a sample of college students in California (N?=?294; 51% female; M age?=?21.49). Participants completed measures of sexism and attitude extremity, read a positive or negative article about a female senator, and rated her warmth and competence. Results indicate positive media coverage counteracts the competent but cold prediction of the SCM. In the context of negative media, extreme hostile sexism predicted evaluations of low warmth and competence; however, males with less extreme sexist attitudes had greater warmth and competence evaluations. Results are discussed in relation to the SCM and worldview confirmation hypothesis.     

Who is buying bioethics research?

Growing ties to private industry have prompted many to question the impartiality of academic bioethicists who receive financial support from for-profit corporations in exchange for ethics-related services and research. To the extent that corporate sponsors may view bioethics as little more than a way to strengthen public relations or avoid potential controversy, close ties to industry may pose serious threats to professional independence. New sources of support from private industry may also divert bioethicists from pursuing topics of greater social importance, such as the needs of medically underserved communities. To inform ongoing debates about the financing of bioethics and its transparency to those concerned about potential sources of bias, we examined funding disclosures appearing in original research reports in major bioethics journals. Reviewing research published over a 15-year period, we found little evidence that for-profit corporations are influencing bioethics research directly. Instead, we found evidence that a great number of organizations, both public and private, support bioethics research. These findings suggest that worries about the cooption of bioethics research by a few interested stakeholders are greatly overstated and undersupported by available data.     

Neural correlates of perceptual narrowing in cross‐species face‐voice matching

Integrating the multisensory features of talking faces is critical to learning and extracting coherent meaning from social signals. While we know much about the development of these capacities at the behavioral level, we know very little about the underlying neural processes. One prominent behavioral milestone of these capacities is the perceptual narrowing of face–voice matching, whereby young infants match faces and voices across species, but older infants do not. In the present study, we provide neurophysiological evidence for developmental decline in cross‐species face–voice matching. We measured event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) while 4‐ and 8‐month‐old infants watched and listened to congruent and incongruent audio‐visual presentations of monkey vocalizations and humans mimicking monkey vocalizations. The ERP results indicated that younger infants distinguished between the congruent and the incongruent faces and voices regardless of species, whereas in older infants, the sensitivity to multisensory congruency was limited to the human face and voice. Furthermore, with development, visual and frontal brain processes and their functional connectivity became more sensitive to the congruence of human faces and voices relative to monkey faces and voices. Our data show the neural correlates of perceptual narrowing in face–voice matching and support the notion that postnatal experience with species identity is associated with neural changes in multisensory processing ( Lewkowicz & Ghazanfar, 2009 ).     

The interleaving of actions in everyday life multitasking demands

It has been argued that executive tests should capture central aspects of executive functions in everyday life such as initiating and monitoring parallel actions in low-structured environments (so-called multitasking; see Burgess, 2000). We present a cooking task in order to assess executive function impairments in brain-damaged patients, which focuses on a central feature of multitasking, the interleaving of tasks (Burgess, 2000). Behavioural performance of 21 brain-damaged patients (stroke, traumatic brain injury) and of a group of matched controls was analysed on the basis of a standardized protocol. In comparison to controls, the patients explored less, were less successful in monitoring their actions and corrected errors less efficiently. Interleaving of actions was observed less frequently in patients, with respect to both cooking itself as well as to subordinate goals (e.g., cleaning up). Interleaving proved efficient, as it was associated with less time to complete the task. Patients' scores in the cooking task correlated with performance in both the Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS) Zoo Map Test and the BADS Six Elements Test, but not with tests of attention, verbal memory, or figural fluency, thus demonstrating convergent and discriminant validity. In summary, our task demonstrates that cooking can provide a valid testing ground for assessing a central aspect of everyday multitasking demands, namely, the interleaving of actions.