Testing factor models of the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version and their association with instrumental aggression

Although there is a documented link between psychopathy and instrumental violence in adult offenders, the association between these constructs has not garnered significant attention in adolescent offenders. In this study, we evaluated the relationship between psychopathy and instrumental aggression in a sample of 122 male adolescents incarcerated in a state facility for serious and chronic offenders. We evaluated the primary (2-, 3-, and 4-factor) models of the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV; Forth, Kosson, & Hare, 2003) and assessed their relationship to a separate 5-item measure of instrumental violence. CFA revealed good model fit for the 3- and 4-factor latent variable models of adolescent psychopathy and a single-factor model reflecting a 5-item measure of instrumental violence. Structural equation modeling results indicate that the 4-factor model accounted for 20% of the variance for instrumental violence. In contrast, the 3-factor model of the PCL:YV accounted for 8%, and the 2-factor model accounted for 5% of the variance associated with instrumental violence.     

Youth sport motivational climate and attitudes toward migrants’ acculturation: The role of empathy and altruism

Previous research has shown that an empowering motivational climate in organized sport has been linked to attitudes favoring migrants’ integration. The purpose of the present study was to further test the relationship between motivational climate and acculturation attitudes, and to explore the role of prosocial skills as potential mediators of this relationship in adolescent athletes from the host population. Participants were 338 (13.61 ± .95 years of age) Greek adolescents (167 girls) participating in organized sport. Participants’ acculturation attitudes, prosocial skills, and perceptions of the coach-created motivational climate were measured. Analysis of structural models revealed that an empowering motivational climate was positively related with prosocial skills, reflecting empathy and altruism, which in turn were positively linked with acculturation attitudes favoring migrants’ integration. The results of the present study replicate previous findings regarding the links between empowering motivational climate and acculturation attitudes, and further, provide evidence that prosocial skills such as empathy and altruism mediate this relationship.     

Religiosity,spirituality, mental health,and mental health treatment outcomes in Australia: a systematic literature review

The relationship between religiosity and mental health is a relatively well-researched field within North America, covering numerous domains of religiosity, including: religion, spirituality, prayer, church attendance, church affiliation and belief in God or a higher power. Considering the Australian literature, there are few papers that explore these dimensions of religiosity and their relationship with health, and in particular, very little research into the field of religiosity and mental health. Using systematic literature review methods, this study explores the Australian research into relationships between religiosity, mental health, and treatment outcomes for psychiatric illness and suicidal behaviour.     

NonREM sleep mentation in chronically-treated persons with schizophrenia

This study examined the laboratory dream content reported by 14 patients with schizophrenia and 15 controls, with a focus on reports obtained from NonREM sleep. Both the controls' and patients' frequency of dream recall following awakenings from NonREM and REM sleep were similar to values reported for healthy participants. Patients' NonREM sleep narratives were shorter than those from controls. When compared to their reports from REM sleep, both groups' NonREM sleep reports included significantly fewer words and reportable items. The controls were more likely to report a subjective feeling of bizarreness for their REM sleep reports as compared to their NonREM sleep reports. This difference was not observed in patients with schizophrenia. Taken together, these findings suggest few differences between the NonREM sleep mentation of patients with schizophrenia and of controls and that sleep stage cognitive style is comparable in both groups, with NonREM sleep reports being more thought-like, less elaborate and bizarre than REM sleep reports.     

Early modulation of visual input: A study of attentional strategies

Despite agreement among many attentional theories that processing resources are limited and allocated according to task demands, controversy continues about the locus of selectivity. Studies of spatial orientation of attention suggest an early effect. These results, however, can be explained instead by effects of decision processes. The present study avoids this difficulty by directly manipulating attention in a dual-task paradigm and by using SDT to dissociate sensory tuning from criterion shifts. Ten subjects judged whether two lines to the left of fixation were the same or different in length; they also judged two lines presented simultaneously to the right. In a given block of 64 trials, the subject was to allocate 80%, 50%, or 20% of attention to one pair of lines and the rest to the other. On every trial, the subject judged both pairs. Results showed that d' increased from 0.77 with 20% allocation to 1.69 with 80%, indicating that sensitivity is modulated by attentional instructions. These results are predicted quantitatively by Luce's sample-size model.     

‘A Glorious Sun and a Bad Person’. Wittgenstein,Ethical Reflection and the Other

Most commentators working on Wittgenstein’s remarks on ethics note that he rejects the very possibility of traditional normative ethics, that is, a philosophically justified normative guide for right conduct. In this article, Wittgenstein’s view of ethical reflection as presented in his notebooks from 1936 to 1938 is investigated, and the question of whether it involves ethical guidance is addressed. In Wittgenstein’s remarks, we can identify three requirements inherent in ethical reflection. The first two is revealed in the realisation that ethical reflection presupposes both a clear understanding of oneself and a normative ideal of how one ought to live and reason. The third source of normativity springs from the fact that ethical reflection involves a relationship with the other, not as judge, but as example and addressee. In this way, ethical reflection is essentially relational. In the article, we unfold how these three normative sources figure in Wittgenstein’s remarks, especially how the third requirement, the relationship with the other, shows both a point of conversion and a difference between his view of ethics and religious faith. It will also be argued that even if Wittgenstein thus presents ethical reflection as a normatively guided activity, the content of the guidance is personal, springing solely from the reflecting individual.     

Olfactory fear conditioning induces field potential potentiation in rat olfactory cortex and amygdala

The widely used Pavlovian fear-conditioning paradigms used for studying the neurobiology of learning and memory have mainly used auditory cues as conditioned stimuli (CS). The present work assessed the neural network involved in olfactory fear conditioning, using olfactory bulb stimulation-induced field potential signal (EFP) as a marker of plasticity in the olfactory pathway. Training consisted of a single training session including six pairings of an odor CS with a mild foot-shock unconditioned stimulus (US). Twenty-four hours later, the animals were tested for retention of the CS as assessed by the amount of freezing exhibited in the presence of the learned odor. Behavioral data showed that trained animals exhibited a significantly higher level of freezing in response to the CS than control animals. In the same animals, EFPs were recorded in parallel in the anterior piriform cortex (aPC), posterior piriform cortex (pPC), cortical nucleus of the amygdala (CoA), and basolateral nucleus of the amygdala (BLA) following electrical stimulation of the olfactory bulb. Specifically, EFPs recorded before (baseline) and after (during the retention test) training revealed that trained animals exhibited a lasting increase (present before and during presentation of the CS) in EFP amplitude in CoA, which is the first amygdaloid target of olfactory information. In addition, a transient increase was observed in pPC and BLA during presentation of the CS. These data indicate that the olfactory and auditory fear-conditioning neural networks have both similarities and differences, and suggest that the fear-related behaviors in each sensory system may have at least some distinct characteristics.     

A detrimental effect of emotion on picture recollection

Several studies indicate that the recollection process, as assessed by the Remember-Know paradigm (Tulving, 1985) is enhanced for emotional stimuli as compared with neutral ones. The goal of this study was to assess the influence of emotion on recollection process, applying the Processes Dissociation Procedure (PDP; Jacoby, 1991) on emotional and neutral pictures. A total of 63 participants (aged 40-78 years) were included in this study, and the PDP was implemented by a list discrimination task. The results indicate that recollection estimate is lower for positive and negative pictures compared with neutral ones. This finding contrasts with others using the Remember-Know procedure (e.g., Ochsner, 2000) but is in agreement with the previously described trade-off effect (e.g., Jurica and Shimamura, 1999).