Extraversion and neuroticism in team sport participants, individual sport participants, and nonparticipants

Scores on Extraversion and on Neuroticism as measured by the Eysenck Personality Inventory were compared for 90 undergraduate team sport participants, individual sport participants, and nonparticipants (43 men, 47 women, M age = 20.3 yr.). From past research and Eysenck's biological theory of personality, it was hypothesized that sport participants would score higher on Extraversion and lower on Neuroticism than nonparticipants, and that team participants would score higher on Extraversion and perhaps higher on Neuroticism than individual sport participants. By comparing scores for students in first year and final year, it was also investigated whether pre-existing personality differences drew people to sport (the gravitational hypothesis) or whether personality changed as a function of sport participation (the developmental hypothesis). The main findings were that team participants scored higher on Extraversion than both individual sport participants and nonparticipants, and that test scores did not change over time, supporting the gravitational hypothesis for Extraversion.     

Working memory deficits in transgenic rats overexpressing human adenosine A2A receptors in the brain

Adenosine receptors in the central nervous system have been implicated in the modulation of different behavioural patterns and cognitive functions although the specific role of A(2A) receptor (A(2A)R) subtype in learning and memory is still unclear. In the present work we establish a novel transgenic rat strain, TGR(NSEhA2A), overexpressing adenosine A(2A)Rs mainly in the cerebral cortex, the hippocampal formation, and the cerebellum. Thereafter, we explore the relevance of this A(2A)Rs overexpression for learning and memory function. Animals were behaviourally assessed in several learning and memory tasks (6-arms radial tunnel maze, T-maze, object recognition, and several Morris water maze paradigms) and other tests for spontaneous motor activity (open field, hexagonal tunnel maze) and anxiety (plus maze) as modification of these behaviours may interfere with the assessment of cognitive function. Neither motor performance and emotional/anxious-like behaviours were altered by overexpression of A(2A)Rs. TGR(NSEhA2A) showed normal hippocampal-dependent learning of spatial reference memory. However, they presented working memory deficits as detected by performance of constant errors in the blind arms of the 6 arm radial tunnel maze, reduced recognition of a novel object and a lack of learning improvement over four trials on the same day which was not observed over consecutive days in a repeated acquisition paradigm in the Morris water maze. Given the interdependence between adenosinic and dopaminergic function, the present results render the novel TGR(NSEhA2A) as a putative animal model for the working memory deficits and cognitive disruptions related to overstimulation of cortical A(2A)Rs or to dopaminergic prefrontal dysfunction as seen in schizophrenic or Parkinson's disease patients.     

Tötungsdelinquenten im Normalvollzug unter besonderer Berücksichtigung psychiatrisch unauffälliger Mörder

We collected data on 121 cases of homicide and manslaughter in the normal penitentiary system and counted the cases of perpetrators with, and without, psychiatric diagnosis. About 30% of the sample consisted in perpetrators without any psychiatric diagnosis; in contrast, about 40% were diagnosed as personality disorder; some few cases (7%) were classified as alcoholism or polytoxicomania, respectively; and the rest (23%) were cases of both personality disorder and alcoholism/polytoxicomania. Perpetrators without psychiatric diagnosis differed in systematic ways from perpetrators with psychiatric diagnosis. The former committed their offenses more on victims in partnership and family, while perpetrators with psychiatric diagnosis frequently offended strangers. Perpetrators lacking a diagnosis used poison, and striking to dead, relatively more frequently while homicide and manslaughter by stabbing, shooting, or some combination thereof were committed mainly by perpetrators with psychiatric diagnosis. Diagnosed perpetrators had more frequently been previously convicted (nearly 70%). In sum we found a considerable percentage of perpetrators who lacked a psychiatric diagnosis. We argue that this group can properly be distinguished from perpetrators who have some psychiatric diagnosis.     

Draining the pond: why Singer’s defense of the duty to aid the world’s poor is self-defeating

Philosophical Studies - Peter Singer’s defense of the duty to aid the world’s poor by the pond analogy is self-defeating. It cannot be both true that you ought to save the drowning...     

Connecting Dempster–Shafer Belief Functions with Likelihood-based Inference

The Dempster–Shafer approach to expressing beliefabout a parameter in a statistical model is notconsistent with the likelihood principle. Thisinconsistency has been recognized for some time, andmanifests itself as a non-commutativity, in which theorder of operations (combining belief, combininglikelihood) makes a difference. It is proposed herethat requiring the expression of belief to be committed to the model (and to certain of itssubmodels) makes likelihood inference very nearly aspecial case of the Dempster–Shafer theory.     

Counterfactual closeness and predicted affect

Empirical research on counterfactual thinking has found a closeness effect: people report higher negative affect if an actual outcome is close to a better counterfactual outcome. However, it remains unclear what actually is a “close” miss. In three experiments that manipulate close counterfactuals, closeness effects were found only when closeness was unambiguously defined either with respect to a contrasted alternative, or with respect to a categorical boundary. In a real task people failed to report greater negative affect when encountering a close numerical miss, while they predicted greater negative affect hypothetically. These results show that counterfactual closeness effects on affect depend on closeness being accessible and unambiguously defined.     

Group therapy: The Elgin plan

Pastoral Psychology -