Love: an important dimension in marital research and therapy

How do men and women describe and assess their relationship? What themes are decisive for its quality and stability? To answer such questions, we investigated a random sample of 204 married couples (reference sample), and 31 married couples undergoing psychotherapy (clinical sample) using a newly developed questionnaire. The participating couples were asked to evaluate a total of 19 themes with respect to their importance for the couple's connectedness. Although only rarely directly addressed in couple therapy and in‐vestigated in couple research, the theme “Love” proved to be the decisive factor for quality and stability. The results of the present study, therefore, indicate that “Love” should be investigated more thoroughly in couple research and included more actively in diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.     

Acute stress facilitates trace eyeblink conditioning in C57BL/6 male mice and increases the excitability of their CA1 pyramidal neurons

The effects of stress (restraint plus tail shock) on hippocampus-dependent trace eyeblink conditioning and hippocampal excitability were examined in C57BL/6 male mice. The results indicate that the stressor significantly increased the concentration of circulating corticosterone, the amount and rate of learning relative to nonstressed conditioned mice, and the excitability of CA1 hippocampal pyramidal neurons. Behaviorally, there was no effect of the stressor on control mice that received unpaired presentations of the tone and periorbital shock, i.e., neither stressed nor nonstressed control mice showed an increase in conditioned responding that was above baseline levels. Biophysically, the stressor significantly decreased the amplitude of the post-burst afterhyperpolarization (AHP) and decreased spike frequency accommodation relative to cells from nonstressed control mice. The effect was significant for mice that were stressed either 1 h or 24 h earlier. The results suggest that the stressor increases the excitability of hippocampal pyramidal neurons and that the mechanism underlying this increase may contribute to the more rapid acquisition of hippocampally dependent eyeblink conditioning.     

Rhyming words and onset-rime constituents: an inquiry into structural breaking points and emergent boundaries in the syllable

Geudens and Sandra, in their 2003 study, investigated the special role of onsets and rimes in Dutch-speaking children's explicit phonological awareness. In the current study, we tapped implicit phonological knowledge using forced-choice similarity judgment (Experiment 1) and recall of syllable lists (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, Dutch-speaking prereaders judged rime-sharing pseudowords (/fas/-/mas/) to sound more similar than pseudowords sharing an equally sized nonrime unit (/fas/-/fak/). However, in a syllable recall task (/tepsilonf/, /ris/, /nal/), Dutch-speaking prereaders were as likely to produce recombination errors that broke up the rime (/tepsilons/) as to produce errors that retained the rime (/repsilonf/). Thus, a rime effect was obtained in a task that highlighted the phonological similarity between items sharing their rimes, but this effect disappeared in tasks without repetition of rime units. We conclude that children's sensitivity to rimes depends on similarity relations and might not reflect a fixed perceived structure of spoken syllables.     

Haptic detection of sine-wave gratings

We studied human haptic perception of sine-wave gratings. In the first experiment we measured the dependence of amplitude detection thresholds on the number of cycles and on the wavelength of the gratings. In haptic perception of sine-wave gratings, the results are in agreement with neural summation. The rate at which detection thresholds decrease with increasing number of cycles is much higher than can be accounted for by probability summation alone. Further, neural summation mechanisms describe the detection thresholds accurately over the whole spatial range probed in the experiment, that is wavelengths from 14 mm up to 225 mm. Earlier, we found a power-law dependence of thresholds on the spatial width of Gaussian profiles (Louw et al, 2000 Experimental Brain Research 132 369-374). The current results extend these findings; the power-law dependence holds not only for Gaussian profiles, but also for a broad range of sine-wave gratings with the number of cycles varying between 1 and 8. Haptic perception involves tactual scanning combined with an active, dynamic exploration of the environment. We measured characteristics of the velocity and force with which stimuli were scanned while performing a psychophysical task. One particularly surprising finding was that, without being instructed, participants maintained an almost constant scanning velocity during each 45-min session. A constant velocity in successive trials of the experiment might facilitate or even be necessary for discrimination. Further, a large systematic dependence of velocity on scanning length was found. An eightfold increase in scanning length resulted in about a fourfold increase in scanning velocity. A second experiment was conducted to study the influence of scanning velocity on psychophysical detection thresholds. This was done by systematically imposing specific scanning velocities to the participants while the thresholds were measured. The main result of the second experiment was that psychophysical detection thresholds are constant over a relatively broad range of scanning velocities.     

Goal engagement in coping with occupational uncertainty predicts favorable career-related outcomes

We investigated whether goal engagement and disengagement in coping with occupational uncertainty (e.g., perceptions of growing difficulties in career planning and lacking job opportunities) predicts three objective career-related outcomes: job loss, job finding, and income change. We also tested for the buffering effects of these coping strategies on the association between objectively unfavorable labor market conditions (as indicated by regional unemployment rates) and these outcomes. We used four-wave survey data from a longitudinal sample of 620 German adults aged 16–43 years at the first wave and analyzed changes in the three career-related outcomes across 1294 pairs of successive annual waves. Analyses revealed that goal engagement predicted a higher chance of job finding over one year. Moreover, goal engagement buffered the association between higher regional unemployment rates and a higher likelihood of job loss, as well as a lower income, over one year. Goal disengagement predicted a lower income but had no other statistically significant effects. Thus, even in a relatively highly regulated labor market like the German one, goal engagement in coping with occupational uncertainty can contribute to objective career success.     

Challenge and threat emotions as antecedents of recovery experiences: findings from a diary study with blue-collar workers

The aim of this study was (1) to investigate whether threat (e.g., anxiety, fear) and challenge (e.g., confidence, excitement) emotions that employees experience before work while thinking about the upcoming workday predict their recovery experiences (i.e., psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control) after work and (2) to explore the moderating role of job control on the effect of threat and challenge emotions on recovery experiences. For two to four weeks, 57 blue-collar workers at an airport’s hub station completed a diary. Multilevel analyses (N = 1104) reveal that threat emotions in the morning decrease psychological detachment and relaxation after work. Job control buffers this negative effect. Furthermore, challenge emotions in the morning boost mastery after work. Next, when employees have low job control, challenge emotions also boost the recovery experience control. Practical implications and the need for future studies to examine more fine-grained mechanisms for better understanding how threat and challenge emotions experienced before starting work affect recovery experiences after work are discussed.     

Personality prototypes in individuals with compulsive buying based on the Big Five Model

Personality prototypes based on the Big Five factor model were investigated in a treatment-seeking sample of 68 individuals with compulsive buying (CB). Cluster analysis of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) scales yielded two distinct personality clusters. Participants in cluster II scored significantly higher than those in cluster I on neuroticism and lower on the other four personality traits. Subjects in cluster II showed higher severity of CB, lower degree of control over CB symptoms, and were more anxious, interpersonally sensitive and impulsive. Furthermore, cluster II was characterized by higher rates of comorbid anxiety disorders, and cluster B personality disorders. The two personality prototypes did not differ with respect to obsessive-compulsive features. Finally and of considerable clinical significance, participants in cluster II reported lower remission rates after undergoing cognitive-behavioral therapy. Implications of the results for treatment are discussed.