Cognitive deficits in major depression

Major depression is a mood disorder that is often accompanied by the impairment of cognitive functions. Although suggestive, the large range of existing neuropsychological, neuropsychiatric, and, lately, neuroimaging investigations have not yet given a consistent picture of the psychological and biological disturbances involved in this psychiatric disorder. The present study of the cognitive functions in depression was part of an extensive investigation, including neuropsychological testing, psychiatric examination, and neuroimaging. A representative sample of 40 severely depressed hospitalized patients and a group of 49 closely matched control subjects were tested with an extensive neuropsychological test battery. Results, corrected for various confounding factors, confirmed the current notion that depressed patients suffer from wide-spread cognitive impairments. The group analysis did not allow any hypothesis on a possible pattern to the dysfunctions, but heterogeneity in the test performances calls for further analysis of the data in patient subgroups in relation to neuroimaging results.     

Interparental conflict and risk behaviors among Mexican American adolescents: a cognitive-emotional model

This study used a cognitive-emotional model to examine the relations between multiple dimensions of interparental conflict and health risk behaviors among young adolescents. Participants were 151 Mexican American adolescents and their parents. At initial individual interviews, parents reported on conflict with their spouses, and adolescents reported on their parents' conflict, their appraisals of the conflict, their emotional distress, and their acculturation level. At 6-month follow-ups, adolescents reported on their risk behaviors, including substance use and sexual activity. In general, adolescents' acculturation level was not related to their risk behaviors. More frequent conflict, more conflict about the adolescent, more adolescent involvement in the conflict, and poor conflict resolution were related to greater emotional distress. More conflict about the adolescent, mothers being more demanding/dominating during conflict, and more adolescent involvement in the conflict were related to greater risk behaviors. Adolescents' cognitions mediated the link between two dimensions of parental conflict, frequency and resolution, and emotional distress. Adolescents' emotional distress mediated the association between adolescent involvement in parental conflict and adolescents' risk behaviors.     

Lack of association of computer use and ability with spontaneous mental visualization

Relationships between frequency of computer use or ability to use the computer effectively with the tendency to construct and process visual mental images were investigated by administering a computer-use questionnaire and a visualization questionnaire to a sample of 185 Italian and Spanish undergraduates. Analysis did not support associations between either (a) frequent computer use of any kind or (b) high competence in using the computer for various purposes and spontaneous use of imagery.     

Recent exposure affects artifact naming

Deciding how to label an object depends both on beliefs about the culturally appropriate name and on memory. A label should be consistent with a language community's norms, but those norms can be used only if they can be retrieved. Two experiments are reported in which we tested the hypothesis that immediate prior exposure to familiar objects and their names affects how an ambiguous target object is named. Exposure to a typical instance of one name category was pitted against exposure to one or two instances from a contrasting category. When the contrast set consisted of a neighbor of the target, naming was usually consistent with the contrast category. This effect was reduced when a typical instance of the contrast category was also exposed. In Experiment 2, the exposure set was varied to include conditions in which either the neighbor or a prototypical instance was paired with an instance dissimilar to the target. The results suggest that all recently exposed objects affect name choice in proportion to their similarity to the target.     

Effects of normal aging and Alzheimer's disease on emotional memory

Recall is typically better for emotional than for neutral stimuli. This enhancement is believed to rely on limbic regions. Memory is also better for neutral stimuli embedded in an emotional context. The neural substrate supporting this effect has not been thoroughly investigated but may include frontal lobe, as well as limbic circuits. Alzheimer's disease (AD) results in atrophy of limbic structures, whereas normal aging relatively spares limbic regions but affects prefrontal areas. The authors hypothesized that AD would reduce all enhancement effects, whereas aging would disproportionately affect enhancement based on emotional context. The results confirmed the authors' hypotheses: Young and older adults, but not AD patients, showed better memory for emotional versus neutral pictures and words. Older adults and AD patients showed no benefit from emotional context, whereas young adults remembered more items embedded in an emotional versus neutral context.     

Functionality and spatial relations in memory and language

We examined whether the functionality of spatial relations affects the construction and memory of information in situation models. A functional relationship involves the interaction of entities that is implied by either typical use or contextual demands. Previous research has shown that spatial relations are less likely to be encoded during comprehension unless there is extensive prior knowledge, explicit instructions to attend to spatial information, or a clear emphasis on spatial information. If the construction of a situation model is guided by a need to understand the functional structure of a situation, then functional spatial relations should be more likely to be encoded. The results of our study showed that sentences with functional spatial relations were read faster and remembered better in both recall and recognition tests than sentences with nonfunctional spatial relations.     

Transforming mental health care for children and their families

In April 2002, the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health was created by executive order to study the mental health care delivery system in our nation and to make recommendations for improvements so that individuals with serious mental disorders can live, work, learn, and fully participate in their homes and communities. In its report, "Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America," the commission provided strategies to address critical infrastructure, practice, and research issues. This article focuses on the work of the commission's Subcommittee on Children and Families, describing its vision for mental health service delivery for children and providing suggestions for strengthening community-based care for youths with or at risk of behavioral health disorders. Training, research, practice, and policy implications for psychologists are discussed.     

Leader self-sacrifice and leadership effectiveness: the moderating role of leader prototypicality

Self-sacrificing behavior of the leader and the extent to which the leader is representative of the group (i.e., group prototypical) are proposed to interact to influence leadership effectiveness. The authors expected self-sacrificing leaders to be considered more effective and to be able to push subordinates to a higher performance level than non-self-sacrificing leaders, and these effects were expected to be more pronounced for less prototypical leaders than for more prototypical leaders. The results of a laboratory experiment showed that, as expected, productivity levels, effectiveness ratings, and perceived leader group-orientedness and charisma were positively affected by leader self-sacrifice, especially when leader prototypicality was low. The main results were replicated in a scenario experiment and 2 surveys.     

Mind,Brain, and Epistemologically Different Worlds

The reason why, since Descartes, nobody has found a solution to the mind–body problem seems to be that the problem itself is a false or pseudo-problem. The discussion has proceeded within a pre-Cartesian conceptual framework which itself is a source of the difficulty. Dualism and all its alternatives have preserved the same pre-Cartesian conceptual framework even while denying Descartes’ dualism. In order to avoid this pseudo-problem, I introduce a new perspective with three elements: the subject, the observed object, and the conditions of observation (given by the internal and external tools of observation). On this new perspective, because of the conditions of observation, the mind and the brain belong to epistemologically different worlds. An erratum to this article is available at .