Is perceptual space inherently non-Euclidean?

It is often assumed that the space we perceive is Euclidean, although this idea has been challenged by many authors. Here we show that if spatial cues are combined as described by Maximum Likelihood Estimation, Bayesian, or equivalent models, as appears to be the case, then Euclidean geometry cannot describe our perceptual experience. Rather, our perceptual spatial structure would be better described as belonging to an arbitrarily curved Riemannian space.     

Matters of the variable heart: respiratory sinus arrhythmia response to marital interaction and associations with marital quality

Maintenance of relationship quality requires self-regulation of emotion and social behavior, and women often display greater effort in this regard than do men. Furthermore, such efforts can deplete the limited capacity for self-regulation. In recent models of self-regulation, resting level of respiratory sinus arrhythmia, quantified as high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), is an indicator of self-regulatory capacity, whereas transient increases in HF-HRV reflect self-regulatory effort. To test these hypotheses in marriage, 114 young couples completed measures of marital quality and a positive, neutral, or negative initial marital task, preceded and followed by resting baseline assessments of HF-HRV. Couples then discussed a current marital disagreement. Resting HF-HRV was correlated with marital quality, suggesting that capacity for self-regulation is associated with adaptive functioning in close relationships. For women but not men, the negative initial task produced a decrease in resting HF-HRV. This effect was mediated by the husbands' negative affect response to the task and their ratings of wives as controlling and directive. When the subsequent disagreement discussion followed the negative initial task, women displayed increased HF-HRV during the discussion but a decrease when it followed the neutral or positive task. The valence of the initial task had no effect on men's HF-HRV during disagreement. Negative marital interactions can reduce women's resting HF-HRV, with potentially adverse health consequences. Women's reduced health benefit from marriage might reflect the depleting effects on self-regulatory capacity of their greater efforts to manage relationship quality.     

Affective orientation influences memory for emotional and neutral words

Memory is better for emotional words than for neutral words, but the conditions contributing to emotional memory improvement are not entirely understood. Elsewhere, it has been observed that retrieval of a word is easier when its attributes are congruent with a property assessed during an earlier judgment task. The present study examined whether affective assessment of a word matters to its remembrance. Two experiments were run, one in which only valence assessment was performed, and another in which valence assessment was combined with a running recognition for list words. In both experiments, some participants judged whether each word in a randomized list was negative (negative monitoring), and others judged whether each was positive (positive monitoring). We then tested their explicit memory for the words via both free recall and delayed recognition. Both experiments revealed an affective congruence effect, such that negative words were more likely to be recalled and recognized after negative monitoring, whereas positive words likewise benefited from positive monitoring. Memory for neutral words was better after negative monitoring than positive monitoring.Thus, memory for both emotional and neutral words is contingent on one's affective orientation during encoding.     

Parental Behaviors During Family Interactions Predict Changes in Depression and Anxiety Symptoms During Adolescence

This study investigated the prospective, longitudinal relations between parental behaviors observed during parent-adolescent interactions, and the development of depression and anxiety symptoms in a community-based sample of 194 adolescents. Positive and negative parental behaviors were examined, with negative behaviors operationalized to distinguish between observed parental expressions of aggression and dysphoria. Results showed that higher levels of parental aggression prospectively predicted higher levels of both depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescents over two-and-a-half years, whereas higher levels of positive parental behaviors prospectively predicted lower levels of depression symptoms only. Parental dysphoric behavior was not related to changes in either symptom dimension. These results suggest that patterns of parental behaviors may be differentially associated with depressive versus anxious outcomes in adolescents, and highlight the potential role for family-focused prevention or treatment interventions aimed at reducing an escalation of depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescence.     

Capturing worry in daily life: are trait questionnaires sufficient?

Worry is crucial in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders and has been associated with several other adverse health outcomes. Yet, little is known about the frequency and perseveration of worry in daily life, and its predictability by widely used trait questionnaires. In this study 432 students completed the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), the Worry Domains Questionnaire (WDQ) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Trait version (STAI-T) and kept a log of worry frequency and duration during six consecutive days and nights. The results showed that worry is a very common phenomenon that is predicted by the two trait worry questionnaires, independent of trait anxiety. The often clinically utilized PSWQ predicted worry duration better than the WDQ, and exclusively predicted night-time worry and several other indices of perseverative and potentially pathogenic worry. Although this study provides some support for the predictive validity of the PSWQ and the WDQ, these questionnaires did not account for the larger part of variance in daily worry. Future studies of worry and its associated perseverative processes should consider using momentary assessments.     

Psychological and health problems in a geographically proximate population time-sampled continuously for three months after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist incidents

This study assessed the mental and physical health status and psychological problems related to the September 11th terrorist incidents among a representative sample of adults living near New York City, using continuously time-sampled data collected throughout 2001. Prevalence estimates for poor mental or physical health after September 11th (October through December) were comparable to those for the entire year of 2001 (i.e. approximately 33%). Psychological problems related to the terrorist incidents were reported by more than half of the respondents, and appeared to peak in prevalence approximately two to three months following the incidents, followed by a decline in the next month and subsequent year. Poor mental health, female gender, media re-exposure, and ongoing or increased alcohol use were risk factors for psychological problems, while older age (65+ years old) and being married were protective factors. Risk factors for poor physical and mental health or psychological problems were generally stable over the three-month period following September 11th, but some changes were identified consistent with stage models of post-disaster psychological adjustment. Implications are discussed for using continuous time-sampling as a strategy to research patterns of relatively acute stress-related sequelae of terrorism in populations whose members are affected despite primarily not having been at the disaster epicenter.     

Why individuals want money is what matters: Using self-determination theory to explain the differential relationship between motives for making money and employee psychological health

Researchers have debated for years whether money can lead to happiness. Indeed, the findings to date are contradictory in regard to the impact of individuals’ motives for making money on their psychological well-being. This study aimed to reconcile these findings and show that certain motives for making money can be beneficial to individuals’ psychological health, while others can be detrimental, not only by reducing well-being, but also by increasing ill-being. Based on self-determination theory, basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) were hypothesized to be the psychological mechanism explaining these differential effects. More precisely, need satisfaction and need frustration were hypothesized to mediate the relationship between employees’ money motives and psychological health (well-being and ill-being). Our findings suggest that self-integrated motives for making money lead to greater well-being and lesser ill-being by positively predicting need satisfaction and negatively predicting need frustration. On the other hand, non-integrated motives for making money appear to result in lesser well-being and greater ill-being by being negatively associated with need satisfaction and positively associated with need frustration. Together, these findings suggest that money motives can have differential effects on employees’ psychological health depending on whether these underlying reasons are need-satisfying or need-frustrating life goals.     

A truth that’s told with bad intent: An ERP study of deception

Human social cognition critically relies on the ability to deceive others. However, the cognitive and neural underpinnings of deception are still poorly understood. Why does lying place increased demands on cognitive control? The present study investigated whether cognitive control processes during deception are recruited due to the need to inhibit a tendency to state the truth, or reflect deceptive intent more generally. We engaged participants in a face-to-face interaction game and examined event-related brain potentials (ERPs) while participants lied and told the truth with or without deceptive intention. The same medial frontal negative deflection (N450) occurred when participants lied and when they told the truth with deceptive intent. This suggests that the main challenge of lying is not to inhibit a tendency to state the truth. Rather, the challenge is to handle the cognitive conflict resulting from the need to keep others’ mental states in mind while deceiving them.