Enhanced probing of attentional bias: The independence of anxiety-linked selectivity in attentional engagement with and disengagement from negative information

Cognitive models of anxiety posit that an attentional bias to negative information plays a causal role in elevated anxiety vulnerability and dysfunction. There has been considerable recent interest in determining whether this attentional bias reflects facilitated attentional engagement with and/or impaired attentional disengagement from negative information. We concur with the claim of investigators who have noted that the methodologies previously employed to dissociate engagement and disengagement biases are not optimal for this purpose. In the present study, we employ a novel methodology, the Attentional Response to Distal vs. Proximal Emotional Information (ARDPEI) task, which enables the discrete assessment of these two types of attentional selectivity. The findings demonstrate that facilitated attentional engagement with and impaired attentional disengagement from negative information both characterise elevated anxiety vulnerability. Further, these biases represent distinctive facets of anxiety-linked attentional selectivity. We discuss the potentially differing roles that engagement and disengagement biases may play in the development and/or maintenance of anxiety vulnerability and dysfunction.     

Age-group Differences in Inhibiting an Oculomotor Response

ABSTRACT

Age-group differences were examined in the delayed oculomotor response task, which requires that observers delay the execution of a saccade (eye movement) toward an abrupt-onset visual cue. This task differs from antisaccade and attentional capture in that inhibition causes saccades to be postponed, not redirected. Older adults executed more premature saccades than young adults, but there were no age-group differences in latency or accuracy of saccades executed at the proper time. The results suggest that older adults are less capable of inhibiting a prepotent saccadic response, but that other aspects of visual working memory related to the task are preserved.     

Creative Knowledge Environments

The extent to which an individual's (or a group's) creative potential is expressed depends considerably on the environment in which that individual (or group) works. To understand scientific and technological creativity, one needs to analyze the interactions between individuals or groups and their environment. We put forward the concept of a creative knowledge environment (CKE) to examine the environmental influences on individual and group creativity. After reviewing the research literature relevant to creativity using the CKE framework, we identify the main influences promoting creativity at different levels of organization. The framework provides suggestions as to how best to stimulate CKEs to be more creative. The article concludes by identifying issues where further research is needed.     

Imaginary Companions in Childhood: Relations to Imagination Skills and Autobiographical Memory in Adults

The presence of a childhood imaginary companion (IC) has been proposed to reflect heightened imaginative abilities. This study hypothesized that adults who reported having a childhood IC would score higher on a task requiring the imaginative construction of visual scenes. Additionally, it was proposed that individuals who produced more vivid and detailed scenes would also report richer autobiographical memories, due to a shared reliance on imaginative abilities in construction and recollection. Sixty participants (20 with an IC), completed an adapted scene construction procedure and an autobiographical memory questionnaire. Participants reporting a childhood IC scored significantly higher on scene construction and rated themselves as more imaginative. Scene construction scores were also moderately related to the richness of autobiographical memories, although this was almost entirely due to scores on the thought/emotion/action component of scene construction. Autobiographical memory was unrelated to the presence of an IC. Implications for overlapping and dissociable aspects of imagination and memory are discussed.     

The Human Simulation Lab—Dissecting Sex in the Simulator Lab: The Clinical Lacuna of Transsexed Embodiment

This article begins with an ethnographically documented incident whereby nursing students dissected a medical human simulator model and rearranged it so that the “male” head and torso was attached to the “female” lower half. They then joked about the embodiment of the model, thus staging a scene of anti-trans ridicule. The students’ lack of ability, or purposeful refusal, to recognize morphological biodiversity in medical settings indicates a lacuna in clinical imaginaries. Even as trans-identified and gender nonconforming people increasingly access care in the clinic, the lacuna of transsex—as a proxy term for non-binary embodiment—persists at the heart of clinical practice. This article concludes that we might engage in more ethical clinical practice if we recognize and affirm the trace of multiple forms of human being in the non-human simulator.     

HARD-BOILED ZEN: JANWILLEM VAN DE WETERING’S THE JAPANESE CORPSE AS BUDDHIST LITERATURE

ABSTRACT

Though many studies of the contemporary Buddhist literature exist, such studies often limit their purview to canonised, ‘high-brow’ authors. In this article, I read Janwillem van de Wetering’s The Japanese Corpse, a detective novel, for how it portrays Zen Buddhism. I show that The Japanese Corpse portrays Zen as non-dualist and amoral: good and bad are arbitrary categories that impede spiritual freedom. Likewise, characters’ identities are fluid, not fixed. The novel shows this by insistently associating Zen with sex and violence, and by the use of dramatic motifs. However, the novel also excludes women, particularly Japanese women, from spiritual attainment, instead essentialising them as the sexual objects of the hard-boiled detective story. As a matrix of conflicting values, The Japanese Corpse thus turns out to be a case study of Buddhist modernism, and of challenges of detective fiction as world literature.     

The use of Web 2.0 technologies in marketing classes: Key drivers of student acceptance

With the proliferation in Web 2.0 technologies, many marketing educators are experimenting with new teaching and learning tools (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Second Life). The benefits of such technologies are often touted by scholars, and indeed, there is a good deal of evidence to support such a view. However, increasingly, educators are highlighting some of the limitations of technology in the learning environment. To draw parallels with other new product research in marketing, the adoption of new learning technologies is often not so widespread. The literature exhibits inconsistency about the willingness of students to adopt new technology in a learning environment, but no systematic research into the factors that affect technology acceptance yet exists. This research fills a gap in the literature by applying an augmented Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to understand students' future intentions to adopt Twitter, a Web 2.0 technology shown to offer students a variety of benefits. By using partial least squares, the research shows that the main proximal driver of student adoption of Twitter is a utilitarian attitude. Students need to be convinced about ‘what's in it for me’, rather than persuaded about the technology's hedonic benefits. Other affective variables such as an individual's affinity with computers and risk tolerance were also found to be important drivers of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, the TAM's key antecedents. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

THE EUPHORIC DECADE

Film was the most notable expression of the Israeli mood during the decade between 1967 and 1977 which was characterized by “euphoric” and quasi‐capitalist freedom, which found its implementation in what can be termed “vulgar poetics”. The formal characteristics of this poetics of vulgarity, matching the characteristics of euphoric consciousness, were excess and lack of inhibition or subtlety. This is manifested in the thematic reduction of the films’ subjects and in their dishonesty in their excessive portrayal of action in war, sexual license and ethnic stereotypes, and in their blunt disregard for style and artistic restraint. These characteristics are detected in the three main film genres that evolved during this period: war films, “Personal” films and “Burekas” films (comedies focused on inter‐ethnic relations), with particular focus on the films of Uri Zohar.     

Training Motor Sequences: Effects of Speed and Accuracy Instructions

Participants practiced a fixed 3- and a fixed 6-key press sequence for 144 times each. In the speed group, they were instructed to execute their sequences fast without bothering much about errors while the accurate group was instructed to be careful and prevent errors. In the test phase, participants executed series of 3 and 6 responses (a) when all element-specific stimuli were displayed in the familiar order, (b) in response to just the familiar first stimulus, and (c) by responding to random stimuli. The speed instruction yielded stronger sequencing skill while the accuracy instruction developed stronger reaction skill.     

The Simple Copy Task: Detecting Higher Order Visual Processing Deficits in Schizophrenia,Dementia, and Movement Disorder Groups

The Simple Copy Task (SCT) is a figure copying test with inherent appeal due to its short administration time, graded task difficulty, varied stimuli, and potential to eliminate floor effects. Despite this, there is a lack of data regarding its construct validity and diagnostic utility. The present study compared SCT performance of schizophrenia (n = 29), dementia (n = 64), and movement disorder (n = 12) groups with that of unmatched healthy control participants (n = 49). Movement disorder patients committed a high degree of misplacement errors, whereas dementia patients tended to omit items, add extraneous detail, and perseverate. The schizophrenia group was most similar to the dementia group in their performance on the SCT, committing primarily omission and perseveration errors. The SCT was most closely related to the Rey Complex Figure Task (r = 0.68, p < .01) and the Block Design Task (r = 0.62, p < .01). Age (r = ?0.14, p < .01) and education (r = 0.35, p < .01) effects were present; however, there was no impact of gender and handedness. Taken together, these findings provide support for the utility of the task and directions for clinical interpretation.