Impulse control disorders in Parkinson’s disease: Predominant role of psychological determinants

Objectives: Impulse Control Disorders (ICDs) in Parkinson’s disease (PD) have previously almost exclusively been considered to result from anti-parkinsonian medication. However, this biomedical perspective has failed to achieve a full understanding of the phenomenon and it is argued that a failure to consider psychological factors is a critical omission.

Design: The present study examined the predictive relationship between ICDs in PD and a range of psychological measures, whilst controlling for a number of biomedical determinants.

Main outcome measures: One hundred participants with idiopathic PD completed questionnaires that assessed demographic and clinical characteristics, psychological measures and the presence of ICDs (QUIP-RS).

Results: Increased use of a ‘negative’ coping strategy, stronger illness identity, more emotional illness representations and stress were found to be significant predictors of ICDs, and different psychological predictors were associated with different ICDs. Medication was not found to predict ICDs in the presence of psychological factors, either when total treatment levels were considered or when agonist dose was considered alone.

Conclusions: This study provides the first quantitative evidence of a predominant predictive relationship between psychological factors and ICDs in PD. The results suggest that psychological interventions may have useful therapeutic role to play for ICDs in PD.     

Social influence on metacognitive evaluations: The power of nonverbal cues

Metacognitive evaluations refer to the processes by which people assess their own cognitive operations with respect to their current goal. Little is known about whether this process is susceptible to social influence. Here we investigate whether nonverbal social signals spontaneously influence metacognitive evaluations. Participants performed a two-alternative forced-choice task, which was followed by a face randomly gazing towards or away from the response chosen by the participant. Participants then provided a metacognitive evaluation of their response by rating their confidence in their answer. In Experiment 1, the participants were told that the gaze direction was irrelevant to the task purpose and were advised to ignore it. The results revealed an effect of implicit social information on confidence ratings even though the gaze direction was random and therefore unreliable for task purposes. In addition, nonsocial cues (car) did not elicit this effect. In Experiment 2, the participants were led to believe that cue direction (face or car) reflected a previous participant's response to the same question—that is, the social information provided by the cue was made explicit, yet still objectively unreliable for the task. The results showed a similar social influence on confidence ratings, observed with both cues (car and face) but with an increased magnitude relative to Experiment 1. We additionally showed in Experiment 2 that social information impaired metacognitive accuracy. Together our results strongly suggest an involuntary susceptibility of metacognitive evaluations to nonverbal social information, even when it is implicit (Experiment 1) and unreliable (Experiments 1 and 2).     

Halo effects from agency behaviors and communion behaviors depend on social context: Why technicians benefit more from showing tidiness than nurses do

We investigate halo effects from agency behaviors and communion behaviors in different social contexts. According to the salient dimension model, attributes elicit halo effects on the ratings of other, unrelated attributes when they are relevant in a situation. Given that communion behaviors are more relevant in social and care‐related jobs, they should elicit stronger halo effects than agency behaviors in this context. In the context of scientific and technical jobs, this difference should be weakened or even reversed. Three experiments support the predicted interaction of context and behavior on halo effects. This interaction was stronger for negative than for positive behaviors. These results have implications for understanding the basic processes of halo effects as well as their real‐world effects in job‐related contexts.     

“One Doesn’t Slap a Girl but…” Social Representations and Conditional Logics in Legitimization of Intimate Partner Violence

The present research, which fits into the conceptual framework of social representations, aims to analyze the impact of gender and legitimizing ideologies on the evaluation of intimate partner violence (IPV). Using an inductive mixed methods approach, two studies were conducted in a French context. In Study 1, 24 participants were asked to express their views about a vignette describing an IPV case during semi-structured interviews. In Study 2, 123 participants completed a questionnaire which was based on the results of Study 1. They were asked to evaluate the severity and justification for this same IPV case in relation to several situations identified in interviews. They also completed two scales measuring adherence to ideologies legitimizing male dominance: the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory and the Domestic Violence Myth Acceptance Scale. Results show expressed ambivalence by participants between condemnation of IPV and the use of conditional logics in order to minimize or justify it. The expression of this reasoning was determined by social regulations such as the situations in which the violence occurred and adherence to legitimizing ideologies. Our results are relevant for campaigns raising awareness and educational programs that take into account social representations underlying IPV legitimization.     

Numerical and nonnumerical estimation in children with and without mathematical learning disabilities

There are currently multiple explanations for mathematical learning disabilities (MLD). The present study focused on those assuming that MLD are due to a basic numerical deficit affecting the ability to represent and to manipulate number magnitude ( Butterworth, 1999 , 2005 ; A. J. Wilson & Dehaene, 2007 ) and/or to access that number magnitude representation from numerical symbols ( Rousselle & No?l, 2007 ). The present study provides an original contribution to this issue by testing MLD children (carefully selected on the basis of preserved abilities in other domains) on numerical estimation tasks with contrasting symbolic (Arabic numerals) and nonsymbolic (collection of dots) numbers used as input or output. MLD children performed consistently less accurately than control children on all the estimation tasks. However, MLD children were even weaker when the task involved the mapping between symbolic and nonsymbolic numbers than when the task required a mapping between two nonsymbolic numerical formats. Moreover, in the estimation of nonsymbolic numerosities, MLD children relied more than control children on perceptual cues such as the cumulative area of the dots. Finally, the task requiring a mapping from a nonsymbolic format to a symbolic format was the best predictor of MLD. In order to explain these present results, as well as those reported in the literature, we propose that the impoverished number magnitude representation of MLD children may arise from an initial mapping deficit between number symbols and that magnitude representation.     

Determination of emotional endophenotypes: a validation of the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales and further perspectives

The study of endophenotypes, notably with configured self-reports, represents a promising research pathway to overcome the limits of a syndromal approach of psychiatric diseases. The Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) is a self-report questionnaire, based on neuroethological considerations, that could help to assess emotional endophenotypes related to the activity in 6 core cerebral emotional systems (FEAR, ANGER, SADNESS, CARING, PLAYFULNESS, SEEKING). We further investigated its psychometric properties among 830 young adults and showed that they were satisfactory. As participants also completed several other self-reports that shared potential traits with the ANPS, we offer new validity evidence based on relations to other variables. We also provide additional evidence to consider that the ANPS scores can be validly interpreted for the characterization of emotional endophenotypes involved in a variety of psychiatric disorders. On the grounds of present results, of previous clinical studies, as well as some preliminary neuroimaging findings, we discuss new steps in the ANPS validation.     

Self-Reported Psychological Well-Being and Disease-Related Strains among Adults with Diabetes

The study was designed to describe self-reported psychological well-being among adults with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes and to explore associations of psychological well-being with disease-related strains, such as self-reported long-term complications, frequency of hypoglycaemia and disablement or sick-leave. A sample comprising 534 Norwegian adults with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes aged 25-70 years participated in the study. Psychological well-being was assessed using three different scales; the WHO (Ten) Well-Being Index, the Short Zung Depression Rating Scale and four items from the anxiety sub-scale of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist. Findings indicate that adults with both types of diabetes reported relatively poor psychological well-being. There was a tendency for younger persons to report the worst psychological well-being. For symptoms of anxiety this tendency was most evident among people with Type 2 diabetes. People being disabled due to diabetes reported relatively markedly impaired psychological well-being, whereas self-reported diabetes-related complications and the number of episodes with hypoglycaemia were weakly associated with psychological well-being. Findings may indicate that healthcare practitioners should pay more attention to the psychological needs of people with diabetes. This applies especially to younger people with Type 2 diabetes.     

Formation of prismatic loop alignments in crystals deformed in single slip

In γ-TiAl deformed at room temperature in single slip, prismatic loops ar often organized in a staircase-like configuration, called strings whose generation by cross-slip is facilitated by the dislocation tendency to form screw locks as described recently by Grégori and Veyssière. The present letter is aimed at showing that strings may be encountered in virtually any crystal provided that the two impinging dislocations exhibit significantly different velocities. The crossslip annihilation mechanism of crossed dislocations considered by Tetelman is revisited and shown to evolve into a configuration significantly distinct from that originally predicted.     

Using stressful films to analyze risk factors for PTSD in analogue experimental studies – which film works best?

Abstract

To understand mental disorders, analogue paradigms provide an indispensable contribution. In posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the stressful film paradigm is a frequently used analogue approach: Films depicting traumatic events are shown to non-clinical participants in order to elicit stress responses analogue to responses to traumatic events in real life. Previous studies used a large variety of films, which is problematic with regard to the comparability of results. The main goal of this study was to identify a film clip that (a) consistently provokes stress reactions and (b) provokes reactions that are as similar as possible to traumatic stress.

We randomly exposed 105 male and female participants to one of four stressful films, differing, e.g., in content and origin. Intrusive memories of the film, reported immediately after the film and during a diary phase of three days, as well as distress, heart rate, and several mood states were measured. A film clip depicting rape elicited the most consistent reactions that were characterized by a higher heart rate, more distress and more intrusive memories, compared to the other three clips. Intrusive memories across all films were especially related to an increase in heart rate and disgust in response to the film.