Health anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, and attentional biases for pictorial and linguistic health-threat cues

The study investigated attentional biases for pictorial and linguistic health-threat stimuli in high and low health anxious individuals, who were selected from the upper and lower quartile ranges of a normal sample using a screening measure of health anxiety. Attentional bias was assessed using a visual probe task which presented health-threat and neutral pictures and words at two exposure durations, 500 ms and 1250 ms. The prediction that the high health anxious group would show a greater attentional bias for health-threat cues than the low health anxious group was not supported despite the groups being well-differentiated on a general measure of health anxiety, the Illness Attitudes Scale (IAS). Instead, the results indicated that individuals with high levels of anxiety sensitivity showed a significantly greater initial attentional bias for threat pictures compared with those with low anxiety sensitivity, as assessed by the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI).     

Effects of emotion and age on performance during a think/no-think memory task

Recent studies have demonstrated that young adults can voluntarily suppress information from memory when directed to. After learning novel word pairings to criterion, participants are shown individual words and instructed either to "think" about the associated word, or to put it out of mind entirely ("no-think"). When given a surprise cued recall test, participants typically show impaired recall for no-think words relative to think or "control" (un-manipulated) words. The present study investigated whether this controlled suppression effect persists in an aged population, and examined how the emotionality of the to-be-suppressed word affects suppression ability. Data from four experiments using the think/no-think task demonstrate that older and younger adults can suppress information when directed to (Experiment 1), and the age groups do not differ significantly in this ability. Experiments 2 through 4 demonstrate that both age groups can suppress words that are emotional (positive or negative valence) or neutral. The suppression effect also persists even if participants are tested using independent probe words that are semantically related to the target words but were not the studied cue words (Experiments 3 and 4). These data suggest that the cognitive functioning necessary to suppress information from memory is present in older adulthood, and that both emotional and neutral information can be successfully suppressed from memory.     

A Cross-National and Cross-Sectional Comparison of Men's Gender Role Conflict and Its Relationship to Social Intimacy and Self-Esteem

We hypothesized that men's nationality and age group would affect (a) their level of gender role conflict and (b) the strength of the relationship between gender role conflict and the psychological health variables of social intimacy and self-esteem. Three hundred twenty-five men (97 college-aged American, 86 middle-aged American, 82 college-aged Australian, and 60 middle-aged Australian) completed the Gender Role Conflict, Miller Social Intimacy, and Coopersmith Self-Esteem Scales. MANCOVA results revealed two significant interaction effects between (a) age group and social intimacy and (b) nationality and self-esteem. The discussion highlights a contextual interpretation of the results, limitations, and future research.     

Selective attention to angry faces in clinical social phobia

This study investigated the time course of attentional responses to emotional facial expressions in a clinical sample with social phobia. With a visual probe task, photographs of angry, happy, and neutral faces were presented at 2 exposure durations: 500 and 1250 ms. At 500 ms, the social phobia group showed enhanced vigilance for angry faces, relative to happy and neutral faces, in comparison with normal controls. In the 1250-ms condition, there were no significant attentional biases in the social phobia group. Results are consistent with a bias in initial orienting to threat cues in social anxiety. Findings are discussed in relation to recent cognitive models of anxiety disorders.     

Parenting Disruptive Preschoolers: Experiences of Mothers and Fathers

This study examined parental functioning and interactions with young children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), with emphasis on differences between mothers and fathers in their responses to their child and in their unique contributions to the prediction of child disruptive behavior. Participants were 53 3- to 6-year olds with ODD who presented for treatment with two parents. Mothers reported more severe disruptive behavior and higher parenting stress than fathers. During parent-child interactions, mothers showed more responsiveness than fathers, even though children were more compliant during interactions with fathers. Regression analyses showed that fathers' parent-related stress was predictive of both mothers' and father's reports of disruptive child behavior; mothers' marital satisfaction was predictive of behavioral observations of child compliance with both mothers and fathers. This study revealed several important differences in the experiences of mothers versus fathers of disruptive children and indicates the importance of including the father in the child's assessment and treatment.     

Selective orienting of attention to masked threat faces in social anxiety

The aims of the study were two-fold: to examine whether previous evidence of a pre-attentive bias for masked threat faces in anxious individuals could be replicated, and to assess the relationship between the predicted bias and measures of trait and social anxiety. Pairs of face stimuli were briefly displayed and masked in a modified version of the visual probe task. Results indicated that high anxious individuals were faster to respond to probes occurring in the spatial location of masked threat rather than neutral faces; consistent with their attention being automatically captured by sub-threshold threat cues. Furthermore, this vigilance effect for masked threat faces appeared to be primarily a function of social anxiety and social avoidance, rather than trait anxiety. It was also more apparent when threat faces were presented in the left visual field, suggestive of right hemisphere involvement.     

The tale of a moderate normative skeptic

While Richard Joyce’s moral skepticism might seem to be an extreme metaethical view, it is actually far more moderate than it might first appear. By articulating four challenges facing his approach to moral skepticism, I argue that Joyce’s moderation is, in fact, a theoretical liability. First, the fact that Joyce is not skeptical about normativity in general makes it possible to develop close approximations to morality, lending support to moderate moral revisionism over moral error theory. Second, Joyce relies on strong, contentious conceptual and empirical claims in support of his views. Third, Joyce’s evolutionary debunking argument threatens to backfire, generalizing to all normative judgments. Finally, Joyce fails to offer an adequate account of the normativity of desire. Each of these four challenges can be either sidestepped (the first and second) or embraced (the third and fourth) by radicalizing and defending a global form of normative skepticism. There are thus several ways in which global normative skepticism appears to be in a more robust dialectical position than Joyce’s moral skepticism. Furthermore, I argue, Joyce’s arguments against global normative skepticism are unconvincing. While this discussion is framed in terms of Joyce’s work, its arguments will apply to other moral skeptics who are not also global normative skeptics. The result is an invitation for Joyce and other moral skeptics to leave these problems behind and join the radical camp.