Machiavellian emotion regulation in a cognitive reappraisal task: An fMRI study

Affective coldness is one of the main features of Machiavellianism. Recent studies have revealed that Machiavellians are emotionally detached and that this “affective blunting” is associated with intense feelings, emotional instability, negative emotions, and difficulty in enduring distress. We used brain-imaging techniques to investigate emotion regulation in Machiavellianism at a neuropsychological level. We used situations in which participants were required to demonstrate emotional flexibility to explore the controversy surrounding the fact that Machiavellianism is associated with both cold-mindedness and emotional instability. Participants performed a reappraisal task in which emotionally evocative pictures (from the International Affective Picture System) were presented in different contexts (negative, positive, and neutral). They were asked to interpret a scenario according to its title and to reinterpret it according to another context created by a new title (e.g., negatively labeled pictures shifted to positively labeled ones). During task performance, Machiavellians showed increased activation of brain regions associated with emotion generation—for example, the amygdala and insula. This indicates that Machiavellian individuals are able to be involved emotionally in social situations. Increased activation in the temporal and parahippocampal regions during reappraisal suggests that Machiavellians use semantic–perceptual processes to construct alternative interpretations of the same situation and have enhanced memory for emotional stimuli. Furthermore, they seem to possess an intense awareness that leads them to shift attention from external to internal information to detect environmental changes. These cognitive processes may enable them to adjust their behavior quickly. This study supports the flexibility hypothesis of Machiavellianism and suggests that Machiavellians’ approach to emotion regulation is linked to their rational mode of thinking.     

Action goal selection and motor planning can be dissociated by tool use

The preparation of eye or hand movements enhances visual perception at the upcoming movement end position. The spatial location of this influence of action on perception could be determined either by goal selection or by motor planning. We employed a tool use task to dissociate these two alternatives. The instructed goal location was a visual target to which participants pointed with the tip of a triangular hand-held tool. The motor endpoint was defined by the final fingertip position necessary to bring the tool tip onto the goal. We tested perceptual performance at both locations (tool tip endpoint, motor endpoint) with a visual discrimination task. Discrimination performance was enhanced in parallel at both spatial locations, but not at nearby and intermediate locations, suggesting that both action goal selection and motor planning contribute to visual perception. In addition, our results challenge the widely held view that tools extend the body schema and suggest instead that tool use enhances perception at those precise locations which are most relevant during tool action: the body part used to manipulate the tool, and the active tool tip.     

A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis of Triple P-Positive Parenting Program Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling: Effectiveness and Moderating Variables

A meta-analysis encompassing all studies evaluating the impact of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program on parent and child outcome measures was conducted in an effort to identify variables that moderate the program's effectiveness. Hierarchical linear models (HLM) with three levels of data were employed to analyze effect sizes. The results (N = 55 studies) indicate that Triple P causes positive changes in parenting skills, child problem behavior and parental well-being in the small to moderate range, varying as a function of the intensity of the intervention. The most salient findings of variables moderating the interventions' impact were larger effects found on parent report as compared to observational measures and more improvement associated with more intensive formats and initially more distressed families. Sample characteristics (e.g., child's age, being a boy) and methodological features (e.g., study quality) exhibited different degrees of predictive power. The analysis clearly identified several strengths of the Triple P system, most importantly its ability to effect meaningful improvement in parents and children. Some limitations pertain to the small evidence-base of certain formats of Triple P and the lack of follow-up data beyond 3 years after the intervention. Many of the present findings may be relevant to other evidence-based parenting programs.     

Neurotoxic lesion of the rostral perirhinal cortex blocks stress-induced exploratory behavioral changes in male rats

Exposure to stress leads to adaptive responses including both behavioral and physiological changes. This process is induced by the activation of multiple brain regions. The present study examined the role of the rostral perirhinal cortex (rPRh) in behavioral changes following electrical foot shock-induced stress. The rPRh of rats was lesioned bilaterally by local microinjections of 10 microg N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) before foot shocks (0.7 mA, 1 s). The effects of these lesions on foot shock-induced changes in exploratory behaviors were tested in the open field (4 h, 48 h, 72 h, and 14 days after foot shocks) and the light-dark box (7 days after foot shocks). Foot-shocked and sham-lesioned rats showed several well known behavioral changes in the open field (e.g., immobility, reduction of exploratory activity) most marked at 48 h after foot shocks, and the light-dark box (e.g., reduction of time spent and activity in the lit compartment). All these stress-induced behavioral changes were blocked by neurotoxic lesions of the rPRh. Furthermore, rPRh lesions did not affect behavior in the open field and the light-dark box in unstressed rats. Taken together, these data indicate that the rPRh is involved in neurophysiological mechanisms that mediate changes induced by foot-shock stress in exploratory behaviors which indicate unconditioned fear or anxiety.     

Change of reference frame for tactile localization during child development

Temporal order judgements (TOJ) for two tactile stimuli, one presented to the left and one to the right hand, are less precise when the hands are crossed over the midline than when the hands are uncrossed. This ‘crossed hand’ effect has been considered as evidence for a remapping of tactile input into an external reference frame. Since late, but not early, blind individuals show such remapping, it has been hypothesized that the use of an external reference frame develops during childhood. Five‐ to 10‐year‐old children were therefore tested with the tactile TOJ task, both with uncrossed and crossed hands. Overall performance in the TOJ task improved with age. While children older than 5½ years displayed a crossed hand effect, younger children did not. Therefore the use of an external reference frame for tactile, and possibly multisensory, localization seems to be acquired at age 5.     

Immunotoxic cholinergic lesions in the basal forebrain reverse the effects of entorhinal cortex lesions on conditioned odor aversion in the rat

Conditioned odor aversion (COA) corresponds to the avoidance of an odorized-tasteless solution (conditioned stimulus, CS) previously paired with toxicosis. COA occurs only when the interstimulus interval (ISI) is kept short, suggesting that the memory trace of the odor is subject to rapid decay. Previous experiments have shown that the entorhinal cortex (EC) is involved in the acquisition of COA, since lesion of the EC rendered COA tolerant to long ISI. Because EC lesions induce a septo-hippocampal cholinergic sprouting, the present experiment investigated whether COA tolerance to long ISI may be linked to this sprouting reaction. In a first experiment, male Long-Evans rats subjected to bilateral excitotoxic EC lesions combined to intracerebroventricular infusions of the selective cholinergic immunotoxin 192 IgG-saporin were exposed to odor-toxicosis pairing using a long ISI (120 min). Results showed that EC-lesioned rats displayed COA with the long ISI but not the control groups. In rats with EC combined to 192 IgG-saporin lesions, histological analysis demonstrated no evidence for cholinergic septo-hippocampal sprouting. In a second experiment, animals with 192-IgG saporin lesion showed a marked COA with a short ISI (5 min). These results suggest that the COA with the long ISI found in rats with EC lesions might involve a functional activity related to the EC lesion-induced hippocampal cholinergic sprouting. As the injection of 192 IgG-saporin alone did not affect COA with a short ISI, our data also point to a possible role of hippocampal cholinergic neurons in the modulation of memory processes underlying COA.     

Question answering from structured knowledge sources

We present an implemented approach for domain-restricted question answering from structured knowledge sources, based on robust semantic analysis in a hybrid NLP system architecture. We perform question interpretation and answer extraction in an architecture that builds on a lexical-conceptual structure for question interpretation, which is interfaced with domain-specific concepts and properties in a structured knowledge base. Question interpretation involves a limited amount of domain-specific inferences, and accounts for higher-level quantificational questions. Question interpretation and answer extraction are modular components that interact in clearly defined ways. We derive so-called proto queries from the linguistic representations, which provide partial constraints for answer extraction from the underlying knowledge sources. The search queries we construct from proto queries effectively compute minimal spanning trees from the underlying knowledge sources. Our approach naturally extends to multilingual question answering, and has been developed as a prototype system for two application domains: the domain of Nobel prize winners, and the domain of Language Technology, on the basis of the large ontology underlying the information portal LT World.     

Organizational Support for Strengths Use,Work Engagement,and Contextual Performance: The Moderating Role of Age

Applied Research in Quality of Life - Personal strengths are those characteristics that allow us to be at our best, that is, to deliver high performance while feeling happy and energized. Research...