Use of experienced retrieval ease in self and social judgments

People base judgments from memory on both the content of the information they retrieve and the ease they experience in retrieving it (Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Strack, F., Klumpp, G., Rittenauer-Schatka, H., & Simons, A. (1991). Ease of retrieval as information: another look at the availability heuristic. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 195-202). Four studies demonstrate that people rely relatively more on the experienced ease of recall when making judgments about the self compared to judgments about others. This pattern was found for judgments of an “average” (Study 1a) or specific (Study 1b) other. Subjective retrieval ease was less informative when people were relatively less familiar with the specific other person. Providing an alternative explanation for the experienced difficulty of recall affected self, but not social, assessments (Study 2). In addition, the effect generalized to risk judgments about a state of the world; namely, the safety of one’s town (Study 3). A deeper appreciation of when and why people rely on different sources of accessible information when making judgments may help in understanding and reducing social conflict.     

Selective blockade of 5-HT2A receptors attenuates the increased temperature response in brown adipose tissue to restraint stress in rats

Previous studies have demonstrated that 5-HT2A receptors may be involved in the central control of thermoregulation and of the cardiovascular system. Our aim was to test whether these receptors mediate thermogenic and tachycardiac responses induced by acute psychological stress. Three groups of adult male Hooded Wistar rats were instrumented with: (i) a thermistor in the interscapular area (for recording brown adipose tissue temperature) and an ultrasound Doppler probe (to record tail blood flow); (ii) temperature dataloggers to record core body temperature; (iii) ECG electrodes. On the day of the experiment, rats were subjected to a 30-min restraint stress preceded by s.c. injection of either vehicle or SR-46349B (a serotonin 2A receptor antagonist) at doses of 0.01, 0.1 and 1.0 mg/kg. The restraint stress caused a rise in brown adipose tissue temperature (from, mean +/- s.e.m., 36.6 +/- 0.2 to 38.0 +/- 0.2 degrees C), transient cutaneous vasoconstriction (tail blood flow decreased from 12 +/- 2 to 5 +/- 1 cm/s), increase in heart rate (from 303 +/- 15 to 453 +/- 15 bpm at the peak, then reduced to 393 +/- 12 bpm at the steady state), and defaecation (6 +/- 1 pellets per restraint session). The core body temperature was not affected by the restraint. Blockade of 5-HT2A receptors attenuated the increase in brown adipose tissue temperature and transient cutaneous vasoconstriction, but not tachycardia and defaecation elicited by restraint stress. These results indicate that psychological stress causes activation of 5-HT2A receptors in neural pathways that control thermogenesis in the brown adipose tissue and facilitate cutaneous vasoconstriction.     

Organisational culture moderation of interpersonal trust and affective commitment in health care non-governmental organisations in Ghana

This study examined the moderating effect of organisational culture (OC) moderation on the relationship between interpersonal trust (IT; trust in management and trust in peers) and employees’ affective commitment (AC). Participants were 295 employees of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Ghana (female = 42%; age range = 18–55). The employees completed the measures of IT, OC, AC, and employee performance. Moderation analysis of the data utilising structural equation modelling revealed that OC completely moderated the relationship between trust in management and trust in peers on AC. However, the moderation impact was found to be higher with trust in management than trust in peers. Moreover, AC completely mediated between trust in management and employee performance, and between trust in peers and employee performance. These findings highlight the importance for human resource managers of NGOs to incorporate and leverage on organisational culture as a key determinant resource for employees’ trust relationships, AC and performance goals.     

Clinical assessment of motor function: a processes oriented instrument based on a speed-accuracy trade-off paradigm

In this study, we developed a digitizing tablet-based instrument for the clinical assessment of human voluntary movements targeting motor processes of planning, programming and execution. The tool was used to investigate an adaptation of Fitts' reciprocal tapping task [10], comprising four conditions, each of them modulated by three indices of difficulty related to the amplitude of movement required. Temporal, spatial and sequential constraints underlying the various conditions allowed the intricate motor processes to be dissociated. Data obtained from a group of elderly healthy subjects (N=50) were in agreement with the literature on motor control, in the temporal and spatial domains. Speed constraints generated gains in the temporal domain and costs in the spatial one, while spatial constraints generated gain in the spatial domain and costs in the temporal one; finally, sequential constraints revealed the integrative nature of the cognitive operations involved in motor production. This versatile instrument proved capable of providing quantitative, accurate and sensitive measures of the various processes sustaining voluntary movement in healthy subjects. Altogether, analyses performed in this study generated a theoretical framework and reference data which could be used in the future for the clinical assessment of patients with various movement disorders, in particular Parkinson's disease.     

Relations between mechanisms of CNS arousal and mechanisms of stress

In the centennial year of the birth of Hans Selye, this review compares his classical concepts of stress with a modern approach to mechanisms of CNS arousal. Relations between the two concepts are described. Neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, and functional genomic mechanisms underlying CNS arousal are briefly reviewed. Controls over stress responses and arousal are compared to particular concepts of control system engineering. Understanding these two systems is of crucial importance because their dysregulation is associated with large numbers of disease states.     

Hemispheric visual atentional imbalance in patients with traumatic brain injury

We find a spatially asymmetric allocation of attention in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) despite the lack of obvious asymmetry in neurological indicators. Identification performance was measured for simple spatial patterns presented briefly to a locus 5 degrees into the left or right hemifield, after precuing attention to the same (ipsilateral) or opposite (cross-hemifield) side. Though the cue was non-predictive of target location overall, performance was significantly slower for cross than for ipsilateral trials in both patients and controls. We tested 21 TBI patients without overt focal brain damage and nine control subjects. Only patients demonstrated significantly worse performance for left side presentation in the ipsilateral condition. Furthermore, in the cross-hemifield condition, the left-right difference seen in TBI patients was significantly larger-reflecting a failure in producing a leftward attention shift. Again no significant difference was found in controls. These hemifield effects suggest an asymmetry in the ability of TBI patients in shifting attention to the left hemifield, whether from central fixation or from a cue in the contra-lateral hemifield. The results support basic hypotheses regarding visual attention: Attentional control may be asymmetric and attention may be a distributed, rather than localized cortical function.     

Encoding under trust and distrust: the spontaneous activation of incongruent cognitions

Past studies of strategic thinking have shown that the encoding of the message information becomes more complex under distrust. Receivers process the information as if they are trying to protect themselves from being misled by testing alternative potential interpretations. The present study investigates the possibility that when people are mistrustful they spontaneously activate associations that are incongruent with the given message. Findings from 3 experiments suggest that, even when the distrust is unrelated in any meaningful way to the message and even when receivers are unable to prepare a strategic response, the cognitive system reacts to distrust by automatically inducing the consideration of incongruent associations--it seems designed to ask, "and what if the information were false?" The theoretical implications of the results for theories of social perception and persuasion are discussed.     

Konrad Bloch, 12 January 1912 - 15 October 2000

Konrad Bloch was a man of strong ethical principles. In personality, he was soft-spoken, kind, and generous. His home in Lexington, Massachusetts, with Lore, his wife of more than sixty years, his daughter, Susan, and son, Peter, was at the center of a joyous family life.