Personal values as a mediator between parent and peer expectations and adolescent behaviors.

The current study examined the mediating role of adolescents' personal values on the relation between maternal and peer expectations for prosocial behaviors and adolescents' self-reported prosocial and antisocial behaviors. One hundred thirty-four adolescents (mean age = 16.22 years, 54% girls) completed measures of their own values and behaviors, as well as their perceptions of the positive expectations that their mother and their best friend(s) had for their (the adolescents') prosocial behaviors. Stepwise regression analyses suggested that adolescents' personal prosocial values mediated the relation between adolescents' perceptions of both maternal and peer expectations and adolescents' prosocial behaviors. In addition, for boys, perceptions of positive peer expectations were directly and negatively related to antisocial behaviors. The current study has important implications for parents, educators, and practitioners who are concerned about promoting adolescents' positive behaviors and discouraging negative behaviors.     

It’s About Time: The Role of Locomotion in Withdrawal Behavior

Introduction

Locomotion is defined as a self-regulatory orientation that involves committing personal resources to initiate and maintain goal-directed activities Kruglanski et al. (J Personal Social Psychol 79: 793, 2000). This article examines the relation between locomotion and withdrawal behaviors in organizational setting.

Materials and Methods

In the first study, police officers’ (N = 203) locomotion was negatively related to self-report measures of absenteeism and lateness. In the second study, bank employees’ (N = 297) locomotion was negatively related to withdrawal behaviors as evinced by organizational records including hours of absenteeism, lateness, and early departures. In the third study, a two-wave research design replicated the results of Study 2 by demonstrating that telecommunication employees’ (N = 69) locomotion measured at Time 1 was negatively related to their respective withdrawal behaviors 3 months later at Time 2.

Conclusion

Overall, these three studies support the notion that locomotion impacts a plurality of withdrawal behaviors in different organizational settings. Consequently, locomotion can be a pertinent and valuable psychometric tool for managers and human resources interested in improving organizational effectiveness.

     

Oxytocin Receptor (OXTR) Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Indirectly Predict Prosocial Behavior Through Perspective Taking and Empathic Concern

Engaging in prosocial behavior can provide positive outcomes for self and others. Prosocial tendencies contribute to the propensity to engage in prosocial behavior. The oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) has also been associated with prosocial tendencies and behaviors. There has been little research, however, investigating whether the relationship between OXTR and prosocial behaviors is mediated by prosocial tendencies. This relationship may also vary among different types of prosocial behavior. The current study examines the relationship between OXTR, gender, prosocial tendencies, and both altruistic and public prosocial behavior endorsement. Students at a midwestern university (N = 398; 89.2% Caucasian; M_age = 20.76; 26.6% male) provided self‐report measures of prosocial tendencies and behaviors and buccal cells for genotyping OXTR polymorphisms. Results indicated that OXTR single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs2268498 genotype significantly predicted empathic concern, whereas gender moderated the association between several other OXTR SNPs and prosocial tendencies. Increased prosocial tendencies predicted increased altruistic prosocial behavior endorsement and decreased public prosocial behavior endorsement. Our findings suggest an association between genetic variation in OXTR and endorsement of prosocial behavior indirectly through prosocial tendencies, and that the pathway is dependent on the type of prosocial behavior and gender.     

Subjective organization in the episodic memory of individuals with Parkinson’s disease associated with mild cognitive impairment

Word clustering (i.e., the ability to reproduce the same word pairs in consecutive recall trials of an unrelated word list) has been extensively investigated as a proxy of subjective organization (SO) of memorandum. In healthy subjects and in groups of brain-damaged patients, the rate of SO generally predicts accuracy of word list recall. This study aimed at evaluating SO in the performance of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) on a word list recall task in order to investigate the basic mechanisms of episodic memory impairment that are frequently observed in these patients. For this purpose, 56 PD patients, who were stratified according to the presence and quality of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and a group of healthy controls (HCs) were administered a word list task and an extensive battery of neuropsychological tests. Results showed that recall accuracy on the word list task progressively decreased passing from HC to PD patients without cognitive impairment, to patients with single-domain dysexecutive MCI and to patients with multiple-domain dysexecutive and amnesic MCI. Conversely, only the latter PD group showed a lower SO score than that achieved by the other groups. In the overall PD group, correlational and regression analyses demonstrated that SO scores and a composite score of executive functions were not reciprocally related, but both provided an independent and significant contribution to the prediction of word list recall accuracy. These data are discussed in terms of the contribution of executive functions and hippocampal storage processes to the onset of memory impairment in PD.     

Brain stimulation techniques in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder: current and future directions

Recent studies on the epidemiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) estimate 50 million patients suffer from OCD worldwide, thus making it a global problem. The treatment of OCD has changed substantially over the last 2 decades following the introduction of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which provide symptom improvement in approximately 60% of patients. However, some patients remain resistant to the standard pharmacologic and behavioral treatments. Although some treatment-resistant patients respond to pharmacologic augmentations, others do not, and there is evidence that some of the most severe cases benefit from treatment with neurosurgical interventions. Besides pharmacologic, behavioral, and neurosurgical approaches, different brain stimulation methods-transcranial magnetic stimulation, deep brain stimulation, and electroconvulsive therapy-have been investigated in treatment-resistant patients with OCD. However, available data about the use of these techniques in OCD treatment are quite limited in terms of sample size and study design, given the difficulty in conducting standard blinded trials for these procedures. In addition, none of the mentioned treatments have received Food and Drug Administration approval for the treatment of OCD. Nevertheless, promising findings regarding efficacy, tolerability, and non-invasiveness and/or reversibility of these techniques have increased interest in investigating their use in treatment-resistant OCD.     

Detection of grouped and ungrouped parts in visual patterns by tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and humans (Homo sapiens)

The authors investigated perceptual grouping in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and humans (Homo sapiens). In Experiment 1, 6 monkeys received a visual pattern as the sample and had to identify the comparison stimulus featuring some of its parts. Performance was better for ungrouped parts than for grouped parts. In Experiment 2, the sample featured the parts, and the comparison stimuli, the complex figures: The advantage for ungrouped elements disappeared. In Experiment 3, in which new stimuli were introduced, the results of the previous experiments were replicated. In Experiment 4, 128 humans were presented with the same tasks and stimuli used with monkeys. Their accuracy was higher for grouped parts. Results suggest that human and nonhuman primates use different modes of analyzing multicomponent patterns.     

Processing of irrelevant location information under dual-task conditions

This study deals with the problem of whether the processing of irrelevant location information in Simon-like tasks is triggered exogenously or endogenously. In Experiment 1, the primary task required one to press, as fast as possible, a left-hand-side key or a right-hand-side key (R1) to the pitch of a tone that was presented binaurally (S1). The secondary task required identifying, without time constraints, a visual stimulus (S2) that appeared randomly to the left or right of screen center. Results showed that there was a correspondence (i.e., a cross-task Simon effect) between the location of R1 and the location of S2 when S2 was presented alone. The cross-task Simon effect became much smaller (and in-significant) when a noise stimulus was presented contralateral to S2. Experiment 2 was similar to Experiment 1, except that S2 appeared unpredictably in only one-third of the trials. Results of Experiment 2 closely replicated those of Experiment 1: the cross-task Simon effect was much greater when S2 was presented alone. Experiment 3 differed from Experiment 1 because S2 had to be processed in only one-third of the trials, in which its identity was to be reported. In the remaining two-thirds of the trials, participants could ignore S2. Results confirmed that the cross-task Simon effect was much greater when S2 was presented alone. In contrast, it did not matter whether S2 had to be processed or not. In conclusion, the present study supports the hypothesis that the task-irrelevant spatial code of the stimulus is formed automatically, likely through an exogenously triggered selection. The role of endogenously initiated selection, if any, is much less important.     

The role of affordances in inhibition of return

Inhibition of return (IOR) is a response delay that occurs when the target is preceded by an irrelevant stimulus (cue) at the same location. IOR can be object based, as well as location based. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of the pragmatic features of a visually presented object in causing IOR. Two experiments were carried out using different objects as stimuli, for which the graspable part (affordance) was clearly defined. The presentation of a whole object, with the part commonly used to grasp it located below, served as a cue. The presentation of either the graspable or the ungraspable part of the cued or uncued object served as the target Results showed that responses were slower when the graspable part was shown in the cued location than when the ungraspable part was shown in the same location. The effect was apparently linked to the kind of action necessary to grasp an object.     

Music and physical activity in psychological well-being

The present study was designed to examine the effects of listening to music during exercise of moderate intensity on mood, state anxiety, and time to exhaustion as well as to evaluate sex differences in 27 physically active (14 men, 13 women) subjects between the ages of 20 and 30 years. Participants completed the Profile of Mood States and the State Anxiety Inventory before and after treadmill running in Music and No music conditions. Music and No Music conditions were randomly assigned, and participants exercised at 75% of their Heart Rate Reserve until voluntary exhaustion. Analysis indicated participants reported statistically significant mean changes on Tension, Depression, Fatigue, Confusion, and State Anxiety. However, the findings for emotions yielded no significant effect of music, except findings suggested that women, but not men, reported greater mean Fatigue after exercising in the presence of music than in its absence. Also, there was a statistically significant finding suggesting that women exercised longer with music than without.     

Inhibitory and facilitatory effects of cue onset and offset

The response speed to a visual target is modulated by the position of previous events (cues) even if their position is not predictive of the target position. The modulation has been considered biphasic, with an early facilitatory and a later inhibitory component. We conducted three experiments that investigated the importance of the onset and offset features of the cue for the facilitatory and inhibitory effects and estimated their separate and joint effects. The two possible target locations, one in the right and one in the left visual field, were indicated by two empty boxes, and the cue consisted of the onset and/or offset of an arrowhead located just under one of the two boxes. Different time intervals were used between cue and target. Subjects were instructed to ignore the cue and to respond to the target (a cross inside one of the two boxes). The data showed only consistent effects of inhibition (inhibition of return) with the long intervals, but the pattern was different depending on the cue type. The amount of inhibition was much greater when the onset of the cue was followed by its offset. Apparently, inhibition of return depended on the dynamic changes of the cue. Received: 23 October 1996 / Accepted: 3 June 1997