Humor Styles Questionnaire: personality and educational correlates in Belgian high school and college students

Studies often treat sense of humour as a unidimensional construct. Recently, however, four different humour styles have been hypothesized and validated by the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ). In the present two studies, first, the HSQ received cross‐cultural validation among French‐speaking Belgian students (94 high school and 87 college students). Second, apart from some similarities (Extraversion, low need for closure), the four humour styles were found to be differently related to personality. Social and self‐enhancing humour styles were positively related to Agreeableness, Openness, and self‐esteem, whereas hostile humour was negatively related to Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Self‐defeating humour was negatively related to Emotional Stability, Conscientiousness, security in attachment, and self‐esteem. Finally, students' humour styles were neither direct nor indirect predictors of school performance, but self‐defeating and hostile humour styles were typical of students with low school motivation. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lasting false beliefs and their behavioral consequences

False beliefs and memories can affect people's attitudes, at least in the short term. But can they produce real changes in behavior? This study explored whether falsely suggesting to subjects that they had experienced a food-related event in their childhood would lead to a change in their behavior shortly after the suggestion and up to 4 months later. We falsely suggested to 180 subjects that, as children, they had gotten ill after eating egg salad. Results showed that, after this manipulation, a significant minority of subjects came to believe they had experienced this childhood event even though they had initially denied having experienced it. This newfound autobiographical belief was accompanied by the intent to avoid egg salad, and also by significantly reduced consumption of egg-salad sandwiches, both immediately and 4 months after the false suggestion. The false suggestion of a childhood event can lead to persistent false beliefs that have lasting behavioral consequences.     

Faces are special,but facial expressions aren’t: Insights from an oculomotor capture paradigm

We compared the ability of angry and neutral faces to drive oculomotor behaviour as a test of the widespread claim that emotional information is automatically prioritized when competing for attention. Participants were required to make a saccade to a colour singleton; photos of angry or neutral faces appeared amongst other objects within the array, and were completely irrelevant for the task. Eye-tracking measures indicate that faces drive oculomotor behaviour in a bottom-up fashion; however, angry faces are no more likely to capture the eyes than neutral faces are. Saccade latencies suggest that capture occurrs via reflexive saccades and that the outcome of competition between salient items (colour singletons and faces) may be subject to fluctuations in attentional control. Indeed, although angry and neutral faces captured the eyes reflexively on a portion of trials, participants successfully maintained goal-relevant oculomotor behaviour on a majority of trials. We outline potential cognitive and brain mechanisms underlying oculomotor capture by faces.     

Levels of processing with free and cued recall and unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy

This study investigates the role of the temporal lobes in levels-of-processing tasks (phonetic and semantic encoding) according to the nature of recall tasks (free and cued recall). These tasks were administered to 48 patients with unilateral temporal epilepsy (right "RTLE"=24; left "LTLE"=24) and a normal group (n=24). The results indicated that LTLE patients were impaired for semantic processing (free and cued recall) and for phonetic processing (free and cued recall), while for RTLE patients deficits appeared in free recall with semantic processing. It is suggested that the left temporal lobe is involved in all aspects of verbal memory, and that the right temporal lobe is specialized in semantic processing. Moreover, our data seem to indicate that RTLE patients present a retrieval processing impairment (semantic condition), whereas the LTLE group is characterized by encoding difficulties in the phonetic and semantic condition.     

Perception of elliptic biological motion

We tested the ability of the mature visual system for discrimination between types of elliptic biological motion on the basis of event kinematics. Healthy adult volunteers were presented with point-light displays depicting elliptic motion when only a single dot, a moving point-light arm, or a whole point-light human figure was visible. The displays were created in accordance with the two-thirds power kinematic law (natural motion), whereas the control displays violated this principle (unnatural motion). On each trial, participants judged whether the display represented natural or unnatural motion. The findings indicate that adults are highly sensitive to violation of the two-thirds power kinematic law. Notably, participants can easily discriminate between natural and unnatural motions without recognising the stimuli, which suggests that people implicitly use kinematic information. Most intriguing, event recognition seems to diminish the capacity to judge whether event kinematics is unnatural. We discuss possible ways for a cross-talk between perception and production of biological movement, and the brain mechanisms involved in biological motion processing.     

Can physical activity be used as a tool to reduce depression in patients after a cardiac event? What is the evidence? A systematic literature study

A reduction in the incidence of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) has been reported in the Western world, but post‐infarction depression often occurs and is related to poor medical outcomes. The aim of this study was to examine the scientific literature by a systematic review, in order to find evidence for whether physical activity can be a tool to reduce depression in patients who have suffered a cardiac event. Three databases were systematically searched (PubMed, CINAHL, and Cochrane), and the GRADE protocol was used in combination with a revised Amstar‐protocol for the systematic review. Scientific reports fitting the area were scarce. Finally, ten studies were included in this study: one meta‐analysis, five randomized controlled trials, and four clinical trials. The results showed low to moderate evidence for the use of low to moderate levels of exercise as a tool to reduce depression in post‐coronary artery event patients. This study concluded positive effects of physical activity as a tool to reduce depression in post‐coronary artery event patients. Physiotherapists could be further involved in increasing physical activity after cardiac events. More studies are needed in the area.