Vibrotactile localization on the abdomen: effects of place and space

In this study, we explore the conditions for accurate localization of vibrotactile stimuli presented to the abdomen. Tactile orientation systems intended to provide mobility information for people who are blind depend on accurate identification of location of stimuli on the skin, as do systems designed to indicate target positions in space or the status of remotely operated devices to pilots or engineers. The spatial acuity of the skin has been examined for simple touch, but not for the types of vibrating signals used in such devices. The ability to localize vibratory stimuli was examined at sites around the abdomen and found to be a function of separation among loci and, most significantly, of place on the trunk. Neither the structures underlying the skin nor the types of tactor tested appeared to affect localization. Evidence was found for anatomically defined anchor points that provide localization referents that enhance performance even with wide target spacing.     

The General Health Questionnaire and Eysenck's three-dimensional model of personality

A sample of 115 men and women between the ages of 20 and 60 completed the 30-item General Health Questionnaire together with the short-form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. The data indicate psychological distress so assessed is correlated .43 (p <.001) with Neuroticism and -.26 (p <.01) with Introversion but is unrelated to Psychoticism scores.     

Life history and social learning: megapode chicks fail to acquire feeding preferences from conspecifics

Australian brush-turkeys, Alectura lathami, are birds with an unusual life history: The young receive no parental care and first encounter conspecifics at an unpredictable age. Brush-turkey chicks that were 3-4 days old were presented with a robot model that appeared to feed from a distinctively colored dish. In control training trials, chicks saw a robot standing next to a different dish and scanning from side to side. Chicks expressed a strong tendency to feed from dishes of the type indicated by the pecking robot, but this effect proved ephemeral. Brush-turkeys hence appear to show no social learning under conditions that inculcate stable preferences in other galliforms such as chickens, suggesting that life history plays an important role in the evolution of learning.     

Worry and Pathological Worry in Patients with Psoriasis: Cross Sectional and Longitudinal Analyses of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) in Four Samples of Patients

The purpose of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Penn state Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) in patients with psoriasis. A series of cross-sectional and longitudinal studies were undertaken to assess the reliability, stability and validity of the measure. Patients with psoriasis from four samples (consecutive attendees, anxious patients, depressed patients, and 6-month follow-up of consecutive attendees) completed the PSWQ and measures assessing related constructs of anxiety and depression (HADS) and coping (COPE). The clinical severity of patients psoriasis was also assessed by dermatologists using the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI). Exploratory factor analysis was undertaken and receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analyses were used to examine the clinical utility of the PSWQ cut-off score for normal and pathological worry. Exploratory factor analysis suggested that the PSWQ is essentially unidimensional in patients with psoriasis. Intraclass correlation demonstrated that, over a 6-month period, the reproducibility of the PSWQ total scale was good in patients with anxiety and moderate in patients with depression. ROC analysis suggested that the optimum cutoff differentiating pathological worry was > 60, which is commensurate with findings in adult mental health more generally. The PSWQ cutoff for pathological worry showed a lower specificity for depression than anxiety. The PSWQ is an appropriate measure of pathological worry in patients with psoriasis. The cutoff on the scale for pathological worry demonstrates appropriate conceptual overlap with subordinate distress categories of anxiety and depression.     

The contribution of mediator-based deficiencies to age differences in associative learning

Production, mediational, and utilization deficiencies, which describe how strategy use may contribute to developmental trends in episodic memory, have been intensively investigated. Using a mediator report-and-retrieval method, the authors present evidence concerning the degree to which 2 previously unexplored mediator-based deficits--retrieval and decoding deficiencies--account for age deficits in learning. During study, older and younger adults were instructed to use a strategy (imagery or sentence generation) to associate words within paired associates. They also reported each mediator and later attempted to retrieve each response and the mediator produced at study. Substantial deficits occurred in mediator recall, and small differences were observed in decoding mediators. Mediator recall also accounted for a substantial proportion of the age deficits in criterion recall independently of fluid or crystallized intelligence. Discussion focuses on mediator-based deficiencies and their implications for theories of age deficits in episodic memory.     

Eating disorder NOS (EDNOS): an example of the troublesome "not otherwise specified" (NOS) category in DSM-IV

The “Not Otherwise Specified” (NOS) category within DSM-IV is designed for disorders of clinical severity that are not specified within broad diagnostic classes. “NOS” diagnoses are intended to be residual categories and they tend to be neglected by researchers. This can be inappropriate. The problems associated with certain NOS diagnoses are well illustrated by “Eating Disorder NOS” (sometimes termed EDNOS), which is the most common category of eating disorder encountered in routine clinical practice yet it has barely been studied. Indeed, there has been no research on its treatment. Interim and longer-term conceptual and practical solutions to the anomalous status of eating disorder NOS are proposed including the creation of a new diagnosis termed “mixed eating disorder”. Several of these solutions are of relevance to NOS categories in general. All the solutions should fulfil criteria for clinical utility.     

Control over the time course of cognition in the tempo-naming task

Five experiments are reported in which standard naming and tempo-naming tasks were used to investigate mechanisms of control over the time course of lexical processing. The time course of processing was manipulated by asking participants to time their responses with an audiovisual metronome. As the tempo of the metronome increased, results showed that (a) the rate of lexical errors increased, whereas the rate of regularization errors remained constant; (b) onset errors increased at a faster rate than body errors; (c) stimulus effects weakened on latencies, whereas they strengthened on durations and errors; and (d) naming durations decreased more slowly when stimuli were presented prior to the response cue. These results constitute evidence that time pressure in the tempo-naming task caused a compression in the time course of lexical processing. Compression is discussed in terms of threshold mechanisms and rate mechanisms of control.     

Depression proneness in treatment-seeking smokers: a taxometric analysis

Using taxometric procedures, we examined latent distribution of depression proneness and the construct validity of the Depression Proneness Inventory (DPI) within a group of 439 non-depressed smokers participating in a smoking cessation trial. Three taxometric procedures MAMBAC, MAXEIG, and L-MODE, supported the presence of a distinct subgroup of depression prone smokers. A set of indicators including cognitive vulnerabilities, self-reported tendencies to feel inadequate and experience depressive symptoms, as well as recent experiences of depressive symptoms prior to anticipated cessation treatment behaved taxonically suggesting a shared relationship with an underlying taxonic causal factor. The DPI was found to be an efficient index of taxon membership and a strong predictor of depression history. The DPI identifies a subgroup of smokers seeking cessation treatment that carry affective risk factors known to impede successful smoking cessation and might benefit from interventions targeting depression and negative mood.     

Is light in pictures presumed to come from the left side?

For good ecological reasons humans assume that the illumination in pictures comes from overhead rather than from below. Recent work has also raised the possibility that the preferred angle of illumination is between 20 degrees and 30 degrees to the left of vertical, although the ecological basis for that is obscure. We describe two studies of this question. In study 1, twenty subjects looked in free, unrestricted vision, at a picture of a single 'bubble' which appeared either convex if the illumination was from above, or concave if the illumination was from below. There was no evidence in study 1 that illumination from the left produced a different appearance from illumination from the right, the preferred angle of illumination being 0.5 degrees to the right of vertical. In study 2, on forty subjects, there was fast presentation (200 ms) of an array of 16 bubbles, one of which, the target, was illuminated from the opposite direction to the others, and hence 'popped out' from the display, appearing concave if the others were convex, or vice-versa. The preferred angle of illumination for detection of the target was about 14 degrees to the left of vertical in study 2. The estimates from studies 1 and 2 did not differ significantly, and when combined gave a preferred angle of 9 degrees to the left of vertical. The reasons for the seeming discrepancy between studies 1 and 2, or the smaller overall effect than that found in previous studies are not clear since the methodologies seem equivalent. In both studies 1 and 2 there was a highly significant association between the direction of spontaneous head tilt and preferred direction of illumination, and this factor has not previously been taken into account in studies of the phenomenon. Contrary to the study of Sun and Perona (1998, Nature Neuroscience 1 183-184), there was no association with handedness or other measures of functional lateralisation.     

Death and organ procurement: public beliefs and attitudes

Although "brain death" and the dead donor rule--i.e., patients must not be killed by organ retrieval--have been clinically and legally accepted in the U.S. as prerequisites to organ removal, there is little data about public attitudes and beliefs concerning these matters. To examine the public attitudes and beliefs about the determination of death and its relationship to organ transplantation, 1351 Ohio residents >18 years were randomly selected and surveyed using random digit dialing (RDD) sample frames. The RDD telephone survey was conducted using computer-assisted telephone interviews. The survey instrument was developed from information provided by 12 focus groups and a pilot study of the questionnaire. Three scenarios based on hypothetical patients were presented: "brain dead," in a coma, or in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Respondents provided personal assessments of whether the patient in each scenario was dead and their willingness to donate that patient's organs in these circumstances. More than 98 percent of respondents had heard of the term "brain death," but only one-third (33.7%) believed that someone who was "brain dead" was legally dead. The majority of respondents (86.2%) identified the "brain dead" patient in the first scenario as dead, 57.2 percent identified the patient in a coma as dead (Scenario 2), and 34.1 percent identified the patient in a PVS as dead (Scenario 3). Nearly one-third (33.5%) were willing to donate the organs of patients they classified as alive for at least one scenario, in seeming violation of the dead donor rule. Most respondents were not willing to violate the dead donor rule, although a substantial minority was. However, the majority of respondents were unaware, misinformed, or held beliefs there were not congruent with current definitions of "brain death." This study highlights the need for more public dialogue and education about "brain death" and organ donation.