Neural correlates of theory-of-mind reasoning: an event-related potential study

Everyday understanding of human behavior rests on having a theory of mind—the ability to relate people's actions to underlying mental states such as beliefs and desires. It has been suggested that an impaired theory of mind may lie at the heart of psychological disorders that are characterized by deficits in social understanding, such as autism. In this study, we employed the event-related potential methodology to index the activity of neural systems that are engaged during theory-of-mind reasoning in adults. Specifically, neural activity elicited by tasks that required thinking about mental as compared with nonmental representations (i.e., beliefs vs. photographs) was characterized by a focally enhanced positivity over left frontal areas, which was diminished over left parietal areas. These findings provide an important perspective on both children's theory-of-mind development and the neurobiology of disorders in which theory of mind seems to be impaired.     

Exposure to negative emotional cues and alcohol cue reactivity with alcoholics: a preliminary investigation

Fifty-one male and female inpatient alcoholics received cue exposure treatment involving in vivo exposure to alcohol cues and imaginal exposure to individualized high-risk drinking situations involving negative emotional cues. At post-test, self-report measures of urge to drink alcohol and negative emotional states were obtained during an alcohol cue reactivity assessment. Contrary to our hypothesis, greater exposure to negative emotional cues during treatment was associated with greater urge and negative emotional responses at post-test. In addition, greater duration of exposure to negative emotional cues predicted greater attention to alcohol-related stimuli and thoughts about drinking during the post-test. Implications for future research in this area include extending the duration of exposure to negative emotional cues in order to establish the optimal exposure durations within which a majority of individuals achieve clinically significant reductions in their urge to drink alcohol.     

The psychology of hate: Moral concerns differentiate hate from dislike

We investigated whether any differences in the psychological conceptualization of hate and dislike were simply a matter of degree of negativity (i.e., hate falls on the end of the continuum of dislike) or also morality (i.e., hate is imbued with distinct moral components that distinguish it from dislike). In three lab studies in Canada and the United States, participants reported disliked and hated attitude objects and rated each on dimensions including valence, attitude strength, morality, and emotional content. Quantitative and qualitative measures revealed that hated attitude objects were more negative than disliked attitude objects and associated with moral beliefs and emotions, even after adjusting for differences in negativity. In Study 4, we analysed the rhetoric on real hate sites and complaint forums and found that the language used on prominent hate websites contained more words related to morality, but not negativity, relative to complaint forums.     

The go/no-go priming task: automatic evaluation and categorisation beyond response interference

The response-window version of a go/no-go (GNG) response priming task is introduced using both evaluative (Experiment 1) and animacy decision (Experiment 2). In each trial a cue indicates which target category should lead to a key-press. The target is preceded by either a congruent or incongruent prime. The standard priming task was added as well. Both tasks yielded robust priming effects. However, they differed regarding a signature of response activation paradigms, that is, the Gratton effect (i.e. smaller priming effects following incongruent trials compared to congruent trials), which is present in the standard task but absent in the GNG task. This indicates that effects found with the GNG task are caused by different processes compared to the standard task. Experiment 3 tested an alternative account to explain priming effects in the GNG task. By manipulating response biases, Experiment 3 provides evidence for this account.     

Revealing Ireland's “Proper” Heart: Apology,Shame, Nation

This article contributes to feminist expositions of emotion and “matters of the heart” by highlighting the gendered nature of the mobilization of shame. It focuses on the role shame plays in state apology and the desire to recover pride. Specifically, it analyzes the state apology offered to the survivors of Magdalen Laundries by Enda Kenny, the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland. By drawing out how the state apology recreates the Irish nation, it traces the deployment of a potentially productive variety of the politics of shame, which comes to be subverted in the service of keeping the virtuous, feeling “heart” of Ireland—the nation's very core—intact across a temporal, moral continuum.     

Pulling yourself together: Meditation promotes congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem

Self-reported or explicit self-esteem frequently conflicts with indirectly assessed, implicit self-esteem. The present research investigated whether meditation may reduce such inner conflicts by promoting congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem. Relative to control conditions, meditation led to greater congruence between explicit self-esteem, assessed via self-report, and implicit self-esteem, indicated by name-letter preference (Studies 1 and 2). Low implicit self-esteem was further associated with a slow-down of explicit self-evaluation (Study 2), an effect that mediated the greater congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem in the meditation condition. These results suggest that meditation encourages people to rely more on intuitive feelings of self-worth.     

Theory of mind development in Chinese children: a meta-analysis of false-belief understanding across cultures and languages

Theory of mind is claimed to develop universally among humans across cultures with vastly different folk psychologies. However, in the attempt to test and confirm a claim of universality, individual studies have been limited by small sample sizes, sample specificities, and an overwhelming focus on Anglo- European children. The current meta-analysis of children's false-belief performance provides the most comprehensive examination to date of theory-of-mind development in a population of non-Western children speaking non-Indo-European languages (i.e., Mandarin and Cantonese). The meta-analysis consisted of 196 Chinese conditions (127 from mainland China and 69 from Hong Kong), representing responses from more than 3,000 children, compared with 155 similar North American conditions (83 conditions from the United States and 72 conditions from Canada). The findings show parallel developmental trajectories of false-belief understanding for children in China and North America coupled with significant differences in the timing of development across communities-children's false-belief performance varied across different locales by as much as 2 or more years. These data support the importance of both universal trajectories and specific experiential factors in the development of theory of mind.     

Short-term limb immobilization affects motor performance

C. Ghez, J. Gordon, and M. R Ghilardi (1995; J. Gordon, M. R Ghilardi, & C. Ghez, 1995; R. L. Sainburg, M. R Ghilardi, H. Poizner, & C. Ghez, 1995) have found that proprio-ceptive deafferentation impairs feedforward and feedback mechanisms that control reaching movements. In the present study, the authors found immobilization-induced changes in limb kinematics, including joint motion, in 32 healthy participants who performed out-and-back movements before and after 0, 6, or 12 hr of immobilization of the left arm. Control participants did not undergo the arm immobilization procedure. Immobilization for 12 hr, but not 6 hr, caused trajectories with increased hand-path areas and altered interjoint coordination. The abnormalities were smaller in amplitude but similar in quality to those reported in deafferented patients (R. L. Sainburg et al.). In addition, movement onset point significantly drifted after immobilization. Thus, short-term limb disuse can affect interjoint coordination by acting on feedforward mechanisms. These behavioral alterations are potentially related to cortical plastic changes.