The course of depression 10-weeks post-acute coronary syndrome: assessment using the cardiac depression visual analogue scale

This study investigated depressed mood post-acute coronary syndrome in an Australian sample using the Cardiac Depression Visual Analogue Scale (CD-VAS), which was developed to assess the depression-related symptoms of reduced pleasure, memory, activity, future pessimism, increased irritation and sleep problems. The Beck Depression Inventory-II, the Cardiac Depression Scale (CDS) and a demographic medical questionnaire were administered at 2 weeks post-ACS to an initial sample of 13 female and 45 male participants whose mean age was 59.16 (SD=11.13) years (range 38-79). Depressed and non-depressed participants, determined by the CDS, then kept a CD-VAS diary between 2 and 12 weeks. 32 participants kept the diary for the entire 10 weeks. Total CD-VAS scores remained elevated in the depressed group for the entire period. The groups differed on the Pleasure, Memory and Future items for a total of 6, 6 and 5 weeks, respectively, and differed on the Activity item only at 1, 3 and 5 weeks. No group differences were seen in the Irritation or Sleep items. Within the depressed group, the only CD-VAS items that differed from each other across time were Irritation and Activity. Further, the Sleep, Irritation and Activity items had a significant time effect. These results indicate that although overall depression, as measured by the CD-VAS, remained elevated in the depressed group, there were key differences in recovery rates of specific depression-related symptoms. These differences could be useful indicators in the treatment of depression post-ACS.     

An Interrater Reliability Study of Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R–PAS) Raw and Complexity-Adjusted Scores

Recently, the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R–PAS; Meyer, Viglione, Mihura, Erard, &; Erdberg, 2011 Meyer, G. J., Viglione, D. J., Mihura, J. L., Erard, R. E., &; Erdberg, P. (2011). A manual for the Rorschach Performance Assessment System. Toledo, OH: R–PAS. [Google Scholar]) was introduced to overcome some possible limitations of the Comprehensive System (CS; Exner, 2003 Exner, J. E. (2003). The Rorschach: A comprehensive system. Vol. 1: Basic foundations and principles of interpretation (4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. [Google Scholar]) while continuing its efforts to link Rorschach inferences to their evidence base. An important, technical modification to the scoring system is that R–PAS interpretations are based on both standard scores and complexity-adjusted scores. Two previous U.S. studies reported good to excellent interrater reliability (IRR) for the great majority of R–PAS variables; however, IRR of complexity-adjusted scores has never been investigated. Furthermore, no studies have yet investigated R–PAS IRR in Europe. To extend this literature, we examined R–PAS IRR of Page 1 and Page 2 raw and complexity-adjusted scores with 112 Italian Rorschach protocols. We collected a large sample of both clinical and nonclinical Rorschach protocols, each of which was coded separately by 2 independent raters. Results demonstrated a mean intraclass correlation of .78 (SD = .14) for raw scores and.74 (SD = .14) for complexity-adjusted scores. Overall, for both raw and complexity-adjusted values, most of the variables were characterized by good to excellent IRR.     

Ask and you might receive: The actor–partner interdependence model approach to estimating cultural and gender variations in social support

As an essential part of close relationships, social support is a dynamic interactive process. This paper aims to simultaneously investigate social support‐seeking and provision behaviours using the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model (APIM). Ninety‐two friendship dyads participated in this study. Supportive versus negative friendship qualities were used to predict different support‐seeking and support‐provision behaviours during an experimental task. Cultural and gender variations were also examined. Results showed that self‐reported friendship qualities influence support‐seeking and provision behaviours intrapersonally and interpersonally. Female participants were more likely to provide emotion‐focused support than were male participants. After accounting for friendship qualities in the dyads, there was no evidence of cultural group differences on support‐seeking or provision behaviours among same‐sex friends. These results demonstrate the conceptual and empirical advantages of using APIM to unpack cultural and gender variations in social support processes.     

Pointing movements both impair and improve visuospatial working memory depending on serial position

Two experiments investigated the effects of pointing movements on the item and order recall of random, horizontal, and vertical arrays consisting of 6 and 7 squares (Experiment 1) or 8 and 9 squares (Experiment 2). In the encoding phase, participants either viewed the items passively (passive-view condition) or pointed towards them (pointing condition). Then, after a brief interval, they were requested to recall the locations of the studied squares in the correct order of presentation. The critical result was that, for all types of arrays, the effects of the encoding condition varied as a function of serial position: for the initial and central positions accuracy was higher in the passive-view than in the pointing condition (confirming the standard inhibitory effect of pointing movements on visuospatial working memory), whereas the reverse pattern occurred in the final positions—showing a significant advantage of the pointing condition over the passive-view condition. Findings are interpreted as showing that pointing can have two simultaneous effects on the recall of spatial locations, a positive one due to the addition of a motor code and a negative one due to the attentional requirements of hand movements, with the net impact on serial recall depending on the amount of attention resources needed for the encoding of each position. Implications for the item-order hypothesis and the perceptual-gestural account of working memory are also discussed.     

Exploring Initiative as a Signal of Knowledge Co‐Construction During Collaborative Problem Solving

Peer interaction has been found to be conducive to learning in many settings. Knowledge co‐construction (KCC) has been proposed as one explanatory mechanism. However, KCC is a theoretical construct that is too abstract to guide the development of instructional software that can support peer interaction. In this study, we present an extensive analysis of a corpus of peer dialogs that we collected in the domain of introductory Computer Science. We show that the notion of task initiative shifts correlates with both KCC and learning. Speakers take task initiative when they contribute new content that advances problem solving and that is not invited by their partner; if initiative shifts between the partners, it indicates they both contribute to problem solving. We found that task initiative shifts occur more frequently within KCC episodes than outside. In addition, task initiative shifts within KCC episodes correlate with learning for low pre‐testers, and total task initiative shifts correlate with learning for high pre‐testers. As recognizing task initiative shifts does not require as much deep knowledge as recognizing KCC, task initiative shifts as an indicator of productive collaboration are potentially easier to model in instructional software that simulates a peer.     

Irrational and Metacognitive Beliefs Mediate the Relationship Between Content Beliefs and GAD Symptoms: A Study on a Normal Population

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) and Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) models show both similarities and differences in conceptualizing anxiety. This work assumes that REBT’s irrational and MCT’s metacognitive beliefs play a mediation role while CBT’s disorder specific content beliefs act as triggers. This hypothesis is tested using a regression model in which metacognitive and irrational beliefs play a mediation role while content disorder beliefs are independent variables. This paper applied this model to generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a psychiatric diagnosis in which anxiety is the major feature. In GAD, the specific content beliefs are negative problem orientation and intolerance of uncertainty. Therefore, 149 non clinical subjects completed 4 self-report questionnaires: the Negative Orientation to the Problems Questionnaire and the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale as measures for content cognitive beliefs, the Attitudes and Beliefs Scale for irrational beliefs, and the Metacognitive Questionnaire 30 Items Version for metacognitive beliefs. The generalized anxiety disorder questionnaire was chosen in order to measure anxiety as dependent variable. Regression analyses confirmed that irrational and metacognitive beliefs mediate the relation between cognitive content beliefs and GAD. We clinically interpret mediation as a second level regulation.     

Visual cues of motion that trigger animacy perception at birth: the case of self‐propulsion

Self‐propelled motion is a powerful cue that conveys information that an object is animate. In this case, animate refers to an entity's capacity to initiate motion without an applied external force. Sensitivity to this motion cue is present in infants that are a few months old, but whether this sensitivity is experience‐dependent or is already present at birth is unknown. Here, we tested newborns to examine whether predispositions to process self‐produced motion cues underlying animacy perception were present soon after birth. We systematically manipulated the onset of motion by self‐propulsion (Experiment 1) and the change in trajectory direction in the presence or absence of direct contact with an external object (Experiments 2 and 3) to investigate how these motion cues determine preference in newborns. Overall, data demonstrated that, at least at birth, the self‐propelled onset of motion is a crucial visual cue that allowed newborns to differentiate between self‐ and non‐self‐propelled objects (Experiment 1) because when this cue was removed, newborns did not manifest any visual preference (Experiment 2), even if they were able to discriminate between the stimuli (Experiment 3). To our knowledge, this is the first study aimed at identifying sensitivity in human newborns to the most basic and rudimentary motion cues that reliably trigger perceptions of animacy in adults. Our findings are compatible with the hypothesis of the existence of inborn predispositions to visual cues of motion that trigger animacy perception in adults.     

Working memory in healthy aging and in Parkinson’s disease: evidence of interference effects

Focusing on relevant information while suppressing the irrelevant one are critical abilities for different cognitive processes. However, their functioning has been scarcely investigated in the working memory (WM) domain, in both healthy and pathological conditions. The present research aimed to study these abilities in aging and Parkinson’s disease (PD), testing three groups of healthy participants (young, older and elderly) and one of PD patients, employing a new experimental paradigm. Results showed that the transient storing of irrelevant information in WM causes substantial interference effects, which were remarkable in elderly individuals on both response latency and accuracy. Interestingly, PD patients responded faster and were equally accurate compared to a matched control group. Taken together, findings confirm the existence of similar mechanisms for orienting attention inwards to WM contents or outwards to perceptual stimuli, and suggest the suitability of our task to assess WM functioning in both healthy aging and PD.     

Emotional prosody effects on verbal memory in older and younger adults

Prosody, or the way things are said, can modify the meaning of utterances making qualitatively different affective prosodies useful for understanding how auditory affective information is processed and remembered. In this study, we collected behavioral data from 225 younger (M age = 20.8 years, SD = 2.5 years; 119 males) and 225 older adults (M age = 71.6 years, SD = 6.5 years; 119 males) in order to examine age differences in emotional prosody effects on verbal memory. Participants were randomly divided into three subgroups according to different prosody listening conditions (positive, negative, and neutral) and prosody effects on a yes–no recognition memory task were investigated. The results showed how older adults who listened to the story read with a neutral prosody remembered more words than those who listened to the same story with a positive or negative prosody. Younger adults showed no valence effects. Our findings highlighted an age and affective prosody interaction that affects remembering in older adults alone.     

Alerting enhances target identification but does not affect the magnitude of the attentional blink

Identification of the second of two targets is impaired when presented less than about 500 ms after the first. The magnitude of this attentional blink (AB) is known to be modulated by tonic factors (e.g., observer's state of relaxation). The present work examined the effects of a phasic change in observer's state brought about by an alerting stimulus (an aggregate of faint rings) presented in temporal proximity to either letter-target inserted in a temporal stream (RSVP) of digit distractors. In four experiments, identification accuracy of each target was substantially improved by presenting the alerting stimulus either in the target's frame or in the preceding RSVP frame. However, alerting did not modulate the magnitude of the AB. The appearance of an alerting effect on the AB in Experiment 1 was ascribed to a ceiling effect in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 ruled out endogenous temporal cueing effects; Experiment 4 examined the temporal gradient of alerting. Independence of the alerting and AB effects suggests that the alerting stimuli and the letter targets may be processed along distinct visual pathways.