Selective attention and emotional vulnerability: assessing the causal basis of their association through the experimental manipulation of attentional bias

Although it is well-established that vulnerability to negative emotion is associated with attentional bias toward aversive information, the causal basis of this association remains undetermined. Two studies addressed this issue by experimentally inducing differential attentional responses to emotional stimuli using a modified dot probe task, and then examining the impact of such attentional manipulation on subsequent emotional vulnerability. The results supported the hypothesis that the induction of attentional bias should serve to modify emotional vulnerability, as revealed by participants' emotional reactions to a final standardized stress task. These findings provide a sound empirical basis for the previously speculative proposal that attentional bias can causally mediate emotional vulnerability, and they suggest the possibility that cognitive-experimental procedures designed to modify selective information processing may have potential therapeutic value.     

Covert operations: orthographic recoding as a basis for repetition priming in word identification

When a word is generated from a semantic cue, coincident orthographic visualization of that word may cause priming on a subsequent perceptual identification test. A task was introduced that required subjects to visualize the orthographic pattern of auditorily presented words. When used at study, this task produced a pattern of priming similar to that produced by a generate study task. When used at test, equal priming on the orthographic task was produced by read and generate study tasks but not by a generate study task that failed to invite orthographic visualization. Priming on perceptually based word identification tests that results from a generate study episode may be largely due to orthographic recoding of the target rather than to conceptual processing.     

The crucial roles of stimulus matching and stimulus identity in negative priming

Negative priming refers to the situation in which an ignored item on an initial prime trial suffers slowed responding when it becomes the target item on a subsequent probe trial. In this experiment (and a replication), we demonstrate two ways in which stimulus consistency (matching) governs negative priming. First, negative priming for identical words occurred only when the prime distractor changed color when it became the probe target (i.e., constant cue to read the red word); negative priming disappeared when the prime distractor retained its color as the probe target (i.e., cue switches from read the red prime word to read the white probe word). Second, negative priming occurred for identical words, but not for semantically related words, whether related categorically or associatively. This pattern of results is consistent with a memory retrieval account, but not with an inhibition account of negative priming, and casts doubt on whether there is semantic negative priming for words.     

Anxiety-linked expectancy bias across the adult lifespan

Anxiety is characterised by a negative expectancy bias, such that anxious individuals report negatively distorted expectations about the future. Contrary to anxiety, ageing is characterised by a positivity effect, such that ageing is associated with a tendency to attend to and remember positive information, relative to negative information. The current study integrates these literatures to examine anxiety- and age-linked biases when thinking about the future. Participants (N=1,109) completed a procedure that involved reading valenced scenarios (positive, negative, or ambiguous) and then rating the likelihood of future valenced events occurring. Results suggest that ageing and anxiety have independent and opposing effects. Heightened anxiety was associated with a reduced expectancy for positive events, regardless of the scenarios’ current emotional valence, whereas increased age was associated with an inflated expectancy for positive events, which was strongest when individuals were processing socially relevant or negative scenarios.     

The Anglican Communion: Idea,Name and Identity

Abstract

In the early nineteenth century, the idea that the United Church of England and Ireland (with the ‘Colonial Church’), the Scottish Episcopal Church and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA belonged to each other was (in England at least) a belief advocated by high-churchmen, not an established fact. Their ministries were not interchangeable. The article first traces the growth of the view that they were or should be branches of one communion. The second part surveys the variety of names used for this communion in the earlier nineteenth century. It records use of the name ‘Anglican Communion’ in the modern sense in 1847—more than three years earlier than previously known. Finally, reasons are suggested why the terms ‘Anglican’ and ‘Anglican Communion’ are not found in the Church of England's formal expressions of identity. One is the Church of England's reluctance to view itself as a denomination with a particular (‘Anglican’) identity. Mid-twentieth-century statements to this effect are recorded and defended against more recent criticism; indeed, the author agrees with Michael Ramsey in placing a question mark against the very concept of ‘Anglicanism’. References to the provisionality of the Anglican Communion—most recently by Archbishop Runcie—are cited with approval.     

Judgment and the identity theory of truth

The identity theory of truth takes on different forms depending on whether it is combined with a dual relation or a multiple relation theory of judgment. This paper argues that there are two significant problems for the dual relation identity theorist regarding thought’s answerability to reality, neither of which takes a grip on the multiple relation identity theory.     

Mindfulness,physical impairment and psychological well-being in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Objective: Mindfulness is the process of actively making new distinctions, rather than relying on habitual or automatic categorisations from the past. Mindfulness has been positively associated with physical well-being, better recovery rates from disease or infections, pain reduction and overall quality of life (QOL). Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rare, progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disease, clinically characterised by progressively increasing weakness leading to death, usually within five years. There is presently no cure for ALS, and it is considered one of the most genetically and biologically driven illnesses. Thus far, the aims of psychological studies on ALS have focused on understanding patient – and, to a lesser extent, caregiver – QOL and psychological well-being. No previous study has investigated the influence of psychological factors on ALS.

Methods: A sample of 197 subjects with ALS were recruited and assessed online twice, with a duration of four months between the two assessments. Assessments included measurements of trait mindfulness, physical impairment, QOL, anxiety and depression. The influence of mindfulness as predictor of changes in physical impairments was evaluated with a mixed-effects model.

Results: Mindfulness positively influenced the change of physical symptoms. Subjects with higher mindfulness experienced a slower progression of the disease after four months. Moreover, mindfulness at first assessment predicted higher QOL and psychological well-being.

Conclusions: The available data indicate that a psychological construct – mindfulness – can attenuate the progress of a disease that is believed to be almost solely biologically driven. The potential implications of these results extend well beyond ALS.     

Dislocation formation in the partially coherent interfaces of an embedded layer in a semi-infinite matrix

The formation of two misfit edge dislocations is theoretically investigated in the interfaces of a layer embedded in a semi-infinite matrix. Assuming the matrix–layer interfaces are partially coherent, the energy variation resulting from the formation of the dislocations from the lateral free surface of the structure has been determined in the shearing stress field due to the partial misfit. The mechanical stability of the structure is analysed with respect to the dislocation formation as a function of the size of the coherent region of the interface and the misfit strain.