Attachment Patterns as Mediators of the Link Between Combat Exposure and Posttraumatic Symptoms: A Study Among Portuguese War Veterans

We analyzed the role of both attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance as a mediators of the effects of combat exposure on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Participants were Portuguese veterans (N = 60) divided into 2 groups: 30 suffered from chronic PTSD (nonrecovered) and 30 had remission from PTSD (recovered). Combat exposure, attachment patterns, and PTSD symptoms were assessed through self-report measures. Mediation test was performed by conducting several hierarchical regression analyses. Results showed higher attachment anxiety among nonrecovered participants. We did not find statistically significant differences between groups for both attachment avoidance and combat exposure level scores. In mediation analysis, at first step, attachment avoidance was not a significant predictor of PTSD symptoms, and attachment avoidance did not enter in subsequent analysis. Attachment anxiety was a partial mediator of the effect of combat exposure on PTSD symptoms. Implications of the findings for both attachment theory and clinical intervention on trauma are discussed.     

Alcohol intoxication reduces detection of asymmetry: an explanation for increased perceptions of facial attractiveness after alcohol consumption?

Ratings of physical attractiveness are related to degree of facial symmetry. Acute alcohol consumption affects ratings of physical attractiveness and also attenuates aspects of visual perception. We tested the hypothesis that increases in ratings of attractiveness associated with alcohol intoxication can be attributed at least in part to a reduced ability to discern facial asymmetry due to reductions in levels of visual perception. We examined whether alcohol intoxication reduces ability to detect asymmetry in approximately symmetrical images. Sober and intoxicated subjects were shown a series of simple geometric images to which they responded on whether they perceived each one to be symmetrical or asymmetrical. Intoxicated subjects were significantly less able to detect asymmetry than were sober subjects, providing support for the hypothesis.     

Old Age,Finitude and Meaning: Reflections on the Care of Older Adults Based on Logotherapy

Due to the steady increase in the number of older adults among the Brazilian population, the aim of the present article is to reflect on the care provided to the elderly based on Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy as an alternative approach to understanding more deeply what this life stage means. For this purpose, demographic data on the population of older adults are provided, together with distinct views on aging and its relationship to the quality of life. Next, logotherapy, from its conceptions about the relationship of the person to finitude and to the person’s possibilities for existence, is presented as a psychological theory likely to improve the understanding of aging and to represent a possible approach to the care of older adults. Based on an understanding of humans as beings of power and therefore as self-transcendent and endowed with the will to meaning, the possibility of psychology investing in the relationship with alterity as the grounds for interventions targeting older adults is emphasized.     

The Minho Word Pool: Norms for imageability,concreteness, and subjective frequency for 3,800 Portuguese words

Words are widely used as stimuli in cognitive research. Because of their complexity, using words requires strict control of their objective (lexical and sublexical) and subjective properties. In this work, we present the Minho Word Pool (MWP), a dataset that provides normative values of imageability, concreteness, and subjective frequency for 3,800 (European) Portuguese words—three subjective measures that, in spite of being used extensively in research, have been scarce for Portuguese. Data were collected with 2,357 college students who were native speakers of European Portuguese. The participants rated 100 words drawn randomly from the full set for each of the three subjective indices, using a Web survey procedure (via a URL link). Analyses comparing the MWP ratings with those obtained for the same words from other national and international databases showed that the MWP norms are reliable and valid, thus providing researchers with a useful tool to support research in all neuroscientific areas using verbal stimuli. The MWP norms can be downloaded along with this article or from http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases.     

Multidimensional scaling of musical time estimations

The aim of this study was to identify the psycho-musical factors that govern time evaluation in Western music from baroque, classic, romantic, and modern repertoires. The excerpts were previously found to represent variability in musical properties and to induce four main categories of emotions. 48 participants (musicians and nonmusicians) freely listened to 16 musical excerpts (lasting 20 sec. each) and grouped those that seemed to have the same duration. Then, participants associated each group of excerpts to one of a set of sine wave tones varying in duration from 16 to 24 sec. Multidimensional scaling analysis generated a two-dimensional solution for these time judgments. Musical excerpts with high arousal produced an overestimation of time, and affective valence had little influence on time perception. The duration was also overestimated when tempo and loudness were higher, and to a lesser extent, timbre density. In contrast, musical tension had little influence.     

Modularity and hierarchical organization of action programs in children's acquisition of graphic skills

The organization of actions is based on modules in memory as a result of practice, easing the demand of performing more complex actions. If this modularization occurs, the elements of the module must remain invariant in new tasks. To test this hypothesis, 35 children, age 10 yr., practiced a graphic criterion task on a digital tablet and completed a complex graphic task enclosing the previous one. Total movement and pause times to draw the figure indicated skill acquisition. A module was identified by the variability of relative timing, pause time, and sequencing. Total movement to perform the criterion task did not increase significantly when it was embedded in the more complex task. Modularity was evidenced by the stability of relative timing and pause time and sequencing. The spatial position of new elements did not perturb the module, so the grammar of action may still have been forming.     

Metabolic costs of aggressive behaviour in the Siamese fighting fish,Betta splendens

Aggressive conflicts between males are often resolved by means of multiple ritualized agonistic displays without damaging escalation. Apparently, in such cases by using those displays opponents exchange important motivational and physical information on which they base a decision to stay or leave the interaction. In the Siamese fighting fish, the time spent spreading the dorsal fin and erecting the gill coverts predicts who will be the winner or loser of the interaction. Two experiments were carried out to study whether display performance might be costly. First, oxygen consumption was measured during mirror‐image stimulation. This experiment showed that oxygen consumption was positively correlated with gill cover erection and dorsal fin spread. In the second experiment, a fight between two opponents was simulated and the oxygen consumption of the expected winner and loser was compared. Metabolic rates were not different between winners and losers before and during the fight, but winners showed higher oxygen consumption in the night after the fight. These results are in accordance with costs of display performance and with long‐lasting physiological consequences of winning or losing a fight. Aggr. Behav. 32:1–7, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Self-reference is a fast-acting automatic mechanism on emotional word processing: evidence from a masked priming affective categorisation task

This study examined the impact of self-referential information at early stages of emotional word processing using an affective masked-priming paradigm in which positive (e.g, espetacular[awesome]) and negative (e.g., horrível[awful]) trait-adjectives were preceded by briefly primes that could be self-related (Eu sou[I am]), other-related (Ela é[She is]), or a control (%%%%%). Trait-adjectives were selected from female norms and only females participants were used to control for sex differences. Results showed that positive words were categorised faster when preceded by self-related primes than by other-related primes, though not control primes. Negative trait-adjectives were not modulated by the type of prime, even though participants were slower when they were preceded by other-related than by control primes. These findings demonstrate that taking the other-perspective entails a cost, and that the amount of priming produced by self-related and control primes was virtually the same, thus suggesting that assuming the self-perspective is a cognitively effortless process.