Hemispheric superiorities on a unilateral tactile test: relationship to cognitive dimensions

Subjects, 30 male and 30 female, were administered a unilateral tactile test, which requires the subject to judge line orientations. More field-independent individuals in the sample perceived line orientation significantly more accurately with their left hand than with their right hand, while more field-dependent individuals showed no significant lateral difference. However, a similar pattern was observed when a verbal comprehension measure was used as a criterion. The results are discussed as they relate to the hypothesis of a link between psychological differentiation and cerebral specialization.     

Running with emotion: When affective content hampers working memory performance

This study tested the hypothesis that affective content may undermine rather than facilitate working memory (WM) performance. To this end, participants performed a running WM task with positive, negative and neutral words. In typical running memory tasks, participants are presented with lists of unpredictable length and are asked to recall the last three or four items. We found that accuracy with affective words decreased as lists lengthened, whereas list length did not influence recall of neutral words. We interpreted this pattern of results in terms of a limited resource model of WM in which valence represents additional information that needs to be manipulated, especially in the context of difficult trials.     

Basic psychological needs and neurophysiological responsiveness to decisional conflict: an event-related potential study of integrative self processes

Fulfillment of the basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy is believed to facilitate people’s integrative tendencies to process psychological conflicts and develop a coherent sense of self. The present study therefore used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the relation between need fulfillment and the amplitude of conflict negativity (CN), a neurophysiological measure of conflict during personal decision making. Participants completed a decision-making task in which they made a series of forced choices according to their personal preferences. Three types of decision-making situations were created on the basis of participants’ unique preference ratings, which were obtained prior to ERP recording: low-conflict situations (choosing between an attractive and an unattractive option), high-conflict approach-approach situations (choosing between two similarly attractive options), and high-conflict avoidance-avoidance situations (choosing between two similarly unattractive options). As expected, CN amplitudes were larger in high- relative to low-conflict situations, and source localization analyses suggested that the anterior cingulate cortex was the generating structure of the CN. Most importantly, people reporting higher need fulfillment exhibited larger CN amplitudes in avoidance–avoidance situations relative to low-conflict situations; to a lesser extent, they also exhibited larger CN amplitudes in approach–approach situations relative to low-conflict situations. By contrast, people reporting lower need fulfillment exhibited CN amplitudes that poorly discriminated the three decision situations. These results suggest that need fulfillment may promote self-coherent functioning by increasing people’s receptivity to and processing of events that challenge their abilities to make efficient, self-congruent choices.     

Exploration and learning in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.): the role of action–outcome contingencies

Animals have a strong propensity to explore the environment. Spontaneous exploration has a great biological significance since it allows animals to discover and learn the relation between specific behaviours and their consequences. The role of the contingency between action and outcome for learning has been mainly investigated in instrumental learning settings and much less in free exploration contexts. We tested 16 capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) with a mechatronic platform that allowed complex modules to be manipulated and to produce different outcomes. Experimental subjects could manipulate the modules and discover the contingencies between their own specific actions and the outcomes produced (i.e., the opening and lighting of a box). By contrast, Control subjects could operate on the modules, but the outcomes experienced were those performed by their paired Experimental subjects (“yoked-control” paradigm). In the exploration phase, in which no food reward was present, Experimental subjects spent more time on the board and manipulated the modules more than Yoked subjects. Experimental subjects outperformed Yoked subjects in the following test phase, where success required recalling the effective action so to open the box, now baited with food. These findings demonstrate that the opportunity to experience action–outcome contingencies in the absence of extrinsic rewards promotes capuchins’ exploration and facilitates learning processes. Thus, this intrinsically motivated learning represents a powerful mechanism allowing the acquisition of skills and cognitive competence that the individual can later exploit for adaptive purposes.     

Psychopathy in Italian female murderers

Over the years, the number of homicides in Italy has progressively decreased, ultimately becoming one of the lowest rates in Europe (357 = 0.7 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2017, according to ISTAT 1 ISTAT: Italian Institute of Statistics.
). The number of homicides committed by women was about 9% of the total number of homicides during our study period. The percentage has increased in recent years because the total number of homicides has decreased without a proportionate decrease in the number of female homicides. Indeed, murder is an unusual type of crime for a woman and is often associated with a mental disorder, so when a woman committed a homicide, a psychiatric assessment was often performed. A forensic psychiatry expert was assigned to investigate the offender's psychopathology and mental state at the time of the offense. The root causes of the crime remained unexplained, however, due to the lack of a psychiatric precedent to justify this kind of assessment. The role of psychopathy in homicide has seldom been studied in female offenders, even though psychopathy has an important role in violent crimes. The investigators examined, clinically and historically, a sample of women who committed murder with different levels of criminal responsibility (female homicide offenders found not guilty by reason of insanity, having partial criminal responsibility, and convicted as criminally responsible and sentenced to prison) to identify the prevalence of the psychopathic dimension and its possible role in this sample. Prevalence and degree of psychopathic traits were examined in these female offenders using the Psychopathy Checklist‐Revised. This study showed that females who had committed homicide were likely to suffer from mental illness; most of the homicidal acts were committed impulsively; and most female homicides occurred within the family, especially among women who were psychotic, but less so if they were psychopathic. Psychopathy tended to co‐occur more with personality disorders than with psychotic psychopathology. Psychopathy was more evident among female homicide offenders who had been abused or traumatized. Psychopathic women who killed had high factor F1 scores and low antisocial component of factor F2.