Human social defeat and approach–avoidance: Escalating social-evaluative threat and threat of aggression increases social avoidance

Basic research on avoidance by Murray Sidman laid the foundation for advances in the classification, conceptualization and treatment of avoidance in psychological disorders. Contemporary avoidance research is explicitly translational and increasingly focused on how competing appetitive and aversive contingencies influence avoidance. In this laboratory investigation, we examined the effects of escalating social-evaluative threat and threat of social aggression on avoidance of social interactions. During social-defeat learning, 38 adults learned to associate 9 virtual peers with an increasing probability of receiving negative evaluations. Additionally, 1 virtual peer was associated with positive evaluations. Next, in an approach–avoidance task with social-evaluative threat, 1 peer associated with negative evaluations was presented alongside the peer associated with positive evaluations. Approaching peers produced a positive or a probabilistic negative evaluation, while avoiding peers prevented a negative evaluation (and forfeited a positive evaluation). In an approach–avoidance task with social aggression, virtual peers gave and took money away from participants. Escalating social-evaluative threat and aggression increased avoidance, ratings of feeling threatened and threat expectancy and decreased ratings of peer favorableness. These findings underscore the potential of coupling social defeat and approach–avoidance paradigms for translational research on the neurobehavioral mechanisms of social approach–avoidance decision-making and anxiety.     

A Prospective Study of Maternal Exposure to Smoking during Pregnancy and Behavioral Development in the Child

Prenatal smoke exposure (PSE) is a risk factor for adverse outcomes in the offspring, including those affecting psychological development. However, it is uncertain whether these associations are the direct result of PSE or other confounding factors. The aim of this study was to examine the possible relationship between PSE and behavioral development in children at 7.5 years of age, considering several prenatal, neonatal and postnatal covariates. A cohort of 266 mother-child pairs was followed from the first trimester of pregnancy until the children reached 7.5 years of age. PSE was assessed using a questionnaire from prenatal clinical records and corroborated by plasma cotinine determinations in the first and second trimesters and in the cord. Mother-child pairs were classified into one of four groups: unexposed, exposed to passive smoking, first trimester active smoking only and active smoking throughout pregnancy. Child behavior was assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist for ages 6–18 and the Childhood Autism Spectrum Test. In multiple linear regression models, smoking during pregnancy was associated with higher scores in affective problems (β?=?0.298; p?=?0.004). No significant associations were found between smoking during pregnancy and externalizing problems. Findings indicate that PSE is negatively associated with behavioral development in childhood.

     

On being motivated

Merleau-Ponty’s notion of being motivated or solicited to act has recently been the focus of extensive investigation, yet work on this topic has tended to take the general notion of being motivated for granted. In this paper, I shall outline an account of what it is to be motivated. In particular, I shall focus on the relation between the affective character of states of being motivated and their intentional content, i.e. how things appear to the agent. Drawing on Husserl’s discussion of perceptual awareness, I suggest that the intentional content of states of being motivated has a horizonal structure, in which both affective and perceptual features are implied. In states of being motivated, the agent becomes aware of certain possibilities for action, towards which they feel drawn. This structure is what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the “intentional arc” (1962, 136).     

The effect of performance setting and individual differences on the anxiety-performance relationship for elite cyclists

Fifty-three national level cyclists completed competitive rides under both laboratory and field conditions to investigate the relationship between pre-competition anxiety and performance. A total of 39 males and 14 females participated in the study, ranging in age from 19 to 26. The objectives of the study were to, (a) measure the relationship between state anxiety and performance, (b) investigate differences in the anxiety-performance relationship under laboratory versus field conditions, and (c) examine the effect of trait anxiety on the state anxiety-performance relationship. State anxiety was measured using the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2; Martens, Vealey, & Burton, 1990), and trait anxiety with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1970). Results indicated that anxiety was strongly correlated with performance on the field test, but that the anxiety-performance relationship was weaker under laboratory conditions. Results also showed that trait anxiety interacted with the relationship, as low and high trait-anxious subjects had differential response patterns to pre-competition anxiety. The findings are discussed in terms of their relevance for both practitioners and researchers.     

Naming the color of a word: is it responses or task sets that compete?

Subjects named the colors in which high- and low-frequency words and pronounceable nonwords, otherwise matched, were displayed. Color naming was slower for all three item types than for visually equivalent strings of nonalphanumeric symbols but was no slower for words than for nonwords, nor for high-frequency words than for low-frequency words. Unpronounceable letter strings had intermediate color-naming latencies. However, frequency and lexical status had large effects on latency for reading the same words and pseudowords aloud. Interference is thus predicted not by the strength of association between a letter string and its pronunciation but by the presence of word-like constituents. We argue that the interference from an unprimed noncolor word is due to, and isolates, one of two components of the classic Stroop effect: competition from the whole task set of reading. The other component, response competition, occurs only when lexical access is sufficiently primed.