The cortisol awakening response: Associations with trait anxiety and stress reactivity

This study investigated the extent to which trait anxiety and state anxiety in response to stress are associated with the cortisol awakening response (CAR).Fifty-one healthy participants were recruited. State anxiety measures were taken in anticipation of and during a laboratory stressor. Salivary cortisol levels were measured immediately upon awakening (at 0, 15, 30, and 45 min) on two consecutive mornings. Cortisol awakening response was assessed by the area under the curve with respect to zero (AUC_G).The magnitude of the CAR was found to be negatively associated with both trait anxiety and anticipatory anxiety. Moreover, regression analysis showed that the effects of trait anxiety on the AUC_G were mediated by anticipatory anxiety.These results suggest that the CAR is influenced by trait anxiety. Moreover, the effect of trait anxiety on the CAR seems to operate by impacting on psychological stress reactivity (i.e., anticipatory anxiety).     

Desire satisfaction,death, and time

Desire satisfaction theories of well-being and deprivationism about the badness of death face similar problems: desire satisfaction theories have trouble locating the time when the satisfaction of a future or past-directed desire benefits a person; deprivationism has trouble locating a time when death is bad for a person. I argue that desire satisfaction theorists and deprivation theorists can address their respective timing problems by accepting fusionism, the view that some events benefit or harm individuals only at fusions of moments in time. Fusionism improves on existing solutions to the timing problem for deprivationism because it locates death’s badness at the same time as both the victim of death and death itself, and it accounts for all of the ways that death is bad for a person. Fusionism improves on existing solutions to the problem of temporally locating the benefit of future and past-directed desires because it respects several attractive principles, including the view that the intrinsic value of a time for someone is determined solely by states of affairs that obtain at that time and the view that intrinsically beneficial events benefit a person when they occur.     

Evaluating a model of global psychophysical judgments—I: Behavioral properties of summations and productions

The research presented is a partial empirical evaluation of the second author's proposed psychophysical theory [Luce (2002). Psychological Review, 109, 520-532; Luce (2004). Psychological Review, 111, 446-454]. The theory deals with the global percept of subjective intensity, in which there is a psychophysical function Ψ that maps pairs of physical intensities onto the positive real numbers and represents, in an explicit mathematical way, subjective summation and a form of ratio production. A number of behavioral properties have been shown to follow from these specific representations, and in the presence of certain plausible background assumptions these properties are also sufficient for the representations. In four auditory experiments, key behavioral properties of summation over the two ears and a form of generalized ratio production are evaluated empirically. Considerable support is reported for particular forms of Ψ for summations and ratio productions separately. A second article, Steingrimsson and Luce (Journal of Mathematical Psychology, in press), explores the behavioral properties that link summations and productions.     

Remapping the cognitive and neural profiles of children who struggle at school

Our understanding of learning difficulties largely comes from children with specific diagnoses or individuals selected from community/clinical samples according to strict inclusion criteria. Applying strict exclusionary criteria overemphasizes within group homogeneity and between group differences, and fails to capture comorbidity. Here, we identify cognitive profiles in a large heterogeneous sample of struggling learners, using unsupervised machine learning in the form of an artificial neural network. Children were referred to the Centre for Attention Learning and Memory (CALM) by health and education professionals, irrespective of diagnosis or comorbidity, for problems in attention, memory, language, or poor school progress (n = 530). Children completed a battery of cognitive and learning assessments, underwent a structural MRI scan, and their parents completed behavior questionnaires. Within the network we could identify four groups of children: (a) children with broad cognitive difficulties, and severe reading, spelling and maths problems; (b) children with age‐typical cognitive abilities and learning profiles; (c) children with working memory problems; and (d) children with phonological difficulties. Despite their contrasting cognitive profiles, the learning profiles for the latter two groups did not differ: both were around 1 SD below age‐expected levels on all learning measures. Importantly a child's cognitive profile was not predicted by diagnosis or referral reason. We also constructed whole‐brain structural connectomes for children from these four groupings (n = 184), alongside an additional group of typically developing children (n = 36), and identified distinct patterns of brain organization for each group. This study represents a novel move toward identifying data‐driven neurocognitive dimensions underlying learning‐related difficulties in a representative sample of poor learners.     

Harming as making worse off

Philosophical Studies - A powerful argument against the counterfactual comparative account of harm is that it cannot distinguish harming from failing to benefit. In reply to this problem, I suggest...     

Mediating relationship between body mass index and the direct measures of the Theory of Planned Behaviour on physical activity intention

This research examines (a) the interrelationships between body mass index (BMI), the direct measures of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and physical activity intention and (b) the potential mediation effects of the direct measures of the TPB in the relationship between BMI and physical activity intention in a sample of Australian adults. A total sample of 1,062 respondents participated in a computer-assisted telephone-interview (CATI) survey comprised of a standardised introduction; questions regarding TPB and physical activity; and standard demographic questions. BMI for each participant was calculated from self-reported height and weight. Separate regression analyses were performed to examine the mediating effects of each of the direct measures of the TPB on the predictive relationship between the BMI and physical activity intention, as proposed by Baron and Kenny (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(6), 1173 - 1182, 1986). Findings indicated that the direct measure of attitude and perceived behavioural control mediated the relationship between BMI and physical activity intention. However, the direct measure of subjective norm failed to act as a mediating mechanism. To date there has been no research that has examined the mechanism by which body mass may affect physical activity behaviour. Given the current focus for health promotion specialists on promoting physical activity as a strategy for reducing overweight and obesity, a theoretical understanding of weight-related barriers to physical activity may aid in the development of future interventions and community physical activity programs, particularly those targeting overweight and obese populations.     

GRECO ON KNOWLEDGE: VIRTUES, CONTEXTS, ACHIEVEMENTS

I discuss John Greco's paper 'What's Wrong with Contextualism?', in which he outlines a theory of knowledge which is virtue-theoretic while also being allied to a form of attributor contextualism about 'knows'.     

Authoritarianism as an Agent of Status Quo Maintenance: Implications for Women's Careers and Family Lives

We examined how right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) influenced career and family plans and life outcomes in 2 samples of educated women. In the college-aged sample, participants who planned to earn professional degrees scored higher on RWA than those who planned to earn graduate degrees in the humanities or social sciences. RWA was also positively related to the expression of preferences for male partners who possess masculine characteristics. In the midlife sample, RWA scores were higher for participants with traditional career and family outcomes at midlife. For midlife participants following a nontraditional career path, RWA was positively related to compartmentalizing career and family responsibilities and finding role combination stressful. Authoritarianism is important for understanding women's decisions about combining career and family.