Characteristics of taste-mediated environmental potentiation in rats

When rats drink a novel flavor in a distinctive environment and are injected with lithium, potentiated aversions are established to the environment as evidenced by the animals' unwillingness to consume a familiar, nonaversive flavor in this environment. Experiment 1 demonstrates that this potentiation is due to the presence of both the distinctive taste and the environmental cues on the conditioning trials, not simply aversive conditioning to each element or to generalization between the two elements. This potentiation phenomenon was shown to be sensitive to the novelty of the potentiating flavor in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 demonstrated that second-order conditioning is difficult to establish using these procedures, although Experiment 4 revealed that postconditioning extinction of the aversive flavor interfered substantially with environmental potentiation. These outcomes are discussed in terms of their implications for adaptive adjustments in feeding behavior as well as for more general conceptions of associative learning.     

Semantic priming effects for stimuli presented to the right and left visual fields

Studies that have addressed the possibility of hemispheric differences in semantic priming effects have yielded contradictory results. This paper reports the findings of two experiments intended to shed greater light on the issue of hemispheric differences in semantic priming. Experiment 1 used a hemiretinal paradigm and examined manual response latency and response accuracy to four types of word pairs; categorically related, syntactically related, unrelated, and pairs containing a nonword member. Experiment 2 examined the effects of unrecognized, disambiguating flank words on verbal responses to a centrally presented homograph. Experiment 1 yielded no significant visual field differences in magnitude of priming effects when response latency served as the dependent measure, although categorical relatedness facilitated response accuracy for left but not right visual field stimuli. In experiment 2, the disambiguating words had a significant effect on meaning interpretation of the homographs that was independent of visual field of presentation. Taken together, the results of these studies are interpreted as indicating that semantic aspects of linguistic input are automatically processed and can influence the content and latency of subsequent responses, whether presented to the left or right visual field.     

Factors of hemifield differences in form discrimination

The influence of some process-limiting variables on hemifield differences for nonsense shapes in a "same-different" classification task was examined. "Different" responses, but not "same," did show systematic effects. Weakly discriminable and unfamiliar shapes which were presented successively yielded a significant left-hemifield advantage, while highly discriminable and more familiar shapes presented simultaneously yielded a nonsignificant right-hemifield advantage. Discriminability, considered independently of the other variables, had effects in opposite directions: low discriminability tended to favor more the right than the left hemifield in each experiment, but the right hemifield more than the left when the comparison was made between experiments. The results are discussed in terms of the spatial-frequency model (Sergent, 1982b, 1983) and the analytic-holistic distinction.     

Shame,Early Abuse,and Course of Depression in a Clinical Sample: A Preliminary Study

This study of 35 depressed patients was designed to replicate findings from a community sample of a relationship between childhood abuse and bodily shame, and bodily shame and chronic or recurrent depression. In addition, we investigated whether characterological and behavioural shame would also be related to early abuse and depression course. The relation between bodily shame and childhood abuse was replicated. When the other types of shame were considered, bodily shame was the most powerful correlate of early abuse, with behavioural shame showing no relationship. However, all three types of shame appeared to be related to chronic or recurrent course of depression.     

On Freud’s “The Uncanny”, edited by Catalina Bronstein and Christian Seulin,Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2020, 137 pp.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Effects of sleep on positive,negative and neutral valenced story and image memory

During sleep, emotional memories are preferentially strengthened. However, most studies on sleep and emotional memory focus on comparing negative valence with neutral valence stimuli. This study compared the sleep-dependent memory effects for stories and images, each comprising negative, neutral, and positive stimuli. It was hypothesized that a sleep effect would be seen for negatively and positively valenced stimuli. A novel story memory task (comprising three stories), and photographs from the Nencki Affective Picture database were presented for learning to 61 healthy adults (ages 18–25). They were tested for memory on the two tasks immediately, and then again after either a 2-hr nap (n = 31; 17 women, 14 men) or 2-hr wake period (n = 30; 13 women, 17 men). At second testing, the sleep condition had significantly better recall compared to the wake condition on both tasks. There was a relationship with valence only for the story task, with better performance for the sleep condition on the negatively and positively valenced texts, but not on the neutral text. There were no significant relationships between memory measures and sleep-stage duration and EEG power variables. The story memory findings support the hypothesis that memory consolidation prioritizes emotional memory, whether positively or negatively valenced.     

How Evangelicals from Two Churches in the American Southwest Frame Their Relationship with the Environment

In this article, we analyze the ways in which Evangelicals frame a rhetoric of environmental concern and environmental apathy, with a larger focus on the latter. Heeding calls to further explore within-Evangelical differences, we compare environmental narratives of 20 leaders and laity of a predominantly white Southern Baptist congregation and 20 leaders and laity from an African American Baptist church, both located in a Southwestern American city. We find, especially on the topic of climate change, that most Evangelicals in our study readily evince environmental apathy, which we explore in depth. In particular, we find a belief in a rigid hierarchy of God, humans, and then the environment; a belief in the sovereignty of God; and evangelical eschatological beliefs help generate narratives of environmental apathy. There are different environmental narratives, between the two congregations, that are framed in terms of political affiliation and socioeconomic status. But we find little evidence to suggest that religious beliefs foster different environmental attitudes across the two congregations. We conclude with future research directions and implications for those who wish to foster environmental concern among Evangelicals.