Imagination can create false autobiographical memories

Previous studies have shown that imagining an event can alter autobiographical beliefs. The current study examined whether it can also create false memories. One group of participants imagined a relatively frequent event and received information about an event that never occurs. A second group imagined the nonoccurring event and received information about the frequent event. One week before and again 1 week immediately after the manipulation, participants rated the likelihood that they had experienced each of the two critical events and a series of noncritical events, using the Life Events Inventory. During the last phase, participants were also asked to describe any memories they had for the events. For both events, imagination increased the number of memories reported, as well as beliefs about experiencing the event. These results indicate that imagination can induce false autobiographical memories.     

Measurement invariance of the Phubbing Scale across 20 countries

Mobile phone addiction is a robust phenomenon observed throughout the world. The social aspect of mobile phone use is crucial; therefore, phubbing is a part of the mobile phone addiction phenomenon. Phubbing is defined as ignoring an interlocutor by glancing at one's mobile phone during a face-to-face conversation. The main aim of this study was to investigate how the Phubbing Scale (containing 10 items) might vary across countries, and between genders. Data were collected in 20 countries: Belarus, Brazil, China, Croatia, Ecuador, India, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, UK, Ukraine and USA. The mean age across the sample (N = 7696, 65.8% women, 34.2% men) was 25.32 years (SD = 9.50). The cross-cultural invariance of the scale was investigated using multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFA) as well as the invariance analyses. Additionally, data from each country were assessed individually via confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs). We obtained two factors, based on only eight of the items: (a) communication disturbances and (b) phone obsession. The 8 items Phubbing Scale.     

Positive and problematic support,stress and quality of life in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

Background and Objectives: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disease. Previous studies showed that perceived social support has an important role in enhancing patient's quality of life (QOL). However, the precise mechanisms through which social support exerts such an effect are not completely understood. The aim of this paper is to test two alternative models explaining the relationship between social support (positive and problematic) and two dimensions of QOL: Health-Related (HR-QOL) and Non-Health-Related (NHR-QOL). Design: Model A (mediation) hypothesized that positive support would reduce stress while problematic support would increase stress), and that this in turn would reduce QOL. Model B (moderation) hypothesized that the effect of support on QOL would be moderated by the experience of stress in that more stressed individuals would show stronger effects. Methods: Three hundred and forty-four Italian patients with SLE completed an online questionnaire. Results: Stress partially mediated the relationship between support and QOL dimensions (either HR-QOL and NHR-QOL) thus supporting Model B. As hypothesized, positive support reduced stress, while problematic support increased stress. Conclusions: These findings help to explain the complex relationship between social support, stress and QOL in patients with SLE.     

Hypnotic suggestibility,cognitive inhibition,and dissociation

We examined two potential correlates of hypnotic suggestibility: dissociation and cognitive inhibition. Dissociation is the foundation of two of the major theories of hypnosis and other theories commonly postulate that hypnotic responding is a result of attentional abilities (including inhibition). Participants were administered the Waterloo-Stanford Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form C. Under the guise of an unrelated study, 180 of these participants also completed: a version of the Dissociative Experiences Scale that is normally distributed in non-clinical populations; a latent inhibition task, a spatial negative priming task, and a memory task designed to measure negative priming. The data ruled out even moderate correlations between hypnotic suggestibility and all the measures of dissociation and cognitive inhibition overall, though they also indicated gender differences. The results are a challenge for existing theories of hypnosis.     

Hypnotic induction decreases anterior default mode activity

The ‘default mode’ network refers to cortical areas that are active in the absence of goal-directed activity. In previous studies, decreased activity in the ‘default mode’ has always been associated with increased activation in task-relevant areas. We show that the induction of hypnosis can reduce anterior default mode activity during rest without increasing activity in other cortical regions. We assessed brain activation patterns of high and low suggestible people while resting in the fMRI scanner and while engaged in visual tasks, in and out of hypnosis. High suggestible participants in hypnosis showed decreased brain activity in the anterior parts of the default mode circuit. In low suggestible people, hypnotic induction produced no detectable changes in these regions, but instead deactivated areas involved in alertness. The findings indicate that hypnotic induction creates a distinctive and unique pattern of brain activation in highly suggestible subjects.     

Lack of control enhances accurate and inaccurate identification responses to degraded visual objects

Recent studies have shown that lack of control induces illusory pattern perception. In this study, we demonstrate that lacking control also affected identification responses to degraded pictures of visual objects. As compared with control participants, participants in whom lack of control was experimentally induced produced identification responses to visual objects at a significantly higher level of degradation of the stimulus. Lacking control did not influence accuracy of identification, since the effect was present for both correct and incorrect identification responses, and did not encourage pure random guessing. Our results indicate that lacking control makes individuals more prone to achieve visual closure by attempting earlier identifications of perceptually degraded visual objects. Possible mechanisms involved in this effect are discussed.     

Both differences in encoding processes and monitoring at retrieval reduce false alarms when distinctive information is studied

ABSTRACT

Recent research has provided evidence for memory modifications when a post-reactivation treatment (e.g., drugs, new learning) interferes with the memory re-stabilisation (reconsolidation) process. This finding contradicts the long-standing consolidation theory and has high practical and theoretical implications. With an object-learning paradigm, it was shown that episodic memory is highly susceptible to interfering material presented after its reactivation [Hupbach, A., Gomez, R., Hardt, O., &; Nadel, L. (2007). Reconsolidation of episodic memories: A subtle reminder triggers integration of new information. Learning &; Memory, 14, 47–53. doi:10.1101/lm.365707]. The reactivation of a learned list (List 1) before a second learned list (List 2) led to intrusion errors from List 2 when trying to recall List 1, but not vice-versa. Their work has been widely cited and their findings have been explained according to reconsolidation theory. For the first time, we systematically explored the role of retrieval context as an alternative explanation for Hupbach’s results. Our results showed that the intrusion effect occurs independently of the retrieval context (Experiment 1). Additionally, even when the intrusion rate probability is increased (i.e., List 1 memory test is performed in the List 2 learning context), the groups that did not reactivate the original list did not commit intrusion errors (Experiment 2). In sum, we found that the intrusion effect critically depends on the presence of reactivation, discarding alternative interpretations of the results.     

Changing beliefs about implausible autobiographical events: a little plausibility goes a long way

Three experiments investigated the malleability of perceived plausibility and the subjective likelihood of occurrence of plausible and implausible events among participants who had no recollection of experiencing them. In Experiment 1, a plausibility-enhancing manipulation (reading accounts of the occurrence of events) combined with a personalized suggestion increased the perceived plausibility of the implausible event, as well as participants' ratings of the likelihood that they had experienced it. Plausibility and likelihood ratings were uncorrelated. Subsequent studies showed that the plausibility manipulation alone was sufficient to increase likelihood ratings but only if the accounts that participants read were set in a contemporary context. These data suggest that false autobiographical beliefs can be induced in clinical and forensic contexts even for initially implausible events.     

Juvenile drug addiction: a typology of heroin addicts and their families

In this article the authors propose: 1) a typology of drug addiction cases consisting of four main classes: A. traumatic drug addiction, B. drug addiction from actual neuroses, C. transitional drug addiction, and D. sociopathic drug addiction; 2) a clinical study (with 18 months of follow-up data) involving 131 heroin addicts mostly treated with structural or counterparadoxical family therapy in the same psychotherapy center and in the same year; and 3) some preliminary conclusions emerging from an examination of the four-class typology with respect to the effectiveness of family therapy interventions. If, for example, structural family therapy techniques seem more suitable in type-B cases (similar to cases described by Haley in his Leaving Home), the counterparadoxical techniques are likely to be more effective in type-C cases (similar to the anorectics described by Selvini-Palazzoli).     

Do memorability ratings affect study-time allocation?

This research addresses the relation between predicting future memory performance (judgment of learning, or JOL) and subsequent self-paced study-time allocation. The results of three experiments support the main hypotheses: (1) recall increases with increasing JOL, (2) restudy increases JOL accuracy, and (3) study time is related to JOL. This last relation depends on the length of initial presentation time of the items. When the initial exposure trials were short, the most restudy time was allocated to the items judged hard to recall, but when the initial exposure times were long, the most restudy time was allocated to the uncertain items. Items studied longer were recalled equally well (Experiments 1 and 3) or to a lesser extent (Experiment 2) than items studied for a shorter time. It is hypothesized that during study time, subjects refine their JOLs for the items initially less well discriminated.