Modeling of human posturokinetic movements by a linear feedback system: relations among feedback coefficients

This study describes a method of modeling human trunk and whole body backward bending and suggests a possible neural control strategy. The hypothesis was that the control system can be modeled as a linear feedback system, in which the torque acting at a given joint is a function of the state variables (angular positions and angular velocities). The linear system enabled representation of the feedback system by a gain matrix. The matrix was computed from the kinematics recorded by a movement analysis system and from the joint torques calculated by inverse dynamics. To validate the control model, a comparison was made between the angular kinematics yielded by the model and the experimental data. Moreover, for all subjects, the same relationships between feedback coefficients were found although gain values were different. The study showed that the feedback system is an appropriate model of the strategy from performing an accurate controlled trunk or whole body backward bending in the sagittal plane.     

The effect of sensitization and coping style on post-traumatic stress symptoms and quality of life: two longitudinal studies

The present study investigated the effects of multiple trauma exposure and coping style on post-traumatic stress symptoms and quality of life. It was hypothesized that sensitization would occur in subjects repeatedly exposed to life-threatening situations (study 1), and different coping styles would act as a resilience or facilitating factor in symptom development (study 2). The results showed that the single-exposure group revealed a decrease in trauma specific stress reactions from three weeks to four months, with a persistent reduction at 12-month follow-up, while the repeated-exposure group showed an increase in symptom reporting over the 12-month period. The same pattern emerged for perceived quality of life-measured by the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-30). The second study revealed a correlation between scores on avoidant-focused coping style and the Impact of Event Scale-avoidance dimension, Post-traumatic Symptom Scale and GHQ-30. Furthermore, only subjects with a dominant coping style of emotion-focused or task-focused coping showed a reduction in trauma-specific symptom scores over time.     

Correlations for organizational,nonorganizational, and intrinsic religiosity with social support among intercollegiate athletes

The present study was a preliminary examination of the correlations among organizational, nonorganizational, and intrinsic religiosity and social support as measured by the Duke Religion Index and the Nonsupport scale of the Personality Assessment Inventory for 105 intercollegiate athletes (51 women). Scores among these measures were not correlated (-.05 to -.14).     

Repetition blindness has a perceptual locus: evidence from online processing of targets in RSVP streams

Four experiments tested whether repetition blindness (RB; reduced accuracy reporting repetitions of briefly displayed items) is a perceptual or a memory-recall phenomenon. RB was measured in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams, with the task altered to reduce memory demands. In Experiment 1 only the number of targets (1 vs. 2) was reported, eliminating the need to remember target identities. Experiment 2 segregated repeated and nonrepeated targets into separate blocks to reduce bias against repeated targets. Experiments 3 and 4 required immediate "online" buttonpress responses to targets as they occurred. All 4 experiments showed very strong RB. Furthermore, the online response data showed clearly that the 2nd of the repeated targets is the one missed. The present results show that in the RSVP paradigm, RB occurs online during initial stimulus encoding and decision making. The authors argue that RB is indeed a perceptual phenomenon.     

Empathy theory and practice: a survey of psychologists and counselors

Psychologists and counselors completed a questionnaire devised by the authors to explore the relationships between their extent of endorsement of empathy definitions, their use and views of empathy, and their identification with theories of psychotherapy. Results from 565 respondents suggested that those who identified with humanistic/experiential and psychodynamic theories seemed to have similar views of how empathy is defined and viewed and reported that they use empathy more than those with other theoretical inclinations. These findings suggest that there is some consistency between theoretical identification and definition, as well as reported use and views of empathy.     

The priming of face recognition after metric transformations

Four experiments were performed to test whether the perceptual priming of face recognition would show invariance to changes in size, position, reflectional orientation (mirror reversal), and picture-plane rotation. In all experiments, subjects recognized faces in two blocks of trials; in the second block, some of the faces were identical to those in the first, and others had undergone metric transformations. The results show that subjects were equally fast to recognize faces whether or not the faces had changed in size, position, or reflectional orientation between the first and second presentations of the faces. In contrast, subjects were slower to recognize both faces and objects when they were planar-rotated between the first and second presentations. The results suggest that the same metric invariances are shown by both face recognition and basic-level object recognition.     

Gender role and personality disorders

Many researchers have hypothesized relationships between personality disorders and gender role (i.e., masculinity and femininity). However, research has not addressed if people who are masculine or feminine more often meet the criteria for personality disorders. The present study examined whether college students (N = 665, 60% women) higher in masculinity or femininity more often exhibited features of the 10 DSM-IV personality disorders. Feminine men exhibited more features of all the personality disorders except antisocial. Dependent traits were associated with higher femininity and lower masculinity. Antisocial traits were associated with masculinity. Both men and women who typically behaved consistent with their gender had more narcissistic and histrionic features, whereas participants who typically behaved unlike their gender had more features of the Cluster A personality disorders.     

Influence of probe-trial selection on the location negative priming effect.

Using the location variant of the typical negative priming procedure, participants were cued (100% reliable) before (Experiment 1) or after (Experiment 2) the prime trial as to whether a distractor would or would not accompany the target on the probe trial. The crucial results were that on cued trials, the predictable absence, produced the removal of the negative priming effect (disengagement), and that this disengagement of the priming process, motivated by the predictable absence of a probe-trial distractor, could take place on-line. These findings demonstrated the "selection-state" dependency (probe trial) of the location negative priming process, supporting inhibition-based and episodic retrieval models in their contention that the ultimate function of this process is to enhance the efficiency of future distractor processing, and hence selection. The disengagement results revealed an adaptive feature of a process that can be detrimental or irrelevant to upcoming processing.     

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