The Relation Between Sluggish Cognitive Tempo and DSM-IV ADHD

To test the relation between sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) and DSM-IV ADHD symptoms, parent and teacher ratings of the 18 DSM-IV ADHD items and five potential SCT items were obtained in a community sample of 8-18 year-old twins that was overselected for ADHD and learning disabilities (n = 296). Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that a three-factor model provided the best fit to the data for both parent and teacher ratings. DSM-IV inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity symptoms loaded on two factors consistent with the DSM-IV model, and five SCT symptoms loaded primarily on a third factor. The SCT and inattention factors were highly correlated, whereas SCT and hyperactivity-impulsivity were weakly related. Both raters indicated that children meeting symptom criteria for the combined and inattentive subtypes exhibited significantly more SCT symptoms than those meeting symptom criteria for hyperactive-impulsive type and the comparison group without ADHD. Children meeting symptom criteria for the inattentive type exhibited significantly more SCT symptoms than those meeting criteria for the combined type, based on teacher ratings. These results suggest that SCT is an internally consistent construct that is significantly associated with DSM-IV inattention.     

Prenatal androgens and gender-typed behavior: a study of girls with mild and severe forms of congenital adrenal hyperplasia

Gender-typed behaviors and interests were investigated in 26 girls, aged 2-10 years, affected with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) and in 26 unaffected girls matched for age. Girls with CAH were more interested in masculine toys and less interested in feminine toys and were more likely to report having male playmates and to wish for masculine careers. Parents of girls with CAH rated their daughters' behaviors as more boylike than did parents of unaffected girls. A relation was found between disease severity and behavior indicating that more severely affected CAH girls were more interested in masculine toys and careers. No parental influence could be demonstrated on play behavior, nor did the comparison of parents' ratings of wished for behavior versus perceived behavior in their daughters indicate an effect of parental expectations. The results are interpreted as supporting a biological contribution to differences in play behavior between girls with and without CAH.     

Tasks of a feather flock together: Similarity effects in task switching

Recent research on task switching has paid little attention to how tasks are represented and how the relations between task representations might affect the executive processes engaged to achieve a task switch. Two experiments investigated the effect of task similarity on task switching. Similarity was defined in terms of shared component operations--attentional control settings in Experiment 1 and response modality in Experiment 2--with tasks sharing more component operations said to be more similar to each other than tasks sharing fewer component operations. Across both experiments, task similarity facilitated task switching, seen in reduced switch costs for switching between similar tasks as opposed to dissimilar tasks. These results indicate that task similarity defined in terms of component operations can be used to define a multidimensional task space in which the executive processes of task selection and implementation are active.     

A strict response criterion yields a mirror effect in the novelty paradigm

According to the novelty/encoding hypothesis (NEH; Tulving & Kroll, 1995), efficacy of encoding information into long-term memory depends on the movelty of the information. Recognition accuracy is higher for novel than for previously familiarized material. This novelty effect is not a mirror effect: the superiority of novel over familiar items is not found in the hit rates but only in the false-alarm rates. The main result in the present replication study was that novel hit rates were higher than familiar ones when the most confident responses were examined separately, and thus a mirror effect could be demonstrated for these data, for both the low- and the high-frequency words. Similarly, the word-frequency effect on hits was stronger when a stricter response criterion was applied. It was concluded that the novelty effect and the word-frequency effect are more similar to one another than has hitherto been thought.     

Sex differences in episodic memory: minimal influence of estradiol

Sex differences exist for several cognitive tasks and estrogen has been suggested to influence these differences. Eighteen men and 18 women were matched on age and estradiol level. Potential sex differences were assessed in episodic memory, semantic memory, verbal fluency, problem solving, and visuospatial ability. Significant sex differences, favoring women, were found for tasks assessing episodic memory. Correlations between estradiol level and cognitive performance were significant for face recognition in females. Since sex differences remained in verbal episodic memory tasks and face recognition despite matched levels of estradiol, circulating estradiol does not appear to be of paramount consequence for observed sex differences in episodic memory.     

Audiospatial and visuospatial working memory in 6-13 year old school children

The neural processes subserving working memory, and brain structures underlying this system, continue to develop during childhood. We investigated the effects of age and gender on audiospatial and visuospatial working memory in a nonclinical sample of school-aged children using n-back tasks. The results showed that auditory and visual working memory performance improves with age, suggesting functional maturation of underlying cognitive processes and brain areas. The gender differences found in the performance of working memory tasks suggest a larger degree of immaturity in boys than girls at the age period of 6–10 yr. The differences observed between the mastering of auditory and visual working memory tasks may indicate that visual working memory reaches functional maturity earlier than the corresponding auditory system.     

Interpretation and judgmental biases in social phobia

Previous research demonstrated that social phobia is characterized by content-specific interpretation and judgmental biases. The present study investigated whether this interpretation bias occurs not only in ambiguous, but also in positive and negative social events, and whether social phobic patients (SPs) are more characterized by a judgmental bias in costs than in probability. Besides, we argued that the judgmental bias observed in former studies could also be attributed to accurate estimations of SPs (of, for example, stuttering). Therefore, we assessed judgmental bias by the ratings of probability and costs of a negative evaluation (e.g. ‘people dislike me’) and not, as in previous studies, of negative social events (e.g. ‘stuttering’). SPs (n=228) and normal controls (n=33) were presented social and non-social events ranging from positive to profoundly negative. They ranked four different interpretations on likelihood to assess interpretation bias, and rated the profoundly negative interpretation on probability and cost to assess judgmental bias. SPs demonstrated content-specific interpretation and judgmental biases that also occurred in positive and negative social events. In contrast with expectations, SPs were characterized by a judgmental bias in both costs and probability.     

Self-pity: exploring the links to personality,control beliefs,and anger

Self-pity is a frequent response to stressful events. So far, however, empirical research has paid only scant attention to this subject. The present article aims at exploring personality characteristics associated with individual differences in feeling sorry for oneself. Two studies with N = 141 and N = 161 university students were conducted, employing multidimensional measures of personality, control beliefs, anger, loneliness, and adult attachment. With respect to personality, results showed strong associations of self-pity with neuroticism, particularly with the depression facet. With respect to control beliefs, individuals high in self-pity showed generalized externality beliefs, seeing themselves as controlled by both chance and powerful others. With respect to anger expression, self-pity was primarily related to anger-in. Strong connections with anger rumination were also found. Furthermore, individuals high in self-pity reported emotional loneliness and ambivalent-worrisome attachments. Finally, in both studies, a strong correlation with gender was found, with women reporting more self-pity reactions to stress than men. Findings are discussed with respect to how they support, extend, and qualify the previous literature on self-pity, and directions for future empirical research are pointed out.     

The dynamical foundations of motion pattern formation: stability,selective adaptation,and perceptual continuity

A dynamical model is used to show that global motion pattern formation for several different apparent motion stimuli can be embodied in the stable distribution of activation over a population of concurrently activated, directionally selective motion detectors. The model, which is based on motion detectors being interactive, noisy, and self-stabilizing, accounts for such phenomena as bistability, spontaneous switching, hysteresis, and selective adaptation. Simulations show that dynamical solutions to the motion correspondence problem for a bistable stimulus (two qualitatively different patterns are formed) apply as well to the solution for a monostable stimulus (only one pattern is formed) and highlight the role of interactions among sequentially stimulated detectors in establishing the state dependence and, thereby, the temporal persistence of percepts.     

Mood and flexibility in categorization: a conceptual replication

The present study tested the hypothesis that positive mood facilitates cognitive flexibility in categorization, i.e., positive mood enhances the ability to categorize flexibly at broad and narrow levels contingent on task requirement. The study was a conceptual replication of the 1990 work by Murray, Sujan, Hirt, and Sujan. Unlike the original study, it was carried out on the WWW with some modifications in the procedure. Participants were 29 women and 132 men whose average age was 29 yr. They were put into a positive, negative, or neutral mood using the Velten technique. Mood was measured with standard mood scales. Subjects then listed similarities differences between two entertainment TV shows. Contrary to the prediction, participants in a positive mood did not list a higher number, more diverse, or more unusual similarities and differences between the shows, and they were not faster than participants with neutral or negative moods. It is concluded that the influence of mood on cognitive flexibility needs to be reconsidered. In research, temporal aspects of categorization performance as well as a wider range of mood valences should be taken into account.