Berichtigung

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Versuche über das stereoskopische Sehen

Ohne Zusammenfassung Mit 2 Textabbildungen.     

Stress-related immune changes in middle-aged and older women: 1-year consistency of individual differences.

This study reviews prior research and reports longer-term consistency of stress-related immune variables in middle-aged and older women who performed mental math and speech tasks 2 times 1 year apart. Leukocyte subsets, mitogen-induced lymphocyte proliferation, and natural killer cell activity were measured at baseline, after tasks, and after 30-min recovery. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) antibody titers were assessed at baseline. Pearson coefficients and standardized maximum-likelihood estimates of year-to-year covariances for leukocyte subsets and EBV titers showed moderately high to high baseline and posttask consistency and lower recovery consistency; consistency for other functional immune assays and reactivity scores for all variables was moderate to low. Results support longitudinal study of psychosocial context effects on tonic immune function and posttask scores.     

Psychometric properties of the five facet mindfulness questionnaire in depressed adults and development of a short form

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in therapies that include the learning of mindfulness skills. The 39-item Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) has been developed as a reliable and valid comprehensive instrument for assessing different aspects of mindfulness in community and student samples. In this study, the psychometric properties of the Dutch FFMQ were assessed in a sample of 376 adults with clinically relevant symptoms of depression and anxiety. Construct validity was examined with confirmatory factor analyses and by relating the FFMQ to measures of psychological symptoms, well-being, experiential avoidance, and the personality factors neuroticism and openness to experience. In addition, a 24-item short form of the FFMQ (FFMQ-SF) was developed and assessed in the same sample and cross-validated in an independent sample of patients with fibromyalgia. Confirmatory factor analyses showed acceptable model fit for a correlated five-factor structure of the FFMQ and good model fit for the structure of the FFMQ-SF. The replicability of the five-factor structure of the FFMQ-SF was confirmed in the fibromyalgia sample. Both instruments proved highly sensitive to change. It is concluded that both the FFMQ and the FFMQ-SF are reliable and valid instruments for use in adults with clinically relevant symptoms of depression and anxiety.     

The role of extinction and reinstatement in attentional bias to threat: a conditioning approach

We investigated the effects of extinction and reinstatement on attentional bias to fear-conditioned signals in healthy individuals using an emotional modification of a spatial cueing paradigm. Spatial cues were emotionally modulated using differential conditioning. The CS+ was sometimes followed by an aversive electrocutaneous stimulus (UCS), whereas the CS- was never followed by the UCS. During a subsequent extinction phase no UCS was presented anymore. The reinstatement phase started with one or four unpredicted UCS-only trials for half of the participants (reinstatement group). For the other half there were no additional UCS presentations (control group). We found that attention was biased to threat signals during acquisition. This biased attention largely disappeared during extinction. During the reinstatement phase attentional bias to threat signals re-emerged in the reinstatement group, but not in the control group.     

Time-course of attention for threatening pictures in high and low trait anxiety

Cognitive studies about anxiety suggest that the interplay between automatic and strategic biases in attention to threat is related to the persistence of fear. In the present study, the time-course of attention to pictures with varying threat levels was investigated in high trait anxious (HTA, n=21) and low trait anxious (LTA, n=22) students. In a visual probe detection task, high and mild threat pictures were presented at three durations: 100, 500, and 1250 ms. Results indicated that all individuals attended to the high threat pictures for the 100 ms condition. Differential responding between HTA and LTA individuals was found for the 500 ms condition: only HTA individuals showed an attentional bias for mild threatening stimuli. For the 1250 ms condition, the HTA individuals attended away from high and mild threat pictures. The observed pattern of differential attention to threatening pictures may explain the persistence of fear in HTA individuals.     

Coping with disturbances

Motion systems must cope with internal and external disturbances affecting the envisioned movement program. In science responses to disturbances are used to characterize system properties. Recently, evidence has been collected that self-stability due to the mechanical response of a system can greatly contribute to safe guarding proper operation of the system and to follow up an envisioned task. Here we review research in our laboratory on the kinematic response of standing subjects to sudden pulls inflicted by a motor, and the kinetics of runners crossing a track with a bump. We find that in both cases the first responses are dominated by system compliance. Thereby damage is avoided and the tasks are secured. Preparation to the observed disturbance does not seem to have the goal to compensate quickly but to enhance the scope of the reaction and its economy.     

On the role of goal relevance in emotional attention: Disgust evokes early attention to cleanliness

Prior evidence has shown that aversive emotional states are characterised by an attentional bias towards aversive events. The present study investigated whether aversive emotions also bias attention towards stimuli that represent means by which the emotion can be alleviated. We induced disgust by having participants touch fake disgusting objects. Participants in the control condition touched non-disgusting objects. The results of a subsequent dot-probe task revealed that attention was oriented to disgusting pictures irrespective of condition. However, participants in the disgust condition also oriented towards pictures representing cleanliness. These findings suggest that the deployment of attention in aversive emotional states is not purely stimulus driven but is also guided by the goal to alleviate this emotional state.