Nonwork orientations relative to career: A multidimensional measure

Although scholars typically assess an individual's nonwork role orientation relative to career as a unitary construct, we argue that a person's orientation toward nonwork roles is multi-dimensional. Drawing on a literature review demonstrating the need for improved constructs capturing changing relationships between career and multi-faceted nonwork orientations, and empirical data from three studies with samples at different career stages (early and mid-career), we use factor analysis and data from qualitative and longitudinal studies to develop three unique scales to assess a person's nonwork priorities relative to career orientations: family, personal life, and community service. There were generally positive relationships between the protean career scales and the new nonwork role orientation measures. Future research should move beyond a binary work–life or work–family models and include multi-dimensional measures of nonwork orientations relative to career.     

Functional cerebral changes in multiple sclerosis patients during an autobiographical memory test

Our aim was to investigate the functional underpinnings of autobiographical memory (AM) impairment in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. To that end, 18 patients and 18 controls underwent the autobiographical interview (AI). Subsequently, the 36 participants underwent a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) session designed to assess the construction and elaboration of AMs. A categorical control task was also presented. Patients were trained in the fMRI procedure to optimise the procedural aspects accompanying the task itself. Although the patients obtained significantly poorer AI scores (p < .001), their performance on the easier AM fMRI task was efficiently carried out, allowing relevant comparisons with healthy controls. Relatively to healthy controls, the patients showed increased and bilateral cerebral activations (p < .005) during the construction and elaboration phases. The prefrontal, temporal and posterior cerebral region activations were located within the core network sustaining AM, with the bilateral prefrontal region being centrally involved. The parametric neural responses to the difficulty of access and amount of details of memories were also significantly different for the two groups, with the right hippocampal region showing a particularly increased recruitment (p < .005). The findings suggested the presence of functional cerebral changes during AM performance and supported the presence of AM retrieval deficit in MS patients.     

The Significance of Ferenczi's clinical contributions for working with psychotic patients

This paper tries to show that Ferenczi's contributions in “The Development of Psychoanalysis” (with Otto Rank) and in his “Clinical Diary” are pivotal for the development of modern psychotherapy with severely disturbed patients. In addition, the question of whether a psychotherapeutic technique should or could be communicated to others is discussed.     

Associations between type of treatment and illness-specific locus of control in type 1 diabetes patients

Abstract

This study examined differences in diabetes-specific locus of control beliefs of 82 insulin-treated Type I diabetes patients undergoing either conventional therapy (CT), intensified conventional therapy (ICT) or continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII). Compared to CT with its adherence to a strict regimen, ICT and CSII allow a much greater flexibility in timing of meals and daily activities. On the other hand, such flexibility requires a much more active role of the patient. The hypotheses of higher internality and lower powerful others locus of control beliefs in ICT and CSII patients than in CT patients could be supported for powerful others locus of control only. A one-year follow-up replicated this finding. Furthermore, high powerful others locus of control was associated with low diabetes-related knowledge and poor glycaemic control. The relevance of the patients' experience with the respective treatment is examined in view of the results and implications for studies on the feasibility of diabetes regimens are discussed.     

Mood-congruent attention and memory bias in dysphoria: Exploring the coherence among information-processing biases

Recent studies indicate that depression is characterized by mood-congruent attention bias at later stages of information-processing. Moreover, depression has been associated with enhanced recall of negative information. The present study tested the coherence between attention and memory bias in dysphoria. Stable dysphoric (n = 41) and non-dysphoric (n = 41) undergraduates first performed a spatial cueing task that included negative, positive, and neutral words. Words were presented for 250 ms under conditions that allowed or prevented elaborate processing. Memory for the words presented in the cueing task was tested using incidental free recall. Dysphoric individuals exhibited an attention bias for negative words in the condition that allowed elaborate processing, with the attention bias for negative words predicting free recall of negative words. Results demonstrate the coherence of attention and memory bias in dysphoric individuals and provide suggestions on the influence of attention bias on further processing of negative material.     

Confirmatory factor analysis of the WPPSI for language-impaired children

The present study used a maximum-likelihood confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the hypothesis that a four-factor model is the most parsimonious explanation of the structure of the WPPSI for language-impaired children. Four separate maximum-likelihood confirmatory factor analyses were performed on a sample of 198 Norwegian language-impaired children tested with the WPPSI, and on the Norwegian (n = 563) and American (n = 1200) standardization samples. A one-factor (general), a two-factor (verbal and performance), three-factor (parallel to the WISC-R) and a four-factor solution composed of "processing dependent" ("knowing how" and "seeing how") and "knowledge dependent" ("knowing that" and "seeing that") were imposed on the average intercorrelation matrices of the 11 WPPSI subtests. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the four-factor latent construct model was the most parsimonious explanation of the structure of the WPPSI for language-impaired children, as well as for normally developing children.     

Ceci n'est pas la mort: Evidence for the recruitment of self‐reference from surrealistic art under mortality salience

Previous research has demonstrated that death reminders influence how we perceive art. In the context of terror management theory, this has been explained by the death‐transcending quality of art to convey cultural meaning. In two studies, we examined psychological and neurocognitive responses to naturalistic and surrealistic art when death was primed. We found that naturalistic paintings were evaluated similarly in terms of personal reassurance in both mortality salience and control condition, whereas surrealistic paintings were evaluated as more reassuring in the mortality salience condition than in the control condition. Using high‐field functional magnetic resonance imaging in a second study, we found a similar pattern of results, showing specific activation in the precuneus, a brain area associated with self‐related operations, in all prime conditions for the viewing of naturalistic paintings, but only in the death and disgust prime conditions when viewing surrealistic paintings. Our results suggest motivated self‐reference when viewing both naturalistic and surrealistic artworks under mortality salience. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“时间窗”—— 认知加工的后勤基础

时间加工是认知加工的内在属性。因此, 理解发生在知觉或更广泛的认知过程中的时间加工极为重要。为了应对中枢信息加工所面临的外部挑战, 大脑显然已形成了一些用于整合信息的特殊时间窗。已经发现, 其中一个时间窗介于数十毫秒的范围内, 它用于为意识活动产生必要的建构单元。来自反应时、时序阈限以及神经元结构振荡反应的研究为该时间窗的存在提供了实证证据。另一个时间窗的作用范围是2~3秒, 它用于产生“主观现在感”或作为使知觉体的标识保持不变的时间整合区间。支持该窗口存在的实验证据来自时距再现、两可图形、感觉运动同步以及神经生理学研究。还有一种时间窗以昼夜节律的形式存在。所有的心理和生理功能似乎都有着24小时的周期性变化。时间窗的紊乱会以神经或精神疾病的形式表现出来, 这恰恰表明了在基础研究之外对时间加工进行研究的重要性。