Attentional deficits in fibromyalgia and its relationships with pain,emotional distress and sleep dysfunction complaints

Cognitive complaints are common among subjects with fibromyalgia (FM). Yet, few studies have been able to document these deficits with cognitive tasks. A main limitation of existing studies is that attention has been broadly defined and the tasks used to measure attention are not designed to cover all the main components of the attentional system. Research on attention has identified three primary functions of attention, known as alerting, orienting and executive functioning. This study used the attentional network test-interactions task to explore whether and which of the three attentional networks are altered in FM. Results showed that FM patients have impaired executive control (greater interference), reduced vigilance (slower overall reaction time) and greater alertness (higher reduction in errors after a warning cue). Vigilance and alertness showed several relations with depression, anxiety and sleep quality. Sleep dysfunction was a significant predictor for alertness, whereas there were no significant predictors for vigilance. These findings highlight that the treatment of sleep difficulties in FM patients may help with some of their cognitive complaints.     

Environmental sound recognition by timbre in children with Williams syndrome

Anecdotal reports have described children with Williams syndrome (WS) as presenting outstanding skills for recognizing environmental sounds by their timbre. This has led to suggest that the skills for environmental sound recognition by timbre are highly developed in WS. Furthermore, the term hypertimbria has been proposed to refer to this feature. However, no academic research has assessed these skills in WS. This study therefore aimed to contrast the reports on the highly developed skills for environmental sound recognition by timbre in children with WS. An environmental sound recognition task was administered to children with WS, children with Down syndrome of the same chronological age and cognitive level, and chronological age-matched typically developing children. Participants with WS performed significantly lower than their typically developing peers and no significant differences were found between the WS and Down syndrome groups. Unlike previous reports, this study points out that in WS environmental sound recognition by timbre does not constitute a phenotypic strength either in absolute or relative terms. Results suggest that children with WS do not present hypertimbria or preserved skills for timbre recognition. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of cognitive modularity.     

Electron irradiation damage in SnO

In a study of radiation effects in SnO we have found that electron-beam damage is observable from changes in a high-resolution electron microscopy image or electron diffraction pattern. The early stage of the damage is not accompanied by a change in composition or a loss of crystallinity. The dose required for this damage (about 600 C cm^?2) is approximately independent of electron energy (between 100 and 400 keV) and specimen temperature (between 100 and 300 K). The damage is believed to start with displacement of oxygen atoms from their lattice position through a radiolytic mechanism with an efficiency of approximately 10^?4.     

Children's use of addition to solve two‐digit subtraction problems

Subtraction problems of the type M ? S = ? can be solved with various mental calculation strategies. We investigated fourth‐ to sixth‐graders' use of the subtraction by addition strategy, first by fitting regression models to the reaction times of 32 two‐digit subtractions. These models represented three different strategy use patterns: the use of direct subtraction, subtraction by addition, and switching between the two strategies based on the magnitude of the subtrahend. Additionally, we compared performance on problems presented in two presentation formats, i.e., a subtraction format (81 ? 37 = .) and an addition format (37 + . = 81). Both methods converged to the conclusion that children of all three grades switched between direct subtraction and subtraction by addition based on the combination of two features of the subtrahend: If the subtrahend was smaller than the difference, direct subtraction was the dominant strategy; if the subtrahend was larger than the difference, subtraction by addition was mainly used. However, this performance pattern was only observed when the numerical distance between subtrahend and difference was large. These findings indicate that theoretical models of children's strategy choices in subtraction should include the nature of the subtrahend as an important factor in strategy selection.     

Decontextualisation as a rhetorical mechanism in the op-ed article ‘Finding design in nature’, by Cardinal Schönborn (2005)

The objective of this paper is to make a rhetorical analysis of the op-ed entitled ‘Finding design in nature’ by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna, published by The New York Times in 2005, three months after the death of John Paul II. In this essay, the Cardinal states that it is an error to affirm that Catholic doctrine is compatible with the ‘neo-Darwinist’ theory of evolution and that the Roman Catholic Church accepts that theory. For the Archbishop, the origin of this error lies in the abuses committed in the interpretation of John Paul's 1996 speech in which the Pope declared that evolution was more than a hypothesis and took a more favourable stance towards evolutionary theory than his predecessors. In his article, the Cardinal describes that papal message as ‘vague and unimportant’. We interpret Cardinal Schönborn's position as a personal rhetorical change with respect to John Paul II's 1996 speech. In our view, the Archbishop directs his criticism against evolutionary theory not only because of its scientific theories (not rejected by Church Magisterium) but also for being potentially dangerous in its use by certain authors as a scientific argument in support of their atheism.     

Distorted Reflections: Media Exposure and Latino Adolescents' Conceptions of Self

Because Latinos are underrepresented and often negatively stereotyped in the media, concern is frequently expressed that repeated exposure to these portrayals may reflect poorly on Latino adolescents' self-esteem. To test this issue empirically, we conducted 2 studies examining associations between multiple dimensions of self-esteem and several forms of media use. Testing 40 Latino high school students in Study 1, we found that more frequent and more active TV viewing was associated with lower social and appearance self-esteem. Many of these general patterns were replicated in Study 2 with 115 college students and with several demographic controls. Additional analyses of possible moderators revealed more consistent negative correlations among women and among participants with a stronger Latino ethnic identity. Together, these findings provide powerful evidence of a potential link between media use and the self-conceptions of Latino youth.     

Three-level meta-analysis of dependent effect sizes

Although dependence in effect sizes is ubiquitous, commonly used meta-analytic methods assume independent effect sizes. We describe and illustrate three-level extensions of a mixed effects meta-analytic model that accounts for various sources of dependence within and across studies, because multilevel extensions of meta-analytic models still are not well known. We also present a three-level model for the common case where, within studies, multiple effect sizes are calculated using the same sample. Whereas this approach is relatively simple and does not require imputing values for the unknown sampling covariances, it has hardly been used, and its performance has not been empirically investigated. Therefore, we set up a simulation study, showing that also in this situation, a three-level approach yields valid results: Estimates of the treatment effects and the corresponding standard errors are unbiased.     

The Charcot Effect: The Invention of Mental Illnesses

This article proposes the Charcot effect, in which clinicians describe what they themselves prescribe. It is argued that the Charcot effect can be a critical instrument for exposing how mental illnesses are invented in the process of developing diagnostic systems and conducting psychopharmacological research. We argue that the Charcot effect helps explain the expansion of depression to epidemic proportions, the promotion of social phobia as a pharmaceutical marketing strategy, the profile of panic disorder according to the available medication, and the worse prognosis of schizophrenia in developed countries than in developing countries. Having undertaken this review, we situate the Charcot effect in relation to constructivist psychology.     

Auditory Verbal Hallucinations as Dialogical Experiences

The purpose of this study is to offer a model in which auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) can be conceptualized as dialogical experiences. This model is of interest in that it integrates several different perspectives (phenomenological, cognitive, social, and evolutionary) and the findings of empirical research on the subject. Hallucinations are understood as the product of a state of consciousness in which the self is dissociated into different positions or perspectives. After reviewing the most relevant results of psychological research, dialogical self theory is proposed as the theoretical framework for understanding hallucinatory experiences. It is argued that the voices possess a series of characteristics, pragmatic properties, relationships with the voices similar to their social surroundings, and more dissociative experiences in people who experience voices than in those who do not, with which they may be considered a dialogical experience. Finally, a model attempting to integrate psychological research on AVHs within the framework of dialogical self theory is presented.