Schizophrenic tendencies and memory deficits in normals

The report tests the hypothesis that normals who exhibit schizophrenic tendencies are likely to show verbal-memory deficits of the types observed in schizophrenics. Thirty-four middle-aged men were tested using the MMPI 2–7–8 schizophrenic-tendency scales, the Sorting Consistency Task and the Physical Anhedonia Scale. The dependent variables were four memory tests selected on the basis of their known discriminating power and their relevance. The results showed the Schizophrenia (8) and Psychasthenia (7) scales of MMPI, and the Sorting Consistency Task effectively detected memory deficits in normals. When partialling out intelligence, as a measure of general current cognitive functioning, it appeared that one of the deficits reflecting encoding difficulty disappeared. This suggests that normal ‘high-risk’ subjects for schizophrenia show a ‘generalized deficit’, which affects memory in addition to a ‘differential deficit’ in retention. Though tentative, the results can be taken as an indication that ‘high-risk’ subjects indeed show memory deficits and that detecting these deficits requires relatively sensitive tools.     

Two-flash threshold, sensitivity and β in normal subjects and schizophrenics

Two-flash threshold, response criterion, and sensitivity (defined by the slope of the psychophysical ogive), were examined in schizophrenics and in normals under three conditions--a base-line condition, and during and after continuous white noise. Schizophrenics were subdivided into four groups on the basis of whether or not they exhibited paranoid symptomatology and electrodermal orienting responses. In general schizophrenics had more lenient two-flash response criteria than normal subjects. In the base-line condition schizophrenics with orienting responses had lower two-flash thresholds than those without orienting responses. Paranoid schizophrenics had more lenient criteria than non-paranoid schizophrenics and lower sensitivity than the non-paranoid group with orienting responses. Differential group effects were obtained during and after noise, especially with regard to sensitivity.     

Note on social behavior of long-term captive female orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus abellii)

Some observations of social behavior of two aging female orangutans with a younger male son of one were made in an outdoor and in an indoor enclosure during the day. These included social distance, grooming, and locomotion plus wrestling and genital stimulation. As noted 15 years earlier, the two old females were never in contact with each other. Each showed contact and noncontact with the younger male. No clear social relation between the females was evident. Careful study of aging zoo populations could be useful.     

As the wheel turns: a centennial reflection on Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

Freud's theories of psychosexual development, while highly original, were anchored in the explosion of scientific studies of sex in the nineteenth century. Most of these studies were based on masturbation, homosexuality, and deviance, with little attention given to normal sexuality. Around the turn of the century, the narrow interest in pathological sexuality and sexual physiology gradually gave way to a broader interest in normal sexuality. It was in the context of these expanding studies of sexuality that Freud proposed the first psychological view of sexuality, a theory that defined sex as being at the interface between soma and psyche. Libido theory, which Freud developed, is a theory of drives and conflicts. For Freud, libido was the major force in personality development, and he posited sexual conflicts as the heart of neuroses, sexual fixations as the essence of perversions. This article traces the way Freud's libido theory has served as one of the mainsprings in the development of psychoanalytic theory. It also addresses the major revisions that have taken place in libido theory, with a focus primarily on object relations theory, and the impact of culture on the way sex and sexual mores are parsed.     

Reduced electrodermal activity in psychopathy-prone adolescents

This study tests the hypothesis that psychopathy-prone adolescents show reduced anticipatory skin conductance responding. Electrodermal activity was recorded while participants anticipated and responded to a 105 dB signaled or unsignaled white-noise burst. Using an extreme groups design, the authors used Child Psychopathy Scale (D. R. Lynam, 1997) scores from a community sample of 335 male adolescents (age 16) to form control (n = 65) and psychopathy-prone (n = 65) groups. Significantly more psychopathy-prone participants were nonresponders in the signaled anticipatory (p = .014), signaled responsivity (p = .037), and unsignaled responsivity (p = .003) conditions compared with controls. Anticipatory hyporesponsivity of psychopathy-prone adolescents similar to the electrodermal hyporesponsivity found in psychopathic adults suggests that this autonomic impairment is present by adolescence and may predispose individuals to adult psychopathy.     

Saccadic overhead: Information-processing time with and without saccades

Information-processing time was compared for serial and spatially distributed visual presentations with performance measures that permit the separation of total time into its during-display and post-display components. For all subjects, there was a significant saccadic overhead, that is, less time was required with the serial format, which allowed data access without eye movements. However, the magnitude of the overhead decreased as task complexity increased. All subjects were able to exercise some control over the distribution of total processing time, trading off short during-display times with longer post-display times and vice versa.     

Validity of the Externalizing Spectrum Inventory in a criminal offender sample: relations with disinhibitory psychopathology, personality, and psychopathic features

The Externalizing Spectrum Inventory (ESI; Krueger, Markon, Patrick, Benning, & Kramer, 2007) provides a self-report based method for indexing a range of correlated problem behaviors and traits in the domain of deficient impulse control. The ESI organizes lower order behaviors and traits of this kind around higher order factors encompassing general disinhibitory proneness, callous-aggression, and substance abuse. In the current study, we used data from a male prisoner sample (N = 235) to evaluate the validity of ESI total and factor scores in relation to external criterion measures consisting of externalizing disorder symptoms (including child and adult antisocial deviance and substance-related problems) assessed via diagnostic interviews, personality traits assessed with self-reports, and psychopathic features as assessed with both interviews and self-reports. Results provide evidence for the validity of the ESI measurement model and point to its potential usefulness as a referent for research on the neurobiological correlates and etiological bases of externalizing proneness.     

Short-lived effects of a visual inducer during egocentric space perception and manual behavior

A pitched visual inducer has a strong effect on the visually perceived elevation of a target in extrapersonal space, and also on the elevation of the arm when a subject points with an unseen arm to the target’s elevation. The manual effect is a systematic function of hand-to-body distance (Li and Matin Vision Research 45:533–550, 2005): When the arm is fully extended, manual responses to perceptually mislocalized luminous targets are veridical; when the arm is close to the body, gross matching errors occur. In the present experiments, we measured this hand-to-body distance effect during the presence of a pitched visual inducer and after inducer offset, using three values of hand-to-body distance (0, 40, and 70 cm) and two open-loop tasks (pointing to the perceived elevation of a target at true eye level and setting the height of the arm to match the elevation). We also measured manual behavior when subjects were instructed to point horizontally under induction and after inducer offset (no visual target at any time). In all cases, the hand-to-body distance effect disappeared shortly after inducer offset. We suggest that the rapid disappearance of the distance effect is a manifestation of processes in the dorsal visual stream that are involved in updating short-lived representations of the arm in egocentric visual perception and manual behavior.