Questionnaire Assessment Potentially Overestimates Anxiety in Parkinson's Disease

Assessment of anxiety in Parkinson's disease (PD) is complicated by symptoms, such as trembling and shaking, that the two disorders have in common. This symptom overlap produces a potential for overestimation of the rate and severity of anxiety when assessed by self-report questionnaire. The purpose of this study is to estimate the extent to which anxiety scores in PD patients might be overestimated by two commonly-used mood state questionnaires. Fifty-nine patients with PD were administered the Beck Anxiety Inventory and the Profile of Mood States. Results indicate that the rate of clinically significant anxiety on these measures is indeed higher than the rate of clinical anxiety as determined by interview alone, suggesting the potential for overestimation of anxiety in PD when using self-report questionnaires.     

Resolving Uncertainty About the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale–12: Application of Modern Psychometric Strategies

In this study, we evaluated the factor structure, reliability estimates, item parameters, and differential correlates of the short form of the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (Carleton, Norton, &; Asmundson, 2007 Carleton, R., Norton, P., &; Asmundson, G. (2007). Fearing the unknown. A short version of the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 21, 105–117.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in samples of undergraduate women (n = 387) and men (n = 276) ranging in age from 18 to 49 years (M = 20.20, SD = 3.91). This instrument was designed to measure 2 facets of intolerance of uncertainty—prospective anxiety and inhibitory anxiety—although total scores on the measure are often used. A major objective of this study was to determine the degree to which derivation of total versus subscale scores is empirically permissible. Comparison of a bifactor model to a unidimensional model and a 2-factor correlated traits model indicated that the bifactor model exhibited superior fit to the sample data. This model provided evidence of a strong general intolerance of uncertainty factor that was more reliable and accounted for significantly more common variance than either subscale factor. Examination of the item response theory slope parameters revealed negligible bias in the measure's items across genders. Finally, a series of simultaneous regression analyses was conducted to examine differential correlates of the measure's total scale scores for men and women.     

Decompositional Equivalence: A Fundamental Symmetry Underlying Quantum Theory

Decompositional equivalence is the principle that there is no preferred decomposition of the universe into subsystems. It is shown here, by using a simple thought experiment, that quantum theory follows from decompositional equivalence together with Landauer’s principle. This demonstration raises within physics a question previously left to psychology: how do human—or any—observers identify or agree about what constitutes a “system of interest”?     

Implementation of structure-mapping inference by event-file binding and action planning: a model of tool-improvisation analogies

Structure-mapping inferences are generally regarded as dependent upon relational concepts that are understood and expressible in language by subjects capable of analogical reasoning. However, tool-improvisation inferences are executed by members of a variety of non-human primate and other species. Tool improvisation requires correctly inferring the motion and force-transfer affordances of an object; hence tool improvisation requires structure mapping driven by relational properties. Observational and experimental evidence can be interpreted to indicate that structure-mapping analogies in tool improvisation are implemented by multi-step manipulation of event files by binding and action-planning mechanisms that act in a language-independent manner. A functional model of language-independent event-file manipulations that implement structure mapping in the tool-improvisation domain is developed. This model provides a mechanism by which motion and force representations commonly employed in tool-improvisation structure mappings may be sufficiently reinforced to be available to inwardly directed attention and hence conceptualization. Predictions and potential experimental tests of this model are outlined.     

“What It Means To Be a Woman:” Ambivalent Sexism in Female College Students’ Experiences and Attitudes

This study used content analysis to examine if themes related to ambivalent sexism (Glick and Fiske 1996) emerged when female students wrote an essay answering the question “What does it mean to be a woman?” and examined the relationship between Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI) scores (Glick and Fiske 1996) and content analysis. Participants were 78 female undergraduate students in the Southeastern U.S. Findings revealed themes related to ambivalent sexism were present in 99% of essays, indicating that ambivalent sexism is highly relevant to women’s gendered experiences. Furthermore participants’ ASI scores were positively correlated with a sexism score created from coded essay content. The discussion addresses theoretical and contextual implications of the findings.     

Formation of partially and fully elaborated generalized equivalence classes

Most complex categories observed in real-world settings consist of perceptually disparate stimuli, such as a picture of a person's face, the person's name as written, and the same name as heard, as well as dimensional variants of some or all of these stimuli. The stimuli function as members of a single partially or fully elaborated generalized equivalence class when they occasion the mutual selection of each other after the establishment of some subset of relations among the stimuli. Indeed, it is these generalized relations among stimuli that enable an individual to respond appropriately to the inevitable flux of natural environments. The present experiments involved procedures for producing both types of generalized equivalence class and for evaluating their retention. Granting the formal and functional similarities that exist between generalized equivalence classes and natural categories, natural kinds, and fuzzy superordinate classes, the variables responsible for the emergence of the former might also account for the emergence of the latter three phenomena. In Experiment 1, After forming an A'-B' class, a B'-C relation was trained and generalization tests were conducted with B'-C, C-B', A'-C, and C'-A. Two of 5 participants passed the tests documenting the formation of A'-B'-C classes. Failures occurred in the A'-C and C-A' tests but not the B'-C and C-B' tests. Failures were also correlated with time between A'-B' class formation and C-based testing and with the absence of baseline confirmation when training and testing were separated by about one week. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 but presented baseline confirmation probes immediatley prior to testing when training and testing were separated by one week; all participants then formed partially elaborated generalized equivalence classes. In Experiment 3, 5 of 6 participants formed fully elaborated generalized equivalence classes, represented as A' = B' = C'.     

Gender Differences in Positive and Negative Feelings Between Adolescents and Their Fathers and Mothers

Given the connections between feelings and well-being within the family, we addressed gender differences and similarities of feelings within the family. We explored adolescents’, mothers’, and fathers’ positive and negative affect within a community sample of 224 families from the southeast of the United States. Adolescents ranged in age from 12 to 19 years. Findings suggest more gender differences in positive and negative affect for parental gender (i.e., mothers versus fathers) than for adolescent gender (i.e., boys versus girls). There were more consistent associations within the family for positive affect as opposed to negative affect. We discussed the results in the context of gender differences within the family within the family systems theoretical perspective.     

Aspects of Repetition in Bonobo–Human Conversation: Creating Cohesion in a Conversation Between Species

Ape language research has primarily focused on specific isolated language features. In contrast, in research into human language, traditions such as conversational analysis and discourse analysis propose to study language as actual discourse. Consequently, repetitions are seen as accomplishing various discursive and pragmatic functions in human conversations, while in apes, repetitions are seen as rote imitations and as proof that apes do not exhibit language. Tools from discourse analysis are applied in this study to a conversation between a language-competent bonobo, Pan paniscus and a human. The hypothesis is that the bonobo may exhibit even larger linguistic competency in ordinary conversation than in controlled experimental settings. Despite her limited productive means, the bonobo Panbanisha competently engages in co-constructing the conversational turns. She uses shared knowledge and repetitions to achieve compliance with a request. This reveals a knowledge about socio-linguistic interactions which goes beyond the pure informational content of words. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.