Choke or thrive? The relation between salivary cortisol and math performance depends on individual differences in working memory and math-anxiety

In the current study, we explored how a person's physiological arousal relates to their performance in a challenging math situation as a function of individual differences in working memory (WM) capacity and math-anxiety. Participants completed demanding math problems before and after which salivary cortisol, an index of arousal, was measured. The performance of lower WM individuals did not depend on cortisol concentration or math-anxiety. For higher WM individuals high in math-anxiety, the higher their concentration of salivary cortisol following the math task, the worse their performance. In contrast, for higher WM individuals lower in math-anxiety, the higher their salivary cortisol concentrations, the better their performance. For individuals who have the capacity to perform at a high-level (higher WMs), whether physiological arousal will lead an individual to choke or thrive depends on math-anxiety.     

Increased spreading activation in depression

The dopaminergic system is implicated in depressive disorders and research has also shown that dopamine constricts lexical/semantic networks by reducing spreading activation. Hence, depression, which is linked to reductions of dopamine, may be associated with increased spreading activation. However, research has generally found no effects of depression on spreading activation, using semantic priming paradigms. We used a different paradigm to investigate the relationship between depression and spreading activation, one based on word frequencies. Our sample included 97 undergraduates who completed the BDI-II and the Controlled Oral Word Association test as well as the Animal Naming test. The results indicated that the group scoring within the depressed ranged evidenced greater spreading activation as compared to those who scored within the normal range on the BDI-II. The implications of these results as they relate to creativity in depression is discussed.     

The role of forget-cue salience in list-method directed forgetting

Research suggests that manipulating the wording of the forget cue in list-method directed forgetting affects the magnitude of directed forgetting both in younger children (Aslan, Staudigl, Samenieh, & Bauml, in press) and in older adults (Sahakyan, Delaney, & Goodmon, 2008). This occurs when the forget cue overemphasises the importance of forgetting in the current context. The present experiment investigated whether de-emphasising forgetting affected the magnitude of list-method directed forgetting in college adults. Some participants received overt forget cues that explicitly instructed them to forget earlier studied items, whereas others received covert forget cues that implied forgetting by emphasising selective remembering (e.g., "you will only need to remember some of the items"). Results indicated equivalent directed forgetting for both types of cues. However, regardless of the type of cue received, participants who reported using specific forgetting strategies in response to the forget cue showed directed forgetting, whereas those that reported doing nothing did not show any effects. The results underscore that successful directed forgetting requires engagement of controlled processes.     

Presidential Leadership Style and the Political Use of Force

A growing body of work seeks to explain the lack of clear evidence for the diversionary use of force by casting doubt on such strategies' attractiveness for policy makers: while domestic political and economic problems may provide incentives for diversion, such strategies involve political and military risks that frequently outweigh these incentives. Such theories correctly identify the objective risks involved in diversion but do not account for variation in leaders' risk‐taking propensities. We develop a “first image” theory of diversion that suggests a key psychological variable (locus of control) shapes leaders' willingness to engage in risky diversionary strategies. A statistical analysis of the American use of force, 1953–2000, finds strong support for this model. We conclude that the lack of clear evidence for diversion in general is a reflection of the contingent nature of the phenomenon and call for greater attention to how agents and structures interact to produce policy behavior.     

Conceptual and Moral Development of Substance Abuse Counselors: Implications for Training

The relationship among substance abuse counselors' education, experience, recovery status, and cognitive development (conceptual complexity and moral reasoning levels) was examined in a simultaneous multiple regression. Significant relationships were found between counselors' level of conceptual complexity and moral reasoning and their education. Implications for counselor training are presented.     

Sequence-related changes in sensory-evoked potentials in the dentate gyrus: a mechanism for item-specific short-term information storage in the hippocampus

Sensory-evoked potentials were recorded from the dentate gyrus of the rat hippocampus during performance of a differential auditory discrimination task. The short latency (20 ms) component (N1) of the sensory-evoked potential showed systematic amplitude fluctuations dependent upon the sequence of positive and negative trials preceding the presentation of a given trial and did not depend on the associated reward values of the individual tone stimuli which evoked the potential. The amplitude fluctuations could be accurately depicted by a model which retained the sequence for the five preceding trials in a "buffer" with exponentially decaying influence as a function of time of trial occurrence within the sequence. The results provide evidence that the hippocampus encodes accurate short-lasting representations of sensory events which can provide the basis for storage of information pertaining to past experiences.     

Issues in the assessment of social competence in children

Recent interest in children's social competence has been prompted by findings of correlational and retrospective studies that indicate a positive relationship between early social adjustment problems of children and their adjustment later in life. To date, the assessment methodology in the area has pursued two directions: (1) sociometric measures (peer nomination and peer rating scales), which have provided the major means of identifying the socially competent child, and (2) direct observation, principally employed in the specification of socially competent behaviors. The current uses and the inherent assets and limitations of both strategies are discussed along with suggestions for enhancing current data collection methods. Issues concerning the definition of social competence, generalizability of current findings, and social norms are also examined.