Moderating effects of attributions on the relationship between emotional dissonance and surface acting: a transactional approach to health care professionals' emotion work

Based on a transactional model of stress, this study aims to understand the role played by attributions in selecting surface acting as emotion regulation strategy when coping with emotion‐rule dissonance. A sample of primary health care professionals (n = 87) based in Madrid filled in a questionnaire. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to test hypotheses on the moderating effects of attributions on the relationship between emotion‐rule dissonance and surface acting. Results showed that high levels of attribution to patients of responsibility for negative events, low levels of professionals' self‐accountability, and low attribution of being able to promote a positive change strengthen the positive association between emotion‐rule dissonance and surface acting. This could explain why professionals use a potentially damaging emotion regulation strategy.     

Individual Differences in the Context‐Dependent Recruitment of Cognitive Control: Evidence From Action Versus State Orientation

The ability to flexibly adapt to deviations from optimal performance is an important aspect of self‐control. In the present study, the authors present first evidence that the personality trait action versus state orientation (Kuhl, 2000) modulates the ability of adaptive control adjustments in response to experienced conflicts. Sixty‐two German individuals with extreme scores on the action‐state dimension performed a response interference task, that is, 31 extreme action‐oriented individuals (30 females; M_age = 20.35 years) and 31 extreme state‐oriented individuals (20 females; M_age = 23.23 years), respectively. Action‐oriented individuals displayed a stronger conflict adaptation effect as evidenced by a stronger reduction of interference on trials following conflict. These results were further corroborated by a correlational analysis including a sample of 105 participants: the higher the score on the action‐state dimension, the lower the interference effect following conflict (i.e., stronger conflict adaptation). The results provide evidence that even low‐level, bottom‐up‐driven processes of self‐control such as conflict adaptation are systematically moderated by individual differences in control modes and provide insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying action versus state orientation.     

Visual selective attention is equally functional for individuals with low and high working memory capacity: Evidence from accuracy and eye movements

Selective attention and working memory capacity (WMC) are related constructs, but debate about the manner in which they are related remains active. One elegant explanation of variance in WMC is that the efficiency of filtering irrelevant information is the crucial determining factor, rather than differences in capacity per se. We examined this hypothesis by relating WMC (as measured by complex span tasks) to accuracy and eye movements during visual change detection tasks with different degrees of attentional filtering and allocation requirements. Our results did not indicate strong filtering differences between high- and low-WMC groups, and where differences were observed, they were counter to those predicted by the strongest attentional filtering hypothesis. Bayes factors indicated evidence favoring positive or null relationships between WMC and correct responses to unemphasized information, as well as between WMC and the time spent looking at unemphasized information. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that individual differences in storage capacity, not only filtering efficiency, underlie individual differences in working memory.     

Categories in the pigeon brain: A reverse engineering approach

Pigeons are well known for their visual capabilities as well as their ability to categorize visual stimuli at both the basic and superordinate level. We adopt a reverse engineering approach to study categorization learning: Instead of training pigeons on predefined categories, we simply present stimuli and analyze neural output in search of categorical clustering on a solely neural level. We presented artificial stimuli, pictorial and grating stimuli, to pigeons without the need of any differential behavioral responding while recording from the nidopallium frontolaterale (NFL), a higher visual area in the avian brain. The pictorial stimuli differed in color and shape; the gratings differed in spatial frequency and amplitude. We computed representational dissimilarity matrices to reveal categorical clustering based on both neural data and pecking behavior. Based on neural output of the NFL, pictorial and grating stimuli were differentially represented in the brain. Pecking behavior showed a similar pattern, but to a lesser extent. A further subclustering within pictorial stimuli according to color and shape, and within gratings according to frequency and amplitude, was not present. Our study gives proof‐of‐concept that this reverse engineering approach—namely reading out categorical information from neural data—can be quite helpful in understanding the neural underpinnings of categorization learning.     

Zwischen Anerkennung und Zur��ckweisung

The paper deals with the question of to what extent the development and application of medical nosologies are dependent upon social, political and economic conditions and which (often utilitarian) considerations decide on the fitness for use of a clinical picture and a diagnosis. The context and the framework of the construct are crucial to understanding, recognition and finally to compensation procedures. With reference to historical and current material supplied by war veterans, processes of recognition and rejection of entitlements to benefits will be illustrated; the significance of psychoanalytical concepts in this process will be reflected.     

Seelische Gesundheitsvorsorge f��r Kinder krebskranker Eltern

Children of cancer patients are increasingly being paid attention to as target group for family-based mental health prevention concepts in psychosocial oncology. Based on the long-term experiences with the concept Children of Somatically Ill Parents (COSIP) for child-centred medical family counselling, which was developed at the counselling service COSIP at the Hamburg University Medical Centre, a specialized manual was developed for the context of psychosocial care in oncology, which is currently being tested in a multi-center approach. In this article the theoretical framework and the practical steps of this manualized concept in caring for families with a parent having cancer are summarized. Characteristic elements are the flexible handling of the three system levels parents, family and child in the counselling setting as well as focussing on previously defined intervention goals which are expected to strengthen the coping resources in the family and the children. Perspectives for clinical practice and research are discussed.     

Widerstand

With the help of a completed psychoanalysis as an example, important stations of the analysis of resistance are shown. In the second part several derivatives are discussed on the basis of different vignettes, which follow from the psychoanalytic standard method and which have to be especially considered in a psychodynamic psychotherapy with low frequency. A differentiation is made between resistance in the transference and resistance against the setting. The ending of the psychotherapy is thereby a central issue.     

The initial stage of visual selection is controlled by top-down task set: new ERP evidence

Salient visual singleton stimuli produce spatial cueing effects indicative of attentional capture only when they match current task sets, suggesting that capture is subject to top-down control. However, such task-set contingent capture effects could be associated with the top-down controlled disengagement of attention from non-matching stimuli that follows their initial bottom-up salience-driven selection. Using the N2pc component as an event-related potential marker of attentional capture, we demonstrate that top-down task set already controls the initial rapid selection of salient visual singleton stimuli prior to any subsequent attentional disengagement. These findings provide new evidence for the primacy of top-down control over bottom-up salience in attentional capture.