Effects of instructions, biofeedback, reward, and cognitive mediation on the control of heart rate and the application of that control in a stressful situation

Subjects in Phase 1 of this experiment were (a) instructed to try to either increase or decrease their heart rate, (b) with or without the use of biofeedback, and (c) with or without the promise of money for successful performance, whereas no-treatment subjects were given no instructions, no biofeedback, and no promise of reward. Results indicated that (a) when simply instructed to do so, subjects could increase but not decrease their heart rates relative to no treatment controls, (b) the promise of money for good performance aided subjects in increasing but not decreasing heart rate, and (c) biofeedback did not aid subjects in either increasing or decreasing heart rate. Various cognitive strategies employed by subjects in controlling their heart rates are discussed.In Phase 2, subjects in a stress condition were told that they would receive a series of painful electric shocks, whereas subjects in a no stress condition were not told about shocks. All subjects were instructed to try to decrease their heart rates during the “shock” period. Heart rate and self report data revealed that (a) the manipulation was successful in increasing stress, and (b) previous training in decreasing heart rate, with or without biofeedback, did not aid subjects in decreasing their heart rates in the face of the stress.     

Subjective motion and acceleration induced by the movement of the observer’s entire visual field

Three experiments were carried out to trace the developmental time course of apparent subjective rotation induced by rotating a tall striped drum around an observer. In Experiment 1, rotation of the drum led to increasingly frequent reports of subjective rotation over the first 30 sec of stimulation by the optokinetic stimulus, after which subjects experienced mostly apparent subjective rotation and a small amount of drum rotation. In Experiment 2, using a magnitude estimation technique to assess the speed of drum and subjective rotation, subjects reported subjective acceleration and drum deceleration of about the same magnitude over the first 30 sec of the 1-rain trial, followed by a steady level of subjective rotation with some residual drum movement. In Experiment 3, using three different drum speeds, it was found that the speed of steady-state rotation, as well as subjective acceleration and drum deceleration, are linear functions of the speed of the inducing stimulus. Implications of these observations towards the explanation of how we perceive a stable environment during locomotion are discussed.     

Tactile localization of the direction and distance of sounds

In a previous paper, experiments were reported which demonstrated that human subjects can judge accurately the azimuthal direction of sounds using a tactile localization device. It was also demonstrated that a tactile analogue of selective auditory attention was possible with this system. Three additional experiments, reported here, indicate that subjects are also able to judge the distance of the sound source and can concurrently judge both the azimuthal direction and distance of a source. Comparisons were made between conditions where head movements were permitted lactive~ and conditions where the head was held still Ipassive, and between normal auditory judgments and tactile judgments. Active tactile performance was essentially similar to auditory performance. Active performance was superior to passive in both directional and distance judgment, but different components of the motor-sensory complex were found to contribute to active superiority in the two tasks. The implication of these experiments for the design of auditory prosthetic devices is discussed.     

Multiple sessions of systolic blood pressure biofeedback: Its effects on ability to control systolic pressure during training,after training,and its effects on pulse rate

Seventy-one normotensive subjects participated in four training sessions in which they were either (a) instructed to increase their blood pressure, (b) instructed to decrease their blood pressure, or (c) not instructed to change their blood pressure. The subjects either (a) were provided with biofeedback concerning systolic blood pressure or (b) were not provided with biofeedback concerning systolic blood pressure. After the last training session, subjects participated in a transfer session in which they were again instructed concerning changes in pressure but were not provided with biofeedback. Analyses conducted on data from the training and transfer sessions indicated that subjects who were instructed to increase pressure and given biofeedback to aid them showed higher pressure than subjects in other conditions and that there were no differences among those other conditions; that is, biofeedback was effective for teaching subjects to increase pressure but was not effective for teaching subjects to decrease pressure. Additional training sessions did not add to the effect achieved in the first training session. During training sessions, subjects who were instructed to increase pressure showed higher heart rates than subjects in other conditions. The results raise questions concerning the interpretation of earlier experiments that did not include no-treatment, instructions-only, and attention control conditions.     

Brief report: On becoming a group therapist

Clinicians have become group therapists via many routes, either voluntarily or not. Group psychotherapy itself has had a checkered history, in that it has often been seen as an ancillary or a second choice form of treatment. Indeed, we know that there is a growing number of well-respected clinicians who are not only not ambivalent about being seen as group clinicians, but embrace this reality as a primary clinical identity. It has occurred to us that no one has looked deeply at this developmental path or what facilitates or inhibits movement along this path. This article is a preliminary attempt to initiate this line of study.     

Conceived Through Rape/Incest? Adoptive Parents’ Experiences Managing Uncertainty and Disclosure Surrounding their Children's Origins

Adoptive parents may be placed with children conceived under difficult circumstances, such as via rape or incest. At the same time, adoptive parents are generally encouraged to communicate openly with their children about their adoption stories and birth families. No research has examined the experiences of parents who adopt children who were conceived through rape or incest. This exploratory study examines how parents discuss their decision-making when adopting children conceived via rape or incest, how they manage varying levels of uncertainty about their children's origins, and whether and how they plan to disclose this information to children. The researchers used thematic analysis to examine the experiences of 11 couples (22 parents) interviewed at four time points after adopting children who were reportedly conceived via rape or incest. Findings revealed that even soon after adopting, parents discussed the need to eventually talk to their children about their conception circumstances. Parents generally struggled to determine how and when to disclose this information, particularly when they felt uncertain about the veracity of the conception stories they had been told. Some hoped to rely on professionals or birth mothers to guide them in these communications. Findings have implications for supporting adoptive families as they navigate the complexity of managing sensitive information and uncertainty when adopting children conceived through rape or incest. Practitioners should provide ongoing guidance to adoptive parents about how and when to disclose developmentally appropriate information to children about difficult conception circumstances.     

Parental Needs among Children with Birth Defects: Defining a Parent-to-Parent Support Network

The objective of this study was to explore how a parent-to-parent support network could impact parents of a child with a structural birth defect by specifically looking at parents’ continued needs, aspects influencing their participation in support networks, and their recommendations. Structural birth defects occur in approximately 3?% of all infants, representing a significant public health issue. For many reasons, parents are uniquely qualified to provide support to each other. Data were collected retrospectively through a qualitative approach of focus groups or one-on-one interviews. Thirty one parents of infants registered in the Utah Birth Defect Network participated in the study. Three themes emerged, “current sources and inconsistencies in parent-to-parent-support,” “aspects that influence participation in parent-to-parent network,” and “recommendations for a parent-to-parent program.” Health care providers need to be aware of the services and inform parents about these options. A statewide parent-to-parent network integrated into all hospitals would be a valuable resource to facilitate sharing of issues related to caring for an infant or child with a birth defect.     

The Ethics of Neuroscience and the Neuroscience of Ethics: A Phenomenological–Existential Approach

Advances in the neurosciences have many implications for a collective understanding of what it means to be human, in particular, notions of the self, the concept of volition or agency, questions of individual responsibility, and the phenomenology of consciousness. As the ability to peer directly into the brain is scientifically honed, and conscious states can be correlated with patterns of neural processing, an easy??but premature??leap is to postulate a one-way, brain-based determinism. That leap is problematic, however, and emerging findings in neuroscience can even be seen as compatible with some of the basic tenets of existentialism. Given the compelling authority of modern ??science,?? it is especially important to question how the findings of neuroscience are framed, and how the articulation of research results challenge or change individuals?? perceptions of themselves. Context plays an essential role in the emergence of human identity and in the sculpting of the human brain; for example, even a lack of stimuli (??nothing??) can lead to substantial consequences for brain, behavior, and experience. Conversely, advances in understanding the brain might contribute to more precise definitions of what it means to be human, including definitions of appropriate social and moral behavior. Put another way, the issue is not simply the ethics involved in framing neurotechnology, but also the incorporation of neuroscientific findings into a richer understanding of human ethical (and existential) functioning.     

An individual differences approach to the suggestibility of memory over time

We examined how certain personality traits might relate to the formation of suggestive memory over time. We hypothesised that compliance and trust relate to initial acceptance of misinformation as memory, whereas fantasy proneness might relate to integration of misinformation into memory after later intervals (relative to the time of exposure to misinformation). Participants watched an excerpt from a movie—the simulated eyewitness event. They next answered a recall test that included embedded misinformation about the movie. Participants then answered a yes/no recognition test. A week later, participants answered a second yes/no recognition test about the movie (each yes/no recognition test included different questions). Before both recognition tests, participants were warned about the misinformation shown during recall and were asked to base their answer on the movie excerpt only. After completing the second recognition test, participants answered questions from the Neuroticism Extroversion Openness Personality Inventory-3 (McCrae, Costa, & Martin, 2005) and Creative Experiences Questionnaire (Merckelbach, Horselenberg, & Muris, 2001). While compliance correlated with misinformation effects immediately after exposure to misinformation, fantasy-prone personality accounted for more of the variability in false recognition rates than compliance after a 1-week interval.     

The COMT Val/Met polymorphism is associated with reading‐related skills and consistent patterns of functional neural activation

In both children and adults there is large variability in reading skill, with approximately 5–10% of individuals characterized as having reading disability; these individuals struggle to learn to read despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. Although it is well established that a substantial portion of this variability is attributed to the genetic differences between individuals, specifics of the connections between reading and the genome are not understood. This article presents data that suggest that variation in the COMT gene, which has previously been associated with variation in higher‐order cognition, is associated with reading and reading‐related skills, at the level of both brain and behavior. In particular, we found that the COMT Val/Met polymorphism at rs4680, which results in the substitution of the ancestral Valine (Val) by Methionine (Met), was associated with better performance on a number of critical reading measures and with patterns of functional neural activation that have been linked to better readers. We argue that this polymorphism, known for its broad effects on cognition, may modulate (likely through frontal lobe function) reading skill.