Adaptive midlife defense mechanisms and late-life health

A growing body of research suggests that personality characteristics relate to physical health; however, this relationship has primarily been tested in cross-sectional studies that have not followed the participants into old age. The present study utilizes data from a 70-year longitudinal study to prospectively examine the relationship between the adaptive defense mechanisms in midlife and objectively assessed physical health in late life. In addition to examining the direct effect, we test whether social support mediates this relationship. The sample consisted of 90 men who were followed for over seven decades beginning in late adolescence. Health ratings from medical records were made at three time points (ages 70, 75, and 80). Defense mechanisms were coded from narratives by trained independent raters (Vaillant, Bond, & Vaillant, 1986). Independent raters assessed social supports between ages 50 and 70. More adaptive defenses in midlife were associated with better physical health at all three time points in late life. These relationships were partially mediated by social support. Findings are consistent with the theory that defense maturity is important for building social relationships, which in turn contribute to better late-life physical health. Psychological interventions aimed at improving these domains may be beneficial for physical health.     

Are You Minority Enough? Language Ability Affects Targets' and Perceivers' Assessments of a Candidate's Appropriateness for Affirmative Action

In the present study, we focus on Spanish language ability as a predictor of the extent to which Latinos are viewed by both others and themselves as full-fledged minorities. Study 1 shows that perceivers viewed Latinos described as Spanish speakers as more appropriate for race-based affirmative action than Latinos who were unable to speak Spanish (controlling for intellectual competence evaluations). Moreover, the affirmative action advantage that the Spanish-speaking Latinos had over the non-Spanish-speaking Latinos was explained by perceivers viewing the Spanish speakers as having greater minority status. The results of Study 2 suggest that Spanish-speaking ability is related to self-perceptions of minority status among Latinos. Like their perceivers in Study 1, Latinos who have less Spanish-speaking ability feel less Latino and report reluctance to apply for race-based assistance in the form of academic minority scholarships.     

Emotion and appraisal: A study using ecological momentary assessment

This study employed Ecological Momentary Assessment to test predictions from appraisal theories of emotion about the relationships between emotions and appraisals, using a sample of police officers from Singapore. Strong support was obtained for the predictions, thus demonstrating ecological validity of appraisal theories while circumventing shortcomings of previously used methods in appraisal studies. The results also indicate that the emotions were accounted for by specific configurations of appraisals over and above those accounted for by individual constituent appraisals.     

Disgust: Sensory affect or primary emotional system?

We argue in this paper for the inclusion in the primary emotional systems enumerated by Panksepp of a neural system that organises disgust responses. The DISGUST system arose phylogenetically in response to danger to the internal milieu from pathogens and their toxic products. We suggest that the primitive emotive circuit, which originally provided defence by regulating consummatory behaviours, gave rise to a primary emotional system that facilitates evaluation of reinforcers. Unlike the sensory affect of distaste from which it is experimentally dissociable, disgust responses can involve flexible learned components triggered by several modalities. The anterior insula is implicated as playing a major role in the DISGUST system both in organising disgust responses in the individual and recognising disgust responses in others.     

White-matter microstructure and language lateralization in left-handers: A whole-brain MRI analysis

Most people are left-hemisphere dominant for language. However the neuroanatomy of language lateralization is not fully understood. By combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), we studied whether language lateralization is associated with cerebral white-matter (WM) microstructure. Sixteen healthy, left-handed women aged 20–25 were included in the study. Left-handers were targeted in order to increase the chances of involving subjects with atypical language lateralization. Language lateralization was determined by fMRI using a verbal fluency paradigm. Tract-based spatial statistics analysis of DTI data was applied to test for WM microstructural correlates of language lateralization across the whole brain. Fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity were used as indicators of WM microstructural organization. Right-hemispheric language dominance was associated with reduced microstructural integrity of the left superior longitudinal fasciculus and left-sided parietal lobe WM. In left-handed women, reduced integrity of the left-sided language related tracts may be closely linked to the development of right hemispheric language dominance. Our results may offer new insights into language lateralization and structure–function relationships in human language system.     

Reviews

Karantin by V. Maksimov, Possev, Frankfurt, 1973, 364 pp. French translation: En Quarantine by Vladimir Maximov, Grasset, Paris, 1974, 304 pp. 34 F.

Red Star Over Tibet, by Dawa Norbu, Collins, London, 1974, 254 pp. £3.50.

La Repressione Culturale In Lituania, Edizioni Jaca Book, Milano, 1972. A cura di Felix Milani, Centro Studi Russia Cristiana, Via Martinengo, Milano. 190 pp.     

Organisation: What levels of processing are levels of

The psychology of thought and memory has historically been concerned with a struggle between associationism and its opponents. Organisation theory—in part an offspring of Gestalt concepts—has been the most successful and vocal of these contenders. The levels-of-processing framework has been a part of the effort to overcome associationist predilections. Aspects of principles of organisation and of the recent history of organisation theory are presented, followed by an analysis of the levels-of-processing approach in terms of organisational concepts.     

Repertory grid in problem structuring: A case illustration

Although the results of previous psychological studies suggested the existence of behavioral freedom, there existed no methodology that could unequivocally identify the portion of human behavior resulting from self-determination or behavioral freedom in human action. The methodological innovations reviewed herein throw a different light on the factors involved in the genesis of human action than was previously possible with extant psychological research methodologies. But critics contend that in such studies subjects might simply be conforming to the experimenter's demands, rather than demonstrating their ability to self-determine. Two studies are presented that demonstrate that conformity is an extremely implausible explanation for the results attributed to self-determination in previous studies. Furthermore, the second study demonstrates the interaction between the idiographically construed meaningfulness of a behavior and one's desire or ability to voluntarily alter that behavior.     

The limits of visual resolution in natural scene viewing

We examined the limits of visual resolution in natural scene viewing, using a gaze-contingent multiresolutional display having a gaze-centred area-of-interest and decreasing resolution with eccentricity. Twelve participants viewed high-resolution scenes in which gaze-contingent multiresolutional versions occasionally appeared for single fixations. Both detection of image degradation (five filtering levels plus a no-area-of-interest control) in the gaze-contingent multiresolutional display, and eye fixation durations, were well predicted by a model of eccentricity-dependent contrast sensitivity. The results also illuminate the time course of detecting image filtering. Detection did not occur for fixations below 100 ms, and reached asymptote for fixations above 200 ms. Detectable filtering lengthened fixation durations by 160 ms, and interference from an imminent manual response occurred by 400-450 ms, often lengthening the next fixation. We provide an estimate of the limits of visual resolution in natural scene viewing useful for theories of scene perception, and help bridge the literature on spatial vision and eye movement control.     

Use of landmarks and allocentric reference frames for the control of locomotion

In the present study we assessed the use of landmarks and scene layout information for the control of locomotion. Observers were presented displays simulating forward locomotion through a random dot field with the horizontal position perturbed by a sum-of-sines function and were asked to steer and null out the horizontal disturbance of the path of locomotion. The results indicate greater control gain and accuracy when presented with a repeating layout of landmarks as compared to a changing layout of landmarks. Debriefing responses suggest that observers may have implicitly learned the layout of the repeating pattern. These results suggest that observers use an allocentric representation of the scene for steering control. A model for the control of locomotion is discussed that utilizes both scene-based information and optic flow.