Influence of training on maintenance of equilibrium on a tilting platform

To assess the influence of training on the maintenance of equilibrium on a tilting platform, 13 young healthy male athletes aged 19 to 33 years were randomly divided into experimental (n=7) and control (n=6) groups. Two experimental sessions were performed before and after a specific 4-wk. training by the experimental group. Subjects stood upright on a tilting platform. The athletes were asked to maintain the platform as horizontal as possible during a 30-sec. test. The three-dimensional movements of the platform versus the ground were recorded by using a computerized optoelectronic digitiser. The platform plane was calculated and its directrix computed. The area of oscillation and instantaneous angular velocity of the directrix at standardized height were calculated. In both groups the area of oscillation and the angular velocity were reduced in Session 2, but the reduction was significant only in the experimental group. Specific training can significantly improve skill at maintaining equilibrium in young healthy sport performers.     

Cerebellar ataxia: quantitative assessment and cybernetic interpretation

To assess neuromotor disorders clinicians often rely on rating scales. Unfortunately, these scales lack the sensitivity and accuracy needed to detect the small changes in motor coordination that reflect the clinical progression of the disease on the basis of which treatment programmes can be adjusted. As a contribution to this topic, the present paper proposes a straightforward kinematic and kinetic analysis of reaching movements of patients with cerebellar ataxia in conjunction with a cybernetic interpretation of the data. The aim of the approach is to capture key deficits in the underlying motor control processes. We suggest that cerebellar ataxia may be characterized by defective feedforward control.     

Personality Profiles and Political Parties

This paper explores relationships between basic personality profiles of voters and their political party preferences. The Italian political system has moved recently from previously extreme, ideologically distinctive parties to form complex coalitions varying around more centrist orientations. Significant evidence was found for the utility of the Five-Factor Model of Personality in distinguishing between voters' expressed preferences, even given this greater subtlety in proposed values and agendas. More than 2,000 Italian voters who self-identified as having voted for new center-left or center-right political coalitions differed systematically in predicted directions on several personality dimensions measured by the Big Five Questionnaire. In the context of the model, center-right voters displayed more Energy and slightly more Conscientiousness than center-left voters, whose dominant personality characteristics were Agreeableness (Friendliness) and Openness; Emotional Stability was unrelated to either group. This relationship between individual differences in personality and political preferences was not influenced by the demographic variables of voters' gender, age, or education. Thus, personality dimensions proved to be stronger predictors of political preference than any of these standard predictor variables. Implications are discussed regarding links among personality, persuasion, power, and politics.     

Self-efficacy pathways to childhood depression

This prospective research analyzed how different facets of perceived self-efficacy operate in concert within a network of sociocognitive influences in childhood depression. Perceived social and academic inefficacy contributed to concurrent and subsequent depression both directly and through their impact on academic achievement, prosocialness, and problem behaviors. In the shorter run, children were depressed over beliefs in their academic inefficacy rather than over their actual academic performances. In the longer run, the impact of a low sense of academic efficacy on depression was mediated through academic achievement, problem behavior, and prior depression. Perceived social inefficacy had a heavier impact on depression in girls than in boys in the longer term. Depression was also more strongly linked over time for girls than for boys.     

Naming the parents of the THOG: Mental representation and reasoning

It was hypothesized that subjects misrepresent the THOG problem by confusing data and hypotheses. An abstract version of the problem in which the given exemplars and the hypothetical ones were designated by two different labels was used in three experiments. Experiment 1 showed that this version elicits a better performance than the standard version of the problem. Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed these results, by ruling out a possible alternative account of the facilitatory effect obtained in Experiment 1. The present results are discussed in relationship to the general issues of content effects and non-consequentialism in reasoning.     

The eliciting cue value of aggressive slides reconsidered in a personological perspective: The weapons effect and irritability

A study was conducted, according to a 2 × 2 × 2 × 3 design and using the Buss aggression machine paradigm, to investigate the aggression-eliciting properties of slides of firearms. One hundred and twenty highly irritable and 120 low irritable subjects, equally divided between males and females, were given the opportunity to deliver electric shocks to an experimental confederate after having been randomly assigned to one of the six different conditions resulting from presence versus absence of previous instigation to aggress and from exposure to aggressive slides versus exposure to non-aggressive slides versus non-exposure to slides. It was found that aggressive cues, were sufficient per se to increase subsequent aggressive behaviours in observers, whether or not previously instigated to aggress. While sex differences did not seem to play any relevant role, the importance of irritability was stressed, especially where exposure to aggressive slides followed a previous instigation to aggress.     

Understanding the Complexity of Human Aggression: Affective,Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Individual Differences in Propensity Toward Aggression

Human aggression is a complex phenomenon operating at multiple levels. Converging evidence distinguishes ‘hot’ aggression, impulsive and emotionally-centered, from ‘cool’ aggression, cognitively based and instrumental. The correspondence of these aggressive response patterns with individual differences in Propensity toward Aggression was investigated. Our data (from 477 Italian adults) map ten of these aggression indicators into the personality space defined by the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality. The quadrant containing most of these variables is defined by Emotional Instability (the negative pole of Emotional Stability) and Hostility (the negative pole of Friendliness). Factor analysis uncovered two factors that accounted for nearly 60 percent of the variance in Propensity toward Aggression: Emotional Responsivity and Positive Evaluation of Violence. Practical implications for issues of health and disease, violence, and interventions for different forms of adults' and children's aggression are outlined.     

Chances and frequencies in probabilistic reasoning: rejoinder to Hoffrage,Gigerenzer, Krauss,and Martignon

Do individuals unfamiliar with probability and statistics need a specific type of data in order to draw correct inferences about uncertain events? Girotto and Gonzalez (Cognition 78 (2001) 247) showed that naive individuals solve frequency as well as probability problems, when they reason extensionally, in particular when probabilities are represented by numbers of chances. Hoffrage, Gigerenzer, Krauss, and Martignon (Cognition 84 (2002) 343) argued that numbers of chances are natural frequencies disguised as probabilities, though lacking the properties of true probabilities. They concluded that we failed to demonstrate that naive individuals can deal with true probabilities as opposed to natural frequencies. In this paper, we demonstrate that numbers of chances do represent probabilities, and that naive individuals do not confuse numbers of chances with frequencies. We conclude that there is no evidence for the claim that natural frequencies have a special cognitive status, and the evolutionary argument that the human mind is unable to deal with probabilities.     

Sociocognitive self-regulatory mechanisms governing transgressive behavior

This longitudinal research examined a structural model of the self-regulatory mechanisms governing transgressive conduct. Perceived academic and self-regulatory efficacy concurrently and longitudinally deterred transgressiveness both directly and by fostering prosocialness and adherence to moral self-sanctions for harmful conduct. The impact of perceived social self-efficacy was mediated through prosocialness. Moral disengagement and prosocialness affected transgressiveness through the mediating influence of irascible affectivity and hostile rumination. Ruminative affectivity, in turn, both concurrently and longitudinally affected transgressiveness. Moral disengagement also contributed independently to variance in transgressiveness over time. This pattern of relations was obtained after controlling for prior transgressiveness. The structural model was replicated across gender and provided a better fit to the data than did several alternative models.