Anxiety-related differences in affective categorizations of lexical stimuli

Effects of emotional valence on attention have been shown to occur even when stimuli are presented outside awareness. The impact of negative valence on stimulus processing has been demonstrated to be particularly salient in anxiety. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that compared to nonanxious individuals, anxious individuals have an enhanced ability to detect the valence of negative stimuli. However, it remains unclear whether anxious individuals are better at identifying the valence of threatening stimuli or, rather, more likely to label ambiguous stimuli as threatening. To investigate these hypotheses, high and low anxious participants categorized lexical stimuli as "safe" or "dangerous." Stimuli were presented at durations that allowed for both conscious (unmasked) and nonconscious (masked) processing. Results show that on masked trials, anxious individuals evidenced an enhanced ability to correctly classify threatening information, whereas nonanxious participants demonstrated an enhanced ability to correctly classify neutral or positive information. Signal detection analyses indicated results were explained by a response bias, whereby anxious individuals were more likely than nonanxious individuals to categorize masked words as threatening and nonanxious individuals were more likely to categorize masked words as nonthreatening. No group differences for nonword stimuli emerged, suggesting that anxiety-related response bias tendencies are activated only after detection of a weak semantic signal.     

Calibrating the sociometer: the relational contingencies of self-esteem

A longitudinal daily diary study examined how chronic perceptions of a partner's regard for oneself might affect the day-to-day relational contingencies of self-esteem. Married partners each completed a diary for 21 days, and completed measures of satisfaction twice over the year. Multilevel analyses revealed that people who chronically felt more positively regarded compensated for one day's acute self-doubts by perceiving greater acceptance and love from their partner on subsequent days. In contrast, people who chronically felt less positively regarded by their partner internalized acute experiences of rejection, feeling worse about themselves on days after they feared their partner's disaffection. Over the year, such self-esteem sensitivity to rejection predicted declines in the partner's satisfaction.     

“What Button Do I Press?” the Consequences of Conducting a Service Learning Project with Senior Citizens

In an effort to build interest in the two-year old service learning center and to fulfill its mission to integrate academic life with service in thoughtful and relevant ways, a competition was held to award developmental grants to faculty to create innovative courses incorporating service learning. The winning proposal from the business school used a business ethics course as the vehicle for formally introducing service into the business curriculum. This paper will tell the story of the intended and unintended consequences of building collaboration on several levels: between generations, between college and community, between faculty and college resources, between student teams, and between theory and practice.     

Apraxia differs in corticobasal degeneration and left-parietal stroke: A case study.

Corticobasal degeneration (CBD) is a progressive disorder characterized by both cortical and basal ganglia dysfunction such as asymmetrical apraxia, and akinetic rigidity, involuntary movements, and cortical sensory loss. Although apraxia is a key finding for the differential diagnosis of CBD, it has not been determined whether the features of apraxia seen in subjects with CBD are similar to those features exhibited by subjects with left-hemisphere damage from stroke. Therefore, for both clinical purposes and in order to better understand the brain mechanisms that lead to apraxia in CBD, we studied praxis in a patient with CBD and compared him to patients who are apraxic from left-parietal strokes. We used three-dimensional movement analyses to compare the features of apraxic movement. This subject with CBD was a dentist whose initial complaint had been that he "forgot" how to use his tools in the mouths of his patients. Analyses were performed on the trajectories made when using a knife to actually slice bread, and when repetitively gesturing slicing made to verbal command. Movements of the left hand, wrist, elbow, and shoulder were digitized in 3-D space. Although the CBD subject was clearly apraxic, the features of his apraxia differed markedly from those of the subjects with lesions in the left parietal lobe. For movements to command, the CBD subject showed joint coordination deficits, but his wrist trajectories were produced in the appropriate spatial plane, were correctly restricted to a single plane, and, like control subjects, were linear in path shape. However, when he was actually manipulating the tool and object, all of these aspects of his trajectories became impaired. In contrast, the deficits of the apraxic subjects with left-parietal damage were most pronounced to verbal command with their movements improving slightly although remaining impaired during actual tool and object manipulation. Unlike patients with parietal strokes, patients with CBD have degeneration in several systems and perhaps deficits in these other areas may account for the differences in praxic behavior.     

BDNF Regulates the Intrinsic Excitability of Cortical Neurons

Neocortical pyramidal neurons respond to prolonged activity blockade by modulating their balance of inward and outward currents to become more sensitive to synaptic input, possibly as a means of homeostatically regulating firing rates during periods of intense change in synapse number or strength. Here we show that this activity-dependent regulation of intrinsic excitability depends on the neurotrophin brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). In experiments on rat visual cortical cultures, we found that exogenous BDNF prevented, and a TrkB–IgG fusion protein reproduced, the change in pyramidal neuron excitability produced by activity blockade. Most of these effects were also observed in bipolar interneurons, indicating a very general role for BDNF in regulating neuronal excitability. Moreover, earlier work has demonstrated that BDNF mediates a different kind of homeostatic plasticity present in these same cultures: scaling of the quantal amplitude of AMPA-mediated synaptic inputs up or down as a function of activity. Taken together, these results suggest that BDNF may be the signal controlling a coordinated regulation of synaptic and intrinsic properties aimed at allowing cortical networks to adapt to long-lasting changes in activity.     

On the shape of the probability weighting function

Empirical studies have shown that decision makers do not usually treat probabilities linearly. Instead, people tend to overweight small probabilities and underweight large probabilities. One way to model such distortions in decision making under risk is through a probability weighting function. We present a nonparametric estimation procedure for assessing the probability weighting function and value function at the level of the individual subject. The evidence in the domain of gains supports a two-parameter weighting function, where each parameter is given a psychological interpretation: one parameter measures how the decision maker discriminates probabilities, and the other parameter measures how attractive the decision maker views gambling. These findings are consistent with a growing body of empirical and theoretical work attempting to establish a psychological rationale for the probability weighting function.     

Network Knowledge Organization: Do Knowledge Structures for Sexual and Emotional Information Reflect Gender or Sexual Orientation?

Network theory conceptualizes the organizationof semantic information as nodes within a net-likestructure. Links within the network representassociations among knowledge structures or concepts andhave been viewed as forming the basis of humansemantic memory (Quillian, 1962). Network models haverecently been employed in emotion theory (Bower, 1981;Lang, 1984) and in research in human sexuality (Geer, 1996; Rabalais & Geer, 1996; Smith,Eggleston, Gerrard, & Gibbons, 1996). As a result ofthat research, stable gender differences in theorganization of knowledge for sexual and emotionalinformation have begun to be identified (see Geer &Manguno-Mire, 1996, for a review). These differences inknowledge organization have been shown to map well ontoexisting research demonstrating gender differences in sexual attitudes, fantasies, and behavior(Geer & Manguno-Mire). The present study employs thePathfinder computer algorithm (Schvaneveldt, 1990) tocompare the cognitive associative networks of heterosexual men and women and gay men andlesbians. Ninety homosexuals (49 gay men and 41lesbians) and 95 heterosexuals (48 men and 47women)rated all pair-wise combinations of 16 wordsrelevant to sexuality and emotion. The sample was predominantlyCaucasian (90%). Four percent of participants wereAfrican-American, 3% were Hispanic American, 1% wereAsian American. Analysis of our dependent variable(number of links on relevant concepts) revealed genderand sexual orientation differences in the total numberof links in associative networks, the number of linkswithin relevant sexual and emotional word clusters, between relevant word clusters, and onindividual words. Results are interpreted in light ofrelevant theories of gender and sexualorientation.     

Volitional action and inaction in the lives of undergraduate students: State orientation, procrastination and proneness to boredom

The purpose of this research was to examine the relation between state orientation, proneness to boredom and procrastination as proposed in Kuhl's theory of action (Kuhl, 1994a). The findings from two studies are reported. Based on data collected from 143 undergraduate students on the Action Control Scale (Kuhl, 1994b), study 1 revealed arousal, avoidance and decisional procrastination to be positively related to state orientation. Results of study 2 (n = 120) demonstrated proneness to boredom to be positively related to state orientation, arousal procrastination and decisional procrastination. Overall, this research provides support for a link between proneness to boredom, state orientation, and procrastination. The results are discussed in terms of self-identity and time perception.     

TOWARD A FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF SELF-INJURY

This study describes the use of an operant methodology to assess functional relationships between self-injury and specific environmental events. The self-injurious behaviors of nine developmentally disabled subjects were observed during periods of brief, repeated exposure to a series of analogue conditions. Each condition differed along one or more of the following dimensions: (1) play materials (present vs absent), (2) experimenter demands (high vs low), and (3) social attention (absent vs noncontingent vs contingent). Results showed a great deal of both between and within-subject variability. However, in six of the nine subjects, higher levels of self-injury were consistently associated with a specific stimulus condition, suggesting that within-subject variability was a function of distinct features of the social and/or physical environment. These data are discussed in light of previously suggested hypotheses for the motivation of self-injury, with particular emphasis on their implications for the selection of suitable treatments.