Precise Worlds for Certain Minds: An Ecological Perspective on the Relational Self in Autism

Topoi - Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) presents a challenge to social and relational accounts of the self, precisely because it is broadly seen as a disorder impacting social relationships. Many...     

COVID-19 and Religious Ethics

The editors of the JRE solicited short essays on the COVID-19 pandemic from a group of scholars of religious ethics that reflected on how the field might help them make sense of the complex religious, cultural, ethical, and political implications of the pandemic, and on how the pandemic might shape the future of religious ethics.     

Where and when to look: Sequential effects at the millisecond level

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics - Learning and imitating a complex motor action requires to visually follow complex movements, but conscious perception seems too slow for such tasks....     

Effects of fluprazine (DU 27716) upon aggressive and sexual behavior of testosterone-treated female rats

Female rats, chronically treated with Testosterone Propionate (TP), were injected with Fluprazine (DU 27716) or saline and tested for social aggression, masculine and feminine sexual behavior. Fluprazine-treated females were less aggressive than saline-treated females, as indicated by a shift from offensive to less offensive parameters of aggression. At the same time, mounting in Fluprazine-treated females was almost totally abolished, both in aggression tests and in tests for sexual behavior. Feminine sexual responses increased during aggressive encounters but were slightly inhibited when females were confronted with sexually active males. Females treated with Fluprazine and tested for mounting with a receptive female showed a substantial increase of offensive aggression directed at the receptive stimulus female. It is concluded that Fluprazine does not selectively inhibit offensive aggression in TP-treated female rats.     

Assessment of dysfunctional beliefs in borderline personality disorder

This study had two aims: to test the hypothesis that borderline personality disorder (BPD) patients hold numerous dysfunctional beliefs associated with a variety of Axis II disorders, and to construct a BPD belief scale which captures these beliefs. Beliefs were measured using the Personality Belief Questionnaire (PBQ) which is designed to assess beliefs associated with various personality disorders, although not specifically BPD. Eighty-four BPD patients and 204 patients with other personality disorders (OPD) were randomly split into two study samples. Fourteen PBQ items were found to discriminate BPD from OPD patients in both samples. These items came from the PBQ Dependent, Paranoid, Avoidant, and Histrionic scales and reflect themes of dependency, helplessness, distrust, fears of rejection/abandonment/losing emotional control, and extreme attention-seeking behavior. A BPD beliefs scale constructed from these items showed good internal consistency and diagnostic validity among the 288 study patients. The scale may be used to assist in diagnosis and cognitive therapy of BPD.     

Accurate and false recall in the Deese/Roediger and McDermott procedure: a methodological note on sex of participant

Research suggests that individuals may differ in their susceptibility to false memory in the Deese/Roediger and McDermott procedure. Prior studies of differences have focused on the effects of age, personality, personal past history of abuse, and neurological status on false memory susceptibility. This study examined whether sex might also differentially influence false memory. After listening to a series of word lists designed to elicit false recall of nonstudied associates, 50 male and 50 female college students free recalled the lists. Analysis showed no sex difference in accurate recall, false recall, or unrelated intrusions. A robust false memory effect was observed, but sex did not differentiate performance.     

Learning subjective health complaints

Symptom episodes often show a spatio-temporal structure, that is, they occur in a specific context for a certain duration. Repeated experiences may therefore be construed as associative learning trials, in which context elements are turned into predictive cues, triggering anticipatory processes conducive to subjective health complaints. A series of experiments, using inhalations of air enriched with CO2 and external (odors) or internal (mental images) stimuli as cues, is discussed to show that subjective health complaints may occur upon presenting the cue alone. Learned symptoms may be unrelated to bodily responses and easily generalize to new related cues. Better learning occurs to cues with a negative affective valence and in participants scoring high for negative affectivity. Our findings are relevant to the understanding of medically unexplained ("functional") syndromes and the poor relationship between objective and subjective health indicators in general.     

Accountability as a deterrent to self-enhancement: the search for mechanisms

Although self-enhancement is linked to psychological benefits, it is also associated with personal and interpersonal liabilities (e.g., excessive risk taking, social exclusion). Hence, structuring social situations that prompt people to keep their self-enhancing beliefs in check can confer personal and interpersonal advantages. The authors examined whether accountability can serve this purpose. Accountability was defined as the expectation to explain, justify, and defend one's self-evaluations (grades on an essay) to another person ("audience"). Experiment 1 showed that accountability curtails self-enhancement. Experiment 2 ruled out audience concreteness and status as explanations for this effect. Experiment 3 demonstrated that accountability-induced self-enhancement reduction is due to identifiability. Experiment 4 documented that identifiability decreases self-enhancement because of evaluation expectancy and an accompanying focus on one's weaknesses.     

Severe traumatic brain injury: some effects on family caregivers

This study assesses the effects of severe traumatic brain injuries on family members and functioning-a topic of interest for those working with survivors and their families. This issue is receiving increased attention as recent findings suggest that family adjustment influences outcome for brain-injured persons. The Family Environment Scale and the Profile of Mood States were completed by 25 individuals who had a family member with a severe traumatic brain injury. These scales were also completed by a comparison group of 32 individuals who had no brain-injured family member. In terms of family functioning, the findings suggest that, when a family member suffers a severe traumatic brain injury, depression may be elevated, along with a decreased ability to express feelings, decreased time and energy for social and recreational activities, and increased control in comparison to families without a brain-injured member. While this might contribute to family isolation which could last for many years, the overall finding of the present study was that caregiver families were coping adequately.