Nature against nurture: calcification in the right thalamus in a young man with anorexia nervosa and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder

This report describes the case of a young man with a large calcification in the right thalamus that was first diagnosed at 9 years of age. Case history reveals specific eating rituals and other obsessive-compulsive personality traits during the patient's childhood and adolescence, fulfilling diagnostic criteria of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. After a critical life event the patient develops anorexia nervosa. We suggest that our case and further literature provide evidence for an involvement of specific thalamic structures, such as the dorsomedial nucleus, in the development of anorexia nervosa. Furthermore, the treatment of the patient by a combined psychotherapeutic and pharmacotherapeutic approach is described. We focus on the beneficial effect of the atypical antipsychotic olanzapine, which can induce weight gain by an increase of leptin levels.     

Incidence of neurological soft signs in children with isolated cleft of the lip or palate

The purpose of this study was to assess neurological soft signs in children and adolescents with isolated cleft of the lip or palate (iCL/P) compared with healthy controls. Children with iCL/P were recruited through the university cleft clinic. Control subjects were recruited through advertisements. Of the 166 subjects who participated (age range 7 to 17 years, M = 12.5, SD = 3.2), 77 had iCL/P (48 male) and 89 were healthy controls (44 male). All participants took the Physical and Neurological Examination of Subtle Signs and selected tests of motor coordination. A multivariate analysis of variance assessed differences between subjects with and without iCL/P. Also, a Pearson correlation estimated the relationship between the neurological soft signs and age. Subjects with iCL/P scored significantly higher on all neurological soft signs variables. These higher scores were associated with younger age. Findings lend support to the hypothesis of aberrant brain development in children with iCL/P.     

Effect of Light/Dark Cycle on Wheel Running and Responding Reinforced by the Opportunity to Run Depends on Postsession Feeding Time

The Psychological Record - Do rats run and respond at a higher rate to run during the dark phase when they are typically more active? to answer this question, Long Evans rats were exposed to a...     

Thinking about product attributes: Investigating the role of unconscious valence processing in attribute framing

In the present investigation we conducted three studies to examine how unconscious valence processing influences participants' quality judgments in an attribute-framing task. In Studies 1 and 2 we observed how individuals who had depleted cognitive resources, through distraction (Study 2) and time constraint (Study 3), differed in their responses to an attribute-framing task. In Study 3 we subliminally primed participants with attribute frames and then presented them with a frameless decision task. Our results revealed that attribute framing arises from unconscious valence processing and conscious processing may only play a role when the frame is especially salient.     

The limits of anchoring

Anchoring and adjustment is a pervasive bias in which decision makers are influenced by random or uninformative numbers or starting points. As a means of understanding this effect, we explore two limits on anchoring. In Experiments 1 and 2, implausibly extreme anchors had a proportionally smaller effect than anchors close to the expected value of the lotteries evaluated. In Experiments 2 and 3, anchoring occurred only if the anchor and preference judgment were expressed on the same scale. Incompatible anchors and response modes resulted in no anchoring bias. A confirmatory search mechanism is proposed to account for these results.     

Individual differences in conceptual behaviour following manipulated controllability

Expectations of controllability are thought to influence subsequent behaviour, such that perceived non-contingency between behaviour and outcomes can produce a “learned helplessness” reaction by the organism. Since cognitive processes are implicated in this debilitation, the present study examines the influence of manipulated controllability upon the intrinsic individual differences (among females) in a disjunctive conceptual behaviour recovery task. Three-mode factor analysis is used to explore the process variability in a multivariate time-series design. Results indicate that intrinsic task processes are altered by the controllability pretreatment, but the nature of the impact reflects substantial individual differences in reaction.     

Modifying social withdrawal in preschoolers: The effects of filmed modeling and teacher praise

Thirteen social isolates were selected from five nursery schools according to teacher ratings and behavioral samples obtained by trained observers. Half the subjects were randomly assigned to a modeling group and viewed a 23-minute film depicting appropriate social behavior in the nursery school. The remainder of the subjects viewed the same film, but also received 2 days of teacher praise contingent on the subject's peer interaction in his classroom. Modeling was inferred to successfully modify isolate behavior with or without praise. The modeling plus praise condition was not significantly different from modeling only for children's social interactions. General proximity response scores appeared to be detrimentally affected by the praise contingency during posttest assessment only. At followup, all subjects maintained or improved their posttest interaction scores.Gratitude is expressed to the administrators and teachers at the Jewish Community Center of Syracuse and the Syracuse University Cooperative Nursery School.