The effects of immediate forewarning of test difficulty on test performance

Whereas prior research has demonstrated that warning students of an exam's difficulty well in advance of the exam enhances performance, the current research demonstrated the effect of such forewarning immediately before examination administration. Moments before taking an examination in a laboratory environment, participants were either (a) informed that the examination would be difficult, (b) informed that the examination would be easy, or (c) not given any information about the exam's ostensible difficulty. Participants of low trait anxiety performed better when told the exam would be difficult than when told that the exam would be easy. Conversely, participants of high trait anxiety performed worse when told the exam would be difficult than they did when told the exam would be easy or when provided with no such information. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Verbal aggression and viewing the world as a mean place

Of 555 college students those rating verbal aggressiveness higher also rated perception of the world as a meaner place.     

The adaptive character of the attentional system: statistical sensitivity in a target localization task

A localization task required participants to indicate which of 4 locations contained a briefly displayed target. Most displays also contained a distractor that was not equally probable in these locations, affecting performance dramatically. Responses were faster when a display had no distractor and almost as fast when the distractor was in its frequent location. Conversely, responses were slower when targets appeared in frequent-distractor locations, even thou targets were equally likely in each location. Negative-priming effects were reliably smaller when targets followed distractors in the frequent-distractor location compared to the rare-distractor location, challenging the episodic-retrieval account Experiment 2 added a 5th location that rarely displayed distractors and never targets, yet responses slowed most when distractors appeared there. The results confirmed that the attentional system is sensitive to first- and higher-order statistical patterns and can make short- and long-term adjustments in preferences based on prior history of inspecting unsuccessful locations.     

The relationship between reading beauty and fashion magazines and the use of pathogenic dieting methods among adolescent females

This study examined the relationship between reading women's beauty and fashion magazines and the use of pathogenic dieting methods (laxatives, appetite suppressants/diet pills, skipping two meals a day, intentional vomiting, and restricting calories to 1,200 or less each day) among 502 high school females. Weak to moderate positive associations were found between reading frequency and each of these unhealthful practices except the use of laxatives. When controlling for anxiety about weight and frequency of regular exercise, however, the original bivariate relations between reading frequency and skipping two meals a day, and reading and intentional vomiting, disappeared. Replication and weak specification effects were found when examining the relationships between reading and taking appetite suppressant/weight control pills, and reading and restricting calories, under the control conditions. These findings suggest that two of the most common adolescent dieting methods--restricting calories and taking diet pills--appear to be influenced by the reading of women's beauty and fashion magazines.     

Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality

This paper proposes a basic revision of the understanding of teleology in biological sciences. Since Kant, it has become customary to view purposiveness in organisms as a bias added by the observer; the recent notion of teleonomy expresses well this as-if character of natural purposes. In recent developments in science, however, notions such as self-organization (or complex systems) and the autopoiesis viewpoint, have displaced emergence and circular self-production as central features of life. Contrary to an often superficial reading, Kant gives a multi-faceted account of the living, and anticipates this modern reading of the organism, even introducing the term self-organization for the first time. Our re-reading of Kant in this light is strengthened by a group of philosophers of biology, with Hans Jonas as the central figure, who put back on center stage an organism-centered view of the living, an autonomous center of concern capable of providing an interior perspective. Thus, what is present in nuce in Kant, finds a convergent development from this current of philosophy of biology and the scientific ideas around autopoeisis, two independent but parallel developments culminating in the 1970s. Instead of viewing meaning or value as artifacts or illusions, both agree on a new understanding of a form of immanent teleology as truly biological features, inevitably intertwined with the self-establishment of an identity which is the living process.     

The detection of shame in group psychotherapy: uncovering the hidden emotion

Shame, recently so extensively investigated in the individual and family therapy literature, has remained curiously underexplored in the group literature since Alonso and Rutan's noteworthy article on the subject in 1988. Shame is frequently bypassed because, as a result of its hidden nature, its presence is often not detected. This article strives to insure that shame does not go unaddressed. We catalogue and discuss six defenses that may suggest the subterranean workings of shame: (1) focusing on themes that stress similarities among members, (2) generating feelings of scorn and disdain, (3) avoiding here-and-now material, (4) inducing guilt, (5) transference reactions, and (6) preserving the illusion of the leader's infallibility. The best antidote for shame's neglect is a heightened readiness to detect it. Such detection is important because shame plays some role in many of our patients' complaints.     

Dopamin-Dysregulations-Syndrom bei Morbus Parkinson

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease with the cardinal symptoms bradykinesia, rigidity and tremor. In 1817, James Parkinson already described in his "Essay on the Shaking Palsy" in addition to the motor symptoms also autonomic, cognitive and behavioral disturbances (Parkinson, An essay on the shaking palsy. Sherwood, Nealy and Jones, London, 1817). Their impact on quality of life has been underestimated until more recent times. Dopamine dysregulation syndrome is an iatrogenic disturbance, characterized by an addictive pattern of dopamine replacement therapy use. Despite good control of motor symptoms, patients often increase doses of dopamine replacement therapy in excess of those normally required. Consequently these behavioral disorders may also result in social and professional problems.     

Antipsychotic dose modulates behavioral and neural responses to feedback during reinforcement learning in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is characterized by an abnormal dopamine system, and dopamine blockade is the primary mechanism of antipsychotic treatment. Consistent with the known role of dopamine in reward processing, prior research has demonstrated that patients with schizophrenia exhibit impairments in reward-based learning. However, it remains unknown how treatment with antipsychotic medication impacts the behavioral and neural signatures of reinforcement learning in schizophrenia. The goal of this study was to examine whether antipsychotic medication modulates behavioral and neural responses to prediction error coding during reinforcement learning. Patients with schizophrenia completed a reinforcement learning task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. The task consisted of two separate conditions in which participants accumulated monetary gain or avoided monetary loss. Behavioral results indicated that antipsychotic medication dose was associated with altered behavioral approaches to learning, such that patients taking higher doses of medication showed increased sensitivity to negative reinforcement. Higher doses of antipsychotic medication were also associated with higher learning rates (LRs), suggesting that medication enhanced sensitivity to trial-by-trial feedback. Neuroimaging data demonstrated that antipsychotic dose was related to differences in neural signatures of feedback prediction error during the loss condition. Specifically, patients taking higher doses of medication showed attenuated prediction error responses in the striatum and the medial prefrontal cortex. These findings indicate that antipsychotic medication treatment may influence motivational processes in patients with schizophrenia.     

Resilience Among Women with HIV: Impact of Silencing the Self and Socioeconomic Factors

In the U.S., women account for over a quarter of the approximately 50,000 annual new HIV diagnoses and face intersecting and ubiquitous adversities including gender inequities, sexism, poverty, violence, and limited access to quality education and employment. Women are also subjected to prescribed gender roles such as silencing their needs in interpersonal relationships, which may lessen their ability to be resilient and function adaptively following adversity. Previous studies have often highlighted the struggles encountered by women with HIV without focusing on their strengths. The present cross-sectional study investigated the relationships of silencing the self and socioeconomic factors (education, employment, and income) with resilience in a sample of women with HIV. The sample consisted of 85 women with HIV, diverse ethnic/racial groups, aged 24–65 enrolled at the Chicago site of the Women’s Interagency HIV Study in the midwestern region of the United States. Measures included the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale -10 item and the Silencing the Self Scale (STSS). Participants showed high levels of resilience. Women with lower scores on the STSS (lower self-silencing) reported significantly higher resilience compared to women with higher STSS scores. Although employment significantly related to higher resilience, silencing the self tended to predict resilience over and above the contributions of employment, income, and education. Results suggest that intervention and prevention efforts aimed at decreasing silencing the self and increasing employment opportunities may improve resilience.