Self-esteem as a better predictor of restrained eaters' food intake than attributional style and disinhibition tendency

In the present study, a weight increase or decrease was experimentally manipulated in restrained and unrestrained eating subjects. It was hypothesized that restrained eating subjects in the high-weight condition will attribute the cause of this important negative event to internal, stable, and global factors. Such a depressogenic attributional style was expected to be reflected in a more depressed mood which, in its turn, should trigger disinhibitive eating during a bogus taste test. Moreover, it was hypothesized that high scores on Zuckerman's disinhibition subscale and low self-esteem were related to larger food intake. Main findings were that a manipulated weight increase indeed lowered the mood of restrained eaters, whereas it had no effect on the mood of unrestrained eaters. However, the weight increase and the mood decrease of restrained subjects in the high-weight condition were not reflected in a more depressive attributional style and increased food intake. Level of self-esteem appeared to be the best and only predictor of restrained eaters' food intake with lower-self-esteem subjects eating less during the taste test. Moreover, although the restrained subjects scored significantly higher on a general measure of disinhibition than the unrestrained ones, disinhibition was not a very strong predictor of food intake. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A SACRAMENTAL JOURNEY TO THE BEATIFIC VISION: THE INTELLECTUALISM OF PIERRE ROUSSELOT1

This essay traces the intellectualist position of Pierre Rousselot (1878–1915) as he developed it in reaction to neo‐Thomist scholasticism, and argues that at the heart of Rousselot's approach lay a sacramental ontology. Rousselot's 1908 dissertations on St. Thomas's intellectualism and on love in the Middle Ages are best understood in the context of the 1907 condemnations of Modernism. Rousselot questioned the firmly entrenched rationalist approach of the neo‐Thomist revival. While continuing in the Thomist intellectualist tradition, he argued for a chastened epistemology in which the intellect aimed beyond discursive knowledge at union with God. The implication, for Rousselot, was that in its current condition, the human intellect could arrive at knowledge only in an indirect fashion. Accepting Thomas's view of the unity between love of desire and love of friendship, Rousselot emphasized the continuity between nature and the supernatural. Furthermore, his insistence that rational judgements of credibility were powerless without corresponding ‘eyes of faith’ implied a sacramental view of the natural order as pointing to the supernatural end of the beatific vision. His moderated intellectualism, with its implied sacramental ontology, would prove an attractive paradigm for the later movement of nouvelle théologie.     

Overweight and cognition

There is a growing concern among health authorities that an increasing number of people in the Western world become overweight and even obese. It is well known that obesity is related to several diseases (e.g., diabetes, stroke, and high blood pressure) and that such diseases related to obesity lead to early death. It has also been discussed whether overweight and obesity in themselves or in relation to such diseases lead to cognitive decline. On the basis of data from a large, population‐based, prospective study we examined three cognitive domains: episodic memory, semantic memory, and spatial ability. Two body measures were used to define normal weight and overweight, body‐mass index and waist/hip ratio. Although these two body measures reveal quite different prevalence data of overweight, the associations between overweight and cognition are similar. For episodic memory, overweight interacts with age, but when controlling for hypertension, stroke and diabetes, this interaction disappears. For semantic memory, normal weight participants outperform overweight participants even after controlling for these diseases. For spatial ability, the well‐established advantage for men holds for young‐old and old‐old normal‐weight participants. For overweight participants, this advantage holds for middle‐age participants only. We conclude that there is a weight‐cognition relationship even after controlling for obesity‐related diseases. The results are discussed in terms of possible biological mechanisms.     

Psychometric properties of the Danish 16PF and EPQ

A Danish translation of the Cattell's 16PF has been used in studies evaluating the effects of prenatal drug exposure. This paper reports a psychometric analysis of the 16PF and Eysenck's EPQ based on a sample of 558 young Danes. Many 16PF scales had unacceptable psychometric properties (as indicated by coefficient alpha and item–total score correlations), but more satisfactory results were obtained with the EPQ N and E scales. A factor analysis of all 16PF and EPQ scales suggested a six factor solution that roughly corresponds to the second-order factor structure obtained by Krug and Johns (1986). It is concluded that the second-order factor structure should be the basis of interpretation of the 16PF in both practical and research contexts.     

Relation of number of different responses to group size and stimulus words in a discrete free-association situation

FlekkØy, K., Holme, I. & Mohn, E. Relation of number of different responses to group size and stimulus words in a discrete free-association situation. Scand. J. Psychol., 1973, 14, 4–8.-An exploration of the total number (D) of different responses given to a stimulus word in a single-word, free-association situation showed that (1) the first 50 Kent-Rosanoff words (in Norwegian) were highly heterogeneous with regard to D; (2) was an asymptotic function of the number of subjects; and (3) the larger D for schizophrenics may be attributed to their higher frequency of individual responses. It was also indicated that D may not be a valid measure of the magnitude of the associative potential of the individual.     

An exploration of the Pulfrich effect

Abstract.— The existence of a Pulfrich effect based on ocular convergence was demonstrated by having subjects with a neutral density filter over one eye observe a moving rod in a homogeneous environment. This effect was found to have a smailer magnitude than a Pulfrich effect that was obtained when the rod moved optically in the plane of a dot pattern and thus formed the central equivalents of retinal disparities with the dots of the pattern. Under the latter condition, the latency of subjects' reporting the depth effect was shorter when one end of the rod was visible than when both ends of the rod were concealed. This latency difference occurred because the visible end of the rod formed the equivalent of transverse disparities with the dots surrounding it. The presence of real transverse disparities is known to shorten latencies.     

Three- and two-dimensional motion after-effects

Abstract.— The principle of perceptual vector analysis proposed by Johansson (1W) implicitly assumes the organism to be equipped with physiological systems sensitive to common and divergent components of change in the proximal stimulation. The present investigation was designed to study these units by means of the after-effect paradigm. It was found that prolonged viewing of complex changes produced after-effects of motion in depth and changing form specific to the common and divergent components of change in the stimulation. Data supported an explanation of these after-effects in terms of adaptation of units selectively sensitive to different kinds of motion vectors.