The relationship between attachment, personality and antisocial tendencies in a prison sample: a pilot study

This study examined the role of adult attachment and personality in relation to antisocial tendencies (i.e. convictions for violence and interpersonal problems in romantic relationships) in Norwegian prison inmates (N=92). Attachment styles and personality were measured using self-report questionnaires (RSQ; Griffin & Bartholomew, 1994; and NEO-FFI, Costa & McCrae, 1992a). The prison inmates scored higher on avoidant than on anxious attachment style. While age and agreeableness (negatively associated) emerged as significant predictors of violence, anxious attachment explained most of the variances in aggression in intimate relationships. The study suggests that different types of antisocial tendencies could have different attachment and general personality correlates.     

Is the Best Practices Movement Consistent With the Values of the Counseling Profession? A Critical Analysis of Best Practices Ideology

The counseling profession has increasingly embraced a medicalized vision of counseling processes. The latest manifestation of this vision is the best practices (BP) movement. This movement is critically examined to determine if it is consistent with the traditional values of the counseling profession. The author concludes that BP ideology is inconsistent with the value the counseling profession has traditionally placed on the counseling relationship and diversity.     

Counseling Theories Within a Postmodernist Epistemology: New Roles for Theories in Counseling Practice

Counseling theories have traditionally been considered within a modernist epistemology. Reconsidering theories from a postmodern vantage point opens up new possibilities for theory utilization in the counseling process. The author discusses 3 of these possibilities—theories as narrative structures, theoretical truth redefined as pragmatic utility, and egalitarianism in the counseling relationship—along with their implications for counseling practice.     

The Influences of Sex and Gender-Role Identity on Moral Cognition and Prosocial Personality Traits

The relations of sex and gender-role identity to moral thought and prosocial personality traits were examined. Two hundred and nine men and women rated the importance of real-life, care-related, justice-related, and mixed (both care- and justice-related) moral dilemmas. Responses on the real-life and mixed dilemmas also were scored for care and justice orientations. Women and feminine persons viewed moral conflicts as more important than did men and masculine people. On the mixed dilemmas, women scored higher than men on care reasoning, whereas men scored higher than women on justice reasoning. Regardless of sex or gender role, relational real-life dilemmas evoked higher importance and care reasoning scores than did nonrelational ones. Women and persons high in femininity showed more empathic concern for other people. Masculine persons scored lower on personal distress, whereas androgynous persons reported more helpful behaviors than did all others.     

Predicting intergroup bias: the interactive effects of implicit theory and social identity

This research sought to integrate the implicit theory approach and the social identity approach to understanding biases in intergroup judgment. The authors hypothesized that a belief in fixed human character would be associated with negative bias and prejudice against a maligned group regardless of the perceiver's social identity. By contrast, a belief in malleable human character would allow the perceiver's social identity to guide intergroup perception, such that a common ingroup identity that includes the maligned group would be associated with less negative bias and prejudice against the maligned group than would an exclusive identity. To test these hypotheses, a correlational study was conducted in the context of the Hong Kong 1997 political transition to examine Hong Kong Chinese's perceptions of Chinese Mainlanders, and an experimental study was conducted in the United States to examine Asian Americans' perception of African Americans. Results from both studies supported the authors' predictions.     

Symbol-string sensitivity and children's reading

In this study of primary school children, a novel 'symbol-string' task is used to assess sensitivity to the position of briefly presented non-alphabetic but letter-like symbols. The results demonstrate that sensitivity in the symbol-string task explains a unique proportion of the variability in children's contextual reading accuracy. Moreover, developmental dyslexic readers show reduced sensitivity in this task, compared to chronological age controls. The results suggest that limitations set by visuo-spatial processes and/or attentional iconic memory resources may constrain children's reading accuracy.     

A simple cell model with dominating opponent inhibition for robust contrast detection

Ein Modell kortikaler Einfachzellen mit dominanter opponenter Inhibition zur robusten Kontrastdetektion Zusammenfassung. Im primären visuellen Pfad wird Information in zwei getrennten, komplementären Domänen repräsentiert, den on- und off-Zellen. In dieser Arbeit untersuchen wir die Interaktion von on- und off-Zellen zur Generierung der Eingabe für eine kortikale Einfachzelle. Basierend auf physiologischen Studien schlagen wir einen Mechanismus vor, bei dem eine kortikale Einfachzelle aus beiden Domänen eine Eingabe erhält, wobei die Eingabe aus dem opponenten Pfad stärker gewichtet wird. Mit diesem Mechanismus der dominanten opponenten Inhibition können Antworten von kortikalen Einfachzellen auf Hell-Dunkel-Balken simuliert werden, die im primären visuellen Kortex der Katze gemessen wurden. Bei der Verarbeitung synthetischer und natürlicher Bilder können mit dem neuen Modell schärfere Antworten und bessere Rauschunterdrückung erreicht werden. Wir geben eine stochastische Analyse der Rauschunterdrückungscharakteristika des vorgeschlagenen Mechanismus und präsentieren detaillierte numerische Simulationen mit systematischen Parametervariationen. Die Resultate zeigen, dass das Modell kortikaler Einfachzellen mit dominanter opponenter Inhibition robuster gegenüber verrauschten Eingaben wird, weitgehend unabhängig von der Stärke des Rauschens. Diese Eigenschaft ist möglicherweise der Grund für die physiologisch gemessene dominante Inhibition und für die Repräsentation von Kontrastinformation in zwei komplementären Domänen. Basierend auf diesen Ergebnissen stellen wir die Hypothese auf, dass dominante opponente Inhibition im visuellen System verwendet wird, um in verrauschten Umgebungen Kontraste robust extrahieren zu können. Summary. In the primary visual pathway, information is represented in two distinct, complementary domains, namely "on" and "off" cells. In this work we examine how on and off cells may interact to form the input to simple cell subfields. On the basis of physiological evidence, we propose a mechanism of dominating opponent inhibition, where a simple cell subfield is driven by both on and off domains, receiving more heavily weighted input from the opponent pathway. We demonstrate that the model can account for physiological data on luminance gradient reversal recorded from simple cells in cat striate cortex. Next, we use the model for the processing of synthetic and natural images, showing that sharpness of response and robustness to noise can be increased by dominating opponent inhibition. Finally, we present a stochastic analysis of the noise-suppression characteristics of the proposed mechanism accompanied by detailed simulations with systematic parameter variations. Results show that dominating opponent inhibition makes the simple cell responses more robust to noise, largely independently of the amount of noise added. This property may give a rationale for the strong inhibition measured physiologically and for the representation of contrast information in two complementary domains. On the basis of these findings, we hypothesize that the visual system uses dominating opponent inhibition in order to robustly extract features in noisy environments.     

Interference to ongoing activities covaries with the characteristics of an event-based intention

Previous studies of event-based prospective memory have demonstrated that the character of an ongoing task can affect cue detection. By contrast, this study demonstrated that there is a reciprocal relationship insofar as cue-verification and response-retrieval processes interfered with making a response in the ongoing task. The amount of interference was determined by the type of intention, which was manipulated to affect the complexity of verification and retrospective response retrieval. These relationships were true even when the interference caused by cue detection was separated from a more general effect to ongoing-task performance caused by shifts in attentional allocation policies. The results have theoretical implications for models that attempt to specify the cognitive microstructure of event-based prospective memory.     

Behavioral and social development of children born extremely premature: 5-year follow-up

A cohort of extremely prematurely born children and matched term controls was assessed at 5 years of age. The parents completed a questionnaire on their behavioral and social development. The purpose was to illuminate whether the children's general intellectual ability and parental sensitivity were associated with behavioral and social development. The index children exhibited more hyperactive behavior and had poorer social skills than the controls. Lower Full Scale IQ (FSIQ) was associated with outward reacting and hyperactive behavior and poorer social skills. Sensitive parenting was associated with less outward reacting and less hyperactive behavior. When controlling for differences in FSIQ and parental sensitivity, the index children persisted to have an increased risk of exhibiting hyperactive behavior but not poorer social skills. The index children with normal intellectual development, however, did not exhibit more behavioral problems or poorer social skills than the control children did.