Inhibitory attentional control in patients with frontal lobe damage

The performance of a group of frontal lobe lesion and a group of frontal lobe dementia patients was compared with the performance of their respective matched normal control groups on two tests of inhibitory attentional control-the stop-signal reaction time task and a negative priming task. Both patient groups responded significantly slower than their respective normal control groups, but they showed only marginally significant selective impairments on the measures of inhibition. The data suggest that the specific inhibitory processes evaluated by these two tests are, in general, spared in patients with focal frontal lobe lesions or frontal lobe degeneration.     

Technology for independence: a community-based resource center

Despite the prominence of the disability civil rights model--with its values of inclusion and empowerment--the majority of social and policy research conducted to date has not sufficiently included the perspective of persons with disabilities in the research process and as uniquely qualified researchers themselves. This article describes a new project, "Technology for Independence: A Community-Based Resource Center" (CBRC). Over a five-year period, the CBRC will attempt to enhance community and consumer-directed disability organizations to design, implement, and disseminate research that promotes access to and use of assistive technology (AT). The CBRC will use strategies such as leadership training, participatory action research, technical assistance, web-assisted training, and annual symposia. A primary goal of the CBRC is to increase the capacity of community organizations to conduct research on AT that is scientifically rigorous and relevant to disability services, policy, and law.     

Environmental support promotes expertise-based mitigation of age differences on pilot communication tasks

The authors investigated whether expertise is more likely to mitigate age declines when experts rely on environmental support in a pilot/Air Traffic Control (ATC) communication task. Pilots and nonpilots listened to ATC messages that described a route through an airspace, while they referred to a chart of the airspace. They read back (repeated) each message and then answered a probe question about the route. In a preliminary study, participants could take notes while listening to the messages and performing the read-back and probe tasks. In Experiment 1, opportunity to take notes was manipulated. Note taking determined when expertise mitigated age differences on the read-back task. With note taking, read-back accuracy declined with age for nonpilots but not for pilots. Without note taking, similar age-related declines occurred for pilots and nonpilots. Benefits of expertise, younger age, and note taking occurred for probe accuracy, but mitigation did not occur. The findings suggest that older adults take advantage of a domain-relevant form of environmental support (note taking) to maintain performance on some complex tasks despite typical age-related declines in cognitive ability.     

Now you feel it, now you don't: frontal brain electrical asymmetry and individual differences in emotion regulation

Recent theoretical accounts of emotion regulation assign an important role in this process to the prefrontal cortex, yet there is little relevant data available to support this hypothesis. The current study assessed the relation between individual differences in asymmetric prefrontal activation and an objective measure of uninstructed emotion regulation. Forty-seven participants 57 to 60 years old viewed emotionally arousing and neutral visual stimuli while eyeblink startle data were collected. Startle probes were also presented after picture presentation to capture the persistence or attenuation of affect following the offset of an emotional stimulus. Subjects with greater relative left-sided anterior activation in scalp-recorded brain electrical signals displayed attenuated startle magnitude after the offset of negative stimuli. This relation between resting frontal activation and recovery following an aversive event supports the idea of a frontally mediated mechanism involved in one form of automatic emotion regulation.     

Posthypnotic suggestion and the modulation of Stroop interference under cycloplegia

Recent data indicate that under a specific posthypnotic suggestion to circumvent reading, highly suggestible subjects successfully eliminated the Stroop interference effect. The present study examined whether an optical explanation (e.g., visual blurring or looking away) could account for this finding. Using cyclopentolate hydrochloride eye drops to pharmacologically prevent visual accommodation in all subjects, behavioral Stroop data were collected from six highly hypnotizables and six less suggestibles using an optical setup that guaranteed either sharply focused or blurred vision. The highly suggestibles performed the Stroop task when naturally vigilant, under posthypnotic suggestion not to read, and while visually blurred; the less suggestibles ran naturally vigilant, while looking away, and while visually blurred. Although visual accommodation was precluded for all subjects, posthypnotic suggestion effectively eliminated Stroop interference and was comparable to looking away in controls. These data strengthen the view that Stroop interference is neither robust nor inevitable and support the hypothesis that posthypnotic suggestion may exert a top-down influence on neural processing.     

Preliminary evaluation of an abstinence-based program for 7th grade students from a small rural school district

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an abstinence-based program designed for 7th grade students (n = 59) from a rural school district. Analysis suggested that after the program more students intended to avoid having sex before marriage but no change was noted for knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy.     

Complementarity of Linguistic and Prosodic Processes in the Intact Brain

Despite considerable speculation in the research literature regarding the complementarity of functional lateralization of prosodic and linguistic processes in the normal intact brain, few studies have directly addressed this issue. In the present study, behavioral laterality indices of emotional prosodic and traditional linguistic speech functions were obtained for a sample of healthy young adults, using the dichotic listening method. After screening for adequate emotional prosody and linguistic recognition abilities, participants completed the Fused Rhymed Words Test (FRWT; Wexler & Halwes, 1983) and the Dichotic Emotion Recognition Test (DERT; McNeely & Netley, 1998). Examination of the difference in ear asymmetries for these measures within individuals revealed a complementary pattern in 78% of the sample. However, the correlation between laterality quotients for the FRWT and DERT was near zero, supporting Bryden's model of "statistical" complementarity (e.g., Bryden, 1990).     

Content Analysis of Cognitive Bias: Development of a Standardized Measure

The purpose of this research was to develop a standardized content analytic measure of cognitive bias as conceptualized in Beck's (1987) cognitive theory of depression. In a pilot study it was determined that a written stimulus format was preferable to an audiotaped stimulus format with respect to comprehensibility. Valence and expectancy ratings collected in this pilot study also served as the basis for selection of items for the final measure, balancing positive and negative, expected and unexpected events. In study 2 open-ended written responses to questions about the main cause of each event, and the justifications for these attributions, were coded for indices of bias, defined (as in Cook & Peterson, 1986) as justifications that fail to cite covariation of the ascribed cause with the effect. Cognitive bias scores in Study 2 showed internal consistency (positive item-remainder correlations) and high interrater reliability. As predicted, justifications of attributions for expected events were more biased and less rational than were justifications of attributions for unexpected events.     

Does infancy matter? predicting social behavior from infant temperament

In this essay we argue that infant temperament, defined as behavioral styles that appear early in life as a direct result of neurobiological factors, plays a significant role in the development and expression of social behavior. Temperament may be studied using a typological or dimensional approach and the relations between early temperament and later behavior can be examined in terms of homotypic or heterotypic continuity. The implication of each of these approaches for understanding the influence of infant temperament on social development is examined. As well, utilizing data from our laboratory, we suggest that under certain circumstances one can predict social behavior by identifying two temperament types in infancy. These types are high reactive/high negative infants and high reactive/high positive infants. A significant proportion of the high reactive/high negative infants display behavioral inhibition and social reticence through the preschool years, whereas a significant proportion of the high reactive/high positive infants display exuberance and positive social interaction through the preschool period.     

Perfectionism and School Counselors: Differences in Stress,Coping, and Burnout

The authors examined perfectionism and its association with perceived stress, coping processes, and burnout in a sample of 298 practicing school counselors. Latent profile analysis based on measures of perfectionism supported a 3‐class model made up of adaptive perfectionists, maladaptive perfectionists, and nonperfectionists. Among these groups, the authors found significant differences in perceived stress, coping processes, and burnout. Implications for the school counseling profession are discussed.