Make it real: Belief in occurrence within episodic future thought

While the cognitive and neural bases of episodic future thinking are well documented, questions remain as to what gives the sense that an imagined event belongs to one’s personal future. Capitalizing on previous research on metacognitive appraisals in autobiographical remembering, we propose that episodic future thinking involves, in varying degrees, a subjective belief in the potential occurrence of imagined future events and we explore the nature and determinants of such belief. To this aim, participants provided justifications for belief in occurrence for a series of past and future events. For each event, they also assessed their subjective feelings (belief in occurrence, autonoetic experience, and belief in accuracy) and rated various characteristics of mental representations that might contribute to these feelings. Results showed that belief in the occurrence of future events mostly related to their integration in a broader autobiographical context, especially their relevance to personal goals and their personal plausibility. We also found that belief in occurrence, autonoetic experience, and belief in accuracy represented distinct subjective appraisals of future events, which depended in part on different determinants. Based on these findings, we propose a new theoretical model of subjective feelings associated with episodic future thinking that conceives of belief in occurrence as arising from metacognitive appraisals that shape the sense that imagined events belong to one’s personal future.     

Mapping the interplay among cognitive biases,emotion regulation,and depressive symptoms

Cognitive biases and emotion regulation (ER) difficulties have been instrumental in understanding hallmark features of depression. However, little is known about the interplay among these important risk factors to depression. This cross-sectional study investigated how multiple cognitive biases modulate the habitual use of ER processes and how ER habits subsequently regulate depressive symptoms. All participants first executed a computerised version of the scrambled sentences test (interpretation bias measure) while their eye movements were registered (attention bias measure) and then completed questionnaires assessing positive reappraisal, brooding, and depressive symptoms. Path and bootstrapping analyses supported both direct effects of cognitive biases on depressive symptoms and indirect effects via the use of brooding and via the use of reappraisal that was in turn related to the use of brooding. These findings help to formulate a better understanding of how cognitive biases and ER habits interact to maintain depressive symptoms.     

Individual differences in cognitive control over emotional material modulate cognitive biases linked to depressive symptoms

Deficient cognitive control over emotional material and cognitive biases are important mechanisms underlying depression, but the interplay between these emotionally distorted cognitive processes in relation to depressive symptoms is not well understood. This study investigated the relations among deficient cognitive control of emotional information (i.e. inhibition, shifting, and updating difficulties), cognitive biases (i.e. negative attention and interpretation biases), and depressive symptoms. Theory-driven indirect effect models were constructed, hypothesising that deficient cognitive control over emotional material predicts depressive symptoms through negative attention and interpretation biases. Bootstrapping analyses demonstrated that deficient inhibitory control over negative material was related to negative attention bias which in turn predicted a congruent bias in interpretation and subsequently depressive symptoms. Both shifting and updating impairments in response to negative material had an indirect effect on depression severity through negative interpretation bias. No evidence was found for direct effects of deficient cognitive control over emotional material on depressive symptoms. These findings may help to formulate an integrated understanding of the cognitive foundations of depressive symptoms.     

Effect of anxiety on behavioural pattern separation in humans

Behavioural pattern separation (BPS), the ability to distinguish among similar stimuli based on subtle physical differences, has been used to study the mechanism underlying stimulus generalisation. Fear overgeneralisation is often observed in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder and other anxiety disorders. However, the relationship between anxiety and BPS remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of anxiety (threat of shock) on BPS, which was assessed across separate encoding and retrieval sessions. Images were encoded/retrieved during blocks of threat or safety in a 2?×?2 factorial design. During retrieval, participants indicated whether images were new, old, or altered. Better accuracy was observed for altered images encoded during periods of threat compared to safety, but only if those images were also retrieved during periods of safety. These results suggest that overgeneralisation in anxiety may be due to altered pattern separation.     

Civic Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Alternative Paths to the Development of Political Knowledge and Democratic Values

Despite the proliferation of civic education programs in the emerging democracies of Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe, there have been few recent evaluations of the effectiveness of civics instruction in achieving changes in democratic orientations among student populations. We present findings from a study conducted in 1998 that examined the impact of democratic civic education among South African high school students. Using a battery of items to gauge democratic orientations, including measures of political knowledge, civic duty, tolerance, institutional trust, civic skills, and approval of legal forms of political participation, we find that civic education had the largest effects on political knowledge, with the magnitude of the effect being approximately twice as large as the recent Niemi and Junn (1998 ) finding for the United States. Exposure to civic education per se had weaker effects on democratic values and skills; for these orientations, what matters are specific factors related to the quality of instruction and the use of active pedagogical methods employed by civics instructors. Further, we find that civic education changed the structure of students' orientations: a "democratic values" dimension coalesces more strongly, and in greater distinction, from a "political competence" dimension among students exposed to civic education than among those with no such training. We discuss the implications of the findings for our theoretical understanding of the role of civic education in fostering democratic attitudes, norms, and values, as well as the practical implications of the results for the implementation and funding of civic education programs in developing democracies in the future.     

Process arrangements for variety,retention, and selection

This article argues that process management aimed at introducing variety, retention, and selection into complex decision-making processes can make a substantial contribution to improving them. It also describes process arrangements for variety, retention, and selection. He received his Ph. D. in public administration at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. He is also program director at the Netherlands School of Public Administration and director of the TUD research program on multi actor systems. His research concerns networks and network-organizations, with a strong focus on governance and management issues in networks. He is the author on a number of internationally recognized books on these issues. His conceptual approach of these issues has been applied in research on the open source movement, frequency allocation, the design of policy instruments and mediation (e.g. interconnection disputes). He is program leader of the Bsik research program Next Generation Infrastructures. He holds the post of chair research within the faculty.     

Attitudes towards complementary and alternative medicine among medical and psychology students

The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is increasing in Europe as well as in the USA, but CAM courses are infrequently integrated into medical curricula. In Europe, but also especially in the USA and in Canada, the attitudes of medical students and health science professionals in various disciplines towards CAM have been the subject of investigation. Most studies report positive attitudes. The main aim of this study was to compare the attitudes towards CAM of medical and psychology students in Germany. An additional set of questions concerned how CAM utilisation and emotional and physical condition affect CAM-related attitudes. Two hundred thirty-three medical students and 55 psychology students were questioned concerning their attitudes towards CAM using the Questionnaire on Attitudes Towards Complementary Medical Treatment (QACAM). Both medical students and psychology students were sceptical about the diagnostic and the therapeutic proficiency of doctors and practitioners of CAM. Students' attitudes towards CAM correlated neither with their experiences as CAM patients nor with their emotional and physical condition. It can be assumed that German medical and psychology students will be reluctant to use or recommend CAM in their professional careers. Further studies should examine more closely the correlation between attitudes towards CAM and the students' worldview as well as their existing knowledge of the effectiveness of CAM.     

The role of testosterone in social interaction

Although animal researchers established the role of testosterone as a 'social hormone' decades ago, the investigation of its causal influence on human social behaviors has only recently begun. Here, we review and discuss recent studies showing the causal effects of testosterone on social interactions in animals and humans, and outline the basic neurobiological mechanisms that might underlie these effects. Based on these recent findings, we argue that the role of testosterone in human social behavior might be best understood in terms of the search for, and maintenance of, social status.     

The effect of induced anxiety on cognition: threat of shock enhances aversive processing in healthy individuals

Individuals with anxiety disorders demonstrate altered cognitive performance including (1) cognitive biases towards negative stimuli (affective biases) and (2) increased cognitive rigidity (e.g., impaired conflict adaptation) on affective Stroop tasks. Threat of electric shock is frequently used to induce anxiety in healthy individuals, but the extent to which this manipulation mimics the cognitive impairment seen in anxiety disorders is unclear. In this study, 31 healthy individuals completed an affective Stroop task under safe and threat-of-shock conditions. We showed that threat (1) enhanced aversive processing and abolished a positive affective bias but (2) had no effect on conflict adaptation. Threat of shock thus partially models the effects of anxiety disorders on affective Stroop tasks. We suggest that the affective state of anxiety—which is common to both threat and anxiety disorders—modulates the neural inhibition of subcortical aversive processing, whilst pathologies unique to anxiety disorders modulate conflict adaptation.