Coming to terms with risk factors for eating disorders: application of risk terminology and suggestions for a general taxonomy

The aims of the present review are to apply a recent risk factor approach (H. C. Kraemer et al., 1997) to putative risk factors for eating disorders, to order these along a timeline, and to deduce general taxonomic questions. Putative risk factors were classified according to risk factor type, outcome (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, full vs. partial syndromes), and additional factor characteristics (specificity, potency, need for replication). Few of the putative risk factors were reported to precede the onset of the disorder. Many factors were general risk factors; only few differentiated between the 3 eating disorder syndromes. Common risk factors from longitudinal and cross-sectional studies were gender, ethnicity, early childhood eating and gastrointestinal problems, elevated weight and shape concerns, negative self-evaluation, sexual abuse and other adverse experiences, and general psychiatric morbidity. Suggestions are made for the conceptualization of future risk factor studies.     

Revisiting Hispanic Adolescents' Resilience to the Effects of Parental Problem Drinking and Life Stress

Two previous studies found that life stress and parental alcoholism were not as highly related to distress for Hispanic adolescents as they were for European American adolescents (M. Barrera Jr., S. A. Li, and L. Chassin, 1993, 1995). Those findings could be interpreted as evidence of Hispanic youths' resilience, but limitations of the stress measure and the homogeneity of the Hispanic sample threatened this interpretation. The present study improved on those previous studies by using a new measure of uncontrollable stressors and a more heterogeneous Mexican American sample. Participants in this study were 175 Mexican American and 59 European American adolescents and their parents. Unlike the previous studies, results did not show that Mexican American adolescents were more resilient to parental problem drinking or life stress than were European American adolescents. Overall, life stress was related to adolescents', mothers', and fathers' reports of adolescents' psychological distress above and beyond the effects of ethnicity and socioeconomic factors.     

Emotional intelligence and social interaction

Two studies found positive relationships between the ability to manage emotions and the quality of social interactions, supporting the predictive and incremental validity of an ability measure of emotional intelligence, the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). In a sample of 118 American college students (Study 1), higher scores on the managing emotions subscale of the MSCEIT were positively related to the quality of interactions with friends, evaluated separately by participants and two friends. In a diary study of social interaction with 103 German college students (Study 2), managing emotions scores were positively related to the perceived quality of interactions with opposite sex individuals. Scores on this subscale were also positively related to perceived success in impression management in social interactions with individuals of the opposite sex. In both studies, the main findings remained statistically significant after controlling for Big Five personality traits.     

A prototype analysis of forgiveness

Many definitions of forgiveness currently exist in the literature. The current research adds to this discussion by utilizing a prototype approach to examine lay conceptions of forgiveness. A prototype approach involves categorizing objects or events in terms of their similarity to a good example, whereas a classical approach requires that there are essential elements that must be present. In Study 1, participants listed the features of forgiveness. Study 2 obtained centrality ratings for these features. In Studies 3 and 4, central features were found to be more salient in memory than peripheral features. Study 5 showed that feature centrality influenced participants' ratings of victims involved in hypothetical transgressions. Thus, the two criteria for demonstrating prototype structure (that participants find it meaningful to judge features in terms of their centrality and that centrality affects cognition) were met.     

Describing suicidality: an investigation of qualitative SSF responses

Given the incidence and seriousness of suicidality in clinical practice, the need for new and better ways to assess suicide risk is clear. While there are many published assessment instruments in the literature, survey data suggest that these measure are not widely used. One possible explanation is that current quantitatively developed assessment instruments may fail to capture something essential about the suicidal patient's experience. The current exploratory study examined a range of open ended qualitative written responses made by suicidal outpatients to five assessment prompts from the Suicide Status Form (SSF)--psychological pain, press, perturbation, hopelessness, and self-hate. Two different samples of suicidal outpatients seeking treatment, including suicidal college students (n = 119) and active duty U.S. Air Force personnel (n = 33), provided a wide range of written responses to the five SSF prompts. A qualitative coding manual was developed through a step-by-step methodology; two naive coders were trained to use the coding system and were able to sort all the patients' written responses into the content categories with very high interrater reliability (Kappa > .80). Certain written qualitative responses of the patients were more frequent than others, both within and across the five SSF constructs. Among a range of specific exploratory findings, one general finding was that two thirds of the 636 obtained written responses could be reliably categorized under four major content headings: relational (22%), role responsibilities (20%), self (15%), and unpleasant internal states (10%). Theoretical, research, and clinical implications of the methodology and data are discussed.     

Effects of binding in the identification of objects

The binding problem requires a solution at the level of individual neurons, but no definite mechanism has yet be given. Therefore, the neuronal level is as yet inadequate for modeling cognitive processes in which binding plays a crucial role. Moreover, the neuronal level involves too many details that are unlikely to be essential for understanding cognition. A general model of cognitive brain functioning is described in which cognitive tasks are represented in a network of cell assemblies. In the network, binding is functionally defined in a way that is compatible with the neuronal level. A computer simulation of the model clarifies how the binding of location and identity of a set of simultaneously presented letters takes place and how questions about the location and identity of the letters are answered. From the simulation of the task three predictions on the logistics of neural processes are derived: 1. When the cell assembly representing a letter participates in more than one temporary excitation loop, it will reach its critical threshold faster. At the behavioral level this means that as the number of identical letters in the display increases, responses will be faster. 2. In order to answer questions about the location and identity of presented letters cell assemblies representing the target location and the target identity have to become bound to their appropriate values. As a consequence the facilitatory effect of identical letters will be stronger if they involve the target location or the target identity than when identical non-targets are involved. 3. Negative identifications are more dependent on the presentation time of the letters than positive identifications because the excitation loops involved take more time to reach the critical threshold. Therefore, the facilitatory effect of identical letters is stronger when the external activation is relatively strong, i.e., when presentation time of the letters is sufficiently long. The reaction times obtained in three behavioral experiments support these hypotheses. Effects of binding can therefore be predicted on the basis of the general logistics of neural processes, without assumptions about a specific binding mechanism at the neuronal level.     

Actions blind to conceptually overlapping stimuli

Participants are worse at identifying spatial symbols (arrowheads) while performing spatially compatible manual key presses. The present experiments investigated the generality of this blindness effect to response-compatible stimuli. In Experiment 1 a left key press deteriorated the identification of left-pointing arrows, and a right key press deteriorated the perception of right-pointing arrows, independent of the hands used to press the key. Thus the blindness effect is based on codes of the distal response location rather than on the body-intrinsic anatomical connection of the hands. Experiment 2 extended the blindness effect to verbal responses and written position words (left, right, up, down). Vocalizing a position word blinded to directly compatible position words (e.g., left-left), but not to orthogonally compatible position words (e.g., left-down). This result suggests that the use of identical stimulus-response codes, and not the use of saliency-matching but distinct codes, suffices to produce blindness effects. Finally, Experiment 3 extended the blindness phenomenon beyond the spatial domain by demonstrating blindness between saying color words and perceiving color patches. Altogether, the experiments revealed action-induced blindness to be a phenomenon of broad empirical validity occurring whenever action and perception afford simultaneous access to the same conceptual codes.     

Perceiving while acting: action affects perception

In two experiments we studied how motor responses affect stimulus encoding when stimuli and responses are functionally unrelated and merely overlap in time. Such R-S effects across S-R assignments have been reported by Schubö, Aschersleben, and Prinz (2001), who found that stimulus encoding was affected by concurrent response execution in the sense of a contrast (i.e., emphasizing differences). The present study aimed at elucidating the mechanisms underlying this effect. Experiment 1 studied the time course of the R-S effect. Contrast was only obtained for short intertrial intervals (ITIs). With long ITIs contrast turned into assimilation (i.e., emphasizing similarities). Experiment 2 excluded an interpretation of the assimilation effect in terms of motor repetition. Our findings support the notion of a shared representational domain for perception and action control, and suggest that contrast between stimulus and response codes emerges when two S-R assignments compete with each other in perception. When perceptual competition is over, assimilation emerges in memory.     

Memory conjunction errors for autobiographical events: more than just familiarity

Two diary studies investigated the prevalence of memory conjunction errors for real-life events. In both studies, participants completed detailed diary pages over the course of several weeks. Participants in both diary studies committed memory conjunction errors on a later recognition memory test. In the second diary study participants also made remember/know judgements. For a large proportion of their memory conjunction errors participants indicated that they "remembered" the event occurring in that context. These diary studies demonstrate that memory conjunction errors do occur for autobiographical memories, and these errors can seem compelling.