The effects of perpetrator age and abuse disclosure on the relationship between feelings provoked by child sexual abuse and posttraumatic stress

Abstract

The present study examined the relationship between feelings provoked by child sexual abuse (CSA) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom scores in a sample of 163 female survivors of CSA. Finkelhor and Browne's traumagenic dynamics model was applied. The interactive effects of provoked feelings with perpetrator age and the existence of abuse disclosure were also studied. Results showed an overall relationship between feelings provoked by CSA and PTSD symptom scores. Feelings of stigma, betrayal, and powerlessness as a result of CSA were associated with PTSD symptom score when the entire group of CSA victims was analyzed. The role of traumatic sexualization was relevant only when analyzed in interaction with the age of the perpetrator and disclosure. The relationship between traumatic sexualization and PTSD symptom scores was only significant when the abuse was committed by an adult perpetrator and when a disclosure was made during the time of abuse, or a short time after the abuse had occurred.     

Private Speech in Illiterate Adults: Cognitive Functions, Task Difficulty, and Literacy

Children’s private speech has been widely studied among children, but it is clear that adults use private speech as well. In this study, illiterate adults’ private speech during a “school-like” task was explored as a function of literacy level and task difficulty in a sample of 126 adults enrolled in a public literacy program. A main effect for literacy level was found—private speech was more internalized and less externalized among adults with higher literacy levels. Externalized private speech was more frequently observed among illiterate adults engaged in the most difficult task. Private speech served cognitive functions as indicated by the proportion of self-regulatory private speech and the proportion of private speech preceding actions being higher in the advanced literacy group and among illiterate adults doing the easier task. Internalized private speech, self-regulatory private speech, and private speech preceding action were each positively correlated with performance and negatively correlated with time to complete the task. The use of private speech in illiterate adults appears to be linked to the mastery of cultural experiences, such as literacy, similar to the self-talk of children.     

Bats, balls, and substitution sensitivity: cognitive misers are no happy fools

Influential work on human thinking suggests that our judgment is often biased because we minimize cognitive effort and intuitively substitute hard questions by easier ones. A key question is whether or not people realize that they are doing this and notice their mistake. Here, we test this claim with one of the most publicized examples of the substitution bias, the bat-and-ball problem. We designed an isomorphic control version in which reasoners experience no intuitive pull to substitute. Results show that people are less confident in their substituted, erroneous bat-and-ball answer than in their answer on the control version that does not give rise to the substitution. Contrary to popular belief, this basic finding indicates that biased reasoners are not completely oblivious to the substitution and sense that their answer is questionable. This calls into question the characterization of the human reasoner as a happy fool who blindly answers erroneous questions without realizing it.     

Assessment of Identity and Quality of Life in Diabetic and Renal Transplant Adolescents in Comparison to Healthy Adolescents

Identity development represents a central task of adolescence. Identity achievement is characterized by a coherent sense of who one is following a period of exploration and can help navigate the challenges of adulthood. This study examined identity within a quality of life (QOL) context in 85 adolescents with a renal transplant or with Type 1 diabetes in comparison to 90 healthy controls. Results revealed significant differences in ideological identity, with patients showing higher levels of diffusion and controls showing higher levels of foreclosure. No differences with respect to interpersonal identity, QOL, perceived control over the QOL domains, and perceived opportunities for growth and development were found. Future research should assess identity and QOL over a longer period of time to determine whether differences between chronically ill and healthy young adults can be detected.     

Lost ability to automatize task performance in old age

Can elderly adults automatize a new task? To address this question, 10 older adults each performed 10,080 training trials over 12 sessions on an easy but novel task. The psychological refractory period (PRP) procedure was then used to evaluate whether this highly practiced task, when presented as task 2 along with an unpracticed task 1, could proceed automatically. If automatic, task 2 processing should bypass the bottleneck and, therefore, not be delayed while central attention is devoted to task 1, yielding little dual-task interference. This is exactly what Maquestiaux, Laguë-Beauvais, Ruthruff, and Bherer (Memory and Cognition 36:1262-1282, 2008) previously observed for almost all younger adults, even with half the training on a more difficult task. Although extensive training reduced older adults’ reaction times to only 307 ms, a value virtually identical to that attained by Maquestiaux et al.’s (Memory and Cognition 36:1262-1282, 2008) younger adults, the highly practiced task 2 was slowed by 485 ms in the dual-task PRP procedure. Such a large slowing in older adults is striking given the easy tasks and massive amounts of practice. These findings demonstrate a qualitative change with age, in which older adults lose the ability to automatize novel tasks, which cannot be attributed merely to generalized cognitive slowing.     

Selective attention to global and local information: Effects of visual angle,exposure duration,and eccentricity on processing dominance

Abstract

The size and exposure duration of stimuli have been found to be relevant factors to the issue of processing dominance. Nevertheless, the relation between these two factors and their possible effects on processing dominance have never been studied. The aim of the present research was twofold: (a) to examine whether size and the exposure duration of stimuli affect processing dominance; (b) to examine whether these effects depend on the same/different eccentricity of global and local levels. Stimuli were presented at three exposure durations: 140 msec, 70 msec, and 40 msec. The overall sizes of stimuli were varied at three levels: small (3[ddot]), intermediate (6[ddot]) and large (12[ddot]). In Experiment 1 stimuli were used whose global and local levels were at different eccentricity (Hs and Ss stimuli). In Experiment 2 stimuli whose global and local levels were at the same eccentricity (Cs stimuli) were used. The results showed that the effects of visual angle on processing dominance are independent of the exposure duration of stimuli used. The transition from global to local dominance as visual angle is increased depends on the eccentricity of global and local information: It only appears when the eccentricity is different and biased towards the local level (Hs and Ss stimuli). Finally, the size of the effect is modulated by the visual angle subtended by the stimuli: the size of the effect of global advantage was inversely related to visual angle. The size of the interference effect from the local level to the global level was directly related to the visual angle, whereas that from the global level to the local level was inversely related to the visual angle subtended by the stimuli.     

Can expertise modulate representational momentum?

Representational momentum (RM) refers to the tendency of participants to “remember” the stopping point of an event as being farther along in the direction of movement than it was in reality (Freyd & Finke, 1984). Our aim was twofold: (1) Test for the impact of domain-specific expertise (here, automobile driving) on RM, using films of road scenes, and (2) find out whether the improved anticipation ability that comes with greater expertise is transferred to scenes from domains that are far-removed from the person's domain of expertise. Two experiments were conducted in which experienced and inexperienced automobile drivers performed a movement-anticipation task on realistic road scenes (Experiment 1), with stimuli that were very different from those found in their domain of expertise (Experiment 2). These studies pointed out some properties of representational momentum, and showed that RM is dependent upon knowledge acquired by participants in specific domains. Our research also showed that expertise in automobile driving can modulate RM in road-scene perception (i.e., the cognitive characteristics of the observer can modulate the magnitude of the RM effect) but that expertise in automobile driving is not transferred to dissimilar domains.     

First insights on “neuropedagogy of reasoning”

Statements that share an explanation tend to lend inductive support to one another. For example, being told that Many furniture movers have a hard time financing a house increases the judged probability that Secretaries have a hard time financing a house. In contrast, statements with different explanations reduce one another s judged probability. Being told that Many furniture movers have bad backs decreases the judged probability that Secretaries have bad backs. I pose two questions concerning such discounting effects. First, does the reduction depend on explanations being mutually incompatible or does it occur when explanations are deemed irrelevant to one another? I found that a small discounting effect occurred with statements that were blatantly unrelated. However, the discounting effect also depended on a factor external to the argument being judged; the composition of the argument set. Second, are explanation effects attributable to changes in the belief afforded statements or to response-specific changes resulting from misunderstanding of the probability rating task or response bias? The results implicate changes in belief. Prior belief influenced conditional probability more than argument strength judgements, as it would if participants understood the tasks in the same way as the experimenter. Also, conditional probability true and false judgements were complementary, suggesting no response bias.     

Conditional reasoning with a spatial content requires visuo-spatial working memory

In previous research, Toms, Morris, and Ward (1993) have shown that conditional reasoning is impaired by a concurrent task calling on executive functions but not by concurrent tasks that load on the slave systems of the working memory system as conceptualised by Baddeley and Hitch (1974). The present article replicates and extends this previous work by studying problems based on spatial as well as nonspatial relations. In the study 42 participants solved 16 types of spatial or nonspatial problems, both in a single-task condition and under concurrent matrix tapping, a task loading the visuo-spatial sketch pad. The findings were consistent with those of Toms et al. (1993) for problems with a nonspatial content. However, when the content was spatial, and only then, a dual-task impairment was observed: processing time of the first premise was lengthened, especially for problems with negations in the antecedent term, the consequent term, or both; moreover, the number of correctly solved problems with negations in both terms was smaller. The implications of these findings for the mental models theory and the mental logic theory are discussed.     

Psychosocial Concomitants of Loneliness Among Students of Cape Verde and Portugal

This research is an examination of the relationship between loneliness and a number of psychosocial variables (e.g., affective state, cultural issues, gender, age) among adolescents and young adults from Cape Verde and Portugal. Two studies are presented. The participants in the first study were 285 adolescents from Cape Verde and 202 from Portugal, and in the second study there were 134 college students from Cape Verde and 112 from Portugal. The following instruments were administered to all the participants in both studies: The Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale (D. Russell, L. Peplau, & C. Cutrona, 1980), the Neuroticism Scale (J. Barros, 1999), the Optimism Scale (J. Barros, 1998), the Social Anxiety subscale (A. Fenigstein, M. Scheier, & A. Buss, 1975), and the Satisfaction With Life Scale (E. Diener, R. Emmons, R. Larsen, & S. Griffin, 1985). No ethnic or gender differences were found for loneliness between the two groups. For both groups, the most prominent predictors of loneliness were neuroticism and dissatisfaction with life. However, as expected, the adolescent group recorded higher scores for loneliness than did the college students.