Obey or not obey? Dogs (Canis familiaris) behave differently in response to attentional states of their owners

Sixteen domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) were tested in a familiar context in a series of 1-min trials on how well they obeyed after being told by their owner to lie down. Food was used in 1/3 of all trials, and during the trial the owner engaged in 1 of 5 activities. The dogs behaved differently depending on the owner's attention to them. When being watched by the owner, the dogs stayed lying down most often and/or for the longest time compared with when the owner read a book, watched TV, turned his or her back on them, or left the room. These results indicate that the dogs sensed the attentional state of their owners by judging observable behavioral cues such as eye contact and eye, head, and body orientation.     

Cognitive restructuring and a collaborative set in couples' work

Abstract

The present study investigated the effects of cognitive restructuring efforts aimed at modifying unrealistic beliefs marital partners might hold. Seventeen couples participated in the study, nine in the treatment group and eight in a waiting-list control group. The treatment program sought to impact proactively upon variables commonly agreed to as contributing to the creation of an optimistic, positive collaborative set as a prelude to behavioral change strategies: positive therapeutic expectations and relationship goals, and an enhanced base level of marital satisfaction. On all outcome measures, the treatment group showed significant gain scores as compared to the control group. Discussion of the results highlights the importance of marital therapists being particularly attuned to specific beliefs partners may hold pertaining to relationship issues.     

Neuropsychological and neurophysiological effects of strengthening exercise for early dementia: A pilot study

ABSTRACT

Research demonstrates a positive effect of aerobic exercise on cognitive functioning in older adults. Unfortunately, aerobic exercise is often contraindicated for older adults due to cardiovascular and functional limitations. Low-intensity strengthening exercise may offer a practical alternative, but the neuropsychological benefits and potential neurophysiological mechanisms are less well understood. The current study evaluated the effects of a 10-week strengthening exercise intervention on cognitive functioning and EEG in a sample of 13 older adults with early dementia, and 9 normative controls. Results revealed beneficial effects of strengthening exercise on verbal memory coupled with frontal beta and delta power asymmetries and N200 amplitude asymmetry. Results point to increased cognitive efficiency following 10 weeks of strengthening exercise. The findings suggest it is feasible to conduct a strengthening intervention with early dementia patients, and to gather neuropsychological and neurophysiological data to evaluate outcomes. Strengthening exercise may serve as a useful alternative to aerobic exercise.     

Ambulant oder stationär?

A central issue in psychosomatic-psychotherapeutic consultations is whether to recommend outpatient or inpatient psychotherapy. In a prospective field study at a psychosomatic outpatient unit sociodemographic and clinical variables were compared for patients for whom outpatient treatment (N = 129) or inpatient treatment (N = 112) had been recommended. The assessments of the therapeutic alliance were made by the referring therapist and the therapist who conducted the therapy. The main findings were: The decision about what type of treatment to recommend was based mainly on the type and severity of the disorder, including the patient's functional level and personality structure. There was no difference between the patient groups in how the referring therapists assessed the initial therapeutic alliance, but there was a difference in how the treating therapists did, the relationship to the inpatients being rated significantly less favorably. The importance of the different treatment settings in interaction with the severity of the disorder is discussed. The initial therapeutic alliance in the consultation did not enable a prognosis about the therapeutic alliance during therapy.     

Visual categorization of natural stimuli by domestic dogs

One of the fundamental issues in the study of animal cognition concerns categorization. Although domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) are on the brink to become one of the model animals in animal psychology, their categorization abilities are unknown. This is probably largely due to the absence of an adequate method for testing dogs’ ability to discriminate between large sets of pictures in the absence of human cueing. Here we present a computer-automated touch-screen testing procedure, which enabled us to test visual discrimination in dogs while social cueing was ruled out. Using a simultaneous discrimination procedure, we first trained dogs (N = 4) to differentiate between a set of dog pictures (N = 40) and an equally large set of landscape pictures. All subjects learned to discriminate between the two sets and showed successful transfer to novel pictures. Interestingly, presentation of pictures providing contradictive information (novel dog pictures mounted on familiar landscape pictures) did not disrupt performance, which suggests that the dogs made use of a category-based response rule with classification being coupled to category-relevant features (of the dog) rather than to item-specific features (of the background). We conclude that dogs are able to classify photographs of natural stimuli by means of a perceptual response rule using a newly established touch-screen procedure. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Does symptomatic schizophrenia exist?

The question if there are "symptomatic schizophrenias" has been discussed since the 20s. Schizophrenic psychoses caused be definable and well known brain diseases are presented. All schizophrenic symptoms and syndromes, the first rank symptoms (K. Schneider) too, occur in somatically founded psychoses. The group of paroxysmal transition syndromes in the sense of aura prolongata (continua) and the episodic schizophrenic psychoses in psychomotor epilepsy may be a model for the schizophrenia research. Vital threatening, so-called pernicious catatonic schizophrenias are found on the basis of infectious brain diseases, sometimes only diagnosed in autopsy. Beside acute and reversible symptomatic schizophrenic psychoses there are, even if rarely, recurrent and chronic courses of symptomatic schizophrenias. That certain conditions for the developing of symptomatic schizophrenias are rarely realised, could be an explanation for their rarity. Some findings indicate that the limbic system is significant for symptomatic (and idiopathic) schizophrenic psychoses and the pre- and postpsychotic basic stages determined by dynamic and cognitive basic symptoms, which are phenomenologically very similar to aura symptoms released by stereoelectroencephalographic depth recordings (Wieser). The characteristic features of marked fluctuation, discontinuity and insteadiness of the cognitive thought, perception, psychomotor and cenesthetic phenomena do not speak against an organic brain disorder provided that the traditional process hypothesis is abandoned in favor of a neurobiochemic disorder, fluctuating on its part depending on endogenous as well as psychic-reactive factors.