Sleep-dependent consolidation of procedural motor memories in children and adults: the pre-sleep level of performance matters

In striking contrast to adults, in children sleep following training a motor task did not induce the expected (offline) gain in motor skill performance in previous studies. Children normally perform at distinctly lower levels than adults. Moreover, evidence in adults suggests that sleep dependent offline gains in skill essentially depend on the pre-sleep level of performance. Against this background, we asked whether improving children's performance on a motor sequence learning task by extended training to levels approaching those of adults would enable sleep-associated gains in motor skill in this age group also. Children (4-6 years) and adults (18-35 years) performed on the motor sequence learning task (button-box task) before and after ~2-hour retention intervals including either sleep (midday nap) or wakefulness. Whereas one group of children and adults, respectively, received the standard amount of 10 blocks of training before retention intervals of sleep or wakefulness, a further group of children received an extended training on 30 blocks (distributed across 3 days). A further group of adults received a restricted training on only two blocks before the retention intervals. Children after standard training reached lowest performance levels, whereas in adults performance after standard training was highest. Children with extended training and adults after reduced training reached intermediate performance levels. Only at these intermediate performance levels did sleep induce significant gains in motor sequence skill, whereas performance did not benefit from sleep in the low-performing children or in the high-performing adults. Spindle counts in the post-training nap were correlated with performance gains at retrieval only in the adults benefitting from sleep. We conclude that, across age groups, sleep induces the most robust gain in motor skill at an intermediate pre-sleep performance level. In low-performing children sleep-dependent improvements in skill may be revealed only after enhancing the pre-sleep performance level by extended training.     

Comparing Biographical Backgrounds of Religious Founders and Converts to Those Religions: An Exploratory Study

This paper is an exploratory, preliminary investigation of the possible links between the biographical backgrounds and developmental trajectories of major religious figures such as Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Buddha, and Baha’u’llah, and the backgrounds of those who convert to these religions (or certain groups within these religions) in the West. This article ends with the hypothesis that in terms of biographical backgrounds and motivations for conversion, followers’ narratives resemble those of their religious leaders in some areas.

Empathy deficits and trait emotional intelligence in psychopathy and Machiavellianism

This study investigated the relationships between psychopathy (primary and secondary), Machiavellianism, trait emotional intelligence and empathy, using an image task that required an appropriate empathic response to the emotional displays of others (happy, sad and neutral). Results indicated that primary psychopathy and Machiavellianism were positively associated with the experience of positive affect from sad stimuli, while secondary psychopathy and Machiavellianism were positively associated with the experience of negative affect in response to neutral stimuli, and the opposite pattern was found for trait emotional intelligence. Regressional analyses demonstrated that secondary psychopathy, Machiavellianism, trait emotional intelligence and state anxiety are important predictors when stimuli are ambiguous.     

Children's initial sleep‐associated changes in motor skill are unrelated to long‐term skill levels

Sleep is considered to support the formation of skill memory. In juvenile but not adult song birds learning a tutor's song, a stronger initial deterioration of song performance over night‐sleep predicts better song performance in the long run. This and similar observations have stimulated the view of sleep supporting skill formation during development in an unsupervised off‐line learning process that, in the absence of external feedback, can initially also enhance inaccuracies in skill performance. Here we explored whether in children learning a motor sequence task, as in song‐learning juvenile birds, changes across sleep after initial practice predict performance levels achieved in the long run. The task was a serial reaction time task (SRTT) where subjects had to press buttons which were lighted up in a repeating eight‐element sequence as fast as possible. Twenty‐five children (8–12 years) practised the task in the evening before nocturnal sleep which was recorded polysomnographically. Retrieval was tested on the following morning and again 1 week later after daily training on the SRTT. As expected, changes in response speed over the initial night of sleep were negatively correlated with final performance speed after the 1‐week training. However, unlike in song birds, this correlation was driven by the baseline speed level achieved before sleep. Baseline‐corrected changes in speed or variability over the initial sleep period did not predict final performance on the trained SRTT sequence, or on different sequences introduced to assess generalization of the trained behaviour. The lack of correlation between initial sleep‐dependent changes and long‐term performance might reflect that the children were too experienced for the simple SRTT, possibly also favouring ceiling effects in performance. A consistent association found between sleep spindle activity and explicit sequence knowledge alternatively suggests that the expected correlation was masked by explicit memory systems interacting with skill memory formation.     

Effectiveness of an empirically supported treatment for social phobia in the field

This study examined the effectiveness of individual exposure combined with cognitive restructuring for social phobia in a clinical setting as well as the influence of sample restriction criteria on the effect size. Participants were 217 unselected patients with a primary diagnosis of social phobia who were treated by 57 therapists in four outpatient clinics of the Christoph-Dornier-Foundation of Clinical Psychology in Germany. Results 6 weeks after the end of therapy showed highly significant reductions in social phobic fears and avoidance as well as in general anxiety and symptoms of depression. However, patients who dropped out during therapy reported a significantly higher degree of depression. Results did not differ between the four outpatient clinics and are comparable with the average effect-sizes reported by meta-analytic studies of controlled efficacy research, using selected patients. Also, restricting the sample according to the selection criteria often applied in research settings did not result in higher effect sizes for the applied outcome measures. We conclude that individual cognitive behavioural therapy for social phobia can be transported from research settings to the field of mental health.     

Development and structural dynamics of personal life investment in old age

The development of personal life investment (PLI) during old age was investigated with longitudinal and cross-sectional data from the Berlin Aging Study (N = 516, ages = 70-103 years). PLI measures motivational energy expended in life domains that require (obligatory PLI) or do not require (optional PLI) investment in old age. The authors used structural modeling to determine developmental trajectories and dynamics of the PLI types. On average, obligatory PLI remained unchanged between 70 and 101 years. Optional PLI declined during the transition to the 4th age (between 80 and 90 years). When change on the intraindividual level was considered, reductions in optional PLI were not related to changes in obligatory PLI, but declining obligatory PLI was associated with declining optional PLI.     

Response conflict determines sequential effects in serial response time tasks with short response-stimulus intervals

In serial choice reaction time (RT) tasks, performance in each trial critically depends on the sequence of preceding events. In this study, the authors specifically examined the mechanism underlying RT sequence effects at short response-stimulus intervals (RSIs), in which performance is impaired in the current trial N if events alternate rather than repeat from trial N-2 to trial N-1. Different accounts of this RT pattern in terms of perceptual noise, response-selection monitoring, and response conflict were tested in 4 experiments. Second-order RT costs were caused by the response sequence rather than the stimulus sequence. Manipulation of stimulus contrast, stimulus classification difficulty, and set-level compatibility did not modulate the response-related second-order RT effect, whereas this effect increased when spatially incompatible responses were demanded. These findings support a response conflict account of higher order sequential effects in short-RSI situations.     

Functional localization and mechanisms of sequential effects in serial reaction time tasks

Reaction times (RTs) to randomly ordered stimuli are influenced in various ways by the sequence of preceding events. Depending on the response-stimulus interval and stimulus-response compatibility, cost-only or cost-benefit patterns can be observed. In order to localize these effects within the information-processing system, different sequential patterns were induced in overt performance. RTs and amplitude developments of the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) across several trials indicated the accumulation of residual traces as a possible mechanism underlying sequential effects. Analysis of LRP onsets indicated two possible loci of action of such traces. Whereas in motoric stages trace accumulation appeared to produce processing advantages only for continued event repetitions, without corresponding costs for discontinuations, cost-benefit patterns were consistently observed in premotoric stages.     

Twenty Years Post‐genocide: The Creation of Mental Health Competence among Rwandan Survivors Through Community‐based Healing Workshops

Twenty years after the genocide, many Rwandans still suffer from the psychological wounds of the past. The country's mental health agenda is based on individualised and psychiatric approaches that help some but cannot be provided on a large scale. Further, many reconciliation initiatives have been based on public testimonies, which have been shown to be potentially re‐traumatising, leading to calls for small‐scale community‐based approaches to healing, which constitute a middle way between individualised and public approaches. Drawing on the concept of ‘mental health competence’ (Campbell and Burgess, 2012), this study evaluates one such approach: the Life Wounds Healing workshops offered by the African Institute for Integral Psychology. Twenty‐one semi‐structured interviews were conducted with former workshop participants, staff members and the institute's founder to investigate their views on how these workshops can help genocide survivors. The results suggest that the workshops succeed in creating mental health competence by establishing a safe social space for people to open up, increasing people's critical understandings of the processes of pain — and potential for healing — that informs behaviour change, generating bonding social capital and offering participants' income‐generating possibilities. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Behavioural automaticity moderates and mediates the relationship of trait self-control and physical activity behaviour

Objectives: Trait self-control has been shown to be associated with physical activity behaviour. However, in contrast with the theoretical assumption underlying the strength model of self-control, self-control seems to be more important for automatic compared with controlled behaviours. It is argued that self-control might facilitate the formation of adaptive habits (behavioural automaticity) and therefore enhance health behaviour through an indirect effect. The credibility of this hypothesis was empirically assessed in a proof-of-concept study.

Methods: In a prospective design study with two laboratory sessions, participants (N = 124) completed standardised questionnaires assessing trait self-control and behavioural automaticity as predictors (1st session) and actual physical activity behaviour (after one week) as the dependent variable (2nd session).

Results: The predictive power of self-control was stronger for participants with high behavioural automaticity compared with participants with low behavioural automaticity. Furthermore, automaticity mediated the relationship between self-control and behaviour.

Discussion: Behavioural automaticity appears to be a helpful construct for specifying the relationship between self-control and physical activity. Our results support the approach of effortless self-control and self-control success, an extension of the strength model of self-control which assumes that self-control is helpful in creating effective routines. In future studies, causal relationships should be examined using more robust and rigorous research designs.