Aggression of police officers as a function of temperature: An experiment with the fire arms training system

The impact of temperature on police officers' tension, perception, and behaviour in police—offender interactions was investigated. It was hypothesized that increased temperature results in: (1) increased tension; (2) a negative impression of the offender; and (3) aggressive behaviour. The findings confirmed these hypotheses. Finally, some implications of the results are discussed.     

Modulation of Response Timing in ADHD,Effects of Reinforcement Valence and Magnitude

The present study investigated the impact of reinforcement valence and magnitude on response timing in children with ADHD. Children were required to estimate a 1-s interval, and both the median response time (response tendency) and the intrasubject-variability (response stability) were investigated. In addition, heart rate and skin conductance were measured to examine the autonomic responses to reinforcement. Feedback-only trials were compared to low response cost trials (response cost for incorrect responses), low reward trials (reward for correct responses), high response cost and high reward trials. In feedback-only trials, children with ADHD underestimated more severely the interval and responded more variably than controls. Children with ADHD, unlike controls, were unaffected by the reinforcement conditions in terms of time underestimations. The variability of responding, on the other hand, decreased under conditions of reinforcement to a larger extent in children with ADHD than controls. There were no indications that children with ADHD were abnormally affected by the valence or magnitude of reinforcement. Furthermore, skin conductance responses increased when feedback was coupled with reinforcement, an effect which was larger in children with ADHD than controls. This could be interpreted as demonstrating that children with ADHD suffer from a diminished awareness of the significance of feedback in the feedback-only condition. The current study suggests that children with ADHD suffer from motivation problems when reinforcement was not available, at least when variability in responding was measured. Underestimations of time may reflect more stable deficits in ADHD.     

Inhibited and aggressive preschool children at 23 years of age: personality and social transitions into adulthood

In a 19-year longitudinal study, the 15% most inhibited and the 15% most aggressive children at ages 4-6 years were followed up until age 23 years and were compared with controls who were below average in preschool inhibition or aggressiveness. As adults, inhibited boys and girls were judged as inhibited by their parents and showed a delay in establishing a first stable partnership and finding a first full-time job. However, only the upper 8% in terms of inhibition tended to show internalizing problems, including self-rated inhibition. Aggressive boys showed an externalizing personality profile in the parental and self-judgments, were educational and occupational underachievers, and showed a higher adult delinquency rate than the controls, even after sex and socioeconomic status were controlled. The results suggest delayed social transitions without internalizing problems for most male and female inhibited children and a significant long-term risk of an externalizing profile for aggressive children.     

Impact of responsibility for a misfortune on schadenfreude and sympathy: further evidence

The authors tested the hypothesis that the more individuals are responsible for their own misfortune, the more schadenfreude (i.e., pleasure derived from another's misfortune) and less sympathy the misfortune evokes in others. The results support the hypothesis, thereby providing further evidence for the role responsibility plays in emotional reactions to the misfortunes of others.     

The effects of weather on daily mood: a multilevel approach

The present study examines the effects of six weather parameters (temperature, wind power, sunlight, precipitation, air pressure, and photoperiod) on mood (positive affect, negative affect, and tiredness). Data were gathered from an online diary study (N = 1,233), linked to weather station data, and analyzed by means of multilevel analysis. Multivariate and univariate analyses enabled distinction between unique and shared effects. The results revealed main effects of temperature, wind power, and sunlight on negative affect. Sunlight had a main effect on tiredness and mediated the effects of precipitation and air pressure on tiredness. In terms of explained variance, however, the average effect of weather on mood was only small, though significant random variation was found across individuals, especially regarding the effect of photoperiod. However, these individual differences in weather sensitivity could not be explained by the Five Factor Model personality traits, gender, or age.     

Cueing the location of a distractor: an inhibitory mechanism of spatial attention?

Presenting an irrelevant distractor increases reaction times to a target. The current study shows that cueing the location of an upcoming 'distractor' can help to reduce the effects the distractor has on target processing. It is hypothesized that this reduction is due to the active inhibition of the cued location. In two experiments in which the location of the distractor was cued in advance, a reduced effect of the distractor on target-processing was observed. Analyses indicated that this effect was most likely caused by inhibition of the distractor location. The present findings suggest that inhibition plays an important role in visual-spatial selection processes and that this inhibitory mechanism can be controlled in a top-down fashion.     

Object-location memory: A lesion-behavior mapping study in stroke patients

Object-location memory is an important form of spatial memory, comprising different subcomponents that each process specific types of information within memory, i.e. remembering objects, remembering positions and binding these features in memory. In the current study we investigated the neural correlates of binding categorical (relative) or coordinate (exact) position information with objects in memory. Therefore, an object-location memory battery was used, including different task conditions assessing object-location memory, i.e. memory for position information per se, and binding object information with coordinate and categorical position information. Sixty-one stroke patients with focal brain lesions were examined and compared with 77 healthy matched controls. The lesion subtraction method was used to define the area of overlap. Results indicate an important role of the left posterior parietal cortex in the binding of both categorical and coordinate positions with object information. Additionally, the hippocampus seems important for categorical object-location memory. This suggests that categorical and coordinate object-location memory depend on similar cognitive and neural systems.