The relationship between anxiety sensitivity and latent symptoms of emotional problems: A structural equation modeling approach

A large body of research suggests that common and specific psychopathology dimensions underlie the symptoms that occur within mood and anxiety disorders. As of yet, it is unclear precisely how the facets of Anxiety Sensitivity (AS), or fear of the symptoms of fear and anxiety, relate to these latent factors. Using data from 606 adolescents participating in the baseline phase of a longitudinal study on risk factors for emotional disorders, we modeled the facets of AS as measured by the Anxiety Sensitivity Index-Expanded Form (ASI-X) and related these facets to a hierarchical model of latent symptoms of psychological distress. Results suggest that one facet of AS is associated with a broad General Distress factor underlying symptoms of most emotional disorders while others relate to intermediate-level and conceptually-meaningful narrow factors representing aspects of psychological distress specific to particular emotional disorders.     

The Real-Time Processing of Sluiced Sentences

Ellipsis refers to an element that is absent from the input but whose meaning can nonetheless be recovered from context. In this cross-modal priming study, we examined the online processing of Sluicing, an ellipsis whose antecedent is an entire clause: The handyman threw a book to the programmer but I don’t know which book the handyman threw to the programmer_ellipsis. To understand such an elliptical construction, the listener arguably must ‘fill in’ the missing material (“the handyman threw___ to the programmer”) based on that which occurs in the antecedent clause. We aimed to determine the point in time in which reconstruction of the sluiced sentence is attempted and whether such a complex antecedent is re-accessed by the ellipsis. Out of the two antecedent constituents for which we probed, only the Object (programmer) was found active in the elliptical clause, confirming that an antecedent is attributed to the sluice in real time. Possible reasons for the non-observation of the Subject (handyman) are considered. We also suggest that ellipses are detected earlier in coordinated than subordinated sentences.     

Childhood amnesia: Empirical evidence for a two-stage phenomenon

The term childhood amnesia refers to the inability of adults to remember events from their infancy and early childhood. If we plot the number of memories that adults can recall as a function of age during childhood, the number of memories reported increases gradually as a function of age. Typically, this finding has been used to argue that gradual changes in memory development contribute to a gradual decline in childhood amnesia during the preschool period. Alternatively, it is possible that pooling data across participants has obscured more abrupt, stage-like changes in the remission of childhood amnesia. In the present study we examined the number and distribution of childhood memories for individual participants. Six adults were repeatedly interviewed about their childhood memories. We found that the distribution of adults' early childhood memories may be less continuous than pooled data suggest. This finding has important implications for current explanations of childhood amnesia.     

FDG-PET Analysis and Findings in Amnesia Resulting From Hypoxia

The assumptions underlying neuroimaging, and problems in its analysis and interpretation, are commonly underestimated in neuropsychology. The ways in which fluoro-deoxy-glucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) data can be analysed are discussed. PET findings from four patients who had suffered severe amnesia, following episodes of acute hypoxia, are presented. These patients had shown evidence of medial temporal (hippocampal and parahippocampal) atrophy on MRI brain scans. The PET data were analysed in several different ways. The converging findings were that the patients showed bilateral thalamic hypometabolism, and there was also evidence of retrosplenial hypometabolism bilaterally. Cognitively, these patients performed most like other patients with medial temporal lesions, but the results indicate that structural lesions can have distal metabolic effects on structures elsewhere. These findings are interpreted in the light of neuroanatomical observations concerning parallel projections between medial temporal lobe structures and the thalamus, some of which pass via the retrosplenium.     

A Developmental Evaluation of Frequency Memory for Actions Presented in Lists,Scripts, and Stories

Although some research suggests that misinformation provided by a co-witness could be more influential than that obtained from other sources, most of this research has compared the effect of co-witness information against non-social forms of misinformation only. To better understand the influence of co-witnesses we compared the influence of co-witness misinformation with the influence of misinformation provided by an interviewer. Across two experiments using the MORI paradigm we found no evidence that a co-witness is particularly influential relative to another social source of post-event misinformation. In fact, the source of the misinformation delivered by our interviewer was less likely to be correctly recalled than the source of the misinformation delivered by a co-witness. There was some evidence that misinformation delivered by both a co-witness and an interviewer has a stronger effect on witnesses' accuracy and confidence than misinformation obtained from either source alone. Finally, our results suggest that the opportunity to provide an early individual memory account might protect against the effect of subsequently-encountered co-witness misinformation. These results have important implications for the way that criminal investigations are conducted.     

Sport-Type Differences in Alcohol Use Among Intercollegiate Athletes

Prior research has found that (a) intercollegiate athletes are especially “at-risk” for excessive alcohol consumption (e.g., Nelson & Wechsler, 2001 Nelson, T. F. and Wechsler, H. 2001. Alcohol and college athletes. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 33: 43–47. [INFOTRIEVE][CSA][CROSSREF][Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and (b) sport-type differences exist among college athletes in terms of yearly drinking prevalence rates (National Collegiate Athletic Association, 2001 National Collegiate Athletic Association. 2001. NCAA study of substance use habits of college student-athletes, Indianapolis, IN: Author.  [Google Scholar]). No studies, however, have examined sport-type differences on more specific measures of alcohol consumption (e.g., drinks per week), or examined potential mediators of the relationship between sport type and alcohol consumption. In the present study, data were analyzed on 298 intercollegiate athletes from two different universities. Resuls indicated significant sport type differences on alcohol consumption variables, with athletes from the sports of swimming and diving reporting the highest levels of alcohol consumption. Results provided partial support for the role of positively reinforcing drinking motives in mediating the sport type–alcohol consumption relationship. Findings are discussed in light of prior research in the area of college student–athlete alcohol consumption.     

The Paradoxical Place of Enactment in Psychoanalysis: Introduction

Ringstrom's “comparison of relational psychoanalysis and intersubjective systems theory” exhibits a category mistake that renders the core of his argument logically incoherent.     

“Living Memory”: Discussion of Avishai Margalit's “Nostalgia”

Avishai Margalit raises questions about how memory can be a moral and an ethical concern, and in this commentary on “Nostalgia,” Aron expands on these themes and examines the place of memory in psychoanalysis and in Judaism. The study of memory and of mind are inseparable. At its best, psychoanalysis does not contrast thoughts and actions, inner and outer, memory and motor action, intrapsychic mental life and interpersonal external behavior as simple dichotomous terms but rather views these as mutually defining transformations, different views of a single complex reality. Conceived in this way, memory is not a static internal picture, but rather is continually constructed, embedded in our interpersonal context. It is living memory.