Emotion knowledge,emotion regulation,and psychosocial adjustment in children with nonverbal learning disabilities

Nonverbal learning disability is a childhood disorder with basic neuropsychological deficits in visuospatial processing and psychomotor coordination, and secondary impairments in academic and social-emotional functioning. This study examines emotion recognition, understanding, and regulation in a clinic-referred group of young children with nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD). These processes have been shown to be related to social competence and psychological adjustment in typically developing (TD) children. Psychosocial adjustment and social skills are also examined for this young group, and for a clinic-referred group of older children with NLD. The young children with NLD scored lower than the TD comparison group on tasks assessing recognition of happy and sad facial expressions and tasks assessing understanding of how emotions work. Children with NLD were also rated as having less adaptive regulation of their emotions. For both young and older children with NLD, internalizing and externalizing problem scales were rated higher than for the TD comparison groups, and the means of the internalizing, attention, and social problem scales were found to fall within clinically concerning ranges. Measures of attention and nonverbal intelligence did not account for the relationship between NLD and Social Problems. Social skills and NLD membership share mostly overlapping variance in accounting for internalizing problems across the sample. The results are discussed within a framework wherein social cognitive deficits, including emotion processes, have a negative impact on social competence, leading to clinically concerning levels of depression and withdrawal in this population.     

Mortality salience and prejudice towards ethno-religion minorities: Results and implications of a Nigerian study

The present study examined mortality salience (MS) effect on prejudice towards an ethno-religion minority group of Northern Nigeria. Participants were 120 undergraduate students (females = 41.67%) with an age range between 17 and 38 years. The students completed a Distance-(relationship)-Situation (DS) measure under alternative conditions: with MS priming and a control condition. Following a three-way mixed model ANOVA, results showed MS to predict prejudice across relationship situations of secret disclosure, business partnership, and cooperating to get a task done. Consistent with terror management theory, MS effects on ethno-cultural prejudice expression apply across relationship situations.     

Blunted amygdala activity is associated with depression severity in treatment-resistant depression

Up to 50% of individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) do not recover after two antidepressant medication trials, and therefore meet the criteria for treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is one promising treatment; however, the extent to which MBCT influences clinical outcomes relative to baseline neural activation remains unknown. In the present study we investigated baseline differences in amygdala activation between TRD patients and healthy controls (HCs), related amygdala activation to depression symptoms, and examined the impacts of MBCT and amygdala activation on longitudinal depression outcomes. At baseline, TRD patients (n = 80) and HCs (n = 37) participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging task in which they identified either the emotion (affect labeling) or the gender (gender labeling) of faces, or passively viewed faces (observing). The TRD participants then completed eight weeks of MBCT or a health enhancement program (HEP). Relative to HCs, the TRD patients demonstrated less amygdala activation during affect labeling, and marginally less during gender labeling. Blunted amygdala activation in TRD patients during affect labeling was associated with greater depression severity. MBCT was associated with greater depression reductions than was HEP directly following treatment; however, at 52 weeks the treatment effect was not significant, and baseline amygdala activation across the task conditions predicted depression severity in both groups. TRD patients have blunted amygdala responses during affect labeling that are associated with greater concurrent depression. Furthermore, although MBCT produced greater short-term improvements in depression than did HEP, overall baseline amygdala reactivity was predictive of long-term clinical outcomes in both groups.     

Arabic digit naming speed: task context and redundancy gain

There is evidence for both semantic and asemantic routes for naming Arabic digits, but neuropsychological dissociations suggest that number-fact retrieval (2x3=6) can inhibit the semantic route for digit naming. Here, we tested the hypothesis that such inhibition should slow digit naming, based on the principle that reduced access to multiple routes would counteract redundancy gain (the response time advantage expected from parallel retrieval pathways). Participants named two single digit numbers and then performed simple addition or magnitude comparison (Experiment 1), multiplication or magnitude comparison (Experiment 2), and multiplication or subtraction (Experiment 3) on the same or on a different pair of digits. Addition and multiplication were expected to inhibit the semantic route, whereas comparison and subtraction should enable the semantic route. Digit naming time was approximately 15ms slower when participants subsequently performed addition or multiplication relative to comparison or subtraction, regardless of whether or not the same digit pair was involved. A letter naming control condition in Experiment 3 demonstrated that the effect was specific to digit naming. Number fact retrieval apparently can inhibit Arabic digit naming processes.     

The nature of death and the death of nature: The impact of mortality salience on environmental concern

According to terror management theory, individuals are motivated to distinguish themselves from the rest of nature because doing so facilitates the denial of human mortality. However, based on an integration of terror management and contingencies of self-worth perspectives, the present research hypothesized that existential insecurities about death may differentially influence environmental concern depending on whether or not an individual derives self-esteem from environmental action. Results demonstrated that heightened mortality awareness led to less concern for the environment among those not deriving self-esteem from an environmental domain, but fostered environmental concern among those who do acquire self-esteem from environmental action. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Bidirectional associations in multiplication memory: conditions of negative and positive transfer

A variety of experimental evidence indicates that the memory representation for multiplication facts (e.g., 6 x 9 = 54) incorporates bidirectional links with a forward association from factors to product and a reverse association from product to factors. Surprisingly, the authors did not find evidence in Experiment 1 of facilitative transfer-of-practice from multiplication (6 x 9 = ?) to factoring (54 = ? x ?); in fact, multiplication practice produced item-specific interference with factoring. Similarly, the authors found no evidence in Experiment 2 that repetition of specific factoring problems (54 = ? x ?) facilitated performance of corresponding multiplication problems (6 x 9 = ?). In Experiment 3, participants practiced both multiplication and factoring and presented facilitative transfer in both directions. Thus, bidirectional facilitation occurred if both operations were practiced, but interference occurred when only one operation was practiced. We propose that this seemingly paradoxical behavior occurs because it is adaptive for the bidirectional retrieval structure to retain operational flexibility in the context of practicing both operations, whereas it is adaptive to specialize the memory representation for the practiced operation (i.e., factoring or multiplication) when only one operation is practiced.     

The aesthetic appeal of auditory-visual synaesthetic perceptions in people without synaesthesia

The term 'visual music' refers to works of art in which both hearing and vision are directly or indirectly stimulated. Our ability to create, perceive, and appreciate visual music is hypothesised to rely on the same multisensory processes that support auditory visual (AV) integration in other contexts. Whilst these mechanisms have been extensively studied, there has been little research on how these processes affect aesthetic judgments (of liking or preference). Studies of synaesthesia in which sound evokes vision and studies of cross-modal biases in non-synaesthetes have revealed non-arbitrary mappings between visual and auditory properties (eg high-pitch sounds being smaller and brighter). In three experiments, we presented members of the general population with animated AV clips derived from synaesthetic experiences and contrasted them with a number of control conditions. The control conditions consisted of the same clips rotated or with the colour changed, random AV pairings, or animated clips generated by non-synaesthetes. Synaesthetic AV animations were generally preferred over the control conditions. The results suggest that non-arbitrary AV mappings, present in the experiences of synaesthetes, can be readily appreciated by others and may underpin our tendency to engage with certain forms of art.     

Interpersonal politics: the role of terror management and attachment processes in shaping political preferences

Research on terror management theory (TMT) indicates that reminders of death affect political attitudes, but political orientation only sometimes moderates these effects. We propose that secure relationships are associated with values of tolerance and compassion, thus orienting people toward liberalism; insecure attachments are associated with more rigid and absolutist values that orient people toward conservatism. Given that attachment relationships become especially active when security needs are heightened, we predicted that mortality salience would be an important factor in understanding the relationship between attachment processes and political orientation. Supporting these ideas, Study 1 showed that after a mortality-salience manipulation, securely attached participants increased their support for a liberal presidential candidate, and less securely attached participants increased their support for a conservative presidential candidate. In Study 2, a secure-relationship prime following a mortality-salience manipulation engendered a less violent approach to the problem of terrorism than did a neutral-relationship prime. We discuss the interaction of TMT processes and individual differences in attachment in shaping political preferences.     

Spoken numbers versus Arabic numerals: differential effects on adults' multiplication and addition.

J.-A. LeFevre, Q. Lei, B. L. Smith-Chant, and D. B. Mullins (2001) examined effects of auditory versus Arabic visual presentation formats on performance of simple multiplication. They observed a smaller problem-size effect (response time [RT] increases with numerical size) with auditory stimuli compared with Arabic stimuli. If this arises during problem encoding, as opposed to during subsequent calculation processes, the authors would expect comparable Format x Problem Size interactions for both multiplication and addition. For multiplication, the authors replicated the finding of a smaller problem-size effect for auditory stimuli than for Arabic stimuli, but found the opposite pattern for addition whereby the problem-size effect was larger with auditory stimuli than with Arabic stimuli. Decomposition of mean RT into its ex-Gaussian components, mu and tau, demonstrated that the triple interaction arose entirely in connection with tau. This suggests that the effects of auditory versus Arabic format on RT substantially reflected format-related shifts in the use of procedural strategies.