Sleep deprivation and stressors: Evidence for elevated negative affect in response to mild stressors when sleep deprived

Stress often co-occurs with inadequate sleep duration, and both are believed to impact mood and emotion. It is not yet known whether inadequate sleep simply increases the intensity of subsequent stress responses or interacts with stressors in more complicated ways. To address this issue, we investigated the effects of one night of total sleep deprivation on subjective stress and mood in response to low-stress and high-stress cognitive testing conditions in healthy adult volunteers in two separate experiments (total N = 53). Sleep was manipulated in a controlled, laboratory setting and stressor intensity was manipulated by changing difficulty of cognitive tasks, time pressure, and feedback about performance. Sleep-deprived participants reported greater subjective stress, anxiety, and anger than rested controls following exposure to the low-stressor condition, but not in response to the high-stressor condition, which elevated negative mood and stress about equally for both sleep conditions. These results suggest that sleep deprivation lowers the psychological threshold for the perception of stress from cognitive demands but does not selectively increase the magnitude of negative affect in response to high-stress performance demands. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

How Evangelicals from Two Churches in the American Southwest Frame Their Relationship with the Environment

In this article, we analyze the ways in which Evangelicals frame a rhetoric of environmental concern and environmental apathy, with a larger focus on the latter. Heeding calls to further explore within-Evangelical differences, we compare environmental narratives of 20 leaders and laity of a predominantly white Southern Baptist congregation and 20 leaders and laity from an African American Baptist church, both located in a Southwestern American city. We find, especially on the topic of climate change, that most Evangelicals in our study readily evince environmental apathy, which we explore in depth. In particular, we find a belief in a rigid hierarchy of God, humans, and then the environment; a belief in the sovereignty of God; and evangelical eschatological beliefs help generate narratives of environmental apathy. There are different environmental narratives, between the two congregations, that are framed in terms of political affiliation and socioeconomic status. But we find little evidence to suggest that religious beliefs foster different environmental attitudes across the two congregations. We conclude with future research directions and implications for those who wish to foster environmental concern among Evangelicals.     

Correlational and exploratory factor analyses (EFA) of commonly used empathy questionnaires: New insights

Empathy is a concept whose history has been marred by conceptual inconsistencies. Dispositional measures of empathy have varied in constituent subscales and have been suggested to conflate with other related constructs. The current investigation consists of correlational and exploratory factor analyses with self-report empathy measures to assess the commonalities between these measures. Four hundred ninety-seven university undergraduates completed a battery of self-report dispositional empathy measures, along with situational and dispositional sympathy measures. The novel findings include moderate correlations between scales purporting to measure empathy, an interpretable six-factor structure which represent subcomponents of these empathy scales, and the modest ability of existing questionnaires to contribute to these factor structures. The retained factor structure is not consistent with previous definitions of empathy, and it appears that self-report empathy measures do not adequately measure a uniform, consistent construct.     

The mouse attentional-set-shifting task: A method for assaying successful cognitive aging?

Humans exhibit considerable variance in cognitive decline with age, with some exhibiting little disruption and others becoming significantly impaired. In aged rodents, individual differences in spatial memory have been used to identify putative compensatory mechanisms underlying successful hippocampal aging. However, there are few parallel rodent models of cognitive decline in frontal-cortex-mediated functions. We tested the hypothesis that, like aged humans, aged mice would exhibit greater variance in executive function measures, as compared with young mice. We examined the performance of young and aged C57BL/6N mice in the attentional-set-shifting task. Whereas young and old mice did not differ on trials-to-criterion performance, aged mice exhibited significantly greater variance in mean correct latency—selective to the extradimensional shifting stage—as compared with their younger counterparts. Thus, this task may be used to identify mechanisms underlying individual differences in decline of frontal-mediated performances with age.     

Objects,numbers, fingers,space: clustering of ventral and dorsal functions in young children and adults

In the primate brain, sensory information is processed along two partially segregated cortical streams: the ventral stream, mainly coding for objects' shape and identity, and the dorsal stream, mainly coding for objects' quantitative information (including size, number, and spatial position). Neurophysiological measures indicate that such functional segregation is present early on in infancy, and that the two streams follow independent maturational trajectories during childhood. Here we collected, in a large sample of young children and adults, behavioural measures on an extensive set of functions typically associated with either the dorsal or the ventral stream. We then used a correlational approach to investigate the presence of inter‐individual variability resulting in clustering of functions. Results show that dorsal‐ and ventral‐related functions follow two uncorrelated developmental trajectories. Moreover, within each stream, some functions show age‐independent correlations: finger gnosis, non‐symbolic numerical abilities and spatial abilities within the dorsal stream, and object and face recognition abilities within the ventral stream. This pattern of clear within‐stream cross‐task correlation seems to be lost in adults, with two notable exceptions: performance in face and object recognition on one side, and in symbolic and non‐symbolic comparison on the other, remain correlated, pointing to distinct shape recognition and quantity comparison systems.     

Dyadic Causal Sequencing of Depressive Symptoms and Relationship Satisfaction in Romantic Partners Across Four Years

Abstract

Causal sequencing between relationship satisfaction and depressive symptoms has important ramifications for couples therapy. Using dyadic data from the Pairfam study (N?=?1,876 German couples), an auto-regressive cross-lagged model was used to test the causal sequencing of these associations annually across four years. Although depressive symptoms had a significant bidirectional association with relationship satisfaction both within and between partners, depressive symptoms tended to serve as a stronger and more consistent predictor of relationship satisfaction than the reverse direction. Thus, clinically focusing on reducing depressive symptoms in couples’ therapy may serve to help prevent future deterioration in relationship quality.     

Moral emotions and the envisaging of mitigating circumstances for wrongdoing

Anger may be more responsive than disgust to mitigating circumstances in judgements of wrongdoing. We tested this hypothesis in two studies where we had participants envision circumstances that could serve to mitigate an otherwise wrongful act. In Study 1, participants provided moral judgements, and ratings of anger and disgust, to a number of transgressions involving either harm or bodily purity. They were then asked to imagine and report whether there might be any circumstances that would make it all right to perform the act. Across transgression type, and controlling for covariance between anger and disgust, levels of anger were found to negatively predict the envisioning of mitigating circumstances for wrongdoing, while disgust was unrelated. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings to less serious transgressions, using a continuous measure of mitigating circumstances, and demonstrated the impact of anger independent of deontological commitments. These findings highlight the differential relationship that anger and disgust have with the ability to envision mitigating factors.     

The Longitudinal Association of Marital Confidence,Time Spent Together,and Marital Satisfaction

Using three waves of dyadic data collected at 18‐month intervals from a community‐based sample of 610 newly married heterosexual couples (1 220 individuals), we examined the relationship between marital confidence, time spent together, and marital satisfaction using a modified actor‐partner interdependence model. Results indicate that after controlling for marital satisfaction and time spent together at Time 1, marital confidence around the time of marriage was associated with marital satisfaction approximately 3 years later. In addition, marital confidence was associated with how much time husbands and wives spent together at Time 2, which was related to marital satisfaction at Time 3. Tests of the mediating paths from marital confidence to marital satisfaction trended toward significance. The results suggest the importance of assessing for relationship confidence when working with couples in the early stages of their relationship.