Hydrocortisone infusion exerts dose- and sex-dependent effects on attention to emotional stimuli

Glucocorticoid administration has been shown to exert complex effects on cognitive and emotional processing. In the current study we investigated the effects of glucocorticoid administration on attention towards emotional words, using an Affective Go/No-go task on which healthy humans have shown an attentional bias towards positive as compared to negative words. Healthy volunteers received placebo and either low-dose (0.15 mg/kg) or high-dose (0.45 mg/kg) hydrocortisone intravenously during two separate visits in a double-blind, randomized design. Seventy-five minutes post-infusion, the subjects performed tests of attention (Rapid Visual Information Processing [RVIP]), spatial working memory (Spatial Span) and emotional processing (Affective Go/No-go task [AGNG]). On the attention task, performance was impaired under both hydrocortisone doses relative to placebo, though the effect on error rate was not significant after controlling for age; Spatial Span performance was unaffected by hydrocortisone administration. On the AGNG task, relative to the placebo condition the low-dose hydrocortisone infusion decreased response time to emotional words while high-dose hydrocortisone increased response time. In the females specifically, both high and low dose hydrocortisone administration attenuated the normal attentional bias toward positively valenced words. These data suggest that, in healthy women, the modulation of attention by the emotional salience of stimuli is influenced by glucocorticoid hormone concentrations.     

What is the Right Thing to Say? Agreement among Perceivers on the Supportiveness of Statements

Most social support theory implies that there are objectively supportive people and statements. Yet there is little agreement among perceivers that some people are more supportive than others. Nonetheless, there might be better agreement regarding supportive statements. In three studies, children, college students, and members of a clinical training program rated the supportiveness of specific statements presented by text or video. Agreement among perceivers accounted for only 11% of the variance (range = 8%–12%). Perceivers disagreed because of their traitlike perceptual biases, as well as perceivers’ idiosyncratic tastes. Implications for social support theory were discussed.     

Identification with the aggressor and the ‘normal traumas’: clinical implications

Ferenczi's (1933) surprisingly unknown concept of identification with the aggressor – an abuse victim's ‘eliminating’ her own subjectivity and ‘becoming’ precisely what an attacker needs her to be – has radical implications for our understanding of analytic technique. Its very frequent occurrence also forces us to broaden our understanding of what constitutes trauma. Ferenczi saw the experience of ‘traumatic aloneness’ or ‘emotional abandonment’ as the key element of trauma, since this is what enforces the traumatic responses of dissociation and identification with the aggressor. Identification with the aggressor operates in the analytic relationship in both patient and analyst. This has various consequences, including the structuring of the relationship through unconscious collusions – mutually coordinated, defensive identifications designed to help both participants feel secure. This view of the analytic relationship has clinical implications in at least four areas: the understanding of the patient's free associations, which may reflect the patient's compliance with the analyst's wishes rather than the contents of the patient's own unconscious; the need for some kind of mutuality of analysis; the traumatizing potential of the analyst's authority; and the tendency of some patients to take blame and responsibility reflexively, as a way of protecting the analyst.     

Alexithymia tendencies and mere exposure alter social approachability judgments

ABSTRACT People have a fundamental motivation for social connection and social engagement, but how do they decide whom to approach in ambiguous social situations? Subjective feelings often influence such decisions, but people vary in awareness of their feelings. We evaluated two opposing hypotheses based on visual familiarity effects and emotional awareness on social approachability judgments. These hypotheses differ in their interpretation of the familiarity or mere exposure effect with either an affective or cognitive interpretation. The responses of our 128‐student sample supported the cognitive interpretation. Lower emotional awareness or higher alexithymia was associated with higher approachability judgments to familiarized faces and lower approachability judgments to novel faces. These findings were independent of the Big Five personality factors. The results indicate that individual differences in emotional awareness should be integrated into social decision‐making models. The results also suggest that cognitive‐perceptual alterations may underlie the poorer social outcomes associated with alexithymia.     

Neighborhood consistency and memory for number facts

Verguts and Fias (Memory & Cognition 33:1-16, 2005a) proposed a new model of memory for simple multiplication facts ( $ 2 \times 3 = 6 $ ; $ 8 \times 7 = 56 $ ) in which learning and performance is governed by the consistency of a problem’s correct product with neighboring products in the times table. In the present study, to directly investigate effects of neighborhood consistency, participants memorized a set of 16 novel “pound” arithmetic equations. The pound arithmetic table included eight tie equations with repeated operands (e.g., 4 # 4 = 29) and eight nontie equations (e.g., 5 # 4 = 39). In the consistent problem set, tie and nontie answers in adjacent columns and rows shared a common decade or unit value. In the inconsistent problem set, neighboring tie and nontie problems did not share a common decade or unit. Across 14 study–test blocks, memorization of the pound arithmetic table presented a robust effect of neighborhood consistency, with the rate of learning nearly doubling that of the inconsistent condition. An analysis of error types showed that consistency fostered the development of a categorical structure based on problem operands and that tie problems were encoded as a distinct subcategory of problems. There was also a substantial learning advantage for tie problems relative to nonties both with consistent and inconsistent neighbors. The results indicate that neighborhood consistency can have a major impact on memory for number facts.     

Rea’s Revenge and the Persistent Problem of Persistence for Realism

Realism about material objects faces a variety of epistemological objections. Recently, however, some realists have offered new accounts in response to these long-standing objections; many of which seem plausible. In this paper, I raise a new objection against realism vis-à-vis how we could empirically come to know mind-independent essential properties for objects. Traditionally, realists hold kind-membership and persistence as bound together for purposes of tracing out an object’s essential existence conditions. But I propose kind-membership and persistence for objects can conceptually come apart and function epistemologically distinctly from one another—in which case the usual reliance by realists on an assumption of persistence to determine kind-membership conditions is unjustified. Thus, present realist attempts to explain how empirical detection of mind-independent essential properties for objects could possibly occur inevitably results in circularity. The charge against the realist is to explain why we don’t have to first discover persistence conditions for an object before we can ascertain kind-membership conditions for an object. If no answer is forthcoming, then it seems the weight of the epistemological objection to realism is back in full force.     

Does the "eyes lead the hand" principle apply to reach-to-grasp movements evoked by unexpected balance perturbations?

A fundamental principle that has emerged from studies of natural gaze behavior is that goal-directed arm movements are typically guided by a saccade to the target. In this study, we evaluated a hypothesis that this principle does not apply to rapid reach-to-grasp movements evoked by sudden unexpected balance perturbations. These perturbations involved forward translation of a large (2 × 6 m) motion platform configured to simulate a “real-life” environment. Subjects performed a common “daily-life” visuo-cognitive task (find a telephone and make a call) that required walking to the end of the platform, which was triggered to move as they approached a handrail mounted alongside the travel path. A deception was used to ensure that the perturbation was truly unexpected. Eleven of 18 healthy young-adult subjects (age 22-30) reached to grasp or touch the rail in response to the balance perturbation. In support of the hypothesis, none of these arm reactions was guided by concurrent visual fixation of the handrail. Seven of the 11 looked at the rail upon first entering the environment, and hence may have used “stored” central-field information about the handrail location to guide the subsequent arm reaction. However, the other four subjects never looked directly at the rail, indicating a complete reliance on peripheral vision. These findings add to previous evidence of distinctions in the CNS control of volitional and perturbation-evoked arm movements. Future studies will determine whether similar visuo-motor behavior occurs when the available handhold is smaller or when subjects are not engaged in a concurrent visuo-cognitive task.     

College Women��s Feminist Identity: A Multidimensional Analysis with Implications for Coping with Sexism

This study examined components of women's feminist identity and possible relations to their reported coping responses to sexism. A sample of 169 undergraduate women (M?=?19.4?y, SD?=?1.2) from diverse ethnic backgrounds completed surveys assessing their experiences and gender-related views. The first set of analyses revealed that women's social gender identity, exposure to feminism, and gender-egalitarian attitudes independently contributed to feminist identification; moreover, non-stereotyping of feminists further predicted feminist self-identification. A second set of analyses tested the relative contribution of feminist identity components to women's cognitive appraisals of coping responses to sexual harassment. Seeking social support was predicted by self-identification as a feminist (for White European American women only). Confronting was predicted by social gender identity, non-stereotyping of feminists, and public identification as a feminist. Findings highlight possible components of women's feminist identity and their possible impact on coping responses to sexism.