Adolescent risk-taking is predicted by individual differences in cognitive control over emotional,but not non-emotional,response conflict

While much research on adolescent risk behaviour has focused on the development of prefrontal self-regulatory mechanisms, prior studies have elicited mixed evidence of a relationship between individual differences in the capacity for self-regulation and individual differences in risk taking. To explain these inconsistent findings, it has been suggested that the capacity for self-regulation may be, for most adolescents, adequately mature to produce adaptive behaviour in non-affective, “cold” circumstances, but that adolescents have a more difficult time exerting control in affective, “hot” contexts. To further explore this claim, the present study examined individual differences in self-control in the face of affective and non-affective response conflict, and examined whether differences in the functioning of cognitive control processes under these different conditions was related to risk taking. Participants completed a cognitive Stroop task, an emotional Stroop task, and a risky driving task known as the Stoplight game. Regression analyses showed that performance on the emotional Stroop task predicted laboratory risk-taking in the driving task, whereas performance on the cognitive Stroop task did not exhibit the same trend. This pattern of results is consistent with theories of adolescent risk-taking that emphasise the impacts of affective contextual influences on the ability to enact effective cognitive control.     

Indira Gandhi: The Relationship between Personality Profile and Leadership Style

This article explores the relationship between Indira Gandhi's personality profile in the period before she became Prime Minister and her leadership style during the time she was Prime Minister. The instrument for assessing the personality profile was compiled and adapted from criteria for normal personality types and pathological variants. Gandhi emerges as a multifaceted individual with four of her personality scales—the Ambitious, the Reticent, the Contentious, and the Dominating—approaching the level of mildly dysfunctional. A psychodynamic explanation for these patterns was then offered. This study also developed an instrument for evaluating leadership styles in a cabinet system of government and postulated the theoretical links between personality patterns and leadership style profiles. Gandhi's leadership style was then examined and links between personality profile and leadership style explored: In eight of the 10 leadership categories, Indira Gandhi's leadership behavior matched our expectations for the Ambitious, Dominant, and Contentious personality profiles but not the Reticent one. Further discussion focused on the two areas in which personality patterns fell short of predicting leadership style and the possible explanations for this result.     

The speed of recognition of personally familiar faces

Despite the generally accepted notion that humans are very good and fast at recognising familiar individuals from their faces, the actual speed with which this fundamental brain function can be achieved remains largely unknown. Here, two groups of participants were required to respond by finger-lift when presented with either a photograph of a personally familiar face (classmate), or an unfamiliar one. This speeded manual go/no-go categorisation task revealed that personally familiar faces could be categorised as early as 380 ms after presentation, about 80 ms faster than unfamiliar faces. When response times were averaged across all 8 stimulus presentations, we found that minimum RTs for both familiar and unfamiliar face decisions were substantially lower (310 ms and 370 ms). Analyses confirmed that stimulus repetition enhanced the speed with which faces were categorised, irrespective of familiarity, and that repetition did not affect the observed benefit in RTS for familiar over unfamiliar faces. These data, representing the elapsed time from stimulus onset to motor output, put constraints on the time course of familiar face recognition in the human brain, which can be tracked more precisely by high temporal resolution electrophysiological measures.     

Examination of the Relationship Between Perfectionism and Religiosity as Mediated by Psychological Inflexibility

A relationship between perfectionism and religiosity has been suggested in the literature, and this relationship is clarified further when the adaptive and maladaptive dimensions of both constructs are compared. Literature in both areas implicates the idea of a rigid and inflexible personality style that may explain why well meaning high standards can be associated with negative outcomes such as perfectionism. This investigation examined the relationship of perfectionism and religiosity, using adaptive and maladaptive dimensions, as mediated by psychological inflexibility. Validated measures of perfectionism, religiosity, and psychological inflexibility were given to 376 undergraduate college students in an anonymous online survey. Adaptive perfectionism (high standards) was found to be significantly correlated (r = .26, p < .01, two-tailed) with adaptive religiosity (intrinsic orientation). Maladaptive perfectionism (discrepancy) was found to be significantly correlated (r = .13, p < .05, two-tailed) with maladaptive religiosity (extrinsic orientation). Psychological inflexibility was found to be significantly correlated with the maladaptive dimensions of both perfectionism and religiosity. It was also shown to mediate the relationship between maladaptive (extrinsic) religiosity and maladaptive (discrepancy) perfectionism. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Cultural ruptures in short‐term therapy: Working alliance as a mediator between clients' perceptions of microaggressions and therapy outcomes

Aim: To determine whether or not clients' perceptions of microaggressions varied based on their own and the therapist's race/ethnicity and whether or not they would be negatively related to the effectiveness of therapy and if the working alliance would mediate this effect. Method: The study utilised a cross‐sectional, retrospective, methodology. Clients were recruited from a large university counselling centre in the United States (N=232 clients and 29 therapists). Results: Neither clients' race/ethnicity, therapists’ race/ethnicity, nor client‐therapist ethnic matching predicted perceptions of microaggressions. Clients' ratings of microaggressions were negatively associated with their psychological wellbeing; however, this effect was mediated by clients' ratings of the working alliance. Implications: Therapists should take into account the cultural messages they may be conveying to both white and racial/ethnic minority clients. Therapists should develop strategies that are consistent with a general therapeutic approach that promotes discussions about culture with their clients and, most importantly, should attend to the therapeutic relationship.     

Quantifying variability in phase portraits: application to gait ontogeny

We describe new Fourier- and shape-based methods for quantifying variation in phase-portraits, and re-analyze previously-published ontogenetic and adult data [Clark, J. E., & Phillips, S. J. (1993). A longitudinal study of intralimb coordination in the first year of independent walking: A dynamical systems approach. Child Development, 64, 1143–1157]. Results show considerable variation between individuals and through development, but after 6 months of walking some gait patterns stabilize.     

Spatial memory during progressive disorientation

Human spatial representations of object locations in a room-sized environment were probed for evidence that the object locations were encoded relative not just to the observer (egocentrically) but also to each other (allocentrically). Participants learned the locations of 4 objects and then were blindfolded and either (a) underwent a succession of 70 degrees and 200 degrees whole-body rotations or (b) were fully disoriented and then underwent a similar sequence of 70 degrees and 200 degrees rotations. After each rotation, participants pointed to the objects without vision. Analyses of the pointing errors suggest that as participants lost orientation, represented object directions generally "drifted" off of their true directions as an ensemble, not in random, unrelated directions. This is interpreted as evidence that object-to-object (allocentric) relationships play a large part in the human spatial updating system. However, there was also some evidence that represented object directions occasionally drifted off of their true directions independently of one another, suggesting a lack of allocentric influence. Implications regarding the interplay of egocentric and allocentric information are considered.     

Don’t Ever Do That! Long-term Duties in <Emphasis Type="Italic">PD</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">e</Emphasis></Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis>

This paper studies long-term norms concerning actions. In Meyer’s Propositional Deontic Logic (PD _e L), only immediate duties can be expressed, however, often one has duties of longer durations such as: “Never do that”, or “Do this someday”. In this paper, we will investigate how to amend PD _e L so that such long-term duties can be expressed. This leads to the interesting and suprising consequence that the long-term prohibition and obligation are not interdefinable in our semantics, while there is a duality between these two notions. As a consequence, we have provided a new analysis of the long-term obligation by introducing a new atomic proposition I (indebtedness) to represent the condition that an agent has some unfulfilled obligation. Presented by Jacek Malinowski     

Auditory event perception: The source—perception loop for posture in human gait

There is a small but growing literature on the perception of natural acoustic events, but few attempts have been made to investigate complex sounds not systematically controlled within a laboratory setting. The present study investigates listeners’ ability to make judgments about the posture (upright—stooped) of the walker who generated acoustic stimuli contrasted on each trial. We use a comprehensive three-stage approach to event perception, in which we develop a solid understanding of the source event and its sound properties, as well as the relationships between these two event stages. Developing this understanding helps both to identify the limitations of common statistical procedures and to develop effective new procedures for investigating not only the two information stages above, but also the decision strategies employed by listeners in making source judgments from sound. The result is a comprehensive, ultimately logical, but not necessarily expected picture of both the source—sound—perception loop and the utility of alternative research tools.