Social anxiety and interpretation of ambiguous smiles

This study investigated whether social anxiety facilitates the discrimination between genuine and ambiguous smiles. Socially anxious (N=20) and nonanxious (N=20) participants categorized as “happy” or “not happy” faces with either (1) a truly happy expression (i.e., happy eyes and a smile), (2) truly nonhappy expressions (e.g., angry eyes and an angry mouth), or (3) blended expressions with a smiling mouth and nonhappy (e.g., angry, sad, etc.) eyes. Results indicated that, relative to nonanxious participants, those high in social anxiety were more likely to judge as “not happy” any blended expression with nonhappy eyes, and they were faster in judging as “not happy” the blended expressions with angry, fearful, or disgusted eyes (but not those with sad, surprised, or neutral eyes). These results suggest, respectively, that social anxiety inhibits a benign interpretation of all the ambiguous expressions with a smile, and speeds up the detection of threatening eyes in such expressions. Importantly, no differences appeared as a function of social anxiety for truly happy or nonhappy faces. This rules out a response-bias explanation, and also reveals that social anxiety does not affect sensitivity in the recognition of prototypical expressions.     

‘Comparisons of traumatic and positive memories in people with and without PTSD profile’

According to most post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) theories, memory mechanisms are involved in its development and maintenance. However, the specific memory characteristics responsible for this disorder are still not well known. In the present study, 210 participants having reported at least one traumatic experience were assigned to a PTSD or to a non‐PTSD symptom profile group. Both groups rated their memories for their most traumatic and intense positive life events. We observed that the traumatic memories of PTSD profile participants were more clear, detailed and judged as significant compared with those of the non‐PTSD profile group. However, participants in the first group acknowledged having more difficulties putting their traumatic memories into words and controlling these remembrances. These differences were absent in their positive memories. Additionally, clear relationships emerged between memory ratings and PTSD symptoms measures. Results are discussed according to fragmentation and superiority views of traumatic memories in PTSD. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Differential effects of muscarinic receptor blockade in prelimbic cortex on acquisition and memory formation of an odor-reward task

The present experiments determined the consequences of blocking muscarinic cholinergic receptors of the prelimbic (PL) cortex in the acquisition and retention of an odor-reward associative task. Rats underwent a training test (five trials) and a 24-h retention test (two retention trials and two relearning trials). In the first experiment, rats were bilaterally infused with scopolamine (20 or 5 microg/site) prior to training. Although scopolamine rats showed acquisition equivalent to PBS-injected controls, they exhibited weakened performance in the 24-h retention test measured by number of errors. In the second experiment, rats were injected with scopolamine (20 microg/site) immediately or 1 h after training and tested 24 h later. Scopolamine rats injected immediately showed severe amnesia detected in two performance measures (errors and latencies), demonstrating deficits in retention and relearning, whereas those injected 1 h later showed good 24-h test performance, similar to controls. These results suggest that muscarinic transmission in the PL cortex is essential for early memory formation, but not for acquisition, of a rapidly learned odor discrimination task. Findings corroborate the role of acetylcholine in consolidation processes and the participation of muscarinic receptors in olfactory associative tasks.     

The effect of achievement goals on enjoyment, effort, satisfaction and performance

This study examined the effect of achievement goals and achievement emotions on sport satisfaction, performance and effort among competitive athletes. Participants were 200 athletes. Structural equation modeling was used to test the indirect effect of mastery-approach goals on satisfaction with sport experience and performance, the direct effect of mastery-approach goals on enjoyment and effort, the direct effect of performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals on performance, and the direct effect of mastery-avoidance goals on effort. Results showed a positive direct effect of mastery-approach goals on enjoyment and an indirect effect, through enjoyment, on satisfaction, performance, and effort. We did not find support for the hypothesized effect of performance-approach or performance-avoidance goals on performance. The applied implications of endorsing mastery-approach goals are discussed.     

Mapping across Domains Without Feedback: A Neural Network Model of Transfer of Implicit Knowledge

This paper shows how a neural network can model the way people who have acquired knowledge of an artificial grammar in one perceptual domain (e.g., sequences of tones differing in pitch) can apply the knowledge to a quite different perceptual domain (e.g., sequences of letters). It is shown that a version of the Simple Recurrent Network (SRN) can transfer its knowledge of artificial grammars across domains without feedback. The performance of the model is sensitive to at least some of the same variables that affect subjects' performance—for example, the model is responsive to both the grammaticality of test sequences and their similarity to training sequences, to the cover task used during training, and to whether training is on bigrams or larger sequences.