When your heart is in your mouth: the effect of second language use on negative emotions

Research on bilingualism and emotions has shown stronger emotional responses in the native language (L1) compared to a foreign language. We investigated the potential of purposeful second language (L2) use as a means of decreasing the experience of psychological distress. Native Swedish speakers read and answered questions about negative and neutral texts in their L1 (Swedish) and their L2 (English) and were asked to rate their level of distress before or after the questions. The texts and associated questions were either written in the same (within-language), or different languages (cross-language). We found that within-language trials when the text was written in participants’ native language (Swedish–Swedish) resulted in an increase of distress, whilst cross-language trials (Swedish–English) resulted in a decrease of distress. This implies that purposeful second language use can diminish levels of distress experienced following a negative event encoded in one's first language.     

Beziehungsmuster und Beziehungskonflikte

Zusammenfassung  Die Veränderung pathogenetisch bedeutsamer Beziehungsmuster gilt als wesentliches psychotherapeutisches Behandlungsziel. Um zielgerichtete Veränderungen von Beziehungsstrukturen zu erreichen, bedarf es sowohl einer Diagnostik und Beschreibung solcher Beziehungsmuster, einer darauf zielenden Behandlungstechnik als auch einer Verlaufskontrolle und Evaluation der angestrebten Veränderungen. Nach einem Überblick über verschiedene Methoden zur Erfassung von Beziehungsmustern wird die Methode des Zentralen-Beziehungskonflikt-Themas (ZBKT) von Luborsky näher beschrieben; ausgewählte Ergebnisse der ZBKT-Forschung werden dargestellt und die Methode kritisch bewertet.

Physical activity,motor ability,and school readiness of 6-yr.-old children

The aim of this investigation was to study the relationships between physical activity, motor ability, and school readiness in 6-yr.-old children. In total, 294 healthy children from Tartu were studied (161 boys and 133 girls). The physical activity of children was reported by parents and teachers using the questionnaire of Harro. The motor ability of children was evaluated using various tests from the Eurofit test battery as well as the 3-min. endurance shuttle run test. The Controlled Drawing Observation rest was used as a predictor of school readiness and development of mental abilities. Indoor physical activities predicted 19-25% of total variance in motor scores for these preschool children. Motor ability tests, which demand children's total attention and concentration, appear related to the chosen measures of school readiness.     

Personality,mental distress,and risk perception in subjects with multiple chemical sensitivity and toxic encephalopathy

Personality, mental distress, and risk perception were assessed in (a) cases of multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS; n = 17), (b) chemically intolerant toxic encephalopathy cases (TE), type 2A (n = 31) and 2B (n = 26), and (c) healthy referents (n = 200). MCS cases showed elevated mental distress scores on the Depression, Interpersonal Sensitivity, Global Severity Index, and Somatization scales in the Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90). In the Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP) the MCS group showed an elevation only on the Psychasthenia scale. Both TE groups showed elevations across the KSP anxiety scales Muscular Tension, Psychasthenia, and Somatic Anxiety. TE type 2B subjects also showed elevations on the Irritability and Indirect Aggression scales. However, neither MCS nor TE groups showed deviating personality characteristics in the Meta Contrast Technique test. Similarly, none of the groups deviated from referents in a risk perception inventory.     

The effect of sensitization and coping style on post-traumatic stress symptoms and quality of life: two longitudinal studies

The present study investigated the effects of multiple trauma exposure and coping style on post-traumatic stress symptoms and quality of life. It was hypothesized that sensitization would occur in subjects repeatedly exposed to life-threatening situations (study 1), and different coping styles would act as a resilience or facilitating factor in symptom development (study 2). The results showed that the single-exposure group revealed a decrease in trauma specific stress reactions from three weeks to four months, with a persistent reduction at 12-month follow-up, while the repeated-exposure group showed an increase in symptom reporting over the 12-month period. The same pattern emerged for perceived quality of life-measured by the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-30). The second study revealed a correlation between scores on avoidant-focused coping style and the Impact of Event Scale-avoidance dimension, Post-traumatic Symptom Scale and GHQ-30. Furthermore, only subjects with a dominant coping style of emotion-focused or task-focused coping showed a reduction in trauma-specific symptom scores over time.     

Processing of temporal duration information in working memory after frontodorsal tumour excisions

This study aimed to test the hypothesis that impairments of temporal duration processing after frontal lobe lesions reflect deficits in executive monitoring functions rather than a domain-specific deficit in the maintenance of duration information in working memory. Patients with frontodorsal lesions, clinical controls with post-central lesions, and healthy controls performed recognition and classification tasks, which should allow for testing maintenance and monitoring functions, respectively. Results showed mild non-selective impairments of the frontal patients on both temporal and spatial recognition tasks, but a marked selective degradation on temporal classification while performance on spatial classification was unimpaired. This suggests that maintenance of duration information in working memory after frontal lesions is basically preserved but that, depending on executive task characteristics, there is a specific deficit in the strategic organization of this type of information.     

Division of the corpus callosum into subregions

Various attempts have been made to subdivide the corpus callosum (CC) into anatomically and functionally distinct subareas. A promising current approach is the use of factor analytic techniques in conjunction with traced MRI images. The traced images are divided into 99 percentile slices, where the widths of the percentile slices are used as variables that are entered into the analysis (Denenberg, Kertesz & Cowell, 1991). Studies that use this technique agree broadly between 6 and 7 factors, but available factor solutions contain inconsistencies and large gaps, which arise when many of the percentile slices do not load appreciably on any of the factors. The present study uses a larger number of brains (N = 184), all normalized, and some methodological refinements in the analysis of the traced MRI images of the CC. A stable 7 factor solution was found, and the factor structure for males and females was very similar.     

Semantic generation can cause episodic forgetting

The repeated retrieval of a subset of previously learned items can cause forgetting of the nonretrieved items. The study reported here investigated whether retrieval-induced forgetting generalizes to a situation in which the retrieved and nonretrieved items are not part of the same experiential episode and task. Subjects learned an item list that they had to recall later in the experiment. In a separate intermediate phase, they repeatedly generated related items from semantic memory, or were presented the same items intact for study. Only the semantic generation of items, and not their presentation for study, induced forgetting of the initially learned items. This result indicates that, first, semantic generation can cause recall-specific episodic forgetting and, second, retrieval-induced forgetting can occur even if the retrieved and nonretrieved items belong to different experiential episodes and tasks. Connections of the present results to other memory phenomena, such as part-set cuing and the generation effect, social cognition, and eyewitness memory, are discussed.     

The myth of technology in health care

Technology is believed to have liberated health care from dogmas, myths and speculations of earlier times. However, we are accused of using technology in an excessive, futile and even detrimental way, as if technology is compelling our actions. It appears to be like the monster threatening Dr. Frankenstein or like the socerer’s broom in the hand of the apprentice. That is, the same technology that should liberate us from myths, appears to be mythical. The objective of this article is to investigate the background for the re-entrance of the myth: How we encounter it and how we can explain it. The main point is that a myth of technology is normative: it relates ‘is’ and ‘ought’ and directs our actions. This becomes particularly clear in health care. Hence, if there is a myth of technology, it is an ethical issue, and should be taken seriously.     

Attribution of aggression to acts: a four-factor model

Factors determining why acts are regarded as aggressive were investigated in a sample of 303 subjects (140 males, 163 females, M age = 17.7 yr., SD = 1.4). A model was tested, according to which people base their attribution of aggression to acts on four factors: (1) intention (yes/no), (2) reason (attack/defense), (3) injury (death/injury/no injury), and (4) mode (weapon/bare hands/nonphysical means). All four factors contributed to the explanation of attribution of aggression, and the order of importance was the one mentioned above, intention being most important. The interaction between intention and reason was the second most important, contributing more than reason alone. The findings are consistent with the severity of punishment in sentences for different crimes of violence.