Atypical depression: enhanced right hemispheric dominance for perceiving emotional chimeric faces

Two studies compared hemispatial bias for perceiving chimeric faces in patients having either atypical or typical depression and healthy controls. A total of 245 patients having major depressive disorder (MDD) or dysthymia (164 with atypical features) and 115 controls were tested on the Chimeric Faces Test. Atypical depression differed from typical depression and controls in showing abnormally large right hemisphere bias. This was present in patients having either MDD or dysthymia and was not related to anxiety, physical anhedonia, or vegetative symptoms. In contrast, patients having MDD with melancholia showed essentially no right hemisphere bias. This is further evidence that atypical depression is a biologically distinct subtype and underscores the importance of this diagnostic distinction for neurophysiologic studies.     

Crying threshold and intensity in major depressive disorder

Clinical lore suggests that depression is associated with frequent and intense crying. To test these postulations empirically, a standardized cry-evoking stimulus was presented to depressed and nondepressed participants, and their likelihood of crying and the magnitude of crying-related changes in their emotion experience, behavior, and autonomic physiology were compared. Unexpectedly, crying was no more likely in depressed than in nondepressed participants. Within the nondepressed group, participants who cried exhibited increases in the report and display of sadness and had greater cardiac and electrodermal activation than did participants who did not cry. There was less evidence of this crying-related emotional activation within the depressed group. The lack of emotional activation among clinically depressed participants who cried provides a tantalizing clue concerning how emotions are dysregulated in this disorder.     

The fit and implementation of sexual harassment law to workplace evaluations

Three studies used videotaped harassment complaints to examine the impact of legal standards on the evaluation of social-sexual conduct at work. Study 1 demonstrated that without legal instructions, college students' judgment strategies were highly variable. Study 2 compared 2 current legal standards, the "severity or pervasiveness test" and a proposed utilitarian alternative (i.e., the rational woman approach). Undergraduate participants taking the perspective of the complainant were more sensitive to offensive conduct than were those adopting an objective perspective. Although the utilitarian altemative further increased sensitivity on some measures, it failed to produce a principled judgment strategy. Finally, Study 3 examined the kinds of errors that full-time workers make when applying the "severity or pervasiveness" test to examine more closely the sensitivity of the subjective approach.     

Effects of lexicality and distinctiveness on repetition blindness

The repetition blindness (RB) paradigm developed by K. M. Arnell and P. Jolicoeur (1997) was used to examine effects of lexicality (word vs. nonword target pairs) and target distinctiveness on RB. Distinctiveness was manipulated by having both targets (Experiments 1 and 2) or only the first target (Experiment 3) brighter than nontarget items. All 3 experiments demonstrated strong RB for word targets but no RB for nonword targets. This confirms that RB depends on pre-existing memory representations. In fact, there was repetition facilitation for nonwords in Experiments 2 and 3. These experiments also demonstrated that RB is reduced when targets are distinctive. This finding is better understood interms of RB as a failure of memory rather than as a failure of perception.     

The accuracy of abstracts in psychology journals

This article provides an empirically supported reminder of the importance of accuracy in scientific communication. The authors identify common types of inaccuracies in research abstracts and offer suggestions to improve abstract-article agreement. Abstracts accompanying 13% of a random sample of 400 research articles published in 8 American Psychological Association journals during 1997 and 1998 contained data or claims inconsistent with or missing from the body of the article. Error rates ranged from 8% to 18%, although between-journal differences were not significant. Many errors (63%) were unlikely to cause substantive misinterpretations. Unfortunately, 37% of errors found could be seriously misleading with respect to the data or claims presented in the associated article. Although deficient abstracts may be less common in psychology journals than in major medical journals (R. M. Pitkin, M. A. Branagan, & L. F. Burmeister, 1999), there is still cause for concern and need for improvement.     

Background beliefs in Bayesian inference

We report five experiments in which the role of background beliefs in social judgments of posterior probability was investigated. From a Bayesian perspective, people should combine prior probabilities (or base rates) and diagnostic evidence with equal weighting, although previous research shows that base rates are often underweighted. These experiments were designed so that either piece of information was supplied either by personal beliefs or by presented statistics, and regression analyses were performed on individual participants to assess the relative influence of information. We found that both prior probabilities and diagnostic information significantly influenced judgments, whether supplied by beliefs or by statistical information, but that belief-based information tended to dominate the judgments made.     

How (and where) does moral judgment work?

Moral psychology has long focused on reasoning, but recent evidence suggests that moral judgment is more a matter of emotion and affective intuition than deliberate reasoning. Here we discuss recent findings in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, including several studies that specifically investigate moral judgment. These findings indicate the importance of affect, although they allow that reasoning can play a restricted but significant role in moral judgment. They also point towards a preliminary account of the functional neuroanatomy of moral judgment, according to which many brain areas make important contributions to moral judgment although none is devoted specifically to it.     

Sex differences and estropausal phase effects on water maze performance in aged rats

An age-related decline in memory has been reported in male rats; however, there are few studies that have addressed these changes in aged female rats. In young female rats, hormonal cycles influence behavior. By the age of 22 months most female rats have not had regular hormonal cycles for at least 9 months. In the current study we examined how the hormonal status (persistent estrus and pseudo-pregnant) of the aged (22-24 months) female rat (Long Evans) influenced performance on a spatial version of the Morris water maze and compared this to aged male rats. Aged females in persistent estrus showed better performance on the water maze than both aged females that were pseudopregnant and aged males. Thus, postestropausal hormonal status may influence the course of aging in females.