Pain-related anxiety and marijuana use motives: a pilot test among active marijuana-using young adults

The present investigation examined pain-related anxiety in regard to marijuana use motives among a sample of young adult marijuana users (N = 180; 45% women; M(age) = 21.11 years, SD = 6.41). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to determine the relations between pain-related anxiety and marijuana use motives. After controlling for current marijuana use frequency (past 30 days), daily cigarette smoking rate, current rate of alcohol consumption, level of bodily pain (current), and other marijuana use motives, pain-related anxiety was significantly and uniquely associated with coping and conformity motives for marijuana use. Pain-related anxiety was not significantly related to other marijuana use motives. These results offer novel empirical insight pertaining to a relation between pain-related anxiety and coping as well as conformity motives for marijuana use among active users.     

Decision support for real-time, dynamic decision-making tasks

By definition, dynamic decision making dictates that multiple and interrelated decisions be made in a continuously changing environment. Such decision making is difficult and often taxes individuals’ cognitive resources. Here I investigated ways in which to support decision making in these environments. I evaluated three forms of decision support: outcome feedback, cognitive feedback, and feedforward that incorporated (to varying degrees) common features of learning theories associated with dynamic tasks. Participants in a laboratory experiment performed a real-time, dynamic decision-making task while receiving one of the different types of decision support. During the first 2 days, individuals received one type of decision support, but on the third day they performed the task without this support. Participants who received feedforward improved their performance considerably and continued to exhibit improved performance even after discontinuation of the decision support on the third day. Neither outcome feedback nor cognitive feedback resulted in improved performance. More research is necessary to conclusively identify the best forms of dynamic decision-making support and their durability when transferred to new tasks.     

A cross‐cultural study of environmental belief structures in USA,Japan, Mexico,and Peru

Throughout history, the way in which people conceive nature/human relationships has dramatically changed, and different cultures also have divergent notions regarding the role humans play in nature. In Western societies a “new environmental paradigm” (NEP) of ecological nature has apparently replaced the old “human exception paradigm” (HEP), which conceives of humans as being superior and apart from nature. Previous research has shown that, in those societies, a marked dichotomy exist between these two apparently contradictory paradigms, meaning that people who accept the NEP reject the HEP. Countries other than Western ones also exhibit a bias towards the ecological paradigm; however, their world‐views are not necessarily dualistic, since they may adhere to the NEP and, simultaneously, believe that human beings are “special.” This study compares world‐views in four different countries. Responses of 1358 undergraduates from USA, Japan, Mexico, and Peru to the HEP and the NEP scale were analysed to see if they confirmed three factors previously found: (1) a vision of separation from nature (HEP), (2) a necessary “balance” between human needs and nature preservation, and (3) the need to impose “limits” on the human impact on nature. This trifactorial structure was tested using confirmatory factor analysis. USA students exhibited two dimensions (HEP‐NEP) and the other samples showed the expected three factors, although they intercorrelated differentially, depending on the national sample. In all samples “balance” and “limits” were positively correlated. In the Peruvian and Japanese samples the HEP and “balance” were negatively correlated while the USA sample produced a negative covariance between HEP and NEP. In the Japanese sample HEP and “limits” were uncorrelated but in Peru these factors covaried negatively, while in the Mexican sample they were positively correlated. The HEP‐NEP two‐factor structure would seem to be limited to Western nations. More countries need to be measured.     

Whose Metaphysics of Presence? Heidegger's Interpretation of Energeia and Dunamis in Aristotle

In the recently published 1924 course, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, Martin Heidegger offers a detailed interpretation of Aristotle's definition of kinesis in the Physics. This interpretation identifies entelecheia with what is finished and present‐at‐an‐end and energeia with being‐at‐work toward this end. In arguing against this interpretation, the present paper attempts to show that Aristotle interpreted being from the perspective of praxis rather than poiesis and therefore did not identify it with static presence. The paper also challenges later variations of Heidegger's interpretation, in particular his account of dunamis in the 1931 course on Metaphysics Theta, which insists that its mode of being is presence‐at‐hand. By arguing that this reading too is untenable, the paper concludes that Aristotle's metaphysics is not a metaphysics of presence and that his texts instead point toward a possibility of metaphysics ignored by the attempts of Heidegger and others to overcome it.     

Development of eye-movement control

Cognitive control of behavior continues to improve through adolescence in parallel with important brain maturational processes including synaptic pruning and myelination, which allow for efficient neuronal computations and the functional integration of widely distributed circuitries supporting top-down control of behavior. This is also a time when psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and mood disorders, emerge reflecting a particularly vulnerability to impairments in development during adolescence. Oculomotor studies provide a unique neuroscientific approach to make precise associations between cognitive control and brain circuitry during development that can inform us of impaired systems in psychopathology. In this review, we first describe the development of pursuit, fixation, and visually-guided saccadic eye movements, which collectively indicate early maturation of basic sensorimotor processes supporting reflexive, exogenously-driven eye movements. We then describe the literature on the development of the cognitive control of eye movements as reflected in the ability to inhibit a prepotent eye movement in the antisaccade task, as well as making an eye movement guided by on-line spatial information in working memory in the oculomotor delayed response task. Results indicate that the ability to make eye movements in a voluntary fashion driven by endogenous plans shows a protracted development into adolescence. Characterizing the transition through adolescence to adult-level cognitive control of behavior can inform models aimed at understanding the neurodevelopmental basis of psychiatric disorders.     

Culture and aesthetic preference: comparing the attention to context of East Asians and Americans

Prior research indicates that East Asians are more sensitive to contextual information than Westerners. This article explored aesthetics to examine whether cultural variations were observable in art and photography. Study 1 analyzed traditional artistic styles using archival data in representative museums. Study 2 investigated how contemporary East Asians and Westerners draw landscape pictures and take portrait photographs. Study 3 further investigated aesthetic preferences for portrait photographs. The results suggest that (a) traditional East Asian art has predominantly context-inclusive styles, whereas Western art has predominantly object-focused styles, and (b) contemporary members of East Asian and Western cultures maintain these culturally shaped aesthetic orientations. The findings can be explained by the relation among attention, cultural resources, and aesthetic preference.     

Head-putter coordination patterns in expert and less skilled golfers

The authors examined the patterns of expert and less skilled golfers in putting on an indoor surface to 1 of 3 circular targets (1, 3, and 5 m away) in trials with a ball present (and putted) or not present (a practice stroke). As expected, the experts performed better than the less skilled golfers on a large number of outcome and kinematic measures. Displacement and velocity profiles of the head and putter revealed high positive correlations for the less skilled golfers, indicating a dominant allocentric coordination pattern, but high negative correlations for the expert golfers, indicating a dominant egocentric coordination pattern. The observed coordination patterns did not interact with the distance of the intended putt or the presence/absence of a ball. These findings offer preliminary evidence that, although contrary to traditional beliefs, fundamental differences exist in putting coordination modes between expert and less skilled golfers.     

Social representations and intergroup conflicts: Who's smoking here?

We studied the influence of explicitating a social conflict between smokers and nonsmokers on the social representations held about tobacco. Two representations were found: a psychological' representation which was defined by psychological explanations of the causes of beginning to smoke, a characterization of smokers as psychologically disturbed, and negative feelings towards smokers; a second defensive representation which attributes smoking to social factors, and hold both a positive stereotype of smokers and positive feelings towards smokers. The percentage of smokers who adhere to the defensive representation increased significantly when the conflict was made salient. Non-smokers were not influenced by the explicitation of the social conflict. The structure of each representation was analyzed. It was found that in the psychological' representation the structuring element was the negative stereotype of smokers. By contrast, the structuring element in the defensive representation was identification with smokers. The implicatlons of this data for theories of both intergroup relations and social representations are discussed.