Psychopathic personality traits and temporal perspective: A test of the short time horizon hypothesis

A number of authors have proposed that psychopathic individuals possess an abnormally constricted time horizon (i.e., foreshortened sense of the future). This hypothesis was tested among 101 undergraduates, who were administered a battery of (1) self-report indices of psychopathic personality traits, antisocial behavior, and normal-range personality traits; (2) self-report indices of time perspective; (3) projective tests of time perspective; and (4) laboratory tasks assessing time estimation and capacity for foresight and impulse control. Measures of psychopathy/antisocial behavior tended to be negatively correlated with several self-report indices assessing preoccupation with the future and with a projective task assessing the frequency of thoughts concerning future events, although only one of the correlations with this latter task was significant. In most cases these correlations were not attributable to the variance shared by measures of psychopathy/antisocial behavior and measures of (low) anxiety-proneness, although several correlations decreased substantially after levels of harmavoidance were controlled. In contrast, measures of psychopathy/antisocial behavior were negligibly correlated with laboratory tasks. These results provide mixed support for the short time horizon hypothesis and suggest that further attention to the role of method factors in investigations of future time perspective is warranted.     

Is fluency free-operant response-response chaining?

This article briefly reviews behavioral fluency and its 10 products. Fluency development requires three of the four free-operant freedoms: the freedom to present stimuli at the learner's rhythm, the freedom to form the response, and the freedom to speed at the learner's maximum frequency. The article closes with several suggestions that fluent performing is really operant response-response (R-R) chaining, and recommends further controlled laboratory research on free-operant R-R chaining.     

Aging and maintaining intentions over delays: do it or lose it

When execution of retrieved intentions must be briefly delayed, older adults display deficits in performing those intentions (G. O. Einstein, M. A. McDaniel, M. Manzi, B. Cochran, & M. Baker, 2000). This initial finding was extended by showing age-related deficits with 5-s unfilled delays, with instructions to rehearse during the delay, and with divided attention during initial retrieval of the intention. Performance increased with a break at the end of the delay period, such that when combined with full attention (during retrieval), older adults' performance approached that of younger adults. These results suggest that age compromises maintenance of information in awareness. Consequently, when forced to delay execution of retrieved intentions, older adults may rely more on plan reformulation and subsequent retrieval of the intention from long-term memory at the end of the delay.     

Comorbidity between and within childhood externalizing and internalizing disorders: reflections and directions

The term and concept of lcomorbidity has been mired in controversy, although there is little question that the existence of covariation among psychiatric diagnoses poses significant challenges to current models of psychiatric classification and diagnosis. The papers in this Special Section underscore a number of important issues relevant to the comorbidity between and within childhood externalizing and internalizing disorders, and illustrate both methodological and substantive reasons for such comorbidity. Weiss, Susser, and Catron's distinction among common, broad-band specific, and narrow-band specific features provides a helpful framework for understanding the comorbidity of childhood externalizing and internalizing disorders (B, Weiss, K. Susser, & T. Catron, 1998). Hierarchical models of psychopathology help to dissolve the distinction between splitters and lumpers and point to variables that may elucidate the etiology of externalizing and internalizing disorders.     

Behavioral treatment of insomnia in older adults: an open clinical trial comparing two interventions

Fifty-five insomniacs, 60 years or above, participated in a behavioral treatment program, comparing two interventions (sleep hygiene+stimulus control vs sleep hygiene+relaxation tape). Half of the subjects were randomized to a waiting-list condition prior to treatment. No significant changes were observed during the waiting-list period. During the treatment period however, the subjects improved on several sleep parameters, and treatment gains were maintained at a 6-month follow-up. The effects of treatment were greater for nocturnal measures (e.g. sleep onset latency and total sleep time) as compared to daytime measures (e.g. life satisfaction, daytime alertness) and not-targeted behavior (medication use). There were no differences in treatment effects for the two interventions.     

Emotion dysregulation and adolescent psychopathology: a prospective study

Background

Emotion regulation deficits have been consistently linked to psychopathology in cross-sectional studies. However, the direction of the relationship between emotion regulation and psychopathology is unclear. This study examined the longitudinal and reciprocal relationships between emotion regulation deficits and psychopathology in adolescents.

Methods

Emotion dysregulation and symptomatology (depression, anxiety, aggressive behavior, and eating pathology) were assessed in a large, diverse sample of adolescents (N = 1065) at two time points separated by seven months. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the longitudinal and reciprocal relationships between emotion dysregulation and symptoms of psychopathology.

Results

The three distinct emotion processes examined here (emotional understanding, dysregulated expression of sadness and anger, and ruminative responses to distress) formed a unitary latent emotion dysregulation factor. Emotion dysregulation predicted increases in anxiety symptoms, aggressive behavior, and eating pathology after controlling for baseline symptoms but did not predict depressive symptoms. In contrast, none of the four types of psychopathology predicted increases in emotion dysregulation after controlling for baseline emotion dysregulation.

Conclusions

Emotion dysregulation appears to be an important transdiagnostic factor that increases risk for a wide range of psychopathology outcomes in adolescence. These results suggest targets for preventive interventions during this developmental period of risk.     

An exploratory study of syncretic experience: eidetics, synaesthesia and absorption.

Synaesthesia and eidetic imagery are both syncretic experiences entailing a dedifferentiation of perceptual qualities. In this paper the correlation between synaesthesia and eidetic imagery is explored. Ten subjects selected for possible eidetic and/or synaesthetic ability were tested in a battery of tasks that tap structural and typographic eidetic imagery, and colour-hearing and colour-mood synaesthesia. It was found that both structural and typographic eidetic imagery were correlated with measures of synaesthesia, indicating a relationship between the two phenomena.     

Cocaine-induced brainstem seizures and behavior.

A variety of abnormal sensory/motor behaviors associated with electrical discharges recorded from the bilateral brainstem were induced in adult WKY rats by mechanical (electrode implants) and DC electrical current stimulations and by acute and chronic administration of cocaine. The electrode implant implicated one side or the other of the reticular system of the brainstem but subjects were not incapacitated by the stimulations. Cocaine (40 mg/kg) was injected subcutaneously for an acute experiment and subsequent 20 mg/kg doses twice daily for 3 days in a chronic study. Cocaine generated more abnormal behaviors in the brainstem perturbation group, especially the electrically perturbated subjects. The abnormal behaviors were yawning, retrocollis, hyperactivity, hypersensitivity, "beating drum" behavior, squealing, head bobbing, circling, sniffing, abnormal posturing, and facial twitching. Shifts in the power frequency spectra of the discharge patterns were noted between quiet and pacing behavioral states. Hypersensitivity to various auditory, tactile, and visual stimulation was present and shifts in the brainstem ambient power spectral frequency occurred in response to tactile stimulation. These findings suggest that the brainstem generates and propagates pathological discharges that can be elicited by mechanical and DC electrical perturbation. Cocaine was found to activate the discharge system and thus induce abnormal behaviors that are generated at the discharge site and at distant sites to which the discharge propagates. Cognitive functions may also be involved since dopaminergic and serotonergic cellular elements at the brainstem level are also implicated.