Common and Unique Factors Associated with DSM-IV-TR Internalizing Disorders in Children

With the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders DSM-IV Fourth Edition-Text Revision. Author, Washington, DC. 2000) ahead, decisions will be made about the future of taxonomic conceptualizations. This study examined the factor structure of items from three internalizing disorders (Social Phobia, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Depression) on the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM-IV-Child Version (Silverman, W. K., & Albano, A. M. Anxiety disorders interview schedule for children for DSM-IV, child and parent versions. Psychological Corporation, San Antonio, 1996). Two-, three-, and four-factor models emerged in an exploratory factor analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis provided additional empirical support for the four-factor model over the two- or three-factor models. Implications for the structure of the DSM-V taxonomy in children and adolescents are discussed.     

Seeing the Forest Beyond the Trees: A Construal‐Level Approach to Self‐Control

Self‐control failure is a ubiquitous and troubling problem people face. This article reviews psychological models of self‐control and describes a new integrative approach based on construal level theory (e.g., Trope & Liberman, 2003 ). This construal‐level perspective proposes that people's subjective mental construals or representations of events impacts self‐control. Specifically, more abstract, global (high‐level) construals promote self‐control success, whereas more concrete, local (low‐level) construals tend to lead to self‐control failure. That is, self‐control is promoted when people see the proverbial forest beyond the trees. This article surveys research findings that demonstrate that construing events at high‐level versus low‐level construals promotes self‐control. This article also discusses how a construal‐level perspective promotes understanding of self‐control failures.     

Inhibition in Goal Systems: A Retrieval-Induced Forgetting Account

In social psychological models of goals, particular means or goals that receive more activation are pursued while their counterparts are “inhibited.” To account for inhibition, these theories emphasize structural distribution of resources and the consequences of goal or means choices. Absent are alternate accounts of inhibition based on memory processes that rely on retrieval or recall of items. We propose that the act of recalling means or goals from memory entails inhibition of competing alternatives. Two experiments using repeated retrieval paradigms present evidence that recalling one means associated with a particular goal inhibits competing means. Moreover, this inhibitory mechanism is sensitive to the structural relationship of goals and means. Implications for models of inhibition in goal pursuit are discussed.     

Differences in adrenocortical secretory and gene expression responses to stimulation in vitro by ACTH or prolactin between high- and low-avoidance Hatano rats

Rats of the Hatano high-avoidance (HAA) and low-avoidance (LAA) strains have been genetically selected on the basis of their two-way active avoidance behavior, and have different endocrine responses to stress. The present study focused on the adrenal steroid hormone responses of the Hatano strains and identifies differences in regulation of the adrenal cortex in vitro of HAA and LAA rats. Although incubation with prolactin (PRL) and/or adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) resulted in a dose-dependent increase of corticosterone and progesterone release by adrenal cells from both HAA and LAA male rats, the responses were markedly increased for adrenal cells from LAA rats as compared with HAA rats. This finding suggested that adrenal glands of HAA rats are less sensitive to PRL and/or ACTH than adrenals from LAA rats. Several possible intra-adrenal regulators were investigated. The basal level of expression of steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (StAR) and the long form of the PRL receptor (PRLR-L) mRNAs was higher in adrenals of LAA rats. ACTH treatment of adrenal cells from HAA rats resulted in statistically significant increases in melanocortin receptor 2 (MC2R) mRNA expression, while neither ACTH nor PRL altered MC2R mRNA expression in adrenal cells of LAA rats. Conversely, the increase in PRLR-L mRNA expression induced by PRL was observed only in adrenal cells from LAA rats. Treatment of adrenal cells with PRL and/or ACTH increased the expression of StAR and CYP11A1 mRNAs for both Hatano strains. However, the induction of StAR mRNA expression was higher in LAA rats, but the CYP11A1 response was lower. These findings indicate that adrenal cells of the LAA strain have higher sensitivity to secretagogues than those of the HAA strain. These results suggest that PRL may also be important in stimulating secretion of adrenal steroid hormones.     

Dogs recall their owner's face upon hearing the owner's voice

We tested whether dogs have a cross-modal representation of human individuals. We presented domestic dogs with a photo of either the owner's or a stranger's face on the LCD monitor after playing back a voice of one of those persons. A voice and a face matched in half of the trials (Congruent condition) and mismatched in the other half (Incongruent condition). If our subjects activate visual images of the voice, their expectation would be contradicted in Incongruent condition. It would result in the subjects’ longer looking times in Incongruent condition than in Congruent condition. Our subject dogs looked longer at the visual stimulus in Incongruent condition than in Congruent condition. This suggests that dogs actively generate their internal representation of the owner's face when they hear the owner calling them. This is the first demonstration that nonhuman animals do not merely associate auditory and visual stimuli but also actively generate a visual image from auditory information. Furthermore, our subject also looked at the visual stimulus longer in Incongruent condition in which the owner's face followed an unfamiliar person's voice than in Congruent condition in which the owner's face followed the owner's voice. Generating a particular visual image in response to an unfamiliar voice should be difficult, and any expected images from the voice ought to be more obscure or less well defined than that of the owners. However, our subjects looked longer at the owner's face in Incongruent condition than in Congruent condition. This may indicate that dogs may have predicted that it should not be the owner when they heard the unfamiliar person's voice.     

Categorical and dimensional perceptions in decoding emotional facial expressions

We investigated whether categorical perception and dimensional perception can co-occur while decoding emotional facial expressions. In Experiment 1, facial continua with endpoints consisting of four basic emotions (i.e., happiness–fear and anger–disgust) were created by a morphing technique. Participants rated each facial stimulus using a categorical strategy and a dimensional strategy. The results show that the happiness–fear continuum was divided into two clusters based on valence, even when using the dimensional strategy. Moreover, the faces were arrayed in order of the physical changes within each cluster. In Experiment 2, we found a category boundary within other continua (i.e., surprise–sadness and excitement–disgust) with regard to the arousal and valence dimensions. These findings indicate that categorical perception and dimensional perception co-occurred when emotional facial expressions were rated using a dimensional strategy, suggesting a hybrid theory of categorical and dimensional accounts.     

Visual space perception and visually directed action.

The results of two types of experiments are reported. In 1 type, Ss matched depth intervals on the ground plane that appeared equal to frontal intervals at the same distance. The depth intervals had to be made considerably larger than the frontal intervals to appear equal in length, with this physical inequality of equal-appearing intervals increasing with egocentric distance of the intervals (4 m-12 m). In the other type of experiment, Ss viewed targets lying on the ground plane and then, with eyes closed, attempted either to walk directly to their locations or to point continuously toward them while walking along paths that passed off to the side. Performance was quite accurate in both motoric tasks, indicating that the distortion in the mapping from physical to visual space evident in the visual matching task does not manifest itself in the visually open-loop motoric tasks.     

Extraversion and happiness

The relationship between extraversion and happiness or subjective well-being (SWB) is one of the most consistently replicated and robust findings in the SWB literature. The present study was conducted in order to examine three key aspects of the relationship: (1) Whether it is primarily substantive in nature, or a product of self-report response artifacts, such as social desirability; (2) What the underlying systems or mechanisms involved in the relationship are; and (3) Whether Eysenck's two dimensions of extraversion and neuroticism combine additively or interactively in their influence upon an individual's level of SWB. The results are supportive of the substantive nature of the relationship, and suggest that both situational and personality factors combine to produce the positive correlation between extraversion and SWB. In terms of the interaction of extraversion and neuroticism, the results are mixed in supporting both an additive and interactive relationship.     

Perception of the standard and the reversed Müller-Lyer figures in pigeons (Columba livia) and humans (Homo sapiens)

The authors compared perception of the standard and reversed Müller-Lyer figures between pigeons (Columbia livia) and humans (Homo sapiens). In Experiment 1, pigeons learned to classify 6 lengths of target lines into "long" and "short" categories by pecking 2 keys on the monitor, ignoring the 2 brackets so placed that they would not induce an illusion. In the test that followed, all 3 birds chose the "long" key more frequently for the standard Müller-Lyer figures with inward-pointing brackets (><) than for the figures with outward-pointing brackets (<>). The subjects' responses were accountable by neither overall lengths of the figures nor horizontal gaps between the 2 brackets. For the reversed figures, effects of the brackets were absent. These results suggested that the pigeons perceived the standard Müller-Lyer illusion but not the reversed one. Experiment 2 confirmed that humans perceived both types of the illusion. Pigeons and humans may perceive the same illusory figures in different ways.