Stress-related immune changes in middle-aged and older women: 1-year consistency of individual differences.

This study reviews prior research and reports longer-term consistency of stress-related immune variables in middle-aged and older women who performed mental math and speech tasks 2 times 1 year apart. Leukocyte subsets, mitogen-induced lymphocyte proliferation, and natural killer cell activity were measured at baseline, after tasks, and after 30-min recovery. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) antibody titers were assessed at baseline. Pearson coefficients and standardized maximum-likelihood estimates of year-to-year covariances for leukocyte subsets and EBV titers showed moderately high to high baseline and posttask consistency and lower recovery consistency; consistency for other functional immune assays and reactivity scores for all variables was moderate to low. Results support longitudinal study of psychosocial context effects on tonic immune function and posttask scores.     

Prime and probability: causal knowledge affects inferential and predictive effects on self-agency experiences

Experiences of having caused a certain outcome may arise from motor predictions based on action–outcome probabilities and causal inferences based on pre-activated outcome representations. However, when and how both indicators combine to affect such self-agency experiences is still unclear. Based on previous research on prediction and inference effects on self-agency, we propose that their (combined) contribution crucially depends on whether people have knowledge about the causal relation between actions and outcomes that is relevant to subsequent self-agency experiences. Therefore, we manipulated causal knowledge that was either relevant or irrelevant by varying the probability of co-occurrence (50% or 80%) of specific actions and outcomes. Afterwards, we measured self-agency experiences in an action–outcome task where outcomes were primed or not. Results showed that motor prediction only affected self-agency when relevant actions and outcomes were learned to be causally related. Interestingly, however, inference effects also occurred when no relevant causal knowledge was acquired.     

Synaesthesia: the prevalence of atypical cross-modal experiences

Sensory and cognitive mechanisms allow stimuli to be perceived with properties relating to sight, sound, touch, etc, and ensure, for example, that visual properties are perceived as visual experiences, rather than sounds, tastes, smells, etc. Theories of normal development can be informed by cases where this modularity breaks down, in a condition known as synaesthesia. Conventional wisdom has held that this occurs extremely rarely (0.05% of births) and affects women more than men. Here we present the first test of synaesthesia prevalence with sampling that does not rely on self-referral, and which uses objective tests to establish genuineness. We show that (a) the prevalence of synaesthesia is 88 times higher than previously assumed, (b) the most common variant is coloured days, (c) the most studied variant (grapheme-colour synaesthesia)--previously believed most common--is prevalent at 1%, and (d) there is no strong asymmetry in the distribution of synaesthesia across the sexes. Hence, we suggest that female biases reported earlier likely arose from (or were exaggerated by) sex differences in self-disclosure.     

The dimensions of change in therapeutic community treatment instrument

In this article, the authors describe the refinement and preliminary evaluation of the Dimensions of Change in Therapeutic Community Treatment Instrument (DCI), a measure of treatment process. In Study 1, a 99-item DCI, administered to a cross-sectional sample of substance abuse clients (N = 990), was shortened to 54 items on the basis of results from confirmatory factor analyses and item response theory invariance tests. In Study 2, confirmatory factor analyses of the 54-item DCI, completed by a longitudinal cohort of 993 clients, established and validated an 8-factor solution across 2 subpopulations (adults and adolescents) and 2 time points (treatment entry and 30-days postentry). The results of the 2 studies are encouraging and support use of the 54-item DCI as a tool to measure treatment process.     

Flanker effects with faces may depend on perceptual as well as emotional differences

Do threatening or negative faces capture attention? The authors argue that evidence from visual search, spatial cuing, and flanker tasks is equivocal and that perceptual differences may account for effects attributed to emotional categories. Empirically, the authors examine the flanker task. Although they replicate previous results in which a positive face flanked by negative faces suffers more interference than a negative face flanked by positive faces, further results indicate that face perception is not necessary for the flanker-effect asymmetry and that the asymmetry also occurs with nonemotional stimuli. The authors conclude that the flanker-effect asymmetry with affective faces cannot be unambiguously attributed to emotional differences and may well be due to purely perceptual differences between the stimuli.     

Turning Fantasies About Positive and Negative Futures into Self-Improvement Goals

Contrasting fantasies about the future with reflections on reality that impedes fantasy realization creates a tight link between expectations of success and forming commitments to self-improvement goals. This effect applies to both fantasies about a positive future contrasted with impeding negative reality as well as fantasies about a negative future contrasted with impeding positive reality. In Study 1, with 63 student participants, contrasting positive fantasies about benefiting from a vocational training with negative reflections on reality impeding such benefits led to expectancy-dependent willingness to invest in the training, more so than indulging in the positive future and than dwelling on the negative reality. In Study 2, with 158 high school students from former East Berlin, contrasting negative, xenophobic fantasies about suffering from the influx of immigrants with positive reflections on reality impeding such suffering led to expectancy-dependent tolerance and willingness to integrate the immigrants. Findings are discussed in terms of how mental contrasting facilitates self-improvement and personal development by making people form expectancy-dependent goal commitments to approach positively-perceived as well as negatively-perceived futures.     

Neutralizing increases discomfort associated with obsessional thoughts: an experimental study with obsessional patients

Cognitive-behavioral theories suggest that the development of neutralizing is crucial in the development and persistence of obsessional problems (OCD). Twenty-nine patients with a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnosis of OCD were randomly allocated to 2 conditions. Both listened to repeated recorded presentations of their intrusive thoughts and either neutralized (experimental group) or distracted themselves (control). Discomfort was rated during this 1st phase and then during a 2nd phase without neutralizing or distraction. The experimental group showed a similar level of discomfort in the 1st phase, which significantly reduced during the period compared with controls. The experimental group experienced significantly more discomfort during the 2nd phase, and significantly stronger urges to neutralize and distract at the end of this phase than controls.