Slave,Sister, Sexborg,Sphinx: Feminine Figurations in Nick Land's Philosophy

Given that Nick Land is one of the central influences on certain strands of accelerationism, xenofeminism, and inhumanism, it is important to understand how he himself first developed and deployed the concepts of acceleration, the feminine, and the inhuman, which others would go on to appropriate for their own purposes. This article will trace the four feminine figures throughout Land's philosophical trajectory, which he sees as agents for accelerating the transcendental critique of both anthropocentrism and phallocentrism: the slave turned lesbian; the sister; the sexborg; and the Sphinx. Having elucidated the importance of these figures for Land's thought, this article will conclude by drawing upon the younger Land's feminist resources to immanently critique the disappearance of women from his more recent neoreactionary philosophy in favor of concessions to patriarchal traditionalists.     

Psychometric Properties of a Social Skills Assessment using a Virtual Environment

Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is a marked and persistent fear of social and/or performance situations in which embarrassment or scrutiny from others may occur. One form of behavioral assessment is a Role Play Task (RPT). However, RPTs often are not feasible in clinical settings due to the common obstacles in implementation. Thus, the current study examines the feasibility, acceptability and psychometric properties of a virtual environment based social skills assessment compared to the traditional RPT. Forty-six children, ages 7 to 14, participated in two assessment conditions: RPT and a virtual environment behavioral assessment (VE BAT). Participants reported self-ratings of anxiety and acceptability, while blinded observers rated social skills and overall social anxiety. An ANCOVA, covarying for age, revealed (a) no significant task difference for voice volume, speech latency, number of words spoken, effectiveness, and SAM ratings; (b) that the VE BAT was more feasible to implement in terms of personnel time and costs and; (c) more overall anxiety during the RPT task than during the VE BAT task. In addition, the VE BAT demonstrated moderate concurrent validity when correlating the self-report ratings of anxiety with the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory for Children (SPAI-C). The current study addresses many of the impediments to conducting RPTs in a clinical setting and, overall, supports the utilization of VE BATS as a viable alternative for the behavioral assessment of social skills in children. Further implications address the potential for the armamentarium for social skills training with children with SAD.     

中学生社会支持对数学学习坚持性的影响:数学自我效能感的中介作用

以北京市通州区一所普通中学的228名初一和初二学生为被试,采用领悟社会支持量表、数学自我效能感和数学学习坚持性问卷,考察在中学生数学学习中不同来源的社会支持对数学学习坚持性的影响,并检验数学自我效能感在其中的中介作用。结果发现:(1)社会支持中的教师支持和同伴支持能够显著正向预测数学学习坚持性水平,而父母支持的预测作用不显著;(2)数学自我效能感在同伴支持和数学学习坚持性之间起完全中介作用,在教师支持和数学学习坚持性之间起部分中介作用。     

Similarity and Helping Behavior on the Web: The Impact of the Convergence of Surnames Between a Solicitor and a Subject in a Request Made by E‐Mail1

Similarity between a solicitor and a subject traditionally enhances helping behavior. An experiment was carried out in a computer‐mediated context. Fifty students received an e‐mail containing a 40‐question survey on their food habits, which required 15 to 20 min of their time to respond. This questionnaire came from a hypothetical student of the university in which the participants were registered. In half of the cases, the surname of the solicitor, which appeared in his or her electronic address, was the same as the surname of the target. Results show that compliance to the request was significantly higher in the same‐sumame condition than in the different‐surname condition. The response delay was significantly shorter in the same‐surname condition than in control condition.     

Thinking about commitment: Accessibility of commitment and prediction of relationship persistence,accommodation, and willingness to sacrifice

Research has demonstrated that more accessible cognitive constructs (e.g., attitudes, stereotypes) are more likely to influence thoughts and behaviors. The current research applies a social cognition framework to the prediction of romantic relationship persistence (i.e., “stay‐leave” behavior), accommodation, and willingness to sacrifice. Conceptualizing commitment as a partially cognitive construct and following from social cognition and attitudinal research, we hypothesized that the accessibility of commitment will moderate the association between commitment and relationship persistence, accommodative responses, and willingness to sacrifice. In Study 1, participants in romantic relationships responded to statements derived from the commitment subscale of the Investment Model Scale. Reaction times to these statements were used as a measure of accessibility of commitment. In addition, participants completed measures of their commitment level. Seven months later, participants were contacted and relationship persistence was assessed. Accessibility of commitment significantly moderated the association between commitment and relationship persistence. Study 2 expanded on the results of the first study by demonstrating that accessibility of commitment also significantly moderated the association between commitment and accommodation and willingness to sacrifice. Taken together, these two studies highlight the usefulness of applying social cognitive concepts to understand close relationships.     

Directed forgetting of autobiographical memory in mild Alzheimer's disease

Using the autobiographical directed forgetting method (Barnier et al., 2007), the present paper addressed the intentional inhibitory processes of episodic and semantic autobiographical memory in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Mild AD patients and healthy elderly people were instructed to either forget or to continue remembering previously generated autobiographical events. In a later recall test they were asked to reconstruct the early-generated memories regardless of the forget/remember instruction. Autobiographical reconstruction was further distributed into episodic and semantic memories. Results showed no forget instruction effect on episodic or semantic autobiographical recall with AD patients, whereas healthy elderly people were able to inhibit only episodic autobiographical memories. The findings suggest an impairment of the intentional inhibitory processes in autobiographical memory with AD and a relative preservation of these mechanisms with normal ageing. They also demonstrate an earlier decline in the intentional inhibitory processes compared to the autobiographical deterioration in AD.     

Pre-training anandamide infusion within the basolateral amygdala impairs plus-maze discriminative avoidance task in rats

Endocannabinoids (eCBs) modulate a variety of brain functions via activation of the widely expressed CB1 receptor. One site of high density of this receptor is the basolateral amygdala (BLA), a structure involved in the formation of aversive memories. The activation and blockade of CB1 receptors by systemic or hippocampal drug administrations have been shown to modify memory processing. However, little is known about the role of the BLA endocannabinoid system in aversive memories. Additionally, BLA endocannabinoid transmission seems to be related to emotional states, but the relevance of these effects to memory formation is still unknown. In this study we investigated the effects of the eCB anandamide (AEA) and the CB1 antagonist/inverse agonist AM251 infused into the BLA on the acquisition of an aversive memory task, concomitantly evaluating basal anxiety levels in rats. Male rats received pre-training micro-injection of AEA, AM251 or vehicle bilaterally into the BLA, and were studied with the plus-maze discriminative avoidance task (a paradigm that allows concomitant and independent evaluation of anxiety-like behavior and the memory of an aversive task). Our results showed that AEA into the BLA before training prevented memory retrieval 24 h later, as evaluated by exploration of the aversive arm of the maze, while AM251 into the BLA did not interfere with animals' performance. In addition, AEA had no effect on anxiety-like behavior (as evaluated by open arm exploration and risk assessment), while AM251 induced an anxiogenic effect. Our data indicate an important role of BLA CB1 receptors in aversive memory formation, and suggest that this involvement is not necessarily related to a possible modulation of anxiety states.     

The Five-Factor Model of Personality at the Facet Level: Association with Antisocial Personality Disorder Symptoms and Prediction of Antisocial Behavior

The association between the Five-Factor Model of personality (FFM) and antisocial personality disorder (APD) symptoms was investigated in a sample of young males with a history of severe antisocial behavior. Results were compared against those of an expert-consensus study (Lynam and Widiger Journal of Abnormal Psychology 110:401–412, 2001) and those of a recent meta-analysis (Samuel and Widiger Clinical Psychology Review 28:1326–1342, 2008) based primarily on non-antisocial samples. A high degree of similarity was observed across the three. Multivariate analysis indicated two FFM facets, Compliance and Activity, to be associated with APD symptoms. The contribution of these facets to the prospective prediction of antisocial behavior over and above that of APD symptoms and past antisocial behavior was evaluated. Compliance alone explained 8.7% of the unique variance in future antisocial behavior.