Empathic-like responding by domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to distress in humans: an exploratory study

Empathy covers a range of phenomena from cognitive empathy involving metarepresentation to emotional contagion stemming from automatically triggered reflexes. An experimental protocol first used with human infants was adapted to investigate empathy in domestic dogs. Dogs oriented toward their owner or a stranger more often when the person was pretending to cry than when they were talking or humming. Observers, unaware of experimental hypotheses and the condition under which dogs were responding, more often categorized dogs' approaches as submissive as opposed to alert, playful or calm during the crying condition. When the stranger pretended to cry, rather than approaching their usual source of comfort, their owner, dogs sniffed, nuzzled and licked the stranger instead. The dogs' pattern of response was behaviorally consistent with an expression of empathic concern, but is most parsimoniously interpreted as emotional contagion coupled with a previous learning history in which they have been rewarded for approaching distressed human companions.     

What do pre-adolescents and adolescents understand about HIV/AIDS?

Abstract

Pre-adolescents and adolescents (N= 80, aged 10, 12, 15, and 18 years) were tested on their knowledge of HIV/AIDS. Knowledge was assessed using a self-report questionnaire (examining levels of factual knowledge) and a semi-structured interview (examining cognitive developmental levels of understanding). Examination of the developmental shifts in understanding of HIV/AIDS revealed an increase in conceptual complexity on causal and prevention dimensions. The main conceptual changes included a shift from single cause to multiple cause solutions and a shift from identifying surface or immediate features to implicating less salient features. Additionally, with age, concepts about HIV/AIDS were increasingly organised around internal, physiological principles. Questionnaire responses yielded significant age-related increases in knowledge. Level of knowledge, as measured by the questionnaire, was higher than that assessed by the interview for the three youngest age groups. Thus, factual information acquired about HIV/AIDS is not automatically accompanied by understanding. In light of these findings the past conclusion that adolescents have high levels of knowledge of HIV/AIDS is questioned.     

Electron diffraction patterns from the Al–Mn decagonal phase

Abstract

The variety of electron diffraction patterns arising from the decagonal phase has been explored using a stereographic analysis for generating the important zone axes as intersection points corresponding to important relvectors. An indexing scheme employing a set of five vectors and an orthogonal vector has been followed. A systematic tilting from the decagonal axis to one of the twofold axes has been adopted to generate a set of experimental diffraction patterns corresponding to the expected patterns from the stereographic analysis with excellent agreement.     

Appraisals of Fear, Helplessness, and Perceived Life-Threat During Emergent Cardiac Surgery: Relationship to Pre-surgical Depression, Trauma History, and Posttraumatic Stress

Depression and posttraumatic stress (PTS) have been linked to medical/psychological outcomes following coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. This study assessed pre-surgical trauma history, PTS, and depression; and peri-surgical appraisals of fear, helplessness, and perceived life-threat among 110 patients. All CABGs were emergent, rather than elective, surgeries. In hierarchical multiple regressions, total severity score for pre-surgical PTS predicted fear regarding the cardiac event and the CABG, and perceived life-threat regarding the cardiac event and the CABG. Pre-surgical depression predicted perceived helplessness regarding the cardiac event and the CABG, and contributed to prediction of perceived life-threat. Trauma history contributed to prediction of fear and perceived helplessness regarding surgery (but not regarding the cardiac event necessitating surgery). When posttraumatic stress disorder diagnosis (PTSD) was entered, rather than total severity of PTS, PTSD did not predict any appraisals, and depression showed stronger prediction of fear, helplessness, and perceived life-threat than did PTSD.     

Addressing Sexual Assault within Social Systems: System Justification as a Barrier to College Prevention Efforts

Sexual assault perpetrated by men against women is a distressingly common occurrence, particularly on college campuses. One of the barriers to assault prevention efforts is the general perception of violence against women as an unwanted yet implicitly tolerated aspect of the status quo. Drawing on system justification theory, a concept used to explain why individuals accept aspects of their social systems that are objectively unjust, the mechanisms that perpetuate sexual assault are examined. Furthermore, this theory is used to examine current prevention efforts on college campuses and suggestions for modifications to these programs will be made.     

Enhancing visual working memory encoding: The role of target novelty

Perceptual salience improves the encoding of information into visual working memory (WM). However, the factors that contribute to this facilitation effect are not well understood. This study tested the influence of target familiarity on WM encoding. In each trial, participants were presented with either one or three targets and asked to encode their locations into WM. In Experiment 1, target familiarity was manipulated by presenting either an upright (familiar target) or upside-down (unfamiliar/novel target) A. Increasing the novelty of the targets led to improved performance in the spatial WM task. Experiment 2 showed that participants were faster in responding to novel versus familiar targets in a spatial detection task. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the beneficial effect of target novelty on WM encoding was not driven by differences in low-level features. Our results suggest that target novelty enhances the processes required for WM encoding, just as it facilitates perceptual processing.     

Effectiveness of a mental training program for novice scuba divers

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to assess the effects of a mental training program on state anxiety, respiration rate and performance of novice scuba divers. Forty-four participants enrolled in novice open water diving courses served as participants. An intervention group (n = 15), in addition to scuba training, received an audiotaped mental training program designed to reduce anxiety and improve diving performance. A placebo-control group (n = 15) followed the same procedures except that their audiotape contained general information about scuba diving. A control group (n = 14) received only scuba training. The intervention group reported lower pre-dive scores for cognitive anxiety, higher pre-dive scores for self-confidence, performed better on bail-out and mask removal tasks, and showed lower respiration rate than either control group. Respiration rate and somatic anxiety scores significantly predicted bail-out performance. Respiration rate also predicted mask removal performance. These results suggest that novice divers may benefit from mental training as part of their pre-dive instruction.     

Does Personal Intelligence Exist? Evidence From a New Ability-Based Measure

Personal intelligence has been defined as the ability to reason about personality and personality-relevant information and to use that information to guide one's actions and more generally, one's life. We constructed an initial version of an ability-based measure to test whether personal intelligence can be measured and whether it exists as a unitary intelligence. In 3 studies (N = 241, 308, and 385), we administered this Test of Personal Intelligence (TOPI), composed of 4 sections, to undergraduates along with criterion measures. Results suggested that a personal intelligence can be measured, that it might exist as a unified area of mental abilities, and that it represents psychological qualities that have intriguing predictive aspects.     

Why do individuals respond to fraudulent scam communications and lose money? The psychological determinants of scam compliance

Why do so many people all over the world, so often, react to completely worthless scam offers? In two questionnaire studies, one of which included the distribution of an experimentally manipulated simulated scam, we investigated differences between respondents who did and did not report past compliance with scams. We found that the principal differences were in their response to very high‐value incentives, in the extent to which they reacted with positive emotions to the thought of winning a large prize, in their reliance on signs of official authority, and in their self‐confidence. The first two of these can be regarded as forms of visceral processing. Some of these differences suggested a dispositional difference between victims and non‐victims.     

Rumination and Impaired Cortisol Recovery Following a Social Stressor in Adolescent Depression

Response styles theory promotes rumination as a central cognitive construct driving negative mood and depression, and past research suggests that at least part of the mechanism driving rumination’s depressogenic effect is through inhibiting the individual’s ability to shift attentional focus away from negative environmental stimuli. In the current study, we hypothesized that high trait rumination would be associated with impaired recovery of the body’s biological response to psychological stress. In a community sample of depressed (n?=?31) and non-depressed (n?=?33) adolescents we assessed rumination and the more adaptive trait of distraction and problem-solving with the Children’s Response Styles Questionnaire (CRSQ; Abela 2000), and diagnostic status was confirmed using the Child and Adolescent Schedule of Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (K-SADS; Kaufman et al. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 36:980–988, 1997). Participants completed the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; Kirschbaum et al. Neuropsychobiology 28:76–81, 1993), and the focus of our analyses was the change in salivary cortisol concentration between peak cortisol output (25 min post-stressor) and a sample taken during the “Recovery” period 65 minutes post-stressor. Consistent with the predictions of response style theory, among the depressed adolescents only, high trait rumination was associated with delayed post-stressor cortisol recovery, whereas high trait distraction and problem-solving was associated with more rapid recovery. In contrast, response styles were not associated with cortisol recovery in the non-depressed group. These findings implicate impaired post-stress cortisol recovery as a potential mechanism underlying the pathological effect of rumination on the development and maintenance of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD).