A problem with the EQS V3.0 simulator

The structural equations program EQS V3.0 has proved to be an important tool for research in the field of Monte Carlo simulations. However, when used to replicate a simulation experiment, the simulator has been found to contain a serious flaw which makes it unusable for particularly complex models. This functional anomaly stems from the fact that, from a given replication onward, none of the remaining replications offer adequate and convergent solutions.     

Adolescents’ neural response to social reward and real-world emotional closeness and positive affect

Feeling emotionally close to others during social interactions is a ubiquitous and meaningful experience that can elicit positive affect. The present study integrates functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to investigate whether neural response to social reward (1) is related to the experience of emotional closeness and (2) moderates the association between emotional closeness and positive affect during and following social interactions. In this study, 34 typically developing adolescents (ages 14–18 years) completed a social-reward fMRI task, a monetary-reward fMRI task, and a 2-week EMA protocol regarding their social and affective experiences. Adolescents with greater right posterior superior temporal sulcus/temporoparietal junction (pSTS/TPJ) response to social reward reported greater mean momentary emotional closeness. Neural response to social reward in the right pSTS/TPJ moderated how strongly momentary emotional closeness was associated with both concurrent positive affect and future peak happiness, but in different ways. Although emotional closeness had a significant positive association with concurrent positive affect among adolescents at both high and low right pSTS/TPJ response based on a follow-up simple slopes test, this association was stronger for adolescents with low right pSTS/TPJ response. In contrast, emotional closeness had a significant positive association with future peak happiness among adolescents with high right pSTS/TPJ response, but not among those with low right pSTS/TPJ response. These findings demonstrate the importance of neural response to social reward in key social processing regions for everyday experiences of emotional closeness and positive affect in the context of social interactions.     

Is the body represented in everyday bodily activities?

There seem to be good reasons to think that there must be body representations or some kind of body content required for riding a bike or grabbing a cup of coffee. However, when I ride a bike or grab a cup of coffee, am I just representing the bike and the cup? Or am I actually also representing my body and bodily movements? The thesis of this paper is that the body not only figures in the content that guides everyday activities but that it must. How is this possible? Exactly what elements of the subject’s body can be said to figure in this content? I will proceed in three steps: in the first, I bring together the conceptual resources that seem to be required; in the second, I discuss a couple of proposals about how to link the notion of affordance and the topic of bodily representations, arguing that they are misguided; finally, I propose a view according to which the body’s physical and spatial properties are an unavoidable part of the content that guides everyday activities.     

Variable Sharing in Connexive Logic

Journal of Philosophical Logic - However broad or vague the notion of connexivity may be, it seems to be similar to the notion of relevance even when relevance and connexive logics have been shown...     

Recurrent criminal behavior and executive dysfunction

OBJECTIVE: To experimentally test the hypothesis that people who repeatedly participate in forms of non-violent crime exhibit an executive deficit detected in tests of high ecological validity, having changes in prefrontal functioning as neurophysiologic basis. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: A batteiy to assess executive dysfunction was administered--the Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS)--to an experimental group of 30 inmates convicted of crimes against property (mean age = 39.3, SD = 9.98), and a control group of 30 (mean age = 32.7, SD = 11.8), all male. RESULTS: The group of recurrent inmates performed significantly worse than the control group in their global scores on the battery, as well as in the majority of subscales. CONCLUSION: Without removing from consideration the fact that sample size was not very large and, primarily, alerting ourselves to the dangerous hypothesis of a "frontal criminogenesis," the authors interpret criminal recurrence and resistance to penal measures in terms of the scarcity of control that individuals from the experimental group have over their behavior and its respective consequences.     

Psychometric Properties of the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory, the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents, the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale, and the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale in an Adolescent Spanish-Speaking Sample

The relationship among several social anxiety measures and a semistructured interview in an adolescent Spanish-speaking sample is examined. Construct validity and test-retest reliability were tested. A principal axis factor analysis was also explored. Results revealed good construct validity and alpha coefficients for the assessment instruments such as the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI), the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A), the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNES) and the Social Avoidance Distress Scale (SADS). Among these, data strongly support the validity of the Social Phobia and Difference measures of the SPAI and Total SAS-A score as assessment measures in the adolescent population even in non-American cultures and languages. Furthermore, results appear to support the presence of a single higher-order dimension, social anxiety, as measured by the instruments used in this study.