The personality construct of hardiness, III: Relationships with repression, innovativeness, authoritarianism, and performance

Previous research has established hardiness as a dispositional factor in preserving and enhancing performance and health despite stressful circumstances. The present four studies continue this construct-validational process by (a) introducing a shortened version of the hardiness measure and (b) testing hypotheses concerning the relationship between hardiness and repressive coping, right-wing authoritarianism, innovative behavior, and billable hours (a measure of consulting effectiveness). Results of these studies suggest the adequate reliability and validity of the Personal Views Survey III-R, which is the shortened, 18-item measure of hardiness. Further, results support the hypothesis that the relationship of hardiness is negative with repressive coping and right-wing authoritarianism and positive with innovative behavior and billable hours. Hardiness also appears unrelated to socially desirable responding.     

Sex-specific differences in olfactory sensitivity for putative human pheromones in nonhuman primates

In humans, the volatile C19-steroids androsta-4,16-dien-3-one (AND) and estra-1,3,5(10),16-tetraen-3-ol (EST) have been shown to modulate autonomic nervous system responses, and to cause hypothalamic activation in a gender-specific manner. Using two conditioning paradigms, the authors here show that pigtail macaques and squirrel monkeys of both sexes were able to detect AND and EST at concentrations in the micromolar and mM range, respectively. Male and female spider monkeys, in contrast, differed markedly in their sensitivity to these two odorous steroids, with males not showing any behavioral responses to the highest concentrations of AND tested and females not responding to the highest concentrations of EST. These data provide the first examples of sex-specific bimodal distributions of olfactory sensitivity in a nonhuman primate species.     

Hippocampal train stimulation modulates recall of fear extinction independently of prefrontal cortex synaptic plasticity and lesions

It has been shown that long-term potentiation (LTP) develops in the connection between the mediodorsal thalamus (MD) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and between the hippocampus (HPC) and the mPFC following fear extinction, and correlates with extinction retention. However, recent lesion studies have shown that combined lesions of the MD and mPFC do not interfere with extinction learning and retention, while inactivation of the dorsal HPC disrupts fear extinction memory. Here we found in rats that immediate post-training HPC low-frequency stimulation (LFS) suppressed extinction-related LTP in the HPC-mPFC pathway and induced difficulties in extinction recall. HPC tetanus, applied several hours later, failed to re-establish mPFC LTP but facilitated recall of extinction. Delayed post-training HPC LFS also provoked mPFC depotentiation and difficulties with extinction recall. HPC tetanus abolished these two effects. We also found that damage to the mPFC induced fear return only in rats that received HPC LFS following extinction training. HPC tetanus also reversed this behavioral effect of HPC LFS in lesioned rats. These data suggest that the HPC interacts with the mPFC during fear extinction, but can modulate fear extinction independently of this interaction.     

The protection of patients’ rights in clinical trials

The Helsinki Declaration is a very important document regarding the protection of patients’ rights in clinical trials and one of the fundamental sources of operational principles for every ethics committee. Although they have been updated, the international guidelines for ethics committees continually fail to address certain issues pertaining to the protection of patients’ rights in clinical trials. These issues include, most significantly, the method of electing ethics committees (a free, secret ballot should be preferred to direct appointment), the avoidance of conflict of interest during the election of ethics committee members, and the necessary insurance coverage for the participants of clinical trials. Polish law should, on the other hand, be developed in such way as to not limit the effectiveness of ethics committees in protecting patients’ rights in clinical trials. The ideal solution would be to draft a uniform law concerning not only clinical trials, but all medical experiments. The opinions of experts who have been reviewing medical research projects for several years may prove to be especially valuable in this setting. This paper was presented at the 6th International Bioethics Conference on the subject of ‘The Responsible Conduct of Basic and Clinical Research’, held in Warsaw, Poland, 3–4 June 2005. The author is Chairman, Bioethics Committee of the Warsaw Regional Chamber of Physicians and Dentists.     

Stimulus control of delayed matching in pigeons: Directed forgetting

Pigeons were trained in delayed matching-to-sample with two postsample stimuli. A postsample R-cue signaled that a matching choice phase would follow. A postsample F-cue signaled that a matching choice phase would not follow. Previous research found reduced matching accuracy on F-cued probe trials when comparison stimuli were presented in the choice phase. The present four experiments systematically varied the events following an F-cue to determine the conditions under which the F-cue reduces delayed-matching accuracy. When F-cues and R-cues controlled different behavior, matching on probe trials was poor. When both cues controlled the same behavior, matching on probe trials was good. This result is best explained by the theory that comparison stimuli retrieve the sample representation, but only in the behavioral context established by the R-cue. The present research supports the view that response-produced stimuli serve a contextual role in animal short-term memory.     

Battered women's coping strategies and psychological distress: differences by immigration status

People are rarely passive, and battered women are no exception. This study investigated the types of coping strategies women of Japanese descent (both Japan-born and U.S.-born) chose and their perceived effectiveness in dealing with their partners' violence. Japan-born respondents were significantly less likely to use active strategies and perceived them to be less effective than did U.S.-born respondents. For the Japan-born, the more effective they perceived active strategies, the higher their psychological distress, whereas the more effective they perceived passive strategies, the lower their psychological distress. In contrast, for the U.S.-born, the higher the perceived effectiveness of active strategies, the lower their psychological distress, and the perceived effectiveness of passive strategies had little effect on their psychological distress. The complex relationship between individuals' country of birth, the choice and perceived effectiveness of coping strategies, and psychological distress calls for increased attention to the role of culture in studies of coping and domestic violence.     

Interhemispheric communication via direct connections for alternative meanings of ambiguous words

A priming experiment was used to investigate Burgess and Simpson's (1988) claim that interhemispheric cooperation plays an essential role in the interpretation of ambiguous text. In doing so, the merits of two models of interhemispheric cooperation, the homotopic inhibition theory (Cook, 1986) and the direct connections model (Collins & Coney, 1998), were examined. Priming of alternative meanings of ambiguous words was measured using homographs and their dominant (e.g., BARK-DOG) and subordinate meanings (e.g., BARK-TREE) as related pairs in a lexical decision task, with normal university students as subjects. Stimulus pairs were temporally separated by stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 180 and 350 ms and were independently projected to the left or right visual fields (LVF or RVF). At the shorter SOA, priming was restricted to LVF-RVF presentations, with homograph primes directed to the LVF equally facilitating responses to RVF targets which were associated with their dominant and subordinate meanings. This suggests that within 180 ms, a homograph projected to the right hemisphere activates a range of alternative meanings in the left hemisphere. At an SOA of 350 ms, LVF-RVF priming was obtained along with RVF-LVF and RVF-RVF priming. Evidently at this stage of processing, an ambiguous word directed to either hemisphere activates a range of alternative meanings in the contralateral hemisphere, while RVF primes also activate subordinate, but not dominant meanings in the left hemisphere. A homograph directed to the LVF did not activate dominant or subordinate meanings within the right hemisphere at either SOA. Generally, ambiguous words directed to either hemisphere activated a more extensive array of meanings in the contralateral hemisphere than in the hemisphere to which the prime was directed. This confirms the importance of interhemispheric cooperation in generating alternate meanings of ambiguous words. Strong support was found for the direct connections model (Collins & Coney, 1998), but no support for the homotopic inhibition theory (Cook, 1986).     

Semantic and syntactic forces in noun phrase production

Three experiments investigated semantic and syntactic effects in the production of phrases in Dutch. Bilingual participants were presented with English nouns and were asked to produce an adjective + noun phrase in Dutch including the translation of the noun. In 2 experiments, the authors blocked items by either semantic category or grammatical gender. Participants performed the task slower when the target nouns were of the same semantic category than when they were from different categories and faster when the target nouns had the same gender than when they had different genders. In a final experiment, both manipulations were crossed. The authors replicated the results of the first 2 experiments, and no interaction was found. These findings suggest a feedforward flow of activation between lexico-semantic and lexico-syntactic information.     

When ecology and sociology meet: the contributions of Edward A. Ross

Edward A. Ross, a key figure in the early history of American sociology, developed a conceptualization of natural and social changes of the material environment that is virtually forgotten today. In this paper, these topics are discussed and located vis-à-vis Ross's intellectual contemporaries and their general take on the nature/society relationship. It is argued that ecological and sociological ideas in the early twentieth century influenced one another and, in the case of Ross, produced a perspective of social change that tried to include the dynamics of nature.