Personality: a vulnerability factor in rhinitis?

Personality traits were assessed in 63 patients with persistent allergic or non-allergic rhinitis with the Karolinska Scales of Personality, developed with the aim of measuring psychobiological vulnerability factors, and were compared with a reference group comprising a random sample of 400 sex- and age-stratified subjects. The patients' personality profile differed slightly - within one standard deviation - but significantly from the reference group on a number of factors together suggestive of a disinhibitory disposition, an inclination to express anxiety through somatic rather than psychological channels, difficulties in maintaining emotional distance to others, and a limited awareness of aggressive affect, a pattern that suggests that they expose themselves to more stimulation than they can process in terms of thought and feelings, generating sustained physiological arousal that may contribute to the development of their intolerance reactions.     

Right-hemisphere reading in a case of developmental deep dyslexia

The right-hemisphere hypothesis of deep dyslexia has received support from functional imaging studies of acquired deep dyslexia following damage to the left cerebral hemisphere, but no imaging studies of cases of developmental deep dyslexia, in which brain damage is not suspected, have been reported. In this paper, we report the first evidence of right hyperactivation in an adult case of developmental deep dyslexia. Hyperactivation was observed in the right inferior frontal cortex during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the oral reading of imageable content words and nonwords to which imageable lexical responses were frequently made. No evidence of right hyperactivation was observed in the oral reading of function words, nor during the naming of imageable words in response to pictured objects. The results reveal strategic and selective use of right-hemisphere functions for particular types of written stimuli. We propose that children with developmental deep dyslexia compensate for their lack of phonological skills by accessing right-hemisphere imageable associations that provide a mnemonic for linking written forms to spoken names.     

Pragmatic post‐structuralism (I): participant observation and discourse in evaluating violence intervention

This paper discusses the process and merits of a post‐structuralist approach to participant observation and describes the use of this research strategy in evaluating a community based ‘stopping violence’ programme. While the participant observation research strategy is commonly employed as a ‘process evaluation’ method (Rossi and Freeman, 1993 ) it's role within a distinctly post‐structuralist programme is a novel application of a well‐established research strategy. This has significant implications for how social scientists may approach both participant observation and evaluation in the future. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Clamped Corticosterone (B) Reveals the Effect of Endogenous B on Both Facilitated Responsivity to Acute Restraint and Metabolic Responses to Chronic Stress

To determine the effects of both corticosterone (B) and chronic stressors on acute ACTH responses to restraint, young male rats were exposed to streptozotocin-induced diabetes, cold (5-7 degreesC) or intracerebroventricular (icv) neuropeptide Y (NPY) for 5 d and then exposed to restraint within 2 h after lights on. Two groups of rats were studied: intact and adrenalectomized replaced with B pellets that maintained plasma B in the normal mean 24-h range of intact rats. In addition to ACTH and B responses to restraint on d 5, body weight, food intake, fat depots, glucose and other hormones were measured to determine the role of stress-induced elevations in B on energy balance. ACTH responses to restraint were normal in intact rats subjected to diabetes or cold. By contrast, there was no ACTH or B response to restraint in NPY-infused intact rats. All 3 groups of chronically stimulated adrenalectomized rats with clamped B had facilitated ACTH responses to restraint compared to their treatment controls. Overall food intake increased in all groups of stressed rats; however, augmented intake occurred only during the light in intact rats and equally in the light and dark in B-clamped rats. White adipose depot weights were decreased by both diabetes and cold and increased by NPY in intact rats; the decreases with cold and increases with NPY were both blunted and changes in fat stores were not significant in adrenalectomized, B-clamped rats. We conclude that: 1. diabetes- and cold-induced facilitation of restraint-induced afferent input to hypothalamic control of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is opposed in intact rats by the elevated feedback signal of B secretion; 2. NPY does not induce facilitation of afferent stress pathways; 3. chronic stimulation of the HPA axis induces acute hyperresponsiveness of hypothalamic neurons to restraint provided that the afferent input of this acute stimulus is not prevented by B feedback; 4. stimulus-induced elevations in B secretion result in day-time feeding; 5. insensitivity of both caloric efficiency and white fat stores to chronic stress in adrenalectomized, B-clamped rats results from loss of normally variable B levels.     

Activity, Passivity, Self-Denigration, and Self-Promotion: Toward an Interactionist Model of Interpersonal Dependency

ABSTRACT Although dependency in adults is inextricably linked with passivity and submissiveness in the minds of many theoreticians, clinicians, and researchers, evidence has accumulated which suggests that in certain situations, dependency is actually associated with high levels of activity and assertiveness. Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that when a dependent person is concerned primarily with getting along with a peer, he or she will “self-denigrate” (i.e., will utilize strategies that ensure that a peer will be evaluated more positively than he or she is on a laboratory task), but when a dependent person is concerned primarily with pleasing an authority figure, he or she will “self-promote” (i.e., will adopt strategies that increase the likelihood that he or she will be evaluated more positively than a peer on a laboratory task). This hypothesis was supported in all three experiments. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed, and an interactionist model of interpersonal dependency is briefly described.     

The ideal‐self inventory: A new measure of self‐esteem

This article reports on some research in progress developing a new measure of self‐esteem which we have called the Ideal‐Self Inventory (ISI). The inventory is based on a constructivist approach and simply asks participants to list ten characteristics to describe their ideal self together with the ten opposite characteristics to describe their not ideal self. The ISI has been tested on over 100 student volunteers and correlates significantly with the adult version of the Coopersmith Self‐Esteem Inventory. The applications of this new measure are discussed with particular reference to counselling and psychotherapy.     

Chess expertise in children

This paper reports several studies of chess expertise in children who play competitive chess. The first study examines (1) the relationship between experience and skill among 113 school-age children (grades 1 through 12); and (2) the relationship between chess skill and scores on various spatial and logical abilities tests among the top 15 players. Improvement in skill is related to experience, and chess players score higher than average on the Raven's Progressive Matrices. Also, scores on a chess-specific test, the Knight's Tour, correlate with scores on the Raven's. The second study reports three experiments with 59 Ss involving chess-specific tasks in memory, perception, and similarity judgements. The first two experiments replicated and extended Chase and Simon (1973). The third experiment, which asked Ss to judge similarities of chess positions, demonstrated that similarity judgements become more global and abstract with increased skill. The final section describes qualitatively how children's chess expertise compares to that of adults. Drawing upon Anderson (1985), we focus on some distinctive features of children's chess play and on some successful techniques in coaching young players.