Differential effects of psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder symptoms on cognitive and fear processing in female offenders

Psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder (APD) have long been considered important risk factors for criminal behavior and incarceration. However, little is known about the psychobiological underpinnings that give rise to the disinhibited behavior of female offenders. Using an instructed fear-conditioning paradigm and a sample of incarcerated female offenders, we manipulated attentional focus and cognitive load to characterize and differentiate between the dysfunctional cognitive and affective processes associated with these syndromes. We used fear-potentiated startle (FPS) and event-related potentials as measures of affective and cognitive processing, respectively. After controlling for APD symptoms, psychopathic women displayed greater FPS while attending directly to threat-relevant stimuli and displayed less FPS while performing a demanding task that directed attention to threat-irrelevant information. Conversely, controlling for psychopathy, women with high APD symptoms displayed less overall FPS, especially when instructed to focus on threat-relevant stimuli. However, as the demands on cognitive resources increased, they displayed greater FPS. For both psychopathy and APD, analysis of the event-related potentials qualified these findings and further specified the abnormal cognitive processes associated with these two syndromes. Overall, simultaneous analysis of psychopathy and APD revealed distinct patterns of cognitive processing and fear reactivity.     

Paranormal and Religious Believers Are More Prone to Illusory Face Perception than Skeptics and Non‐believers

Illusory face perception, a tendency to find human‐like faces where none are actually present in, for example, artifacts or scenery, is a common phenomenon that occasionally enters the public eye. We used two tests (N = 47) to analyze the relationship between paranormal and religious beliefs and illusory face perception. In a detection task, the participants detected face‐like features from pictures of scenery and landscapes with and without face‐like areas and, in a rating task, evaluated the face‐likeness and emotionality of these areas. Believer groups were better at identifying the previously defined face‐like regions in the images but were also prone to false alarms. Signal detection analysis revealed that believers had more liberal answering criteria than skeptics, but the actual detection sensitivity did not differ. The paranormal believers also evaluated the artifact faces as more face‐like and emotional than the skeptics, and a similar trend was found between religious and non‐religious people. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Declining course of recognition memory

Recognition memory for words can decline, sometimes precipitously, over the course of the recognition test. Decrements of as much as 75% in d’ have been observed from the first quarter of testing to the last. and decrements of 40%–50% are not uncommon. Proactive mechanisms, imperfectly understood, appear to underlie such declines: Processing early input renders late input less recognizable, and making early recognition judgments renders later judgments more difficult. At the same time, the processing of late-input words fails to inhibit the recognition of the words that preceded them.     

Using accelerator pedal force to increase seat belt use of service vehicle drivers

This study evaluated a device that applied a sustained increase in accelerator pedal back force whenever drivers exceeded a preset speed criterion without buckling their seat belts. This force was removed once the belt was fastened. Participants were 6 commercial drivers who operated carpet-cleaning vans. During baseline, no contingency was in place for unbuckled trips. The pedal resistance was introduced via a multiple baseline design across groups. On the first day of treatment, the device was explained and demonstrated for all drivers of the vehicle. The treatment was associated with an immediate sustained increase in seat belt compliance to 100%. Occasionally, drivers initially did not buckle during a trip and encountered the force. In all instances, they buckled within less than 25 s. These results suggest that the increased force was sufficient to set up an establishing operation to reinforce seat belt buckling negatively. Drivers indicated that they were impressed with the device and would not drive very long unbelted with the pedal force in place.     

Large-Scale Assessment of Change in Student Achievement: Dutch Primary School Students’ Results on Written Division in 1997 and 2004 as an Example

This article discusses large-scale assessment of change in student achievement and takes the study by Hickendorff, Heiser, Van Putten, and Verhelst (2009) as an example. This study compared the achievement of students in the Netherlands in 1997 and 2004 on written division problems. Based on this comparison, they claim that there is a performance decline in this subdomain of mathematics, and that there is a move from applying the digit-based long division algorithm to a less accurate way of working without writing down anything. In our discussion of this study, we address methodological challenges that come in when investigating long-term trends in student achievements, such as the need for adequate operationalizations, the influence of the time of measurement and the necessity of the comparability of assessments, the effect of the assessment format, and the importance of inclusion relevant covariates in item response models. All these issues matter when assessing change in student achievement.     

The development of a scale to measure cognitive distortions in bulimia

The Bulimia Cognitive Distortions Scale (BCDS) was developed to measure irrational beliefs and cognitive distortions associated with bulimia. The final 25-item scale was found to have excellent internal consistency with high item to total correlations and a coefficient alpha of .97. Factor analysis revealed two clear factors measuring cognitive distortions related to automatic eating behaviors and to physical appearance. Data attesting to the convergent and divergent validity of the BCDS are also presented. With 110 subjects (55 bulimics, 55 controls), a discriminant analysis revealed the BCDS to be the only significant variable in predicting group membership, correctly classifying 93.6% of all subjects. The BCDS was also predictive of severity of bulimia as measured by the frequency of binge eating episodes. The potential of the BCDS as both a diagnostic and research instrument is discussed.     

The farm crisis: An analysis of social psychological distress among North Carolina farm operators

Using data from a statewide survey of North Carolina farm operators collected during a period of economic and ecological crisis, the relationships between perceived social psychological distress, social support, and demographic, farm structure, and socioeconomic characteristics were analyzed. Younger operators showed higher distress levels, and age and social support interact so that social support lowered distress levels more for younger than for older operators. Results also showed that total family income has a curvilinear relationship with perceived distress: low and high income farm operators manifest higher levels of distress than middle income operators. By identifying the farm operators that show the highest levels of distress, the results have implications for policy intervention and farm crisis support programs.     

Divorce,single parenthood and stepfamilies: Structural implications of these transactions

This article focuses on change in the family structure during the divorce as well as in the sequential stages of single parenthood and the reconstituted family. Special characteristics of these families and the tasks to be undertaken to enable the new unit to function are discussed conceptually and through case illustrations. Family therapy is seen as particularly helpful during the crisis stage when either a parent leaves or a new unit is added to an established one. The necessity of being aware of and working with all parts of the system, both the split-off and the newly-added, is stressed.