Personality and risk-taking: common biosocial factors

The first part of this article describes a study of the relationships between personality and risk-taking in six areas: smoking, drinking, drugs, sex, driving, and gambling. The participants, 260 college students, were given self-report measures of risky behaviors in each of the six areas and the Zuckerman-Kuhlman five-factor personality questionnaire. Generalized risk-taking (across all six areas) was related to scales for impulsive sensation seeking, aggression, and sociability, but not to scales for neuroticism or activity. Gender differences on risk-taking were mediated by differences on impulsive sensation seeking. The second part discusses biological traits associated with both risk-taking and personality, particularly sensation seeking, such as the D4 dopamine receptor gene. the enzyme monoamine oxidase, and augmenting or reducing of the cortical evoked potential. Comparative studies show relationships between biological markers shared with other species and correlated behaviors similar to sensation seeking in humans. A biosocial model of the traits underlying risk-taking is presented.     

What individuals believe they can and cannot do: explorations of realistic and unrealistic control beliefs

We examined construct validity and implications of scales that assess perceived control over controllable events (realistic control belief) and perceived control over uncontrollable events (unrealistic control belief). We found that people high in unrealistic control belief are less likely to discriminate between controllable and uncontrollable situations and to distort task outcomes so as to make them appear more favorable (more under control). We also found that people high in realistic control belief are more likely to assume responsibility for past mistakes. In additional studies on coping and health risk behavior, higher realistic control belief was related to direct engagement with the stressor and to less risky sexual behavior; higher unrealistic control belief was related to less emotional processing and to more risky sexual behavior. The results demonstrate a need to discriminate between the two types of control beliefs.     

Perceptual grouping in change detection

Detection of an item's changing of its location from one instance to another is typically unaffected by changes in the shape or color of contextual items. However, we demonstrate here that such location change detection is severely impaired if the elongated axes of contextual items change orientation, even though individual locations remain constant and even though the orientation was irrelevant to the task. Changing the orientations of the elongated stimuli altered the perceptual organization of the display, which had an important influence on change detection. In detecting location changes, subjects were unable to ignore changes in orientation unless additional, invariant grouping cues were provided or unless the items changing orientation could be actively ignored using feature-based attention (color cues). Our results suggest that some relational grouping cues are represented in change detection even when they are task irrelevant.     

The establishment of the department of psychiatry in the Mount Sinai Hospital: a conflict between neurology and psychiatry

A conflict between neurology and psychiatry and controversies about psychoanalysis played an important role in the establishment of psychiatry in the general hospital. This article reviews the impact of this conflict on the establishment of an independent Department of Psychiatry in the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York during the first half of the twentieth century. A unique opportunity is provided to consider the relationships and personalities of the individuals involved, as well as economic, social, and scientific factors, including the introduction of psychoanalysis as a major psychiatric treatment.     

How Reliably Do Eye Parameters Indicate Internal Versus External Attentional Focus?

Eye behavior is increasingly used as an indicator of internal versus external focus of attention both in research and application. However, available findings are partly inconsistent, which might be attributed to the different nature of the employed types of internal and external cognition tasks. The present study, therefore, investigated how consistently different eye parameters respond to internal versus external attentional focus across three task modalities: numerical, verbal, and visuo-spatial. Three eye parameters robustly differentiated between internal and external attentional focus across all tasks. Blinks, pupil diameter variance, and fixation disparity variance were consistently increased during internally directed attention. We also observed substantial attentional focus effects on other parameters (pupil diameter, fixation disparity, saccades, and microsaccades), but they were moderated by task type. Single-trial analysis of our data using machine learning techniques further confirmed our results: Classifying the focus of attention by means of eye tracking works well across participants, but generalizing across tasks proves to be challenging. Based on the effects of task type on eye parameters, we discuss what eye parameters are best suited as indicators of internal versus external attentional focus in different settings.     

Nonfirmands: Danish youth who choose not to have a Lutheran confirmation

Most Danish youth participate in the traditional Lutheran ritual of confirmation. However, a growing minority does not. Based on survey data collected in 2011 from over 600 Danish pupils, this study examines the ways in which Danish ‘nonfirmands’ are different from their peers who participate in confirmation in relation to religious background, personal religious beliefs, intellectual engagement, and demographic factors. We further explore key motivations for ‘nonfirmation’ expressed by the nonfirmands in the sample. Broadly speaking, our findings highlight secular socialization and individual beliefs about God as key elements in understanding the nonfirmand and his or her reasons for opting out of confirmation. We expect confirmations to continue to decline in popularity as nonfirmation gains social acceptance, as nonfirmands raise their own children, and as Denmark becomes increasingly secular.     

The cross-cultural generalizability of Zuckerman's alternative five-factor model of personality

The aim of this study was to analyze the cross-cultural generalizability of the Alternative five-factor model (AFFM; Zuckerman, Kuhlman, & Camac, 1988). The total sample was made up of 9,152 subjects from six countries: China, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States. The internal consistencies for all countries were generally similar to those found for the normative American sample. Factor analyses within cultures showed that the normative American structure was replicated in all cultures; however, the congruence coefficients were slightly lower in China and Italy. A similar analysis at the facet level confirmed the high cross-cultural replicability of the AFFM. Mean-level comparisons did not always show the hypothesized effects. The mean score differences across countries were very small.     

Monocular deprivation in adult mice alters visual acuity and single-unit activity

It has been discovered recently that monocular deprivation in young adult mice induces ocular dominance plasticity (ODP). This contradicts the traditional belief that ODP is restricted to a juvenile critical period. However, questions remain. ODP of young adults has been observed only using methods that are indirectly related to vision, and the plasticity of young adults appears diminished in comparison with juveniles. Therefore, we asked whether the newly discovered adult ODP broadly reflects plasticity of visual cortical function and whether it persists into full maturity. Single-unit activity is the standard physiological marker of visual cortical function. Using a more optimized protocol for recording single-units, we find evidence of adult ODP of single-units and show that it is most pronounced in deep cortical layers. Furthermore, using visual evoked potentials (VEP), we find that ODP is equally robust in young adults and mature adults and is observable after just one day of monocular deprivation. Finally, we find that monocular deprivation in adults changes spatial frequency thresholds of the VEP, decreasing the acuity of the deprived pathway and improving the acuity of the non-deprived pathway. Thus, in mice, the primary visual cortex is capable of remarkable adaptation throughout life.     

The contents of perceptual hypotheses: Evidence from rapid resumption of interrupted visual search

Observers can resume a previously interrupted visual search trial significantly more quickly than they can start a new search trial (Lleras, Rensink, & Enns, 2005). This rapid resumption of search is possible because evidence accumulated during the previous exposure, a perceptual hypothesis, can carry over to a subsequent presentation. We present four interrupted visual search experiments in which the content of the perceptual hypotheses used during visual search trials was characterized. These experiments suggest that prior to explicit target identification, observers have accumulated evidence about the locations, but not the identities, of local, task-relevant distractors, as well as preliminary evidence for the identity of the target. Our results characterize the content of perceptual search hypotheses and highlight the utility of interrupted search for studying online search processing prior to target identification.