Arousal enhanced memory retention is eliminated following temporal lobe resection

The amygdala, situated in the anterior medial temporal lobe (MTL), is involved in the emotional enhancement of memory. The present study evaluated whether anterior MTL-resections attenuated arousal induced memory enhancement for pictures. Also, the effect of MTL-resections on response latencies at retrieval was assessed. Thirty-one patients with unilateral MTL-resections (17 left, 14 right) together with 16 controls participated in a forced choice memory task with pictorial stimuli varying in arousal. Response latencies increased with stimulus arousal in controls but not in patients. This was paralleled by attenuated recognition memory for moderately and highly arousing pictures in MTL-resectioned patients as compared to healthy controls. However, patients and controls did not differ in memory performance for non-arousing pictures. These results suggest that the MTL is necessary for arousal induced memory enhancement.     

Might an overweight waitress make you eat more? How the body type of others is sufficient to alter our food consumption

This paper investigates how people's food choices can be shaped by the body type of others around them. Using a professionally constructed obesity prosthesis, we show that the body type of a (confederate) server in a taste test study was sufficient to alter both the quantity (Experiment 1) and specific choices (Experiment 2) participants made but that chronic dieters and non-dieters exhibited opposite effects. While non-dieters ate more snacks when the server was thin, dieters ate more when the server was heavy. Dieters were also more persuaded by a heavy (vs. a thin) server, choosing both a healthy and unhealthy snack more often when she recommended it to them. We suggest these results may be attributable to identification with the server.     

Disruption of writing by background speech: Does sound source location and number of voices matter?

It is not unusual that people have to write in an environment where background speech is present. Background speech can vary in both speech intelligibility and location of the sound source. Earlier research has shown disruptive effects of background speech on writing performance. To expand and reinforce this knowledge, the present study investigated the role of number of voices and sound source location in the relation between background speech and writing performance. Participants wrote texts in quiet or in background speech consisting of one or seven voices talking simultaneously located in front of or behind them. Overall, one voice was more disruptive than seven voices talking simultaneously. Self‐reports showed that sound from the front was more disruptive compared with sound from behind. Results are in line with theory of interference‐by‐process, attentional capture, and the cross‐modal theory of attention. The relevance of the results for open‐office environments is discussed.     

Parental coping socialization is associated with healthy and anxious early‐adolescents’ neural and real‐world response to threat

The ways parents socialize their adolescents to cope with anxiety (i.e., coping socialization) may be instrumental in the development of threat processing and coping responses. Coping socialization may be important for anxious adolescents, as they show altered neural threat processing and over reliance on disengaged coping (e.g., avoidance and distraction), which can maintain anxiety. We investigated whether coping socialization was associated with anxious and healthy adolescents’ neural response to threat, and whether neural activation was associated with disengaged coping. Healthy and clinically anxious early adolescents (N = 120; M = 11.46 years; 71 girls) and a parent engaged in interactions designed to elicit adolescents’ anxiety and parents’ response to adolescents’ anxiety. Parents’ use of reframing and problem solving statements was coded to measure coping socialization. In a subsequent visit, we assessed adolescents’ neural response to threat words during a neuroimaging task. Adolescents’ disengaged coping was measured using ecological momentary assessment. Greater coping socialization was associated with lower anterior insula and perigenual cingulate activation in healthy adolescents and higher activation in anxious adolescents. Coping socialization was indirectly associated with less disengaged coping for anxious adolescents through neural activation. Findings suggest that associations between coping socialization and early adolescents’ neural response to threat differ depending on clinical status and have implications for anxious adolescents’ coping.     

Mediators of Change in Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Clinical Burnout

Evidence supporting the effectiveness of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for stress-related illness is growing, but little is known about its mechanisms of change. The aim of this study was to investigate potential mediators of CBT for severe stress in form of clinical burnout, using an active psychological treatment as comparator. We used linear mixed models to analyze data from patients (N = 82) with clinical burnout who received either CBT or another psychological treatment in a randomized controlled trial. Potential mediators (i.e., sleep quality, behavioral activation, perceived competence, and therapeutic alliance) and outcome (i.e., symptoms of burnout) were assessed weekly during treatment. The results showed that the positive treatment effects on symptoms of burnout favoring CBT (estimated between-group d = 0.93) were mediated by improvements in sleep quality, ab = -0.017, 95% CI_asymmetric [-0.037, -0.002], and increase in perceived competence, ab = -0.037, 95% CI_asymmetric [-0.070, -0.010]. Behavioral activation, ab = -0.004 [-0.016, 0.007], and therapeutic alliance, ab = 0.002 [-0.006, 0.011], did not significantly mediate the difference in effects between the treatments. Improving sleep quality and increasing perceived competence may thus constitute important process goals in order to attain symptom reduction in CBT for clinical burnout.     

Turning failures into successes: a methodological shortcoming in empirical research on surrogate accuracy

Decision making for incompetent patients is a much-discussed topic in bioethics. According to one influential decision making standard, the substituted judgment standard, a surrogate decision maker ought to make the decision that the incompetent patient would have made, had he or she been competent. Empirical research has been conducted in order to find out whether surrogate decision makers are sufficiently good at doing their job, as this is defined by the substituted judgment standard. This research investigates to what extent surrogates are able to predict what the patient would have preferred in the relevant circumstances. In this paper we address a methodological shortcoming evident in a significant number of studies. The mistake consists in categorizing responses that only express uncertainty as predictions that the patient would be positive to treatment, on the grounds that the clinical default is to provide treatment unless it is refused. We argue that this practice is based on confusion and that it risks damaging the research on surrogate accuracy.

Hearing Voices: The Impact of Announcer Speech Characteristics on Consumer Response to Broadcast Advertising

Virtually every broadcast advertisement uses the voice of an announcer, but due to lack of guidance from the marketing literature, managers must rely on gut feel when choosing a voice. Drawing on research from psycholinguistics, we identify 3 important voice characteristics —syllable speed, interphrase pausation, and pitch — and link these characteristics to key advertising response variables. By considering these 3 variables simultaneously, we test competing explanations previously offered to explain the process by which speech rate affects consumer response to advertising. Specifically, we assess whether an increase in speech rate enhances or reduces processing of the advertisement and whether this effect is driven primarily by syllable speed or interphrase pausation. Consideration of these 2 aspects of speech rate independently helps identify whether the changes in processing stem from changes in the opportunity to process and/or the motivation to process. Our results show that a voice with faster‐than‐normal syllable speed and low pitch produces less negative advertisement‐directed cognitive responses and more favorable ad attitudes, as well as more favorable brand attitudes, lending support to a motivational process explanation. No significant effects were found for interphrase pausation, suggesting that the results cannot be accounted for by the reduced opportunity to process in the compressed conditions.     

An inexpensive and accurate method of measuring the force of responses in reaction time research

Together with reaction time (RT), the force with which people respond to stimuli can provide important clues about cognitive and affective processes. We discuss some of the issues surrounding the accurate measurement and interpretation of response force, and present a response key by which response force can be measured regularly and unobtrusively in RT research. The advantage of the response key described is that it operates like a standard response key of the type used regularly in classic RT experiments. The construction of the response key is described in detail and its potential assessed by way of an experiment examining response force in a simple reaction task to visual stimuli of increasing brightness and size.     

An interaction model for odor quality and intensity

The perceived intensity and quality of binary odor mixtures are studied in relation to bow their components are perceived when presented separately. Subjects judged the perceived intensity and quality of 6 concentrations of pyridine, 6 concentrations ofn-butanol, and their 36 possible combinations. The results show that the perceived intensity of the mixture can be predicted from the perceived intensity of its components presented separately (R _A andR _B) by the Euclidian arithmetic model. The maximum probability of identifying a mixture as a “mixture” is reached whenR _A andR _B are equally strong. An interaction model for mixtures that relates perceived intensity and quality is presented and tested. The test reveals that both the perceived intensity of a mixture and the probability that it will be identified as the one or the other component can, by a simple interaction model, be successfully predicted fromR _A andR _B.     

Analysis of word comprehension in a case of pure word deafness

A case of pure word deafness due to a left temporal infarct is reported. The results of dichotic tests suggest that auditory verbal material may be processed in the right hemisphere. The inability to repeat nonsense words, the frequent semantic paraphasias in real-word repetition tasks, and the capacity to give a partial account of the meaning of a word that the patient cannot repeat show that despite the impairment of the phonological analysis, lexical semantic processing is possible. An attempt is made to demonstrate that the patient resorts to this semantic processing and that this reflects the linguistic competence of the right hemisphere.