AIDS and social exclusion: personality features or adaptive behaviors?

The purpose of this survey is to detect common personality features in people infected with AIDS who have a case history of drug addiction and who live in a situation of social exclusion. The sample comprised 105 male participants from the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, divided into 4 groups: (a) 30 men with AIDS, having an intravenous drug addiction case history and who live in a condition of social exclusion; (b) 30 men with IVDA case history, also living in a situation of social exclusion; (c) 15 men in a social exclusion condition; and (d) 30 men in a condition of social adaptation. The evaluation instruments were an author-designed semi-structured interview and the Multiaxial Clinical Inventory (MCMI-II; Millon, 1987). Although some differences were found, the results indicate that there is no specific personality profile in the "social exclusion" population. People in a condition of social exclusion (AIDS, drug addicts, and poor people) may obtain similar scores in the variables studied, but there is no clear specific personality profile in the excluded population, although there may be certain situations in which the segregated groups present similar behaviors. Furthermore, these behaviors do not always correspond to personality features but are adaptive responses to a harsh and complex reality.     

Relationship between short- and long-term memory and short- and long-term extinction

Both the acquisition and the extinction of memories leave short- and long-term mnemonic traces. Here, we show that in male Wistar rats, the short-term memory for a step-down inhibitory avoidance task (IA) is resistant to extinction, and that its expression does not influence retrieval or extinction of long-term memory. It has been known for some time that short- and long-term inhibitory avoidance memory involve separate and parallel processes. Here we show that, instead, short-term extinction of IA long-term memory is the first step towards its long-term extinction, and that this link requires functional NMDA receptors and protein synthesis in the CA1 region of the dorsal hippocampus at the time of the first CS-no US presentation.     

Early psychological consequences of the March 11, 2004, terrorist attacks in Madrid, Spain

On March 11, 2004, Al-Qaeda set off 10 bombs on several train routes in Madrid. 192 people were killed and 2,000 wounded. In this study, 1,179 questionnaires were administered Week 2 after the attacks to residents 18 years and over from the affected geographical areas. The questionnaire included items about sociodemographic variables and exposure to the attacks. Psychological effects were assessed as presence of acute stress and depressive symptomatology and functional impairment. 46.7% of the sample presented symptomatology of acute stress and 49.6% depressive symptoms. Among the symptoms of acute stress, the most frequent were re-experiencing (72.5%) and dissociative symptoms (71.8%). The chief predicting variables in symptomatology were being female, over 65 yr. old, and a habitual train user. The large number of affected people was refined with an item analysis and the consideration of severity of interference in psychosocial functioning.     

知道感与不知道感：两种不同的认知加工过程——一项来自行为实验的证据

脑成像研究表明,准确的知晓感（FOK）可以分为知道感和不知道感,两者可能依赖不同的大脑机制实现。该研究通过两个实验,检验了线索和靶子的频率对FOK判断准确性的影响,并在行为水平上考察了“知道感和不知道感可能通过不同的认知过程来实现”的假设。实验一表明：靶子字的频率对FOK判断的准确性有影响,即靶子为低频字时,FOK判断的准确性降低;同时,线索和靶子的字频对知道感和不知道感判断的等级没有影响。实验二显示：线索熟悉性只影响准确的不知道感判断等级,而靶项目强度只影响准确的知道感判断等级,即产生了非交叉的双重分离。综上,我们发现了靶子的字频对FOK判断准确性的影响,并从行为实验的角度证实,知道感和不知道感依赖不同的认知加工过程。     

社会焦虑与大学生自杀人群分析研究

生命是神圣的,珍爱生命,追求生命是人的本能欲望。近年来大学生的自杀问题已经引起社会的普遍关注,社会焦虑引发精神疾病,情绪失控自杀被认为是大学生自杀的普遍过程,建议对大学生进行珍爱生命等有关的心理教育。     

The impact of implicit prejudice about the elderly on the reaction to stereotype confirmation and disconfirmation

Previous research demonstrated that perceivers explicitly condemn ingroup members who use racial stereotypes but that they are implicitly more likely to favor those ingroup members rather than ingroup members who do not use racial stereotypes (Castelli et al., 2001). The present study has two main goals. First, we want to investigate whether the same effects can be detected in the domain of ageism. In particular, we predicted that young adults would implicitly but not explicitly favor a young male who describes an old man in a stereotype-consistent way rather than in a stereotypeinconsistent way. Most importantly, we hypothesized that this tendency is related to participants’ prejudice level as assessed through an implicit measure (IAT, Greenwald et al., 1998), so that high prejudice individuals will implicitly favor stereotypere and derogate ingroup members who use stereotype-inconsistent information. Results provide general support for the hypotheses, and their implications for stereotype maintenance and change are discussed. Preparation of this paper was supported by a research grant from the University of Padova to the first author (CPDG018859).     

同时线索化条件下儿童返回抑制的容量

返回抑制是对先前注意过的目标再次做出反应的时候反应时延长的一种现象。返回抑制具有一定的生物学意义,忽略已经注意过的位置(或客体),使得有机体可以更加有效的注意新的内容。基于这一点,返回抑制现象应该可以在多个已经注意过的位置出现,这便是返回抑制的容量问题。在本研究中,采用同时呈现的线索化方式,考查8岁、10岁儿童在不同的实验任务——觉察任务和辨别任务——中的返回抑制容量。结果发现觉察任务中,10岁组儿童和8岁组儿童最多在5个线索化位置上出现返回抑制,但8岁年龄组的返回抑制容量缺乏稳定;辨别任务中,10岁年龄组只在一个位置上出现返回抑制,而8岁年龄组并没有明显返回抑制现象出现。年龄因素和任务类型对儿童返回抑制容量都产生了一定程度的影响。