Adults' ability to detect children's lying

Adults are poor deception detectors when examining lies told by adults, on average. However, there are some adults who are better at detecting lies than others. Children learn to lie at a very young age, a behavior that is socialized by parents. Yet, less is known about the ability to detect children's lies, particularly with regard to individual differences in the ability to detect this deception. The current study explored adult raters' ability to discern honesty in children who lied or told the truth about committing a misdeed. Results showed that adults are no better at detecting children's lies than they are with adult lies. In particular, adults were very poor at identifying children's honest statements. However, individual differences did emerge, suggesting that the ability to detect lying in children might be facilitated by relevant experience working with children. Implications for legal and mental health contexts are discussed.     

Examination stress as an ecological inducer of cortisol and psychological responses to stress in undergraduate students

The purpose of the present study was to investigate basic methodological issues related to the usage of an examination stress protocol in studies of psychoneuroendocrinology. In the present study, 57 undergraduate students served as participants. All subjects provided salivary samples and completed psychological inventories during a low examination stress period and again during a high examination stress period. Salivary samples were analyzed for cortisol. Three major findings were observed. First, the examination stress protocol proved to be an effective trigger of elevations in both psychological measures of stress and in cortisol levels. Second, sex differences were observed in cortisol levels, such that males showed an elevation in cortisol during the high examination stress session whereas females did not. Finally, no significant correlations were observed between elevations in psychological measures of stress and elevations in cortisol levels. These findings suggest that the examination stress protocol used in the present study effectively elevated both psychological stress and cortisol levels. Furthermore, these findings suggest that there are biological differences in how males and females respond to stress. Finally, no evidence was found to suggest a relationship between psychological and hormonal levels of stress. Together, these findings suggest the need to better define and consider the implications of both the specific measures of stress being used and individual differences in the subject samples in psychoendocrine studies.     

The relationship between anxiety sensitivity and latent symptoms of emotional problems: A structural equation modeling approach

A large body of research suggests that common and specific psychopathology dimensions underlie the symptoms that occur within mood and anxiety disorders. As of yet, it is unclear precisely how the facets of Anxiety Sensitivity (AS), or fear of the symptoms of fear and anxiety, relate to these latent factors. Using data from 606 adolescents participating in the baseline phase of a longitudinal study on risk factors for emotional disorders, we modeled the facets of AS as measured by the Anxiety Sensitivity Index-Expanded Form (ASI-X) and related these facets to a hierarchical model of latent symptoms of psychological distress. Results suggest that one facet of AS is associated with a broad General Distress factor underlying symptoms of most emotional disorders while others relate to intermediate-level and conceptually-meaningful narrow factors representing aspects of psychological distress specific to particular emotional disorders.     

The linguistic and embodied nature of conceptual processing

Recent theories of cognition have argued that embodied experience is important for conceptual processing. Embodiment can be contrasted with linguistic factors such as the typical order in which words appear in language. Here, we report four experiments that investigated the conditions under which embodiment and linguistic factors determine performance. Participants made speeded judgments about whether pairs of words or pictures were semantically related or had an iconic relationship. The embodiment factor was operationalized as the degree to which stimulus pairs were presented in the spatial configurations in which they usually occur (i.e., an iconic configuration, e.g., attic presented above basement). The linguistic factor was operationalized as the frequency of the stimulus pairs in language. The embodiment factor predicted error rates and response time better for pictures, whereas the linguistic factor predicted error rates and response time better for words. These findings were modified by task, with the embodiment factor being strongest in iconicity judgments for pictures and the linguistic factor being strongest in semantic judgments for words. Both factors predicted error rates and response time for both semantic and iconicity judgments. These findings support the view that conceptual processing is both linguistic and embodied, with a bias for the embodiment or the linguistic factor depending on the nature of the task and the stimuli.     

The Real-Time Processing of Sluiced Sentences

Ellipsis refers to an element that is absent from the input but whose meaning can nonetheless be recovered from context. In this cross-modal priming study, we examined the online processing of Sluicing, an ellipsis whose antecedent is an entire clause: The handyman threw a book to the programmer but I don’t know which book the handyman threw to the programmer_ellipsis. To understand such an elliptical construction, the listener arguably must ‘fill in’ the missing material (“the handyman threw___ to the programmer”) based on that which occurs in the antecedent clause. We aimed to determine the point in time in which reconstruction of the sluiced sentence is attempted and whether such a complex antecedent is re-accessed by the ellipsis. Out of the two antecedent constituents for which we probed, only the Object (programmer) was found active in the elliptical clause, confirming that an antecedent is attributed to the sluice in real time. Possible reasons for the non-observation of the Subject (handyman) are considered. We also suggest that ellipses are detected earlier in coordinated than subordinated sentences.     

FDG-PET Analysis and Findings in Amnesia Resulting From Hypoxia

The assumptions underlying neuroimaging, and problems in its analysis and interpretation, are commonly underestimated in neuropsychology. The ways in which fluoro-deoxy-glucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) data can be analysed are discussed. PET findings from four patients who had suffered severe amnesia, following episodes of acute hypoxia, are presented. These patients had shown evidence of medial temporal (hippocampal and parahippocampal) atrophy on MRI brain scans. The PET data were analysed in several different ways. The converging findings were that the patients showed bilateral thalamic hypometabolism, and there was also evidence of retrosplenial hypometabolism bilaterally. Cognitively, these patients performed most like other patients with medial temporal lesions, but the results indicate that structural lesions can have distal metabolic effects on structures elsewhere. These findings are interpreted in the light of neuroanatomical observations concerning parallel projections between medial temporal lobe structures and the thalamus, some of which pass via the retrosplenium.     

The Paradoxical Place of Enactment in Psychoanalysis: Introduction

Ringstrom's “comparison of relational psychoanalysis and intersubjective systems theory” exhibits a category mistake that renders the core of his argument logically incoherent.     

“Living Memory”: Discussion of Avishai Margalit's “Nostalgia”

Avishai Margalit raises questions about how memory can be a moral and an ethical concern, and in this commentary on “Nostalgia,” Aron expands on these themes and examines the place of memory in psychoanalysis and in Judaism. The study of memory and of mind are inseparable. At its best, psychoanalysis does not contrast thoughts and actions, inner and outer, memory and motor action, intrapsychic mental life and interpersonal external behavior as simple dichotomous terms but rather views these as mutually defining transformations, different views of a single complex reality. Conceived in this way, memory is not a static internal picture, but rather is continually constructed, embedded in our interpersonal context. It is living memory.