Spatial task performance,sex differences,and motion sickness susceptibility

There are substantial individual differences in susceptibility to motion sickness, yet little is known about what mediates these differences. Spatial ability and sex have been suggested as possible factors in this relationship. 89 participants (57 women) were administered a Motion Sickness Questionnaire that assesses motion sickness susceptibility, a Water-level Task that gauges sensitivity to gravitational upright, and a Mental Rotation Task that tests an individual's awareness of how objects typically move in space. Significant sex differences were observed in performance of both the Water-level Task (p<.01), and the Mental Rotation Task (p<.005), with women performing less accurately than men. Women also had significantly higher scores on the Motion Sickness Questionnaire (p<.005). Among men, but not women, significant negative relationships were observed between Water-level Task performance and Motion Sickness Questionnaire score (p<.001) and between Mental Rotation Task performance and Motion Sickness Questionnaire score (p<.005). In conclusion, women performed significantly more poorly than men did on the spatial ability tasks and reported significantly more bouts of motion sickness. In addition, men showed a significant negative relationship between spatial ability and motion sickness susceptibility.     

The treatment of hypochondriasis: exposure plus response prevention vs cognitive therapy

In this study (1) exposure in vivo plus response prevention, (2) cognitive therapy and (3) a waiting-list control condition were compared on their efficacy on the treatment of hypochondriasis. Seventy-eight patients with a DSM-IV diagnosis of hypochondriasis were randomly assigned to one of these conditions. Patients in both active treatment conditions improved significantly on all the measures, whereas the patients in the waiting-list control condition did not improve. The improvements were clinically significant. Exposure in vivo plus response prevention and cognitive therapy were equally effective. The improvements were maintained at the 7 months follow up.     

Predicting the Presence and Search for Life Meaning: Test of an Attachment Theory-Driven Model

To date, little is known about how perceptions of life meaning are formed, although recent evidence suggests that “basic attitudes about the meaning of existence are commonly rooted in evolved biological factors and conjointly influenced through people’s experiences with life” (Steger et al. in J Posit Psychol 6:181–191, 2011a). In line with this view, we proposed that multidimensional aspects of adult attachment security and trait authenticity would independently predict perceptions regarding the presence and search for life meaning. Correlational findings largely supported hypothesized relationships among these variables. Regression findings further demonstrated that adult attachment orientations and trait authenticity uniquely predicted the presence of life meaning, and made more modest contributions to the search for meaning. In both predictions, experiences of self-alienation appeared to function as a mediator of the relationship between attachment security and meaning in life perceptions. Implications of our findings for advancing understanding of the formation of these perceptions are discussed.     

Reproducing affective norms with lexical co-occurrence statistics: Predicting valence,arousal, and dominance

Human ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance are frequently used to study the cognitive mechanisms of emotional attention, word recognition, and numerous other phenomena in which emotions are hypothesized to play an important role. Collecting such norms from human raters is expensive and time consuming. As a result, affective norms are available for only a small number of English words, are not available for proper nouns in English, and are sparse in other languages. This paper investigated whether affective ratings can be predicted from length, contextual diversity, co-occurrences with words of known valence, and orthographic similarity to words of known valence, providing an algorithm for estimating affective ratings for larger and different datasets. Our bootstrapped ratings achieved correlations with human ratings on valence, arousal, and dominance that are on par with previously reported correlations across gender, age, education and language boundaries. We release these bootstrapped norms for 23,495 English words.     

The impact of MRI scanner environment on perceptual decision-making

Despite the widespread use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), few studies have addressed scanner effects on performance. The studies that have examined this question show a wide variety of results. In this article we report analyses of three experiments in which participants performed a perceptual decision-making task both in a traditional setting as well as inside an MRI scanner. The results consistently show that response times increase inside the scanner. Error rates also increase, but to a lesser extent. To reveal the underlying mechanisms that drive the behavioral changes when performing a task inside the MRI scanner, the data were analyzed using the linear ballistic accumulator model of decision-making. These analyses show that, in the scanner, participants exhibit a slow down of the motor component of the response and have less attentional focus on the task. However, the balance between focus and motor slowing depends on the specific task requirements.     

Neural mechanisms of sensitivity to peer information in young adult cannabis users

Though social influence is a critical factor in the initiation and maintenance of marijuana use, the neural correlates of influence in those who use marijuana are unknown. In this study, marijuana-using young adults (MJ; n = 20) and controls (CON; n = 23) performed a decision-making task in which they made a perceptual choice after viewing the choices of unknown peers via photographs, while they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scans. The MJ and CON groups did not show differences in the overall number of choices that agreed with versus opposed group influence, but only the MJ group showed reaction time slowing when deciding against group choices. Longer reaction times were associated with greater activation of frontal regions. The MJ goup, compared to CON, showed significantly greater activation in the caudate when presented with peer information. Across groups, caudate activation was associated with self-reported susceptibility to influence. These findings indicate that young adults who use MJ may exhibit increased effort when confronted with opposing peer influence, as well as exhibit greater responsivity of the caudate to social information. These results not only better define the neural basis of social decisions, but also suggest that marijuana use is associated with exaggerated neural activity during decision making that involves social information.     

Sensitivity in detecting facial displays of emotion: Impact of maternal depression and oxytocin receptor genotype

The current study examined sensitivity in detecting emotional faces among children of depressed and non-depressed mothers. A second goal was to examine the potential moderating role of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR rs53576), which has been linked to emotion recognition in the past. Participants included 247 children (ages 8–14). Children completed a forced choice emotion identification task. Maternal history of major depressive disorder during children's lives was associated with children's sensitivity in detecting emotional faces among children homozygous for the OXTR rs53576 G allele, but not among carriers of the A allele. Among G homozygotes, children of depressed mothers exhibited increased sensitivity in detecting sad faces, and reduced sensitivity in detecting happiness, compared to children of non-depressed mothers.     

Differences in emotion modulation using cognitive reappraisal in individuals with and without suicidal ideation: An ERP study

Difficulties in emotion regulation have been associated with increased suicidal thoughts and behaviours. The majority of studies have examined self-reported use of emotion regulation strategies. In contrast, the current study focused on a direct measure of individuals’ ability to use a specific emotion regulation strategy, cognitive reappraisal, using the late positive potential (LPP), an event-related potential component that reflects attention to emotional stimuli. Specifically, the cognitive reappraisal ability of 33 undergraduate students was assessed via an image-viewing task during which the participants had to passively view, increase or reduce their emotions in response to looking at neutral, positive or dysphoric images. We found that participants with a history of suicidal ideation (SI) had significantly higher LPP when asked to reduce negative emotion in response to dysphoric images, compared to individuals with no history of SI. These findings suggest that difficulties with using cognitive reappraisal, specifically to decrease negative affect, might be linked to suicide risk.