Autobiographical narratives of deaf and hearing adults: an examination of narrative coherence and the use of internal states

To examine the impact of early linguistic experiences on later verbal report of autobiographical memory, 13 hearing adults and 13 deaf adults born to hearing parents described events that occurred before and after the age of 10 years. The contextual, temporal, and thematic coherence of the narratives was rated. The use of emotional, perceptual, mental, and physiological states was also recorded. There were differences in the coherence of the narratives and use of internal states according to the age at which the events occurred. There were no group differences in coherence, but hearing adults provided longer narratives than deaf adults. When narrative length was controlled, deaf adults included more emotional states than hearing adults. Results suggest that early unavailability of language does not impact the coherence of adults' narratives, although certain features of linguistic expression specific to ASL may result in greater saturation of emotional states references in autobiographical narratives of deaf adults.     

Construct Validity of the Iowa Gambling Task

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) was created to assess real-world decision making in a laboratory setting and has been applied to various clinical populations (i.e., substance abuse, schizophrenia, pathological gamblers) outside those with orbitofrontal cortex damage, for whom it was originally developed. The current review provides a critical examination of lesion, functional neuroimaging, developmental, and clinical studies in order to examine the construct validity of the IGT. The preponderance of evidence provides support for the use of the IGT to detect decision making deficits in clinical populations, in the context of a more comprehensive evaluation. The review includes a discussion of three critical issues affecting the validity of the IGT, as it has recently become available as a clinical instrument: the lack of a concise definition as to what aspect of decision making the IGT measures, the lack of data regarding reliability of the IGT, and the influence of personality and state mood on IGT performance.     

Affective processing within 1/10th of a second: High arousal is necessary for early facilitative processing of negative but not positive words

Lexical decisions to high- and low-arousal negative words and to low-arousal neutral and positive words were examined in an event-related potentials (ERP) study. Reaction times to positive and high-arousal negative words were shorter than those to neutral (low-arousal) words, whereas those to low-arousal negative words were longer. A similar pattern was observed in an early time window of the ERP response: Both positive and high-arousal negative words elicited greater negative potentials in a time frame of 80 to 120 msec after stimulus onset. This result suggests that arousal has a differential impact on early lexical processing of positive and negative words. Source localization in the relevant time frame revealed that the arousal effect in negative words is likely to be localized in a left occipito-temporal region including the middle temporal and fusiform gyri. The ERP arousal effect appears to result from early lexico-semantic processing in high-arousal negative words.     

Multidimensional body image comparisons among patients with eating disorders,body dysmorphic disorder,and clinical controls: A multisite study

Body image disturbance is considered a core characteristic of eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), however its definition has been unclear within the literature. This study examined the multidimensional nature of body image functioning among individuals with either anorexia nervosa (AN; n = 35), bulimia nervosa (BN; n = 26), or BDD (n = 56), relative to female (n = 34) and male (n = 36) psychiatric controls. Participants were recruited from 10 treatment centers in the United States and England and completed psychometrically validated and standardized self-report measures of body image. Overall, the AN, BN, and BDD groups were characterized by significantly elevated disturbances in most body image dimensions relative to their gender-matched clinical controls. There was variability, however, in the comparisons among the three groups of interest, including foci of body dissatisfaction and body image coping patterns. On omnibus indices of body image disturbance and body image quality of life, patients with BDD reported more body image impairment than those with eating disorders. Although AN, BN, and BDD are characterized by body image disturbances, similar and partially distinctive cognitive, behavioral, and emotional elements of body image functioning exist among these groups. The study's empirical and clinical implications are considered.     

The importance of semantics in auditory representations

The purpose of the present study was to examine the nature of auditory representations by manipulating the semantic and physical relationships between auditory objects. On each trial, listeners heard a group of four simultaneous sounds for 1 sec, followed by 350 msec of noise, and then either the same sounds or three of the same plus a new one. Listeners completed a change-detection task and an object-encoding task. For change detection, listeners made a same-different judgment for the two groups of sounds. Object encoding was measured by presenting probe sounds that either were or were not present in the two groups. In Experiments 1 and 3, changing the target to an object that was acoustically different from but semantically the same as the original target resulted in more errors on both tasks than when the target changed to an acoustically and semantically different object. In Experiment 2, comparison of semantic and acoustic effects demonstrated that acoustics provide a weaker cue than semantics for both change detection and object encoding. The results suggest that listeners rely more on semantic information than on physical detail.)     

Examining the Role of Gender in the Relationship Between Use of Condom-Related Protective Behavioral Strategies when Drinking and Alcohol-Related Sexual Behavior

The present research aimed to examine the relationships among gender, condom-related protective behavior strategies (PBS), and condom use during alcohol-related sexual behavior. Heavy drinking, sexually active U.S. undergraduate college students from a large northwest university (N?=?454; 61.7% female) completed a web-survey that included measures of drinking, sexual behavior, and condom-related PBS. MANOVA findings suggested that males were more likely to use condom-related PBS than females. Negative binomial regression results suggested that use of condom-related PBS by both genders was positively associated with condom use during alcohol-related sexual behavior, but especially for women. These results suggest that condom-related PBS may be useful to incorporate in interventions targeting alcohol-related sexual behavior among heavy drinking college students.