Similar effects of medial supramammillary or systemic injection of chlordiazepoxide on both theta frequency and fixed-interval respondin

The frequency of theta activity may be important for hippocampal function. Anxiolytic drugs reduce theta frequency and have behavioral effects that are similar to those of hippocampal lesions. The effect of the anxiolytic benzodiazepine chlordiazepoxide (CDP) on theta frequency is partially mediated by the medial supramammillary nucleus (mSuM), part of an ascending theta-activating system. Rats were trained on the hippocampal-sensitive fixed-interval 60-sec schedule (FI60). CDP (5 mg/kg i.p.) released responding suppressed by nonreward, seen as increased leverpressing, and reduced theta frequency concurrently. Microinfusion of CDP (20 μg in 0.5 μl saline) into mSuM had as large effects on both frequency and behavior. Other nuclei mediate the benzodiazepine reduction of theta frequency in the open field and the water maze. But the mSuM appears to be the major, if not sole, nucleus controlling theta frequency and, so, hippocampal-mediated behavioral inhibition in the FI60 lever task.     

A Psychoanalytic Contribution to Psychic Vampirism: A Case Vignette

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Ordering autobiographical experiences

This study examined individuals' memory for the temporal order of autobiographical events and for the components that constitute autobiographical events. Study 1 measured performance on an across-event ordering task that involved the chronological arrangement of cards that displayed event labels. Results indicated poor ordering ability across events, but a reasonable ability to order clusters of events. Study 2 compared within-event and across-event ordering using computer-presented digital photographs. Participants were better at ordering the photographs in their own across-event trials than in their within-event trials. The results are discussed in terms of the retrieval of temporal information under within- and across-event conditions.     

Ruminative coping and post-event processing in social anxiety

Cognitive models of social anxiety implicate various factors in the initiation and maintenance of socially anxious states, including anticipatory processing, self-focused attention and post-event processing. The present study focused on post-event processing, which is a post-mortem analysis following a social event that is described as ruminative in nature and serves to maintain social anxiety. Participants (N=112; 64 women, 48 men) were presented with vignettes that involved making mistakes in public and were instructed to record their thoughts to allow for the examination of the content of post-event processing. Ruminative coping and distraction were assessed via self-report. Results indicated that participants high in social anxiety (n=55) were more likely to ruminate and less likely to distract when faced with socially anxious stressors compared to those low in social anxiety (n=57). Further, as hypothesized, participants high in social anxiety recorded more negative thoughts and more upward counterfactual thoughts ('if only' type thoughts on how things could have been better; associated with negative affect) compared to those low in social anxiety. These results are discussed in terms of cognitive models of social anxiety.     

The perceptual determinants of person construal: reopening the social-cognitive toolbox

Guided by a heuristic account of social-cognitive functioning, researchers have attempted to identify the cognitive benefits that derive from a categorical approach to person construal. While revealing, this work has overlooked the fact that, prior to the application of categorical thinking as an economizing mental tool, perceivers must first extract category-triggering information from available stimulus cues. It is possible, therefore, that basic perceptual processes may also contribute to people's propensity to view others in a category-based manner. This possibility was explored in 3 experiments in which the authors investigated the ease with which perceivers can extract categorical and identity-based knowledge from faces under both optimal and suboptimal (i.e., inverted faces, blurred faces, rapidly presented faces) processing conditions. The results confirmed that categorical knowledge is extracted from faces more efficiently than identity-related knowledge, a finding that underscores the importance of perceptual operations in the generation of categorical thinking.     

The look of love: gaze shifts and person perception

Gaze direction is a vital communicative channel through which people transmit information to each other. By signaling the locus of social attention, gaze cues convey information about the relative importance of objects, including other people, in the environment. For the most part, this information is communicated via patterns of gaze direction, with gaze shifts signaling changes in the objects of attention. Noting the relevance of gaze cues in social cognition, we speculated that gaze shifts may modulate people's evaluations of others. We investigated this possibility by asking participants to judge the likability (Experiment 1) and physical attractiveness (Experiment 2) of targets displaying gaze shifts indicative of attentional engagement or disengagement with the participants. As expected, person evaluation was moderated by the direction of gaze shifts, but only when the judgment under consideration was relevant to participants. We consider how and when gaze shifts may modulate person perception and its associated behavioral products.