Assessing emotion sensitivity in female offenders with borderline personality symptoms: results from a fear-potentiated startle paradigm

An instructed fear-conditioning paradigm was used to measure fear-potentiated startle (FPS) in a sample of 80 Caucasian, female offenders assessed using the Personality Assessment Inventory-Borderline Features Scale (Morey, 1991). As predicted, women with higher levels of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) symptoms showed significantly greater FPS than women with lower levels when required to focus attention on the threat-relevant dimension of the experimental stimuli. However, FPS was not greater for women with higher levels of BPD symptoms in the two conditions that required participants to direct attention away from the threat-relevant dimension. These results highlight the importance of attention for moderating the association between BPD symptoms and exaggerated responses to threat-relevant information and may, therefore, help to resolve the inconsistent evidence on emotional reactivity in BPD. Moreover, the potential importance of attentional factors in BPD may shed new light on prominent symptoms of the disorder and existing theoretical perspectives on BPD.     

Psychopathy increases perceived moral permissibility of accidents

Psychopaths are notorious for their antisocial and immoral behavior, yet experimental studies have typically failed to identify deficits in their capacities for explicit moral judgment. We tested 20 criminal psychopaths and 25 criminal nonpsychopaths on a moral judgment task featuring hypothetical scenarios that systematically varied an actor's intention and the action's outcome. Participants were instructed to evaluate four classes of actions: accidental harms, attempted harms, intentional harms, and neutral acts. Psychopaths showed a selective difference, compared with nonpsychopaths, in judging accidents, where one person harmed another unintentionally. Specifically, psychopaths judged these actions to be more morally permissible. We suggest that this pattern reflects psychopaths' failure to appreciate the emotional aspect of the victim's experience of harm. These findings provide direct evidence of abnormal moral judgment in psychopathy.     

New insights into the impact of digital signage as a retail atmospheric tool

This article investigates the previously little‐researched role of digital signage (DS) in retail atmospherics, using an environmental psychology framework, drawing support from the Limited Capacity Model of Mediated Message Processing (LCM). DS consists of screen displays in public spaces showing video. The method consisted of a structured questionnaires quasi‐experiment (n = 357), comparing before and after DS installation against an unchanged control mall. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of DS, which has a positive effect on shoppers' approach behaviors such as spending, mediated by perceptions of the retail environment and positive affect. Results are limited as the DS screens content was information based, whereas according to LCM, people pay more attention to emotion‐eliciting communications. The results have practical implications as DS appeals to employed shoppers. This study contributes to theory by providing a rare longitudinal environmental psychology study of the effects of an atmospheric stimulus on real shoppers in a real retail context. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comprehensive and systematic approach to parent education

Abstract

This paper emphasizes the importance of parent education, particularly in our current rapidly changing society. The history of parent education is briefly reviewed and a new program called STEP, Systematic Training for Effective Parenting is discussed in detail.     

On the (non)persuasive power of a brain image

The persuasive power of brain images has captivated scholars in many disciplines. Like others, we too were intrigued by the finding that a brain image makes accompanying information more credible (McCabe & Castel in Cognition 107:343-352, 2008). But when our attempts to build on this effect failed, we instead ran a series of systematic replications of the original study—comprising 10 experiments and nearly 2,000 subjects. When we combined the original data with ours in a meta-analysis, we arrived at a more precise estimate of the effect, determining that a brain image exerted little to no influence. The persistent meme of the influential brain image should be viewed with a critical eye.     

Potential: The valuation of imagined future achievement

The concept of potential is central to a number of decisions, ranging from organizational hiring, to athletic recruiting, to the evaluation of artistic performances. While potential may often be valued for its future payoffs, the present studies investigate whether people value potential even when making decisions about goods and experiences that can only be consumed in the present. Experiment 1 demonstrates that potential makes people more likely to consume inferior performances in the present. Experiment 2 manipulated temporal focus and demonstrates that focusing on the present (vs. the future) attenuates the effect of potential on enjoyment. Experiment 3 demonstrates that merely moving the performance into the past negates the effect of potential. And, Experiment 4 demonstrates that potential increases valuation only when value is tied to abstract, hedonic dimensions, but not when it is tied to concrete, utilitarian dimensions.     

The impact of psychological therapies on violent behaviour in clinical and forensic settings: A systematic review

Violent behaviour is a serious problem in terms of the impact on victims, quality of life for perpetrators, and the financial burden on the prison service, the health sector, and society generally. However, to date there is not a general consensus as to how this can be managed other than removing the perpetrators from communities. Incarceration can be on an indeterminate basis or for a short period of time before reintegration into society, depending on the gravity of the offence. This systematic review critically examines the existing research literature on psychotherapeutic interventions for violent behaviour in forensic and clinical populations. Five databases were searched, selected journals were hand searched, and authors of identified papers were contacted in efforts to obtain relevant unpublished work. The first author and a colleague independently evaluated the eligibility of all studies identified, abstracted data, and assessed study quality. The overall findings provide tentative support for the utility of psychotherapeutic interventions in reducing aggressive behaviour in forensic and psychiatric patients with a history of violent behaviour.     

Oral Reading Skills of Children with Oral Language (Word-Finding) Difficulties

We examined how children with and without oral language (word-finding) difficulties (WFD) perform on oral reading (OR) versus silent reading recognition (SRR) tasks when reading the same words and how lexical factors influenced OR accuracy, error patterns, and nature of miscues. Primary-grade students were administered an experimental reading measure. Words were controlled for lexical factors known to influence oral language, such as frequency, lexical neighborhood, familiarity, and phonotactic probability. For learners with WFD, SRR was superior to OR; lexical factors predicted OR success; WF error-patterns emerged in OR; and miscues were higher in frequency, more familiar, and from denser neighborhoods than targets.     

An open clinical trial of cognitive therapy for borderline personality disorder

Although borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a major public health concern, psychotherapeutic trials have been limited. The present uncontrolled clinical trial examines whether cognitive therapy for BPD is associated with significant improvement on measures of psychopathology. A total of 32 patients with BPD, who also reported suicide ideation or who engaged in self-injury behavior, received weekly cognitive therapy sessions over a 1-year period as described by Layden et al. (1993). The results revealed significant and clinically important decreases on measures of suicide ideation, hopelessness, depression, number of borderline symptoms and dysfunctional beliefs at termination and 18-month assessment interviews. Implications for further research with this difficult-to-treat patient population are discussed.