Factor Validity of the Beck Hopelessness Scale in Italian Medical Patients

The aim of the present study was to assess the factor structure of the Italian version of the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) in a large sample of patients with medical conditions, comparing four different models proposed previously in the literature. Participants were 514 Italian adult patients with diagnoses of chronic daily headache, type 1 (insulin-dependent) or type 2 diabetes mellitus, epilepsy, open-angle glaucoma, human immunodeficiency virus infection, and women admitted for childbirth to a Department of Fetal–Maternal Medicine. All the patients were administered the BHS during routine visits. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to compare four models using several fit indices. The one-construct two-method model (i.e., the BHS measures one substantive hopelessness construct plus artifacts due to negative–positive item polarity) had the best fit indices and was more parsimonious than other models. The BHS seems to be a unidimensional measure of hopelessness, although there may be artifacts due to item polarity (i.e., positively and negatively worded items). Hopelessness scores differed in patients with particular medical diseases, with higher scores in conditions such as chronic daily headache and diabetes, and lower scores in patients positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and with open-angle glaucoma or epilepsy.     

Comparison of activation level between true and false items in the DRM paradigm

The aim of the present study was to compare the activation levels of true and false memories in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm. For this purpose, we used a lexical decision task (LDT) that can be considered a relative pure measure of activation. Participants had to study a list of words that were semantically associated to a critical non-presented word (CI), and afterwards had to classify the actually studied words, the CI and new words in the LDT. Results indicated that the classification latency of the CI was the same as actually studied words and shorter than new words. The results might be interpreted as evidence that the false and true memory items have the same activation level and that the false memory effect can be based on the indirect activation of the CI at the encoding.     

Inference-driven attention in symbolic and perceptual tasks: Biases toward expected and unexpected inputs

The aims of this paper are (a) to gather support for the hypothesis that some basic mechanisms of attentional deployment (i.e., its high efficiency in dealing with expected and unexpected inputs) meet the requirements of the inferential system and have possibly evolved to support its functioning, and (b) to show that these orienting mechanisms function in very similar ways in two perceptual tasks and in a symbolic task. The general hypothesis and its predictions are sketched in the Introduction, after a discussion of current findings concerning visual attention and the generalities of the inferential system. In the empirical section, three experiments are presented where participants tracked visual trajectories (Experiments 1 and 3) or arithmetic series (Experiments 2 and 3), responding to the onset of a target event (e.g., to a specific number) and to the repetition of an event (e.g., to a number appearing twice consecutively). Target events could be anticipated when they were embedded in regular series/trajectories; they could be anticipated, with the anticipation later disconfirmed, when a regular series/trajectory was abruptly interrupted before the target event occurred; and they could not be anticipated when the series/trajectory was random. Repeated events could not be anticipated. Results show a very similar pattern of allocation in tracking visual trajectories and arithmetic series: Attention is focused on anticipated events; it is defocused and redistributed when an anticipation is not confirmed by ensuing events; however, performance decreases when dealing with random series/trajectory—that is, in the absence of anticipations. In our view, this is due to the fact that confirmed and disconfirmed anticipations are crucial events for “knowledge revision”—that is, the fine tuning of the inferential system to the environment; attentional mechanisms have developed so as to enhance detection of these events, possibly at all levels of inferential processing.     

Grundlagen,Section 64: Frege's Discussion of Definitions by Abstraction in Historical Context

I offer in this paper a contextual analysis of Frege's Grundlagen, section 64. It is surprising that with so much ink spilled on that section, the sources of Frege's discussion of definitions by abstraction have remained elusive. I hope to have filled this gap by providing textual evidence coming from, among other sources, Grassmann, Schlömilch, and the tradition of textbooks in geometry for secondary schools (including a textbook Frege had used when teaching in a Privatschule in Jena in 1882–1884). In addition, I put Frege's considerations in the context of a widespread debate in Germany on ‘directions’ as a central notion in the theory of parallels.     

Burden, depression, and anxiety in caregivers of people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disease caused by the degeneration of motor neurons. The burden for ALS caregivers is quite high. There are still few studies that have investigated the emotional impact of ALS care. We conducted a cross-sectional study among 40 ALS caregivers, assessing general worries, burden of care, depression, anxiety, perception of social support, and patients' severity of disease. Caregiver burden, depression, and anxiety were positively related with each other, and all these variables had a negative relation with social support. Patient's loss of physical functions was positively related with caregiver burden, anxiety, and somatic expression of depression. Caregivers expressed worries for their own health conditions. Given these results, we consider the hypothesis of an emotional-somatic impact of ALS care. The implications and limitations are discussed.     

The association between social isolation,loneliness and psychological problems in young adults: A study during the acute phase of COVID-19 in Italy

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments had to impose social isolation measures to safeguard the citizens' health. However, this could have affected psychological problems. The aim of the present study was to investigate the psychological effects associated with social and emotional isolation during the acute phase of the COVID-19 in Italy. To this purpose, the degree of social isolation and loneliness and the presence of psychological problems (externalising and internalising) were investigated online in a sample of 395 young adults (18–30 years; 57% women). Results confirmed the relevant association between social isolation, loneliness and psychological problems, in both internalising and externalising dimensions. Particularly, loneliness showed the strongest association. Moreover, consistently with surveys conducted during the COVID-19-era, data highlighted that men were more vulnerable to social isolation and loneliness than women. These results underline the need for adequate interpersonal support during moments of isolation to prevent negative effects on psychological problems.     

Integration of base rates and new information in an abstract hypothesis‐testing task

In two studies, we investigated how people use base rates and the presence versus the absence of new information to judge which of two hypotheses is more likely. Participants were given problems based on two decks of cards printed with 0–4 letters. A table showed the relative frequencies of the letters on the cards within each deck. Participants were told the letters that were printed on or absent from a card the experimenter had drawn. Base rates were conveyed by telling participants that the experimenter had chosen the deck by drawing from an urn containing, in different proportions, tickets marked either ‘deck 1’ or ‘deck 2’. The task was to judge from which of the two decks the card was most likely drawn. Prior probabilities and the evidential strength of the subset of present clues (computed as ‘weight of evidence’) were the only significant predictors of participants’ dichotomous (both studies) and continuous (Study 2) judgments. The evidential strength of all clues was not a significant predictor of participants’ judgments in either study, and no significant interactions emerged. We discuss the results as evidence for additive integration of base rates and the new present information in hypothesis testing.     

Cannabis use and the risk behavior syndrome in Italian university students: are they related to suicide risk?

The aim of this study was to examine the association of cannabis use with risky behaviors and suicide risk in university students. A convenience sample of 246 students was recruited from four universities in Rome during the 2004 academic year. Participants completed the Zung scales for anxiety and depression, the Suicide Score Scale, and an ad hoc questionnaire assessing risky behaviors. The findings indicated a widespread use of cannabis among students and its association with risky behaviors, anxiety and depression, and suicide risk. A regression tree analysis resulted in 3 splits indicating that the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale is a good predictor of suicide risk, discriminating individuals at lower risk from those at higher risk. Individuals at higher risk for suicide could also be discriminated by self-reported lifetime drug use. Limitations of the study are related to the small sample size and use of a convenience sample.