Predictors of Deliberate Self-Harm Behavior Among Emerging Adolescents: An Initial Test of a Self-Punitiveness Model

The current study examined the extent to which an expanded self-punitiveness model could be applied to deliberate self-harm (DSH) among students making the transition to university. Specific components of the self-punitiveness model included perfectionism, overgeneralization, self-criticism, and shame. A sample of 319 university students completed a measure of deliberate self-harm as well as two multidimensional perfectionism measures and measures of self-criticism, overgeneralization, and shame. Correlational analyses found few significant associations among deliberate self-harm and the self-punitiveness factors among men. In contrast, among women, deliberate self-harm was associated with dimensions of trait perfectionism such as parental criticism and socially prescribed perfectionism, as well as with overgeneralization, self-criticism, and both characterological shame and bodily shame with the strongest associations found with shame. Supplementary analyses found a strong link between overgeneralization and shame and an association between self-criticism and shame among women. The results support the contention that particularly among young women making the transition to university, deliberate self-harm behavior is a reflection of a self-punitive personality orientation with multiple facets and a sense of shame associated with an overgeneralized sense of failing to meet social expectations.     

How Stimulus Variables Combine to Affect Change Blindness

Change blindness is the inability to detect changes that occur in a scene, when the scene is briefly obscured while the change happens. It has been found to occur during driving simulations and computer use for example. Scene-Complexity, stimulus On-Time and time for which a scene is obscured can all affect our ability to detect changes (or change blindness). In most studies parameters have been selected to induce change blindness with little consideration of the extent to which change blindness might be induced. There is however evidence that variables that describe the visual scene can affect likelihood of detecting changes (Rensink Visual Cognition 7:345?C376, 2000). These effects have in this paper been explored in combination. Increasing Scene-Complexity, decreasing stimulus On-Time and increasing the duration for which a scene is obscured all increase change blindness but they all interact to further increase the likelihood of changes being missed. In order to reduce change blindness in a changing scene, all the variables need to be considered.     

Impulse Control Disorders in Parkinson’s Disease: A Psychosocial Perspective

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease primarily characterised by motor symptoms. However, another feature of PD which is receiving increasing attention is the phenomenon of impulse control disorders (ICDs), such as pathological gambling. To date, research into ICDs in PD has centred on a biomedical model of cause, related to the effects of dopamine replacement therapy. However, there are several areas of discrepancy in the current biomedical account of ICDs in PD. In addition, we argue that social and psychological factors also need to be considered to achieve a more complete understanding of the phenomenon. We present a novel conceptual model which combines biomedical and psychosocial factors in the genesis of ICDs in PD and use the model to identify a number of potential treatment intervention points and to highlight important outstanding questions concerning the inter-relationship between psychosocial and biomedical factors in the genesis of ICDs in PD.     

Electrophysiological evidence of different loci for case-mixing and word frequency effects in visual word recognition

Do word frequency and case mixing affect different processing stages in visual word recognition? Some studies of online reading have suggested that word frequency affects an earlier, perceptual-encoding stage and that case mixing affects a later, central decision stage (e.g., Reingold, Yang, & Rayner, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 36:1677-1683 2010); others have suggested otherwise (e.g., Allen, Smith, Lien, Grabbe, & Murphy, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 31:713-721 2005; Besner & McCann, 1987). To determine the locus of the word frequency and case-mixing effects, we manipulated word frequency (high vs. low) and case type (consistent lower case vs. mixing case) in a lexical-decision paradigm. We measured two event-related-potential components: the N170 (an early peak occurring 140-240 ms after stimulus onset, related to structural encoding) and the P3 (a late peak occurring 400-600 ms after stimulus onset, related to stimulus categorization). The critical finding was that the N170 amplitude was sensitive to case mixing, but the P3 amplitude was sensitive to word frequency and lexicality. These results suggest that case mixing affects an earlier processing stage than does word frequency, at least with respect to lexical-decision processes.     

Reconnecting cognition in the lab and cognition in real life: The role of compensatory social and motivational factors in explaining how cognition ages in the wild

The papers in this Special Issue compellingly show that older adults' everyday cognitive life is governed not by the decline in elementary cognitive processes as measured in the lab, but by a multitude of compensatory mechanisms, most of which are of the social/motivational variety. Much of this compensatory behavior can be elicited with no or only little experimental prodding, underscoring the self-organizing or self-initiated nature of this type of behavior, even in advanced old age. We suggest that the study of compensation and the orchestration of cognitive, social, and motivational compensatory mechanisms in effective and healthy aging provides a meaningful challenge to traditional ways of examining developmental changes in cognitive performance.     

A quasi-experimental analysis of the influence of neighborhood disadvantage on child and adolescent conduct problems

A quasi-experimental comparison of cousins differentially exposed to levels of neighborhood disadvantage (ND) was used with extensive measured covariates to test the hypothesis that neighborhood risk has independent effects on youth conduct problems (CPs). Multilevel analyses were based on mother-rated ND and both mother-reported CPs across 4-13 years (n = 7,077) and youth-reported CPs across 10-13 years (n = 4,524) from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. ND was robustly related to CPs reported by both informants when controlling for both measured risk factors that are correlated with ND and unmeasured confounds. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that ND has influence on conduct problems.