Mood and memories of parental rearing styles: A comparison of mood effects on questionnaire-cued and free recall of autobiographical memories

The relationship between memories of childhood experiences (e.g., adverse parenting) and adult depression often found raises questions of interpretation. On the one hand, both laboratory studies and clinicians' experiences suggest that subjects in a depressed mood frequently show a negative bias in perceptions and memories. Negative childhood memories in depressed persons might, therefore, be interpreted as epiphenomena of depressed mood instead of etiological factors. On the other hand, memories of childhood experiences seem remarkably stable across changes in depressed mood, especially when memories are elicited by means of standardized questionnaires. In the mood and memory literature several explanations for this stability are offered. For one thing, highly structured cues to elicit memories (such as in questionnaires) are hypothesized to be less susceptible to mood bias than unstructured memory cues (such as in free recall procedures). On the other hand, resource allocation theorists suggest that childhood memories, being well established and rehearsed, are relatively impervious to mood bias no matter how they are elicited. In this study we examined whether different methods of eliciting childhood memories (i.e., free recall and questionnaire-cued) are differentially susceptible to mood bias. To this aim, we used a mood induction procedure to induce depressed, neutral, and elated mood and assessed childhood memories both before and after the mood induction using both questionnaires and free recall to elicit memories. Results suggested that memories elicited by means of free recall as well as by means of questionnaire-cued recall were susceptible to depressed and elated mood bias. The implications for research addressing the link between childhood experiences and depression are discussed.     

American Indian Secondary School Students' Preferences for Counselors

Researchers examined the importance of similar ethnicity and the preference for a counselor of the same sex among American Indian secondary school students.     

Confidence in expectations: A test of the triangle hypothesis

Kelley and Stahelski's (1970) triangle hypothesis states that competitors hold homogeneous views of others by assuming that most others are competitive, whereas cooperators or pro-social people hold more heterogeneous views by assuming that others are either cooperative or competitive. To evaluate the triangle hypothesis, this study examines differences between pro-socials, individualists, and competitors not only in their expectations about others' choice behaviour, but also in the confidence with which such expectations are held. It was found that pro-social subjects expected more cooperation than individualists and competitors. More importantly, as predicted on the basis of the triangle hypothesis, pro-socials were less confident about their expectations than competitors, with individualists holding intermediate levels of confidence.     

‘Healthy eating’ clinics in primary care: Programme intensity and patients' health beliefs

The primary care setting is seen by many to be at the forefront of the attempt to encourage people to follow healthier diets. Conducted in a single practice, the present study firstly considered the effectiveness of three ‘healthy eating’ clinics for patients found to have elevated cholesterol levels at screening. Through the use of a randomised trial, these patients received either basic dietay information or were invited back more frequently and requested to complete food diaries, half of which were then analysed through a computer program. At one year follow up the three programmes were found to have produced a 6.7% reduction in cholesterol levels. However, no differences were found between the three programmes. The study secondly examined a range of health belieji, based on the health belief model, as predictors of reductions in cholesterol levels. These were generally found to be poor predictors, with only the belief that one's diet is related to the chances of developing a number of major conditions and the perception of bam'ers dealing with confidence predicting these reductions. Finally, the case for incorporating self-efficacy beliefs into the healh belief model is outlined and the need for health counsellors to tailor their messages to the pre-existing beliefi and behaviours of patients is highlighted.     

Relevance reviewed: The case of argumentum ad hominem

This article aims tt providing some conceptual tools for dealing adequately with relevance in argumentative discourse. For this purpose, argumentative relevance is defined as a functional interactional relation between certain elements in the discourse. In addition to the distinction between interpretive and evaluative relevance that can be traced in the literature, analytic relevance is introduced as an intermediary concept. In order to classify the various problems of relevance arising in interpreting, analyzing and evaluating argumentative discourse, a taxonomy is proposed in which the concept of relevance is differentiated along three co-ordinate dimensions: object, domain and aspect. With the help of this taxonomy, it can be shown that the problems of evaluative relevance with which the standard approach to fallacies cannot satisfactory deal can be more systematically approached within a pragma-dialectical framework. This is demonstrated for the argumentum and hominem, which is erroneously treated as a homogenous type of relevance fallacy in logico-centric analyses, so that cases where this is not justified must be treated as ad hoc exceptions.     

Parallel distributed processing and neuropsychology: A neural network model of Wisconsin card sorting and verbal fluency

Neural networks can be used as a tool in the explanation of neuropsychological data. Using the Hebbian Learning Rule and other such principles as competition and modifiable interlevel feedback, researchers have successfully modeled a widely used neuropsychological test, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. One of these models is reviewed here and extended to a qualitative analysis of how verbal fluency might be modeled, which demonstrates the importance of accounting for the attentional components of both tests. Difficulties remain in programming sequential cognitive processes within a parallel distributed processing (PDP) framework and integrating exceedingly complex neuropsychological tests such as Proverbs. PDP neural network methodology offers neuropsychologists co-validation procedures within narrowly defined areas of reliability and validity.     

A note on russell's paradox in locally cartesian closed categories

Working in the fragment of Martin-Löfs extensional type theory [12] which has products (but not sums) of dependent types, we consider two additional assumptions: firstly, that there are (strong) equality types; and secondly, that there is a type which is universal in the sense that terms of that type name all types, up to isomorphism. For such a type theory, we give a version of Russell's paradox showing that each type possesses a closed term and (hence) that all terms of each type are provably equal. We consider the kind of category theoretic structure which corresponds to this kind of type theory and obtain a categorical version of the paradox. A special case of this result is the degeneracy of a locally cartesian closed category with a morphism which is generic in the sense that every other morphism in the category can be obtained from it via pullback.The financial support of the Royal Society in London is gratefully acknowledged.     

Effects of attentional focusing on pain perception

Two experiments were conducted to examine the hypothesized differential effectiveness of two attentional focusing strategies in pain perception. In the first experiment, subjects (72 male college students) rated their levels of pain after being exposed to either low- or high-intensity pressure stimulation for 75 s. Subjects were instructed to use either an external or internal focus of attention during the pain induction. Results revealed that external focusing was more effective for coping than internal focusing across both levels of stimulus intensity. The second experiment was a replication of the first, and featured bolstered internal focusing and stimulus intensity manipulations. Results showed that high-intensity stimulation produced higher pain ratings than did low-intensity stimulation for subjects in the internal focusing conditions, but not for those in the external focusing conditions. The findings support the power of distraction strategies for dealing with short-term pain with a rapid onset. Theoretical implications are discussed.The authors thank Darwyn E. Linder and Daniel M. Landers for their help in development of this research. The authors are also indebted to Sarah Colley, Jona Davis, Nanci Neuberger, and Rebecca Roberts for their assistance in data collection.