Blood flow velocity changes in anterior cerebral arteries during cognitive tasks performance

Objective

Transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD) enables monitoring of blood flow velocities (BFVs) in basal cerebral arteries during different cognitive tasks performance with great temporal resolution. So far, BFVs changes during mental activity were monitored primarily in middle cerebral arteries (MCAs) and little is known about these changes in anterior cerebral arteries (ACAs).

Aim

To determine the effect of different cognitive tasks performance on BFV changes and hemispheric dominance in ACAs and to assess the most suitable activation test for monitoring of BFV changes in ACAs.

Methods

Fourteen right-handed, healthy subjects aged 20–26 were included in the study. BFVs in both ACAs were recorded simultaneously during performance of cognitive tasks designed to activate frontal lobes: phonemic verbal fluency test (pVFT), Stroop tests and Trail Making Tests (TMTs).

Results

A statistically significant BFV increase was recorded in both ACAs during performance of all cognitive tasks. Statistically significant right ACA dominance was found during performance of pVFT and TMTB. The most significant BFV increase was obtained during performance of TMTB.

Conclusion

Our result addressed cognitive tests with great activation potential for monitoring of ACAs that might be used in distinguishing of healthy individuals and patients with neurovascular or neurodegenerative diseases.     

On the subject of homosexuality: What Freud said

The article explores Freud's writing on homosexuality, from his early hypotheses, expressed in his letters to Fleiss to his last observations in The Outline of Psychoanalysis, published in 1940 after his death. We trace the continuities as well as changes in his thinking, and have organized the paper conceptually, under the headings: 1) Bisexuality 2) Narcissism and Object choice, 3) On Normality and Pathology, and 4) The Quantitative factor and Aggression. We show that Freud was the first to confirm the existence of homosexualities, that he offers no black and white solution to the question of normality and pathology, although he contributes to the understanding of the vehemence that surrounds the subject, and that, in the considerable body of work, he has offered a rich and varied foundation for further thinking on the subject.     

Changing views of emotion regulation and neurobiological models of the mechanism of action of psychotherapy

Influential neurobiological models of the mechanism of action of psychotherapy attribute its success to increases of activity in prefrontal areas and decreases in limbic areas, interpreted as the successful and adaptive recruitment of controlled processes to achieve emotion regulation. In this article, we review the behavioral and neuroscientific evidence in support of this model and its applicability to explain the mechanism of action of psychotherapy. Neuroimaging studies of explicit emotion regulation, evidence on the neurobiological substrates of implicit emotion regulation, and meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies of the effect of psychotherapy consistently suggest that areas implicated in coding semantic representations play an important role in emotion regulation not covered by existing models based on controlled processes. We discuss the findings that implicate these same areas in supporting working memory, in encoding preferences and the prospective outcome of actions taken in rewarding or aversive contingencies, and show how these functions may be integrated into process models of emotion regulation that depend on elaborate semantic representations for their effectiveness. These alternative models also appear to be more consistent with internal accounts in the psychotherapeutic literature of how psychotherapy works.     

Conceptualizing Creativity: General and Cultural Biases in Gough's Creative Personality Scale

This study analyzes the validity of Gough's Creative Personality Scale (CPS) for the Adjective Check List (ACL) by using 1773 Swiss, South Korean, and Mainland Chinese students as a sample. Four sources of potential bias were identified in Gough's CPS, two of which are general and two cultural in nature. The two general biases were investigated by conducting correlation analyses and evaluating alternative scoring methods for the CPS. As a result of the first bias, checking a large number of adjectives was found to be more important for achieving a high score than checking the relevant ones. Due to the second bias, the CPS score mostly depends on the number of positive adjectives checked while negative items have little impact. The two cultural biases were analyzed using an implicit version of the CPS (iCPS) and factor analysis. The latter revealed three different clusters of creativity type: exploratory‐type, socially responsible‐type, and intellectual‐type creativity. Based on cultural background, they are all weighted differently, causing a potential experiential bias in the CPS. Findings indicate that in South Korea and Mainland China socially responsible‐type creativity dominates whereas in Switzerland exploratory‐type creativity prevails. Findings from the iCPS suggest the second cultural bias, the socially desirable responding bias arising from differences in responding styles among the three cultures.     

Gender-stereotyped preferences in childhood and early adolescence: A comparison of cross-sectional and longitudinal data

Children are exposed to a gender-specific environment on an everyday basis through media, books, school supplies and especially toys. Children’s movies and television programs were found to portray protagonists’ occupational and private roles in a very traditional, gender-stereotypical way. The present two studies aimed to investigate gender-specific preferences in childhood and early adolescence. Cross-sectional data (study 1) were compared to longitudinal one (study 2) as we specifically aimed to investigate changes in gender preferences over time. A person-oriented approach, namely Configural Frequency Analysis was applied, to categorically analyze the relationship and development of gender-stereotyped preferences throughout childhood and early adolescence. Consistent with former studies, study 1 showed that gender-stereotypical preferences increased by age, for boys to a higher extent than for girls. By the age of twelve, these preferences had decreased supporting the theory of Kohlberg that children’s gender-stereotypic preferences continuously grow until around six years of age to finally lower thereafter. Gender-specific preferences generally became much more flexible over time.     

The gender effect in 3D-Mental-rotation performance with familiar and gender-stereotyped objects – a study with elementary school children

The study examined the influence of gender-stereotyped stimuli rotated in depth on children’s mental-rotation performance. Participants included 321 elementary school children who completed three-dimensional mental-rotation tasks with either male- or female-stereotyped stimuli (M-MRT-3D/F-MRT-3D). Results suggest that in-depth tasks are very difficult for second graders. No gender effect was found in the mental-rotation performance of 7- to 9-year-old children; however, task understanding indicates gender differences. For fourth graders, a significant interaction of gender and stimulus type could be demonstrated. Furthermore, results indicate that fourth-grade boys tend to guess more often in tasks with stimuli consistent to the respective own gender. In addition, regression analyses showed that next to grade and perceptual speed, the perceived level of stimulus familiarity predicted performance. Considering a possible link between dimensionality and familiarity, the influence of the gender-stereotyped stimuli on children’s confidence and task understanding as well as on transformational processes and strategy efficiency is discussed.     

Perceived stress,recurrent pain,and aggregate salivary cortisol measures in mid‐adolescent girls and boys

Measures of perceived stress have been criticized for theoretical inconsistency. However, the validated pressure activation stress scale has been suggested as a theoretically sound alternative. But it is unclear how pressure and activation stress relate to objective and subjective measures including commonly used aggregate cortisol measures and health complaints respectively. Specifically, this study aimed at investigating how pressure and activation stress were related to aggregate salivary cortisol measures and recurrent pain in mid‐adolescent girls and boys. Mid‐adolescents (119 girls and 56 boys) provided self‐reports in questionnaires on activation and pressure stress and recurrent pain (headache, stomach ache, neck/shoulder and back pain). Additionally, adolescents sampled saliva during an ordinary school day: (1) immediately at awakening; (2) 30 minutes after waking up; (3) 60 minutes after waking up, and (4) at 8 p.m. These samples were analyzed for cortisol. Hierarchical regressions showed no statistically significant associations between activation and pressure stress and cortisol, neither for girls nor for boys. However, activation and pressure stress were significantly associated with recurrent pain but only for girls. The findings may relate to subjective and objective measures reflecting distinct aspects of stress‐related functioning. However, the study participants included mid‐adolescents whose bodily systems are flexible and still relatively unaffected by the strain of their daily stress perceptions. To conclude, the non‐significant relationships between activation and pressure stress and commonly used aggregate measures of cortisol adds to the understanding of how perceived stress may relate to physiological functioning in the daily life of adolescents when using such aggregate measures.     

Body Shame and Disordered Eating in Adolescents

This study aimed to examine the predictive utility of body shame on eating behaviors in adolescents, while controlling for age, sex and body mass index (BMI). Participants were 400 Croatian adolescent girls and boys who completed self-report questionnaires assessing body shame and eating behaviors. Results showed that the mean eating behaviors score and the mean body shame score were significantly higher in females compared to males. Body shame explained statistically significant amount of eating behaviors variance after controlling for age, sex and BMI. Participants’ age and BMI did not play a role as significant predictors of eating behaviors. Implications for future research, including the importance of prospective longitudinal designs, are discussed.     

Keeping it in‐house: how audience affects responses to group criticism

It is often assumed that group‐directed criticism is best kept ‘in‐house’, but the effects of audience on responses to criticism have not been directly examined. Consistent with predictions, ingroup members who criticized the group to an outgroup audience were seen to be making a less appropriate choice of audience (Experiments 2 and 3), aroused more negative feelings (Experiment 1), were downgraded more strongly on personality traits (Experiment 2), and were seen to be doing more damage to the group (Experiment 2) than were ingroup members who kept their criticisms in‐house. Experiment 3 showed that, whereas moderate identifiers agreed with the comments less and showed weaker friendly intentions toward the critic when an outgroup audience as compared to an ingroup audience was chosen, high identifiers agreed with the criticisms just as strongly—and showed more friendly intentions toward the critic—when they were made to an outgroup as compared to an ingroup audience. Results are discussed in light of the broader literature on identity threat. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Separating Implicit Gender Stereotypes regarding Math and Language: Implicit Ability Stereotypes are Self-serving for Boys and Men, but not for Girls and Women

We investigated implicit gender stereotypes related to math and language separately, using Go/No-go Association Tasks. Samples were grade 9 adolescents (N?=?187) and university students (N?=?189) in Germany. Research questions concerned the existence of and gender differences in implicit stereotypes. While typical explicit-stereotyping findings were replicated, implicit math-male stereotypes were found in male, but not in female participants. Females revealed strong language-female stereotypes, whereas males showed language-male counterstereotypes. Thus, females?? implicit math-gender stereotypes were the only ones that did not link own gender to the respective academic domain in a self-serving way. Further, females?? stronger stereotypes were related to lower and males?? to higher scores on constructs related to math ability, corroborating implicit stereotypes?? importance.