Personality Correlates of Self-Esteem

The current study examined the relation between self-esteem and the Big Five personality dimensions. Data were collected over the Internet from a large heterogeneous sample of individuals who ranged in age from 9 to 90 years (N = 326,641). Collectively, the Big Five accounted for 34% of the variance in self-esteem. High self-esteem individuals were emotionally stable, extraverted, and conscientious and were somewhat agreeable and open to experience. Despite an extensive search for potential mediators and moderators of this general pattern, the relations between self-esteem and the Big Five largely cut across age, sex, social class, ethnicity, and nationality (United States vs non-United States). High self-esteem individuals tended to ascribe socially desirable traits to themselves, and this tendency partially mediated relations between the Big Five and self-esteem. Discussion focuses on interpreting the social desirability effects, limitations of the study, and directions for future research.     

LY354740, an mGlu2/3 receptor agonist as a novel approach to treat anxiety/stress

Metabotropic glutamate (mGlu) receptors, which include mGlu1-8 receptors, are a heterogeneous family of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) that function to modulate neuronal excitation and plasticity via pre-synaptic, post-synaptic and glial mechanisms. Agonists for group II mGlu receptors (mGlu2 and mGlu3), such as LY354740, have been shown to suppress enhanced glutamatergic excitations in brain synapses known to be involved in the expression of fear/anxiety in animals and humans. Systemic administration of LY354740 increases open-arm time in the elevated plus maze in mice under conditions of moderate to severe stress, blocks the expression but not development of fear-potentiated startle in rats, prevents lactate-induced panic-like responses in panic-prone rats, and attenuates certain physiological, behavioral, and neurochemical consequences of acute stress in rodents. In these preclinical models, LY354740 does not produce the side-effects (e.g. sedation) that are associated with other anxiolytic agents such as benzodiazepines. Early clinical results with LY354740 have demonstrated safety and efficacy in a human anxiety model (panic provocation induced by CO2 challenge). Collectively, these data indicate mGlu2/3 receptor agonists such as LY354740 represent a promising new approach for treatment of anxiety and stress-related disorders in humans.     

What is manipulative behavior, anyway?

One of the most common ways of characterizing patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder is that they are manipulative. Clinical usage of the term varies widely but clearly carries a pejorative meaning. Furthermore, behaviors that look similar to those called manipulative in clinical contexts are not called manipulative in broader society. It is crucial to become clear on what manipulation is, because studies show that carers routinely perceive BPD patients as manipulative and so have less empathy for them. In this paper the concept of manipulativity is clarified and its scope narrowed by distinguishing it from a number of related concepts, and a number of reasons why manipulating others is morally objectionable are suggested. I argue that, while some BPD patients may be manipulative, much of their behavior can and should be understood in a different light. Moral and clinical values are conflated in carers' judgments of manipulativity, and clinicians and researchers need to clarify when and why manipulative behavior is dysfunctional, and when it is merely morally wrong. Separating these two domains will enable carers to be more empathetic and less blaming of their patients' behavior.     

Temporal limits of selection and memory encoding: A comparison of whole versus partial report in rapid serial visual presentation

People often fail to recall the second of two visual targets presented within 500 ms in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). This effect is called the attentional blink. One explanation of the attentional blink is that processes involved in encoding the first target into memory are slow and capacity limited. Here, however, we show that the attentional blink should be ascribed to attentional selection, not consolidation of the first target. Rapid sequences of six letters were presented, and observers had to report either all the letters (whole-report condition) or a subset of the letters (partial-report condition). Selection in partial report was based on color (e.g., report the two red letters) or identity (i.e., report all letters from a particular letter onward). In both cases, recall of letters presented shortly after the first selected letter was impaired, whereas recall of the corresponding letters was relatively accurate with whole report.     

Constrained formation of object representations

Viewers were presented with a rapid sequence of very brief stimulus pairs, each of which consisted of a pictured object followed by a related or unrelated word. The form of relatedness between the picture and word was manipulated across experiments (identical concept, associated concept, ink color of the picture). Recognition memory for the pictures was affected not only by whether or not paired items were conceptually identical or semantically related, but also by whether or not the words named an irrelevant feature, ink color. These results show that sequential items are integrated on the basis of similarity at whatever level is available, so that the stability of the memory representation of one or both items is increased. We propose that a common mechanism may underlie integration, priming, and selective attention.     

The epidemiology of autistic spectrum disorders: is the prevalence rising?

For decades after Kanner's original paper on the subject was published in 1943, autism was generally considered to be a rare condition with a prevalence of around 2-4 per 10,000 children. Then, studies carried out in the late 1990s and the present century reported annual rises in incidence of autism in pre-school children, based on age of diagnosis, and increases in the age-specific prevalence rates in children. Prevalence rates of up to 60 per 10,000 for autism and even more for the whole autistic spectrum were reported. Reasons for these increases are discussed. They include changes in diagnostic criteria, development of the concept of the wide autistic spectrum, different methods used in studies, growing awareness and knowledge among parents and professional workers and the development of specialist services, as well as the possibility of a true increase in numbers. Various environmental causes for a genuine rise in incidence have been suggested, including the triple vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR]. Not one of the possible environmental causes, including MMR, has been confirmed by independent scientific investigation, whereas there is strong evidence that complex genetic factors play a major role in etiology. The evidence suggests that the majority, if not all, of the reported rise in incidence and prevalence is due to changes in diagnostic criteria and increasing awareness and recognition of autistic spectrum disorders. Whether there is also a genuine rise in incidence remains an open question.     

Source cuing: Memory for melodies

Source cuing is a source-monitoring process in which the retrieval of a memory trace is aided by the use of a memory probe that includes information that is indicative of the original source. This is in contrast to source discrimination, where people need to retrieve the identity of the source of information. Thus, in source cuing, the source information is given, and in source discrimination, the source information is to be retrieved. The operation of source cuing was demonstrated in two experiments in which people had to identify which of two melodies had been heard earlier. Source cuing was present for information that was more indicative of the source (i.e., timbre), but not for information that was less indicative of the source (i.e., pitch). A third experiment demonstrated that the use of source cuing can be influenced by the retrieval context.     

Does test-enhanced learning transfer for triple associates?

Test-enhanced learning and transfer for triple-associate word stimuli was assessed in three experiments. In each experiment, training and final-test trials involved the presentation of two words per triple associate (triplet), with the third word having to be retrieved. In agreement with the prior literature on different stimuli, training through testing with feedback yielded markedly better final-test performance than did restudy. However, in contrast to the positive transfer reported for paired associate stimuli, minimal or no positive transfer was observed, relative to a restudy control, from a trained cue combination (e.g., A, B, ?) to other cue combinations from the same triplet that required a different response (e.g., B, C, ?). That result also held when two unique cue combinations per triplet were tested during training, and for triplets with low and high average associative strengths. Supplementary analyses provided insight into the overall transfer effect: An incorrect response during training appears to yield positive transfer relative to restudy, whereas a correct response appears to yield no, or even negative, transfer. Cross-experiment analyses indicated that test-enhanced learning is not diminished when two or three cue combinations are presented during training. Thus, even though learning through testing is highly specific, testing on all possible stimulus–response combinations remains the most efficient strategy for the learning of triple associates.