Cortical auditory disorders: a case of non-verbal disturbances assessed with event-related brain potentials

In the auditory modality, there has been a considerable debate about some aspects of cortical disorders, especially about auditory forms of agnosia. Agnosia refers to an impaired comprehension of sensory information in the absence of deficits in primary sensory processes. In the non-verbal domain, sound agnosia and amusia have been reported but are frequently accompanied by language deficits whereas pure deficits are rare. Absolute pitch and musicians' musical abilities have been associated with left hemispheric functions. We report the case of a right handed sound engineer with the absolute pitch who developed sound agnosia and amusia in the absence of verbal deficits after a right perisylvian stroke. His disabilities were assessed with the Seashore Test of Musical Functions, the tests of Wertheim and Botez (Wertheim and Botez, Brain 84, 1961, 19-30) and by event-related potentials (ERP) recorded in a modified 'oddball paradigm'. Auditory ERP revealed a dissociation between the amplitudes of the P3a and P3b subcomponents with the P3b being reduced in amplitude while the P3a was undisturbed. This is interpreted as reflecting disturbances in target detection processes as indexed by the P3b. The findings that contradict some aspects of current knowledge about left/right hemispheric specialization in musical processing are discussed and related to the literature concerning cortical auditory disorders.     

The role of disgust and fear in blood and injection-related fainting symptoms: A structural equation model

Structural equation models were used to examine the relationship of blood, injection, and injury (BII) fears, disgust sensitivity, and trait anxiety to having experienced fainting-related symptoms in 722 university students. The latent variable representing BII fears was highly positively related to faint symptoms whereas that relating to disgust experiences was inversely related to fainting. A second disgust sensitivity variable was not directly related to fainting. Trait anxiety added nothing directly to the model, although it was related to BII latent variable. Additional analyses included a gender-related cross-validation which showed that models developed on one gender group did not fit well when applied to the other gender group. Blood drawings were the most common faint eliciting situations and were found to be reportedly more likely to elicit faint symptoms than were injections.     

Event-Related Brain Potentials during Identification of Tachistoscopically Presented Pictures

In the present study in 20 healthy subjects, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the identification of picture stimuli. Each of 36 landscape pictures and 36 scrambled pictures was presented by a tachistoscope repeatedly until the subject made an identification response. Presentation of one picture was finished after 12 exposures. On the average, landscapes were identified after 5.8 ± 0.4 exposures; identification responses to scrambles were always wrong and occurred after 11.8 ± 0.1 exposures. Latencies and amplitude measures were assessed for P2, P3, N400, and the slow wave (SW). Changes in P2 across stimulus presentations did not differ between landscapes and scrambles excluding this component from being indicative for the processing of stimulus meaning. Amplitude of P3 generally declined across presentations, but increased prior to identification for landscape pictures. N400 rapidly declined across presentations of landscapes, but less rapidly for scrambles. The SW increased across stimulus presentations. This increase was more pronounced for landscape than scrambled pictures. The pattern of ERP changes can be interpreted in a framework of a stepwise inhibition of spreading activation within semantic memory with progressing picture identification.     

The role of pain anxiety, coping, and pain self-efficacy in rheumatoid arthritis patient functioning

Anxiety about pain is increasingly recognized as one factor contributing to increased pain perception and pain behavior [McCracken, L. M., Faber S. D., & Janeck A. S. (1998) Pain-related anxiety predicts nonspecific physical complaints in persons with chronic pain. Behavior Research and Therapy, 36, 621-630; McCracken L., & Gross R. (1995). The pain anxiety symptoms scale (PASS) and the assessment of emotional responses to pain. Innovations in clinical practice: a source book, 14, 309-321]. To assess this emotional reaction to pain in chronic pain patients, McCracken, Zayfert and Gross [McCracken, L., Zayfert, C., & Gross, R. (1992). The Pain Anxiety Symptom Scale: development and validation of a scale to measure fear of pain. Pain, 50, 67-73] developed the Pain Anxiety Symptom Scale (PASS) composed of four subscales: Cognitive Anxiety, Fearful Appraisal, Escape Avoidance and Physiological Anxiety. The present study extended previous work by examining the relationship among pain anxiety dimensions, use of active and passive coping strategies and arthritis self-efficacy as predictors of functional status in 154 rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. Functional status was assessed using the Five-Factor Model of the Arthritis Impact Scale, 2nd ed., (AIMS2): Physical Functioning, Affective Experience, Symptoms, Social Interaction and Role Function. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis on each of the AIMS2 criterion variables showed that pain anxiety, pain and symptom self-efficacy, health status and coping strategies were able to explain between 9 and 38% of the variance in the five AIMS2 variables. The present results support the hypothesized role of pain anxiety along with previously established contributions of self-efficacy and coping strategies, in affecting physical, social, emotional and role functioning in chronic RA patients.     

Are criminals better lie detectors? Investigating offenders' abilities in the context of deception detection

The present research examined lie detection abilities of a rarely investigated group, namely offenders. Results of the studies conducted thus far indicated a better performance of offenders compared to non‐offenders when discriminating between true and false messages. With two new studies, we aimed at replicating offenders' superior abilities in the context of deception detection. Results of Study 1 (N = 76 males), in contrast, revealed that offenders were significantly worse at accurately classifying true and false messages compared to non‐offenders (students). Results of Study 2 (N = 175 males) revealed that offenders' discrimination performance was not significantly different compared to non‐offenders (clinic staff). An internal meta‐analysis yielded no significant difference between offenders and non‐offenders, questioning the generalizability of previous findings.     

Communication Formats and Their Impact on Patient Perception and Working Mechanisms: A Mixed-Methods Study of Chat-Based vs. Face-to-Face Psychotherapy for Insomnia

The application of Internet-based interventions within stepped-care models raises the question of when patients should receive Internet-based treatment and when patients should receive face-to-face (FtF) treatment. To address this question, the patient perception and effects of working mechanisms were evaluated after brief psychotherapy for insomnia applying a mixed-methods approach. Treatment was either delivered through a text-based chat or it was delivered FtF. Almost half of the patients who received the chat-based treatment indicated that chat-based communication was appropriate for them when dealing with sleep difficulties, but that they would prefer FtF communication for more sensitive topics. Results from the therapists’ evaluations of working mechanisms yielded that these working mechanisms were more strongly associated with treatment outcome in the FtF condition than they were in the chat-based condition. To understand and to interpret the results, media richness theory may be a useful tool: More severely impaired patients and patients with more complex concerns may need more complex (richer) communication formats for treatment delivery. Such heuristics may help to better justify treatment recommendations and optimize media choice in Internet-based interventions, e.g., by defining moments when human interaction is needed and moments when communication could be conducted by nonhuman chatbots.     

Assessing task difficulty for other people: when deeper evaluation means “it’s more about me!”

Empirical studies have revealed that teachers face problems when assessing task difficulty for their students. By drawing on research that focuses on how individuals assess what others know, we argue that these difficulties are a consequence of the imputation of one’s own knowledge to others (i.e., social projection). In particular, we tested the assumption that individuals impute more of their own knowledge to others, the more they elaborate what these others might know. In a first experiment, students were asked to judge task difficulty for their best friend. In the second experiment, teacher trainees were asked to assess task difficulty for 9th graders. Results revealed that individuals, who deeply elaborated when assessing task difficulty for another person, more closely relied on their own rating of task difficulty than individuals with a lower elaboration depth. These findings support the notion that social projection becomes stronger, the deeper individuals elaborate.     

Using the World-Wide Web to obtain large-scale word norms: 190,212 ratings on a set of 2,654 German nouns

This article presents a new database of 2,654 German nouns rated by a sample of 3,907 subjects on three psycholinguistic attributes: concreteness, valence, and arousal. As a new means of data collection in the field of psycholinguistic research, all ratings were obtained via the Internet, using a tailored Web application. Analysis of the obtained word norms showed good agreement with two existing norm sets. A cluster analysis revealed a plausible set of four classes of nouns: abstract concepts, aversive events, pleasant activities, and physical objects. In an additional application example, we demonstrate the usefulness of the database for creating parallel word lists whose elements match as closely as possible. The complete database is available for free from ftp://ftp.uni-duesseldorf.de/ pub/psycho/lahl/WWN. Moreover, the Web application used for data collection is inherently capable of collecting word norms in any language and is going to be released for public use as well.     

The effects of source likeability and need for cognition on advertising effectiveness under explicit persuasion

• While there is evidence that an endorser's likeability plays a determining role in the advertising effectiveness of explicit persuasive appeals, this paper examines the impact of the need for cognition (NFC) as a moderator of this relationship. We find that this effect holds, as predicted, for individuals with lower NFC, but not for those with higher NFC. Furthermore, the effects of explicit persuasion and the endorser's likeability on evaluations of products or services by lower‐NFC consumers were found to be mediated by the attribution of self‐interest. In contrast, advertising effectiveness for higher‐NFC consumers was predictable only by the valence of their cognitive responses to the product.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.