The general factor of personality and humor styles

The present study examined the phenotypic, genetic, and environmental correlations between a general factor of personality (GFP) and four humor styles: affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating. Participants were 571 same-sex adult twin pairs. Individuals completed the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) and a short form of the NEO personality scale (from which the GFP was extracted). The GFP was found to be heritable with an estimated value of .31. At the phenotypic level, the GFP was found to correlate significantly with the HSQ scales; positively with affiliative and self-enhancing, and negatively with aggressive and self-defeating. Three of the four phenotypic correlations were found to be attributable to correlated genetic factors, suggesting that these dimensions of humor styles and the GFP may have a common genetic factor.     

‘Rehabilitation' in schizophrenia: A psychoanalytic viewpoint

This is a study which investigates some difficulties people with schizophrenia have in the long term; looks at some of the psychoanalytical theories concerning the difficulties they have in keeping an internal caring maternal imago; the consequences for them; how the NHS can help by providing an external caring maternal imago.     

A comparison of coping strategies in patients with fibromyalgia,chronic neuropathic pain,and pain‐free controls

Patients suffering from chronic pain may benefit from learning adaptive coping strategies. Consensus on efficient strategies for this group of patients is, however, lacking, and previous studies have shown inconsistent results. The present study has examined coping strategies in two distinctly different groups of chronic pain patients and a group of healthy controls. Thirty neuropathic pain (NP) patients, 28 fibromyalgia (FM) patients, and 26 pain‐free healthy controls completed the Coping Strategy Questionnaire (CSQ‐48/27) and rated their daily pain. The results showed that FM and NP patients did not cope differently with pain. The only difference between the groups was that FM patients felt more in control of their pain than NP patients. Both patient groups used more maladaptive/passive coping strategies, but surprisingly also more adaptive/active coping strategies than healthy controls. However, FM patients with high levels of passive strategies felt less in control than FM patients with low levels of passive strategies. This was not seen in NP patients. An important implication for clinical practice is therefore that passive coping strategies should be restructured into active ones, especially for FM patients. Otherwise, the same psychological treatment model can be applied to both groups since they use similar coping styles.     

Ethics Issues with Private Research Ethics Boards: A Breakout Session at the 2009 NCEHR National Conference

Research Ethics Boards (REBs) provide oversight for Canadians that research projects will comply with standards of ethics if the studies are carried out as described in the documents that have been approved. While REBs have traditionally been affiliated with institutions such as universities and hospitals, a number of factors - including the increased volume of research being conducted outside academic centres - have resulted in the establishment of some private or independent REBs. This, in turn, has raised concerns about the credibility of REBs in the private sector and their capacity to handle issues around conflict of interest. This Breakout Session was an opportunity to hear the perspectives of people associated with institutional and private REBs and examine perceived problems with boards in the private sector, scrutinize theoretical and structural differences between types of REBs, and look at whether or not there is room for both institutional and private boards in the Canadian research review landscape.     

Compared to Dematerialized Money,Cash Increases Impatience in Intertemporal Choice

When it comes to trading time for money (or vice versa), people tend to be impatient and myopic. Often dramatically so. For illustration, half of people would rather collect $15 now than $30 in 3 months. This willingness to forego 50% of the reward to skip a 3‐month wait corresponds to an annual discount rate of 277%. This article investigates how money's physical form biases intertemporal choice. We ask, what happens to (im)patience (i.e., discount rates) when time is traded against cash rather than against an equivalent sum of dematerialized money? We find that intertemporal decisions pitting time against cash (rather than against dematerialized money) increase impatience. The underlying mechanism relates to the pain of parting from money. Letting go of cash (dematerialized money) we can have now is psychologically more (less) painful, which in turn reduces (increases) our willingness to wait for larger‐later payoffs. Importantly, heightening prevention focus (i.e., concerns for safety and security) moderates this bias. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the research, particularly for the psychology of saving behavior.     

Age-related differences in postural reaction time and coordination during voluntary sway movements

The elderly are known to exhibit declines in postural control during standing and walking, however little is known about how the elderly react under time-critical and challenging postural situations. The purpose of this study was to examine age-related differences in reaction time (RT) and the pattern of temporal coordination between center of pressure (COP), trunk and head motion during voluntary postural sway movements. Healthy young (n=10; mean=24 years; SD=5 years) and elderly men (n=8; mean=75 years; SD=2 years) stood on a force plate with tri-axial accelerometers attached to the head and lower trunk. Participants were required to generate sway in the anterior-posterior (AP) or medial-lateral (ML) direction in response to an auditory cue during two different testing conditions called Static reaction and Dynamic reaction. Static reactions involved the initiation of voluntary sway in either the AP or ML direction from quiet stance. Dynamic reactions involved an orthogonal switch of voluntary sway between the AP and ML directions. Compared to the young, elderly individuals exhibited slower RT during both Static and Dynamic reaction, and smaller differences in RT and phasing between COP, trunk, and head motion. The results of this study suggest that the elderly adopted more rigid coordination strategies compared to the young when executing a rapid change in direction of whole body motion. The rigid movement strategy of the elderly was presumably generated in an effort to compensate for increased challenge to the maintenance of stability.     

The neural consequences of semantic richness: when more comes to mind, less activation is observed

Some concepts have richer semantic representations than others. That is, when considering the meaning of concepts, subjects generate more information (more features, more associates) for some concepts than for others. This variability in semantic richness influences responses in speeded tasks that involve semantic processing, such as lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks. It has been suggested that concepts with richer semantic representations build stronger attractors in semantic space, allowing faster settling of activation patterns and thus faster responding. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined the neural activation associated with semantic richness by contrasting activation for words with high and low numbers of associates in a semantic categorization task. Results were consistent with faster semantic settling for words with richer representations: Words with a low number of semantic associates produced more activation than words with a high number of semantic associates in a number of regions, including left inferior frontal and inferior temporal gyri.