Hand Position and Response Assignment Modulate the Activation of the Valence‐Space Conceptual Metaphor

Conceptual metaphor is ubiquitous in language and thought, as we usually reason and talk about abstract concepts in terms of more concrete ones via metaphorical mappings that are hypothesized to arise from our embodied experience. One pervasive example is the conceptual projection of valence onto space, which flexibly recruits the vertical and lateral spatial frames to gain structure (e.g., good is up ‐bad is down and good is right ‐bad is left ). In the current study, we used a valence judgment task to explore the role that exogenous bodily cues (namely response hand positions) play in the allocation of spatial attention and the modulation of conceptual congruency effects. Experiment 1 showed that congruency effects along the vertical axis are weakened when task conditions (i.e., the use of vertical visual cues, on the one hand, and the horizontal alignment of responses, on the other) draw attention to both the vertical and lateral axes making them simultaneously salient. Experiment 2 evidenced that the vertical alignment of participants’ hands while responding to the task—regardless of the location of their dominant hand—facilitates the judgment of positive and negative‐valence words, as long as participants respond in a metaphor–congruent manner (i.e., up responses are good and down responses are bad). Overall, these results support the claim that source domain representations are dynamically activated in response to the context and that bodily states are an integral part of that context.     

Facing temptation: The neural correlates of gambling availability during sports picture exposure

Nowadays, sports betting has become increasingly available and easy to engage in. Here we examined the neural responses to stimuli that represent sporting events available for betting as compared to sporting events without a gambling opportunity. We used a cue exposure task in which football (soccer) fans (N = 42) viewed cues depicting scheduled football games that would occur shortly after the scanning session. In the “betting” condition, participants were instructed to choose, at the end of each block, the game (and the team) they wanted to bet on. In the “watching” condition, participants chose the game they would prefer to watch. After the scanning session, participants completed posttask rating questionnaires assessing, for each cue, their level of confidence about the team they believed would win and how much they would enjoy watching the game. We found that stimuli representing sport events available for betting elicited higher fronto-striatal activation, as well as higher insular cortex activity and functional connectivity, than sport events without a gambling opportunity. Moreover, games rated with more confidence towards the winning team resulted in greater brain activations within regions involved in affective decision-making (ventromedial prefrontal cortex), cognitive inhibitory control (medial and superior frontal gyri) and reward processing (ventral and dorsal striatum). Altogether, these novel findings offer a sensible simulation of how the high availability of sports betting in today’s environment impacts on the reward and cognitive control systems. Future studies are needed to extend the present findings to a sample of football fans that includes a samilar proportion of female and male participants.     

Media exposure to terrorism and people's risk perception: The role of environmental sensitivity and psychophysiological response to stress

Terrorist attacks have a destabilizing impact on the general population, causing distress and fear. However, not all individuals are equally susceptible to the effects of terror threat. This study aimed to examine whether exposure to terrorism-related pictures interacted with individual differences in environmental sensitivity and psychophysiological response to stress to explain people's risk perception, operationalized as perceived likelihood of a terrorist attack and willingness to trade off one's privacy to increase national security. Ninety-five university students were randomly assigned to one of two conditions (terrorism-related vs. neutral pictures). After watching the pictures, they answered questions concerning risk perception and completed questionnaires. Stress was induced by the Mannheim Multicomponent Stress Test, during which heart rate was recorded. Results showed that the perceived likelihood of future attacks was affected by the interaction between exposure to terrorism pictures and psychophysiological reactivity to stress, whereas willingness to trade off one's privacy to improve national security was influenced by the interaction between exposure to terrorism pictures and environmental sensitivity. The study suggests that individuals high in sensitivity and psychophysiological stress reactivity are particularly affected by terrorism-related pictures. Psychologists should direct their efforts to raise general awareness of the negative effects, especially for some people, of such media coverage.     

Sacralisation – the role of individual actors in legitimising religion

The article makes a contribution to the study of religion by developing the analytical concept of sacralisation as the process whereby individual religious actors and groups construct religious tradition by attributing value to single ideas and practices. The concept of sacralisation helps us understand how religious actors engage with their religious tradition and participate in constructing it by legitimising its single elements. The sacred is thus understood as constructed by religious actors as that which is of value for them and distinctive of their specific tradition. This concept has been developed from a three-year long ethnographic research in a Christian evangelical church and is illustrated through an analysis of the research data.     

Pronounced inferences: A study on inferential conditionals

An experimental study is reported which investigates the differences in interpretation between content conditionals (of various pragmatic types) and inferential conditionals. In a content conditional, the antecedent represents a requirement for the consequent to become true. In an inferential conditional, the antecedent functions as a premise and the consequent as the inferred conclusion from that premise. The linguistic difference between content and inferential conditionals is often neglected in reasoning experiments. This turns out to be unjustified, since we adduced evidence on the basis of a quantitative and a qualitative analysis that this difference has a manifest psychological relevance. For the inferential conditionals, participants appear to retrieve the order of events of the original content conditional on which it was based, before they start reasoning with it. The implications of this finding for reasoning research and linguistics will be discussed.     

An Independence Relation for Sets of Secrets

A relation between two secrets, known in the literature as nondeducibility, was originally introduced by Sutherland. We extend it to a relation between sets of secrets that we call independence. This paper proposes a formal logical system for the independence relation, proves the completeness of the system with respect to a semantics of secrets, and shows that all axioms of the system are logically independent.     

Quality of life of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

The aim of this study is to evaluate the correlation between different measures of quality of life (QoL), functional status and mood status in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). A sample of 40 patients with ALS was recruited and scales for the evaluation of health-related QoL (SF36), patient-centered QoL (SEIQoL), functional status (ALSFRS) and depression (ZDS) have been administered to them. All the correlations (Pearson's r) between the scores have been considered and the t-test was performed in order to compare male with female patients. No correlation emerged between the different measures of QoL and functional status, apart from the scores of the Physical Functioning subscale of the SF36 which resulted positively correlated (p?相似文献   

Testing Models of Psychopathology in Preschool-aged Children Using a Structured Interview-based Assessment

A number of studies have found that broadband internalizing and externalizing factors provide a parsimonious framework for understanding the structure of psychopathology across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. However, few of these studies have examined psychopathology in young children, and several recent studies have found support for alternative models, including a bi-factor model with common and specific factors. The present study used parents’ (typically mothers’) reports on a diagnostic interview in a community sample of 3-year old children (n?=?541; 53.9 % male) to compare the internalizing-externalizing latent factor model with a bi-factor model. The bi-factor model provided a better fit to the data. To test the concurrent validity of this solution, we examined associations between this model and paternal reports and laboratory observations of child temperament. The internalizing factor was associated with low levels of surgency and high levels of fear; the externalizing factor was associated with high levels of surgency and disinhibition and low levels of effortful control; and the common factor was associated with high levels of surgency and negative affect and low levels of effortful control. These results suggest that psychopathology in preschool-aged children may be explained by a single, common factor influencing nearly all disorders and unique internalizing and externalizing factors. These findings indicate that shared variance across internalizing and externalizing domains is substantial and are consistent with recent suggestions that emotion regulation difficulties may be a common vulnerability for a wide array of psychopathology.     

Gender Differences in the Effects of Community Violence on Mental Health Outcomes in a Sample of Low-Income Youth Receiving Psychiatric Care

Previous research suggests that community violence impacts mental health outcomes, but much of this research has not (a) distinguished between different types of community violence, (b) examined gender differences, and (c) focused on youth living in urban poverty. The current study addresses these questions. Participants were 306 youth (23 % girls) and one parent/guardian receiving outpatient psychiatric services for disruptive behavior disorders in a large urban city. Youth and parents reported on youth’s experience of different types of community violence (being a direct victim, hearing reports, and witnessing violence), and whether violence was directed toward a stranger or familiar. Outcomes included youth externalizing, internalizing, and posttraumatic stress symptoms assessed via parent and youth reports. Being a direct victim of violence accords risk for all mental health outcomes similarly for both boys and girls. However, gender differences emerged with respect to indirect violence, such that girls who hear reports of violence against people they know are at increased risk for all assessed mental health outcomes, and girls who witness violence against familiars are at increased risk for externalizing mental health symptoms in particular. There are gender differences in violence-related mental health etiology, with implications for intervention assessment and design.