Neuroleptic malignant syndrome--3 case reports

An account is given of three patients who exhibited a malignant neuroleptic syndrome after the administration of neuroplegics. Like other authors, we identified typical elicitation factors and clinical characteristics. In one case a catatonic dilemma with lethal issue was observed. In the final case dealt with in this paper, the renewed application of neuroplegics following the termination of the malignant neuroleptic syndrome was tolerated without complications, whereas in the case of an epileptic patient with damage to the brain, the malignant neuroleptic syndrome returned upon dosage increase.     

Questions at the general hospital. Ulcerative colitis and Crohn disease in the light of a discussion on the body and soul

The author is an internist in a non-university hospital. He discusses the possibilities and limits of dealing with patients suffering from ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. He demonstrates the clinical importance of a psychoanalytic perspective with three case illustrations.     

Toward a Process Analysis of Emotions: The Case of Surprise

Based on an earlier model of the processes elicited by surprising events, the present studies provide evidence for one of these processes, the evaluation of the surprising event's relevance for ongoing activities (action-relevance check). The central prediction tested was that, if unexpected events elicit among other processes an action-relevance check, then response delay on a concurrent task will be more pronounced in a condition where this process is more elaborate and hence takes more time. In accord with this prediction, Experiment 1 found that an unexpected appearance change of the imperative stimulus in a choice reaction time (RT) task caused greater response delay than an equivalent appearance change of a distractor stimulus. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and tested several additional predictions that concerned the effects on response delay of a second appearance change of either the imperative or the distractor stimuli. These predictions, which were also mostly confirmed, were derived by combining the logic underlying the first study with the assumption that once made, appraisals of unexpected events are stored as part of the situational schema and are reused when the same or similar events reoccur leading to an abbreviation of appraisal processes. Experiment 3 once more replicated the basic finding of the previous studies and ruled out a possible alternative explanation. It is suggested that the proposed RT method of process verification may be of broader interest as a tool to study appraisal processes in emotion.     

Heading and path information from retinal flow in naturalistic environments

In four experiments, we explored the heading and path information available to observers as we simulated their locomotion through a cluttered environment while they fixated an object off to the side. Previously, we presented a theory about the information available and used in such situations. For such a theory to be valid, one must be sure of eye position, but we had been unable to monitor gaze systematically; in Experiment 1, we monitored eye position and found performance best when observers fixated the designated object at the center of the display. In Experiment 2, when we masked portions of the display, we found that performance generally matched the amount of display visible when scaled to retinal sensitivity. In Experiments 3 and 4, we then explored the metric of information about heading (nominal vs. absolute) available and found good nominal information but increasingly poor and biased absolute information as observers looked farther from the aimpoint. Part of the cause for this appears to be that some observers perceive that they have traversed a curved path even when taking a linear one. In all cases, we compared our results with those in the literature.     

The effect of spatial frequency on global precedence and hemispheric differences

There are many conditions in which identification proceeds faster for the global form of a hierarchical pattern than for its local parts. Since the global form usually contains more lower spatial frequencies than do the local forms, it has frequently been suggested that the higher transmission rate of low spatial frequencies is responsible for the global advantage. There are also functional hemispheric differences. While the right hemisphere is better at processing global information, the left hemisphere has an advantage with respect to local information. In accordance with the spatial-frequency hypothesis, it has been speculated that this difference is due to a differential capacity of the hemispheres for processing low and high spatial frequencies. To test whether low spatial frequencies were responsible for the global advantage and/or for the observed hemispheric differences, two experiments were carried out with unfiltered and highpass-filtered compound-letter stimuli presented at the left, right, or center visual field. The first experiment, in which the target level was randomized in each trial block, revealed that low spatial frequencies were not necessary for either global advantage or for hemispheric differences. Highpass filtering merely increased the response times. In the second experiment, the target level was held constant in each block. This generally increased the speed of responding and produced interactions between filtering and global-local processing. It was concluded that both sensory and attentional or control mechanisms were responsible for global precedence and that the hemispheres differed with respect to the latter.     

Gender and Self-Reported Sexual Arousal in Response to Sexual Stimuli: A Meta-Analytic Review

Social constructionist theories and sociobiological perspectives have led to increased interest in gender differences in sexual behavior. This study involved a meta-analysis of gender differences in sexual arousal in response to sexual stimuli. Forty-six studies in which participants were presented with a sexual stimulus depicting males and females and in which participants responded using a self-report measure of arousal were compiled, and 62 independent effect sizes were aggregated. An overall effect size of d = .31 showed a small to moderate-sized gender difference in sexual arousal with men reporting more arousal than women across all studies. There was significant variation in the effect sizes, though, which was only partially explained by variables coded from the studies. It was found that the gender difference was slightly larger for studies using pornographic vs. erotic stimuli, was larger for studies where participants were tested in a private setting or small group compared to a large group, and was much larger for college age participants compared to those who were older than college age. Generally, the pattern of results provided more support for predictions from social influence theories compared to sociobiological theory.     

Ability to generate mental images in students of art

To evaluate the ability to generate mental images and its relations to artistic training, 44 undergraduates were presented with a list of selected fragments from 40 characters in the Roman alphabet. Subjects provided those letters suggested by the fragments for as many items as possible within a 90-second interval. It was hypothesized that students who had received college training in studio art would be able to produce a greater number of candidate images than students not trained in art, resulting in more correct answers and higher scores. Results confirmed the hypothesis. Trained subjects completed significantly more of the letters on the image-generation task than did those not trained in art (p=.0001). This suggests that superior ability to generate images is associated with artistic training. Further, these results imply that, to the degree to which artistic training reflects ability, image generation may also be related to artistic ability.     

Anxious attachment and psychological distress in cardiac rehabilitation patients

This study investigated the relevance of anxious attachment to the differentiation of psychologically distressed and non-psychologically distressed cardiac patients. Attachment is a biologically based behavioral system in which proximity to a special other is sought or maintained to achieve a sense of safety and security. Anxious attachment, as the name denotes, fails to achieve the function of attachment in the sense of individuals having little or no confidence in the availability of their attachment figures. Empirically, three scales (feared loss of the attachment figure, proximity seeking and separation protest) capture the features of anxious attachment as elaborated by Bowlby. These scales were administered to 178 cardiac rehabilitation patients drawn from the cardiac rehabilitation program of the Calgary General Hospital. The results indicate that feared loss and proximity seeking differentiated psychologically distressed from non-psychologically distressed patients. The implications of this finding for the understanding of psychologically distressed cardiac patients are discussed.     

Magnitude of luminance modulation specifies amplitude of perceived movement

A compelling impression of movement, which is perceptually indistinguishable from a real displacement, can be elicited by patterns containing no spatially displaced elements. An apparent oscillation, w-movement, was generated by a stationary pattern containing a large number of horizontal pairs of spatially adjacent dots modulated in brightness. The observer’s task was to adjust the perceived amplitude of the w-motion to match the amplitude of a real oscillation. All of the data can be accounted for by a simple rule: If the relative change in the luminance,W = αL/L, between two adjacent stationary dots is kept constant, the distance over which these dots appeared to travel in space comprises a fixed fraction of the total distance by which they are separated. The apparent amplitude of the w-motion increases strictly in proportion with luminance contrast, provided that the contrast is represented in the motion-encoding system by a rapidly saturating compressive Weibull transformation. These findings can be explained in terms of bilocal motion encoders comparing two luminance modulations occurring at two different locations.