Disgust Sensitivity and Psychopathological Symptoms: Distinctions from Harm Avoidance

The present study examined the relationship between disgust sensitivity and symptoms of somatization, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, anger/hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism in a community sample. Participants (n = 121) completed the Disgust Scale-2, the Symptom Checklist-90, and the harm avoidance subscale of the Temperament and Character Inventory. Disgust sensitivity was found to be correlated with a broad range of psychopathological symptoms. However, results also indicated that these correlations were partially mediated by harm avoidance. That is, when controlling for levels of harm avoidance, the association between disgust sensitivity and psychopathological symptoms was either substantially reduced or became nonsignificant. These findings suggest that the tendency towards behavioral inhibition to avoid punishment and non-reward may partially account for the association between disgust sensitivity and a broad range of psychopathological symptoms.

Dogs (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis familiaris</Emphasis>) adjust their social behaviour to the differential role of inanimate interactive agents

Dogs are able to flexibly adjust their social behaviour to situation-specific characteristics of their human partner’s behaviour in problem situations. However, dogs do not necessarily detect the specific role played by the human in a particular situation: they may form expectations about their partners’ behaviour based on previous experiences with them. Utilising inanimate objects (UMO—unidentified moving object) as interacting agents offers new possibilities for investigating social behaviour, because in this way we can remove or control the influence of previous experience with the partner. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether dogs are able to recognise the different roles of two UMOs and are able to adjust their communicative behaviour towards them. In the learning phase of the experiment, dogs were presented with a two-way food-retrieval problem in which two UMOs, which differed in their physical appearance and abilities, helped the dog obtain a piece of food in their own particular manner. After a short experience with both UMOs, dogs in the test phase faced one of the problems in the presence of both inanimate agents. Overall, dogs displayed similar levels of gazing behaviour towards the UMOs, but in the first test they looked, approached and touched the relevant partner first. This rapid adjustment of social behaviour towards UMOs suggests that dogs may generalise their experiences with humans to unfamiliar agents and are able to select the appropriate partner when facing a problem situation.     

Humour production may enhance observational learning of a new tool-use action in 18-month-old infants

Many studies have shown that making children laugh enhances certain cognitive capacities such as attention, motivation, perception and/or memory, which in turn enhance learning. However, no study thus far has investigated whether laughing has an effect on learning earlier in infancy. The goal of this study was to see whether using humour with young infants in a demonstration of a complex tool-use task can enhance their learning. Fifty-three 18-month-old infants participated in this study and were included either in a humorous or a control demonstration group. In both groups infants observed an adult using a tool to retrieve an out-of-reach toy. What differed between groups was that in the humorous demonstration group, instead of playing with the toy, the adult threw it on the floor immediately after retrieval. The results show that infants who laughed at the demonstration in the humorous demonstration group reproduced significantly more frequent target actions than infants who did not laugh and those in the control group. This effect is discussed with regard to individual differences in terms of temperament and social capacities as well as positive emotion and dopamine release.     

Narrative constructions and the life history issue in brain-emotions relations

Emotional reactions are rather flexible, due to the schema-like organization of complex socio-emotional situations. Some data on emotion development, and on certain pathological conditions such as alexithymia, give further support for the psychological constructivist view put forward by Lindquist et al. Narrative organization is a key component of this schematic organization. The self-related nature of narrative organization provides scaffolding to the contextual dependency of emotions.     

Interpretation of Poverty in St. Louis County,Minnesota

The paper analyzes subjective poverty in St. Louis County, Minnesota with the methods of systematic data collection. The initial hypothesis states that American people blame the individuals for their poor living conditions. Based on the Easterlin paradox, the next hypothesis states that subjective and absolute poverty lines are independent. Taking into account that the USA is a developed country, subjective wellbeing is supposed to be associated with relative deprivation. The paper concludes that the items most related to poverty are “no job”, “no access to basic needs” and “addiction”. The main causes of poverty are “cycle of poverty”, “no job” and “addiction”. The main consequences of poverty are “no access to basic needs”, “poor health” and “minimum education”. The results revealed that the most important items related to poverty and the main causes and consequences of poverty cannot be classified unambiguously as being individualist, structural or fatal. The analysis showed that subjective poverty line is different from the objective lines. This result supports the Easterlin paradox and implies that people can be dissatisfied with their lives even when they are above the poverty line according to the official statistics. Elimination of absolute poverty may therefore not be enough to improve subjective well-being. The evidence that relative income assessment is not correlated with subjective well-being implies that people are not concerned with their relative income position.     

The Effect of Alcohol on Speech Production

The present study investigates the effect of acute alcohol consumption on speech in Hungarian subjects. The measures used to reveal these effects were tongue-twisters, which were grouped according to their linguistic features. The number and type of speech errors while uttering the tongue-twisters were compared between intoxicated and sober conditions. The results showed that subjects made more speech errors in alcohol influenced than in sober states in all types of the tongue-twisters except for those using foreign words. Changes in the articulation rate, number of pauses and fundamental frequency were investigated as well. In the intoxicated state, no changes were observed in fundamental frequency and articulation rate, while the number of pauses increased.     

IMPACT OF MATERNAL DEPRESSION ON PREGNANCIES AND ON EARLY ATTACHMENT

The relatively high prevalence and duration of depression in the prenatal and postpartum periods reinforce the need for better understanding of maternal depression. The purpose of this article is to explore the main effects of depression to pregnancies’ outcome and to early attachment reviewing research from the last decade and to find the best way to prevent the negative effects of maternal depression to infants. Recent studies have reported significant associations between maternal depression and several adverse obstetric, fetal, and neonatal outcomes. Antenatal depression has been associated with shorter gestation and lower birth weight, with consequences for infant development. A number of studies have demonstrated an association between prenatal depression and attachment difficulties, which seems to play an important mediating role in the development of further adverse outcomes for children. This review reveals some potential risks of untreated depression during the antenatal and postnatal periods, with possibly significant implications for practice and further research. Considering the high prevalence of depression, antenatal detection of depressive symptoms and intervention before childbirth has huge importance in prevention. Early interventions also may need to focus on mother–infant interactions as a key factor of later child development.     

Perseverative thoughts and subjective health complaints in adolescence: Mediating effects of perceived stress and negative affects

Stable tendency to perseverative thoughts such as trait rumination and worry can influence somatic health. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between perseverative thoughts and somatic complaints, and the possible mediating effects of perceived stress, negative and positive affectivity in adolescence. Having an acute or a chronic condition was also assessed to be controlled for and to reveal their effects on symptom reporting. Three hundred and six adolescents from 7th to 12th grade with mean age of 16.33 (SD = 1.29) participated in the study. Mediation analysis suggested that impact of trait-like perseverative thoughts on complaints were mediated by perceived stress and negative affectivity. Having an acute condition had also an effect on symptom reporting through increased negative affectivity. Our results highlight that ruminations or worry as stable intrapersonal characteristics are relevant processes in health and can be potential targets in prevention programmes in adolescence.     

Different Associations of Health Related Quality of Life with Pain,Psychological Distress and Coping Strategies in Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Inflammatory Bowel Disorder

The primary aim of this study was to measure psychological distress, pain severity, health related quality of life (QOL) and pain coping strategies in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and ulcerative colitis (UC). A second aim was to determine the influence of somatic and psychological variables on health related QOL. Eighty-eight IBS and 66 UC patients completed the Irritable Bowel Syndrome Quality of Life Questionnaire (IBSQOL), Pain Severity Scale of West Haven Yale Multidimensional Pain Inventory (WHYMPY), Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R) and Coping Strategies Questionnaire (CSQ). T-tests and GLM Analysis of Covariance were used for statistical analysis. IBS patients had significantly higher levels of psychological distress, pain severity and maladaptive pain coping strategies (catastrophization), and lower QOL than UC patients. Variance of QOL in IBS was explained for the most part by catastrophization (15%), then by psychological distress (8%), and for the less part by pain severity (5%). In UC, pain severity explained 21%, psychological distress 8%, and catastrophization 3% of the variance of QOL. These results suggest there are differences between IBS and UC patients in the role of physical and psychological factors in QOL and emphasize the importance of cognitive processes in IBS.     

Prenatal Equality of Opportunity

In this article, we defend a normative theory of prenatal equality of opportunity, based on a critical revision of Rawls's principle of fair equality of opportunity (FEO). We argue that if natural endowments are defined as biological properties possessed at birth and the distribution of natural endowments is seen as beyond the scope of justice, Rawls's FEO allows for inequalities that undermine the social conditions of a property‐owning democracy. We show this by considering the foetal programming of disease and the possibility of germ‐line modifications. If children of lower socioeconomic background are more likely to develop in a poor foetal environment and germ‐line enhancements are available only to the rich, initial inequalities between the rich and the poor would grow, and yet FEO would be satisfied. In order to avoid the problem, we propose a revised FEO principle omitting any reference to the comparison of natural endowments. Our revised FEO requires that institutions mitigate social class effect from reproduction and gestation to the greatest extent compatible with parental freedoms and the value of the family.