Exploring the relationship between umbilical blood cord donation and the impact of social distance on altruism and trust

Allogeneic umbilical cord blood (UCB) donation is a pro-social behaviour directed to strangers that has a certain cost for the donor. Although the promotion of such behaviour is an important goal for many countries' health systems, little is known about the reasons that would lead to it. With this study, we explored how the impact of social closeness on altruism and trust could be related to UCB donation in a sample of new-mothers (N = 167). Participants played hypothetical Dictator and Trust games with socially close (e.g., parents) or distant (e.g., strangers) others. They donated more money to parents and siblings compared to cousins, friends and strangers and they trusted more parents, siblings and friends than cousins and strangers. Interestingly, the lower the impact of social closeness on altruism (i.e., generosity towards socially distant others), the higher the intention and the actual probability of UCB donation. A mediation analysis has shown that the relationship between social closeness on altruism and UCB donation was mediated by objective intention to donate (i.e., having followed all the procedures needed). These findings show that other-oriented motivations towards distant others might have important practical implications in identifying the targets of interventions for the promotion of UCB donation.     

The Italian job?: Comparing theory of mind performance in British and Italian children

Cross‐cultural research on theory of mind is relatively recent and largely restricted to comparisons of children from Western versus non‐Western samples; much less is known about variation within Western cultures. This study compared 5‐ to 6‐year‐olds from Britain and Italy (matched for age, verbal age, gender, and maternal education; N = 140), on tests tapping children's understanding of 1st and 2nd order false belief and mixed emotions. Overall, British children outperformed Italian children; group differences were clearest for tests of false‐belief understanding. These results are discussed in relation to contrasts in family talk about mental states, schooling, language comprehension, and cultural factors in Britain and Italy.     

Feline communication strategies when presented with an unsolvable task: the attentional state of the person matters

Animal Cognition - Research on social cognitive ability in domestic cats is limited. The current study investigated social referencing in cats when exposed to first, a solvable, and then, an...     

The capacity to symbolise: Ideas and implications

Through a literature review and clinical examples of session material and dreams, this paper explores aspects of the origin and development of the capacity to symbolise. The literature review considers Freud’s thinking on symbols in dreams, hysteria and obsessional neurosis, Klein’s discovery of the importance of unconscious phantasy, Bion’s ideas on the psychotic part of the mind and Bick’s seminal ideas on skin as an important symbolic boundary between psyche and soma. The clinical material in this paper is used to demonstrate the capacity to symbolise, reasons for the impairment of this capacity, and how the translation of symbols through interpretation in a therapeutic setting can enable the symbols to acquire meaning. It includes examples both of the author’s work with adults and of other clinicians’ work with a child and an adolescent in a psychotic state of mind. The paper’s aim is to consolidate the idea that the capacity to symbolise grows out of an optimal early parent/child relationship and that the awareness of the significance of the symbols when they have been interpreted is of crucial importance.     

Positive Thought Induction for Arresting Disease Progression: A Hypnotherapeutic Application in HIV/AIDS

The present research aimed to investigate the effect of positive thought induction through hypnotherapeutic strategies, e.g., package of relaxation, guided imagery, positive suggestions, etc., on the coping strategies, clinical and immune parameters of disease progression in people living with HIV/AIDS(PLWHA). Data were collected from 20 adults HIV+ patients having CD4 count above 250 and plasma viral load less than 5000, screened from a large group of HIV+ patients who had volunteered for the study. A repeated measure design of research was used. Results of post and follow-up tests indicated that positive thought induction through hypnotherapy had yielded significant positive changes in several dimension of coping strategies (e.g., active coping, alcohol/drug abuse, denial, planning, reinterpretation and growth). Similarly, it led to significant increase in different Immunological parameters (e.g.,% of CD4 count, absolute CD4 count, absolute CD8 count, proportion of CD4 to CD8 count, and absolute CD3 count). These results suggest the effective use of hypnotherapy as an adjunct therapy to arrest disease progression and improve quality of life of PLWHA. In addition, the result highlights the effect of positive thoughts in strengthening positive coping strategies and improving immune competence in PLWHA.     

Parental Psychological Control and Childhood Anxiety: The Mediating Role of Perceived Lack of Control

Parental psychological control has been found to relate to the development of childhood anxiety; however, this relation has not been thoroughly examined. The purpose of this study was to understand the nature of the relation between parental psychological control and anxiety symptoms in children, as well as to understand whether this relation is mediated by children’s perceived control. Questionnaires were administered to children ages 8–11. Results indicated a significant relation between parental psychological control and child anxiety symptoms. Results further indicated that this relation was fully mediated by children’s perceptions of how much control they feel they have over events in their lives. These findings suggest that although parental psychological control and a child’s perceived control both contribute to the development of anxiety, it is possible that parental psychological control contributes to the development of anxiety by affecting a child’s perception of control.     

Working under cover: performance‐related self‐confidence among members of contextually devalued groups who try to pass

This paper experimentally examines the effects of passing (versus revealing) a contextually devalued identity on performance‐related self‐confidence. An experimental scenario was developed on the basis of the results of a pilot study. Studies 1 and 2 (total N = 255) experimentally manipulate passing versus revealing a contextually devalued identity, to an ingroup or an outgroup partner. The results show that, although passing makes participants believe that their partner has more positive expectations of them, it also undermines performance‐related self‐confidence. Moreover, the results show that negative self‐directed affect (i.e., guilt and shame) mediated the negative effect of passing on performance‐related self‐confidence. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How the bimodal format of presentation affects working memory: an overview

The best format in which information that has to be recalled is presented has been investigated in several studies, which focused on the impact of bimodal stimulation on working memory performance. An enhancement of participant’s performance in terms of correct recall has been repeatedly found, when bimodal formats of presentation (i.e., audiovisual) were compared to unimodal formats (i.e, either visual or auditory), in providing implications for multimedial learning. Several theoretical frameworks have been suggested in order to account for the bimodal advantage, ranging from those emphasizing early stages of processing (such as automatic alerting effects or multisensory integration processes) to those centred on late stages of processing (as postulated by the dual coding theory). The aim of this paper is to review previous contributions to this topic, providing a comprehensive theoretical framework, which is updated by the latest empirical studies.     

How implicitly activated and explicitly acquired knowledge contribute to the effectiveness of retrieval cues

The extralist cued recall task simulates everyday reminding because a memory is encoded on the fly and retrieved later by an unexpected cue. Target words are studied individually, and recall is cued by associatively related words having preexisting forward links to them. In Experiments 1 and 2, forward cue-to-target and backward target-to-cue strengths were varied over an extended range in order to determine how these two sources of strength are related and which source has a greater effect. Forward and backward strengths had additive effects on recall, with forward strength having a consistently larger effect. The PIER2 model accurately predicted these findings, but a plausible generation-recognition version of the model, called PIER.GR, could not. In Experiment 3, forward and backward strengths, level of processing, and study time were varied in order to determine how preexisting lexical knowledge is related to knowledge acquired during the study episode. The main finding indicates that preexisting knowledge and episodic knowledge have additive effects on extralist cued recall. PIER2 can explain these findings because it assumes that these sources of strength contribute independently to recall, whereas the eSAM model cannot explain the findings because it assumes that the sources of strength are multiplicatively related.