The effects of behavioral inhibition/approach system as predictors of Internet addiction in adolescents

This study aimed to determine how the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and the Behavioral Approach System (BAS) affect Internet addiction in adolescents. Two hundred and eleven high school students participated in this study and completed the Young’s Internet Addiction Test (IAT), BIS/BAS scales, and several self-administered questionnaires about depression, anxiety, and impulsivity. Hierarchical regressions showed that BIS and BAS × BIS emerged as significant predictors of IAT; however, only BAS-fun seeking subscale predicted IAT among BAS related subscales. In further analyses, the BAS-fun seeking subscale was mediated by impulsivity and anxiety, and BIS was mediated by anxiety and depression. The current findings imply that BIS and BAS interdependently influence vulnerability to Internet addiction through both shared (anxiety) and different (depression and impulsivity, respectively) pathways.     

Impaired body but not face perception in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder

Background. Empirical evidence involving the processing of social information by patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) has been relatively scarce. Our study investigated the perceptual abilities of patients with OCD to recognize human faces and bodies. Method. Fifty‐four drug‐free or drug‐naïve patients with OCD and 42 healthy controls performed discrimination tasks consisting of four types of stimuli: two sets of faces that were manipulated with regard to configuration and features, human bodies, and chairs. The stimuli were presented in upright and upside‐down orientations. Results. Patients with OCD were significantly less accurate in discriminating pairs of bodily postures implying actions. However, we found no significant differences between patient and control groups in the ability to recognize faces and chairs. The inversion effects for bodies and faces were also comparable between the two groups. Conclusions. The current findings suggest that patients with OCD experience difficulty in perceiving static forms of bodily postures, but are able to adequately recognize human faces. Our data indicate a selective deficit in the perception of bodily postures in those with OCD and suggest that this deficit is probably not related to the abnormal configurational processing of social objects.     

Instructed Hand Movements Affect Students’ Learning of an Abstract Concept From Video

Producing content-related gestures has been found to impact students’ learning, whether such gestures are spontaneously generated by the learner in the course of problem-solving, or participants are instructed to pose based on experimenter instructions during problem-solving and word learning. Few studies, however, have investigated the effect of (a) performing instructed gestures while learning concepts or (b) producing gestures without there being an implied connection between the gestures and the concepts being learned. The two studies reported here investigate the impact of instructed hand movements on students’ subsequent understanding of a concept. Students were asked to watch an instructional video—focused on the concept of statistical model—three times. Two experimental groups were given a secondary task to perform while watching the video, which involved moving their hands to mimic the placement and orientation of red rectangular bars overlaid on the video. Students were told that the focus of the study was multitasking, and that the instructed hand movements were unrelated to the material being learned. In the content-match group the placement of the hands reinforced the concept being explained, and in the content-mismatch group it did not. A control group was not asked to perform a secondary task. In both studies, findings indicate that students in the content-match group performed better on the posttest, and showed less variation in performance, than did students in the content-mismatch group, with control students falling in between. Instructed hand movement—even when presented as an unrelated, secondary task—can affect students’ learning of a complex concept.     

Social exchange relationships and exchange ideologies of employees and supervisors: A three-way interaction toward employee creativity

This study aims to better understand the effects of social exchange relationships between employees and their organizations (perceived organizational support [POS]), and their leaders (leader–member exchange [LMX]) on their creativity. To this end, we investigated how exchange ideologies of employees and supervisors affect the relationship between POS/LMX and employee creativity using a three-way interaction test. Building on the social exchange theory, the results from our sample of 254 leader–employee dyads indicated that the relationship between POS/LMX and employee creativity is significantly more positive for an employee with strong exchange ideology than for an employee with weak exchange ideology. Moreover, POS and LMX had the strongest positive relationships with creativity when both employees and supervisors had higher levels of exchange ideology. The implications of our results and future research directions are discussed.     

Distance,Contact, and Intergenerational Relationships: Grandparents and Adult Grandchildren from an International Perspective

In previous studies of intergenerational relationships, geographic distance has been considered the most obvious factor influencing opportunity for frequency of contact between grandparents and grandchildren. This study presents findings from a survey of 70 international college students in the Unites States regarding perceived grandparental influence and relationship satisfaction with their “closest” grandparent. Results showed that participants' perceived influence of grandparents and relationship satisfaction was maintained despite decreased contact between grandparents and grandchildren. In addition, grandchildren who initiated contact were found to have a significant impact on relationship satisfaction. This study provides an understanding of distance, contact, and intergenerational relationships in an international context.     

The Specific Role of cGMP in Hippocampal LTP

Previous results have suggested that cGMP is involved in hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP), perhaps as the presynaptic effector of a retrograde messenger. However, other studies have failed to replicate some of those results, making the role of cGMP uncertain. We therefore reexamined this question and identified several variables that can affect the contribution of cGMP. First, brief perfusion with 8-Br–cGMP before weak tetanic stimulation produced long-lasting potentiation in the CA1 region of hippocampal slices, but more prolonged perfusion with 8-Br–cGMP before the tetanus did not produce long-lasting potentiation. Second, the activity-dependent long-lasting potentiation by cGMP analogs was reduced when NMDA receptors were completely blocked, indicating that NMDA receptor activation contributes to, but is not required for, the potentiation. The amount of reduction of the potentiation differed with different protocols, and in some cases could be complete. Third, LTP produced by strong tetanic stimulation in the stratum radiatum of CA1 (which expresses eNOS) was blocked by inhibitors of soluble guanylyl cyclase or cGMP-dependent protein kinase, but LTP in the stratum oriens (which does not express eNOS) was not. The results of these experiments should help to explain some of the discrepant findings from previous studies, and, in addition, may provide insights into the mechanisms and functional role of the cGMP-dependent component of LTP.     

Honesty as the sixth factor of personality: correlations with machiavellianism,primary psychopathy,and social adroitness

Psycholexical studies of personality structure in several languages have recovered, in addition to variants of the Big Five factors, a sixth factor that has been given names suggesting honesty, such as ‘Integrity’, ‘Trustworthiness’, ‘Truthfulness’, and ‘Values’. Using a sample of Korean respondents (N = 610), we correlated lexical markers of the Big Five and the Honesty factor with several questionnaire variables that are relevant to the exploitation of others, including Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, and Social Adroitness. Results indicated that those measures were much more strongly related to the Honesty factor than to any of the Big Five. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.