The mechanism of priming: episodic retrieval or priming of pop-out?

Previous studies indicate that priming affects attentional processes, facilitating processes of target detection and selection on repetition trials. However, the results are so far compatible with two different attentional views that propose entirely different mechanisms to account for priming. The priming of pop-out hypothesis explains priming by feature weighting processes that lead to more frequent selections of nontarget items on switch trials. According to the episodic retrieval account, switch trials conversely lead to temporal delays in retrieving priority rules that specify the target. The results from two eye tracking experiments clearly favour the priming of pop-out hypothesis: Switching the target and nontarget features leads to more frequent selection of nontargets, without affecting the time-course of saccades to a great extent. The results from two more control experiments demonstrate that the same results can be obtained in a visual search task that allows only covert attention shifts. This indicates that eye movements can reliably indicate covert attention shifts in visual search.     

Physical and emotional stresses of technology on employees in the workplace

This article presents how today's technology permeates the planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling functions of human resources management. Certain industries or occupations are more reliant on technology and thus impose more physical and emotional stressors on employees. The effects of physical stressors and the physical manifestations of emotional stressors can expose employers to additional liability. The authors make 8 propositions in this study and provide supporting research with additional information. How employers can be proactive by encouraging task‐focused coping with stress is also discussed.     

Age differences in the effects of social influence on children's eyewitness performance and their metacognitive monitoring

The current work investigated the effects of social influence on children's recall accuracy and metacognitive monitoring. Two studies were conducted in which 8- and 10-year-olds were confronted with postevent information in an interview situation. An interviewer (Study 1) or a confederate (Study 2) provided postevent information with two levels of assertiveness, inducing (a) a variation of conformity pressure and (b) a variation of information credibility. Afterwards, children's confidence judgments were assessed. The results revealed significant age differences in children's ability to adequately cope with variations of social influence. Although conformity pressure was especially important for the 8-year-olds, effects of informative social influence were independent of age. However, 10-year-olds were also able to act appropriately on low credibility, thereby demonstrating a more sophisticated consideration of social influence sources. Moreover, varying assertiveness also affected the quality of children's confidence judgments by improving their metacognitive differentiation skills.     

Intimacy, concreteness, and the "self-reference effect"

Reference to oneself during incidental learning of words frequently results in better recall performance than reference to other persons. However, this effect occurs under different conditions with differing strength, and sometimes it is even reversed. Meta-analyses and further experimental studies suggest that increased recall performance under a self-referential encoding task occurs only if it is compared with a nonintimate other person and if abstract material is presented, irrespective of the type of previously presented words (adjectives or nouns). In the current paper, two experiments are reported which support the assumption that this intimacy effect on memory only occurs if no pictorial or concrete features of the material (nouns) to be learned can be exploited for an improvement in encoding or remembering the material. All results agree with predicted effect sizes, which were drawn from a meta-analysis and subsequently conducted experimental studies. This suggests that a recall advantage of referring to oneself compared to other persons is subordinate to the effects of concreteness or imageability. Moreover, the current results offer a theoretical explanation of some previously reported but nevertheless puzzling results from imagery instructions, which indicate decreased recall performance for self-reference compared to other-reference.     

Electrophysiological correlates of encoding and retrieving emotional events

This study examined the impact of emotional content on encoding and retrieval processes. Event-related potentials were recorded in a source recognition memory task. During encoding, a posterior positivity for positive and negative pictures (250-450 ms) that presumably reflects attentional capturing of emotionally valenced stimuli was found. Additionally, positive events, which were also rated as less arousing than negative events, gave rise to anterior and posterior slow wave activity as compared with neutral and negative events and also showed enhanced recognition memory. It is assumed that positive low-arousing events enter controlled and elaborated encoding processes that are beneficial for recognition memory performance. The high arousal of negative events may interfere with controlled encoding mechanisms and attenuate item recognition and the quality of remembering. Moreover, topographically distinct late posterior negativities were obtained for the retrieval of the context features location and time that support the view that this component reflects processes in service of reconstructing the study episode by binding together contextual details with an item and that varies with the kind of episodic detail to be retrieved.     

Clinical considerations for the treatment of body dysmorphic disorder with cognitive-behavioral therapy

Although cognitive behavior therapy has been found to be very effective in the treatment of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), there still remain a number of challenges that clinicians face in the treatment of individuals with BDD. In this article, we discuss issues related to comorbid depression, suicidality, substance use disorders, personality disorders as well as the role of early life experiences, delusional intensity of beliefs, and motivation to change. The aim of this review is to provide a treatment aid to clinicians by offering specific recommendations for improved care based on the available literature as well as our clinical experience.     

Recommendations for standardized human pedigree nomenclature

The construction of an accurate family pedigree is a fundamental component of a clinical genetic evaluation and of human genetic research. Previous surveys of genetic counselors and human genetic publications have demonstrated significant inconsistencies in the usage of common pedigree symbols representing situations such as pregnancy, termination of pregnancy, miscarriage, and adoption, as well as less common scenarios such as pregnancies conceived through assisted reproductive technologies. The Pedigree Standardization Task Force (PSTF) was organized through the Professional Issues Committee of the National Society of Genetic Counselors, to establish recommendations for universal standards in human pedigree nomenclature. Nomenclature was chosen based on current usage, consistency among symbols, computer compatibility, and the adaptability of symbols to reflect the rapid technical advances in human genetics. Preliminary recommendations were presented for review at three national meetings of human genetic professionals and sent to >100 human genetic professionals for review. On the basis of this review process, the recommendations of the PSTF for standardized human pedigree nomenclature are presented here. By incorporating these recommendations into medical genetics professional training programs, board examinations, genetic publications, and pedigree software, the adoption of uniform pedigree nomenclature can begin. Usage of standardized pedigree nomenclature will reduce the chances for incorrect interpretation of patient and family medical and genetic information. It may also improve the quality of patient care provided by genetic professionals and facilitate communication between researchers involved with genetic family studies.Reprinted with permission from theAmerican Journal of Human Genetics 56:745–752, 1995, The University of Chicago Press. © 1995 by The American Society of Human Genetics. All rights reserved.     

Krankheitsbelastung bei chronisch entzündlichen Darmerkrankungen

Background

Psychosocial distress is considerable in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The aim of this study was to assess the association of illness perceptions with disease-specific distress in patients with IBD in the context of various medical and psychological parameters.

Method

A total of 62 patients suffering from IBD were examined for illness perceptions using the illness perception questionnaire revised (IPQ-R), medical parameters and affective parameters using the hospital anxiety and depression scale (HADS) in a cross-sectional study. Associations with disease-specific distress were assessed.

Results

In multiple regression analyses illness perceptions and also physical well-being were identified as significant predictors of disease-specific distress and showed significant effects on the explanation for the amount of variance (R²=0.70).

Conclusion

Even in the context of various medical and psychological parameters illness perceptions showed significant associations with disease-specific distress in patients with IBD.     

The development of emotional face and eye gaze processing

Recent research has demonstrated that infants' attention towards novel objects is affected by an adult's emotional expression and eye gaze toward the object. The current event-related potential (ERP) study investigated how infants at 3, 6, and 9 months of age process fearful compared to neutral faces looking toward objects or averting gaze away from objects. Furthermore, we examined how the processing of novel objects is affected by gaze direction and emotional expression. We hypothesized that an adult's fearful expression should be particularly salient when it is directed toward a referent in the environment. Furthermore, responses to objects should be increased if the face previously expressed fear toward the object. Three-month-olds did not show differential neural responses to fearful vs. neutral faces regardless of gaze direction. Six-month-olds showed an enhanced negative central (Nc) component for fearful relative to neutral faces looking toward objects, but not when eye gaze was averted away from the objects. Furthermore, 6-month-olds showed an enhanced Nc for objects that had been gaze-cued by a fearful compared to a neutral face. Nine-month-olds showed an enhanced Nc for fearful relative to neutral faces in both eye gaze conditions and showed an enhanced Nc for objects that had been gaze-cued by a neutral face. The findings are discussed in the context of social cognitive and brain development.     

The Femme Fatale Effect: Attractiveness is a Liability for Businesswomen’s Perceived Truthfulness,Trust, and Deservingness of Termination

Sex Roles - In what we label the “femme fatale” effect, we proposed and found support for the notion that attractive businesswomen are judged as being less truthful than less attractive...