Accuracy of respiratory symptom perception in persons with high and low negative affectivity

Accuracy of respiratory symptom perception was investigated in different contexts in participants (N = 56) scoring high or low for negative affectivity (NA). Within subject-correlations were calculated between minute ventilation (frequency per minute × tidal volume) and the subjective symptom ‘faster and/or deeper breathing’ across 10 subsequent breathing trials of 2?min with varying air mixtures, containing fresh or foul smelling odours and/or 5.5% CO₂. Half the participants were given a positive information frame for the sensations (‘some air mixtures may induce a pleasantly arousing feeling, like when being in love’), whereas the other half was given a negative frame (‘some air mixtures may induce feelings of being anxious and distressed’). Interoceptive accuracy was overall fairly high (r = 0.56–0.74), but it dropped considerably (r = 0.27), when bodily sensations were induced in high NA persons in a negative information frame (interaction, p < 0.005). Interoceptive accuracy appears low when persons with high NA are in situations characterised by negative affective cues.     

Effects of Organizational Perspective on Implicit Trait Policies About Correctional Officers' Job Performance

This study tests the general idea that people in different organizational positions can have different perspectives on what performance means in a particular job and that these different perspectives are reflected in their implicit trait policies (ITPs) about performance in that job. We test the hypothesis that prison inmates harbor ITPs about the importance of agreeableness and conscientiousness in correctional officers' performance that are different from the ITPs harbored by officers and supervisors. Our results show that critical incidents of officers' performance that are generated by inmates emphasize agreeableness more and conscientiousness less than critical incidents generated by officers and supervisors. Our results also show that inmates' ratings of the effectiveness of officers' behavior described in critical incidents are more strongly associated with the agreeableness of the behavior and less strongly associated with the conscientiousness of the behavior than are officers' and supervisors' ratings.     

Who’s Afraid of Nagelian Reduction?

We reconsider the Nagelian theory of reduction and argue that, contrary to a widely held view, it is the right analysis of intertheoretic reduction. The alleged difficulties of the theory either vanish upon closer inspection or turn out to be substantive philosophical questions rather than knock-down arguments.     

Ambulante manualisierte Verhaltenstherapie bei Anorexia nervosa

Anorexia nervosa is a serious illness leading to high morbidity and mortality. Its treatment poses a particular challenge to psychotherapists offering outpatient treatment. Often therapists follow or work according to a treatment manual. Supervision in the treatment of anorexia nervosa patients intends to promote quality assurance as well as to foster therapists’ mental hygiene. It offers the opportunity to collect plenty of practical experiences. Some of these will be presented here to provide suggestions and support to therapists working with anorexia nervosa patients. Certain treatment modules of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) such as motivation, eating behavior, case formulation and relapse prevention will be considered. Regarding the therapist-patient relationship ambivalent relation shaping and motivational interviewing will be targeted.     

Behandlungsleitlinie Persönlichkeitsstörungen

The S2 guidelines for the treatment of personality disorders (PD) are summarized. In the diagnostic assessment of personality disorders a clinical interview should be supplemented by (semi-) structured clinical interviews and self-report measures for the categorical and dimensional assessment of PDs. The results of the assessment process should be communicated to the patient based on a psycho-educational framework. The diagnosis should always be linked to the patient’s individual history. Psychotherapy is the treatment of choice for personality disorders. A detailed analysis of the patient’s problems as well as the definition of a hierarchy of treatment goals are part of the process of treatment planning. For three PDs empirical evidence for treatment approaches is available: (1) dialectical behavior therapy, mentalization-based therapy, schema focused therapy and transference focused therapy all proved beneficial in the treatment of borderline personality disorder. Cognitive-behavior therapy proved helpful in the treatment of (2) dissociative personality disorder and (3) avoidant personality disorder. There is limited evidence for interpersonal therapy and psychodynamic therapies in the treatment of avoidant personality disorder.     

The role of crossmodal competition and dimensional overlap in crossmodal attention switching

Crossmodal selective attention was investigated in a cued task switching paradigm using bimodal visual and auditory stimulation. A cue indicated the imperative modality. Three levels of spatial S–R associations were established following perceptual (location), structural (numerical), and conceptual (verbal) set-level compatibility. In Experiment 1, participants switched attention between the auditory and visual modality either with a spatial-location or spatial-numerical stimulus set. In the spatial-location set, participants performed a localization judgment on left vs. right presented stimuli, whereas the spatial-numerical set required a magnitude judgment about a visually or auditorily presented number word. Single-modality blocks with unimodal stimuli were included as a control condition. In Experiment 2, the spatial-numerical stimulus set was replaced by a spatial-verbal stimulus set using direction words (e.g., “left”). RT data showed modality switch costs, which were asymmetric across modalities in the spatial-numerical and spatial-verbal stimulus set (i.e., larger for auditory than for visual stimuli), and congruency effects, which were asymmetric primarily in the spatial-location stimulus set (i.e., larger for auditory than for visual stimuli). This pattern of effects suggests task-dependent visual dominance.     

Dissociation of rapid response learning and facilitation in perceptual and conceptual networks of person recognition

Repetition priming is a prominent example of non‐declarative memory, and it increases the accuracy and speed of responses to repeatedly processed stimuli. Major long‐hold memory theories posit that repetition priming results from facilitation within perceptual and conceptual networks for stimulus recognition and categorization. Stimuli can also be bound to particular responses, and it has recently been suggested that this rapid response learning, not network facilitation, provides a sound theory of priming of object recognition. Here, we addressed the relevance of network facilitation and rapid response learning for priming of person recognition with a view to advance general theories of priming. In four experiments, participants performed conceptual decisions like occupation or nationality judgments for famous faces. The magnitude of rapid response learning varied across experiments, and rapid response learning co‐occurred and interacted with facilitation in perceptual and conceptual networks. These findings indicate that rapid response learning and facilitation in perceptual and conceptual networks are complementary rather than competing theories of priming. Thus, future memory theories need to incorporate both rapid response learning and network facilitation as individual facets of priming.     

Memory Without Consolidation: Temporal Distinctiveness Explains Retroactive Interference

Is consolidation needed to account for retroactive interference in free recall? Interfering mental activity during the retention interval of a memory task impairs performance, in particular if the interference occurs in temporal proximity to the encoding of the to‐be‐remembered (TBR) information. There are at least two rival theoretical accounts of this temporal gradient of retroactive interference. The cognitive neuroscience literature has suggested neural consolidation is a pivotal factor determining item recall. According to this account, interfering activity interrupts consolidation processes that would otherwise stabilize the memory representations of TBR items post‐encoding. Temporal distinctiveness theory, by contrast, proposes that the retrievability of items depends on their isolation in psychological time. According to this theory, information processed after the encoding of TBR material will reduce the temporal distinctiveness of the TBR information. To test between these accounts, implementations of consolidation were added to the SIMPLE model of memory and learning. We report data from two experiments utilizing a two‐list free recall paradigm. Modeling results imply that SIMPLE was able to model the data and did not benefit from the addition of consolidation. It is concluded that the temporal gradient of retroactive interference cannot be taken as evidence for memory consolidation.     

Disentangling Psychological Sources of Overpricing in Anticommons Dilemmas: Strategic Incentives,Endowment Effects,and Interdependence of Outcomes

Anticommons are a special kind of mixed‐motive dilemma in which negative effects for society are caused by the excessive use of exclusion rights. In two fully incentivized experiments on trading goods with risky prospects, we disentangle three psychological sources that have been suggested to contribute to increased pricing in anticommons dilemmas: the effects of strategic incentives for overpricing, endowment effects, and interdependence of outcomes. Our results show that pricing of risky prospects in the anticommons is only marginally influenced by endowment status, whereas participants readily respond to incentives to overprice and to the interdependence of outcomes. Endowment effects are reduced both when strategic incentives to overprice are provided and when outcomes of subjects become interdependent. As a result, endowment effects for risky prospects are strongly reduced or even disappear completely in anticommons dilemmas. Our results render support for an interaction model instead of an additive effect model in which both incentives and endowment effects would drive up pricing. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Roman Catholic Gay Priests: Internalized Homophobia, Sexual Identity, and Psychological Well-Being

Using convenience sampling, a national sample of 156 actively ministering or retired Roman Catholic priests was obtained. One hundred and five (105) of these priests identified as gay/homosexual (67.3 %), 42 identified as heterosexual (26.9 %), and 9 identified as bisexual (5.8 %). Due to the small number of bisexual participants, the bisexual priests’ responses were excluded, and the whole sample was divided into a gay/homosexual group and a heterosexual comparison group. This confidential study yielded a response rate of 78 %. The priests were mailed self-report survey instruments, including the Scales of Psychological Well-Being, the Internalized Homonegativity Inventory, the Gay Identity Questionnaire, the Depression-Happiness Scale, and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, as well as a demographics questionnaire. Results demonstrated that internalized homophobia was negatively correlated with psychological well-being and associated with depression. Internalized homophobia was also found to be related to less integration of sexual identity. There was no significant difference between the gay/homosexual and the heterosexual group in their psychological well-being and depression scores, and both groups emerged as high scorers on the measures of psychological well-being and depression-happiness (high scores on this bipolar instrument indicate happiness). Implications and limitations of the study are reviewed and discussed.