Body image change in obese and overweight women enrolled in a weight-loss intervention: the importance of perceived versus actual physical changes

Using the exercise and self-esteem model as a guiding framework, this study examined variables related to body image change among 88 overweight and obese women (M(age)=28.4±7.8; M(BMI)=31.6±3.5) participating in a 16-week diet and exercise weight-loss intervention. Measures of body image and potential mechanisms of body image change (actual and perceived physical changes, self-efficacy) were administered at baseline, Weeks 8 and 16. Body image improved significantly over the study time-points (ps<.001). Perceived physical changes accounted for most explained variance (12-37%) in body image change (total R(2)(adj)=.21-.50). Improved perceptions of body fat were a particularly important predictor in each model (ps≤.04). Results support the notion that to improve body image, perceived changes to the body are more important than actual changes. Such information is integral to developing theories to explain body image change and interventions to maximize it.     

Engaging with research ethics in central Francophone Africa: reflections on a workshop about ancillary care

ABSTRACT: Research ethics is predominantly taught and practiced in Anglophone countries, particularly those in North America and Western Europe. Initiatives to build research ethics capacity in developing countries must attempt to avoid imposing foreign frameworks and engage with ethical issues in research that are locally relevant. This article describes the process and outcomes of a capacity-building workshop that took place in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo in the summer of 2011. Although the workshop focused on a specific ethical theme - the responsibilities of researchers to provide health-related care to their research participants - we argue that the structure of the workshop offers a useful method for engaging with research ethics in general, and the theme of ancillary care encourages a broad perspective on research ethics that is highly pertinent in low-income countries. The workshop follows an interactive, locally driven model that could be fruitfully replicated in similar settings.     

Adapting Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Treatment-Resistant Depression: A Clinical Case Study

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is currently ranked the third leading cause of disability in the world. Treatment-Resistant Depression (TRD) causes the majority of MDD's disability. Strikingly, 50% of individuals with MDD will fail to remit with two adequate trials of antidepressant medications, thus qualifying as treatment resistant. Current pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatment strategies for TRD are limited in effectiveness so new interventions are needed. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is a new psychotherapeutic treatment with established efficacy in preventing relapse of depression for individuals in complete remission. MBCT is a group-based, 8-week intervention that uses mindfulness meditation as its core therapeutic technique. It teaches people to have a different relationship to depressive thoughts and feelings. Strategies are focused on decreasing rumination, enhancing self-compassion, increasing acceptance and decreasing avoidance. This modified version of MCBT, which includes the use of metaphor and adaptations of the original intervention will be discussed through the clinical case of a woman with long-standing TRD. A brief review of the current MBCT literature and future directions for the treatment of TRD are discussed.     

An Examination of the Association between Difficulties with Emotion Regulation and Dating Violence Perpetration

The perpetration of aggression in dating relationships is a prevalent problem among college students. Research that examines factors related to perpetrating dating violence is needed, as this could help guide prevention programming. This study examined how emotion regulation is related to dating violence perpetration among male and female college students (N = 440). Findings showed that the association between broad difficulties with emotion regulation, as well as more specific emotion regulation problems, were associated with dating violence perpetration and could differentiate individuals who had perpetrated and not perpetrated aggression. These findings varied slightly depending on the gender of the perpetrator and the type of aggression examined. Implications of these findings for prevention programs and future research are discussed.     

Eyes pursue moving objects, not retinal motion signals

For smooth-pursuit eye movements, a moving target is necessary, but we show that it is not sufficient. Observers pursued targets that appeared to move in one direction even though they really moved in another. Changes in perceived direction did not disrupt pursuit eye movements, but motion-based failures in object parsing did.     

Vestibular stimulation affects optic-flow sensitivity

Typically, multiple cues can be used to generate a particular percept. Our area of interest is the extent to which humans are able to synergistically combine cues that are generated when moving through an environment. For example, movement through the environment leads to both visual (optic-flow) and vestibular stimulation, and studies have shown that non-human primates are able to combine these cues to generate a more accurate perception of heading than can be obtained with either cue in isolation. Here we investigate whether humans show a similar ability to synergistically combine optic-flow and vestibular cues. This was achieved by determining the sensitivity to optic-flow stimuli while physically moving the observer, and hence producing a vestibular signal, that was either consistent with the optic-flow signal, eg a radially expanding pattern coupled with forward motion, or inconsistent with it, eg a radially expanding pattern with backward motion. Results indicate that humans are more sensitive to motion-in-depth optic-flow stimuli when they are combined with complementary vestibular signals than when they are combined with conflicting vestibular signals. These results indicate that in humans, like in nonhuman primates, there is perceptual integration of visual and vestibular signals.     

Disentangling the relationship between hemispheric asymmetry and cognitive performance

It is widely believed that advantages of hemispheric asymmetries originated in better cognitive processing, hence it is often implied that the relationship between hemispheric asymmetry and cognitive performance is linearly positive: the higher the degree of lateralization in a specific cognitive domain, the better the performance in a corresponding task. Yet, the empirical evidence for this notion is mixed and the statistical methods to analyze this relationship have been criticized. The present study therefore investigated the relationship between hemispheric asymmetries and cognitive performance in two behavioral tasks (a left-lateralized word-matching task and a right-lateralized face-decision task) in 230 participants (140 women, 90 men) by using two different approaches. Both methods correspondingly revealed that a relationship between hemispheric asymmetries and cognitive performance does exist. Contrary to a positive (linear) relationship however, the data could be best described by an inverted U-shaped curve. Although the optimal degree of lateralization seemed to be task-specific, a slight or moderate degree of hemispheric asymmetry achieved best cognitive performance in all tasks. Moreover, performances deteriorated towards extreme ends of lateralization (i.e., participants with either extreme left or right hemispheric biases). Taken together, the present study provides evidence against the notion that higher lateralization is related to enhanced cognitive performance.     

Conscious machines: Memory,melody and muscular imagination

A great deal of effort has been, and continues to be, devoted to developing consciousness artificially (A small selection of the many authors writing in this area includes: Cotterill (J Conscious Stud 2:290–311, 1995, 1998), Haikonen (2003), Aleksander and Dunmall (J Conscious Stud 10:7–18, 2003), Sloman (2004, 2005), Aleksander (2005), Holland and Knight (2006), and Chella and Manzotti (2007)), and yet a similar amount of effort has gone in to demonstrating the infeasibility of the whole enterprise (Most notably: Dreyfus (1972/1979, 1992, 1998), Searle (1980), Harnad (J Conscious Stud 10:67–75, 2003), and Sternberg (2007), but there are a great many others). My concern in this paper is to steer some navigable channel between the two positions, laying out the necessary pre-conditions for consciousness in an artificial system, and concentrating on what needs to hold for the system to perform as a human being or other phenomenally conscious agent in an intersubjectively-demanding social and moral environment. By adopting a thick notion of embodiment—one that is bound up with the concepts of the lived body and autopoiesis (Maturana and Varela 1980; Varela et al. 2003; and Ziemke 2003, 2007a, J Conscious Stud 14(7):167–179, 2007b)—I will argue that machine phenomenology is only possible within an embodied distributed system that possesses a richly affective musculature and a nervous system such that it can, through action and repetition, develop its tactile-kinaesthetic memory, individual kinaesthetic melodies pertaining to habitual practices, and an anticipatory enactive kinaesthetic imagination. Without these capacities the system would remain unconscious, unaware of itself embodied within a world. Finally, and following on from Damasio’s (1991, 1994, 1999, 2003) claims for the necessity of pre-reflective conscious, emotional, bodily responses for the development of an organism’s core and extended consciousness, I will argue that without these capacities any agent would be incapable of developing the sorts of somatic markers or saliency tags that enable affective reactions, and which are indispensable for effective decision-making and subsequent survival. My position, as presented here, remains agnostic about whether or not the creation of artificial consciousness is an attainable goal.     

Specificity of episodic and semantic aspects of autobiographical memory in relation to symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Two studies examined the relationship between the ability to access specific autobiographical material in memory and presence/symptoms of posttraumatic stress. In Study 1, a sample of refugees with a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) completed the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) in which they had to generate specific episodic autobiographical memories in response to emotion-related cue words. Results showed that reduced specificity of memories on the AMT was associated with an increased frequency of trauma-related flashbacks but with reduced use of effortful avoidance to deal with trauma-related intrusions in the day-to-day. Study 2 examined retrieval of semantic autobiographical information from previous lifetime periods in groups of cancer survivors with posttraumatic stress and healthy controls. The cancer survivors were able to generate fewer specific semantic details about the personal past compared to the controls. The more symptomatic survivors showed the greatest memory impairment. The data from both studies are discussed in terms of compromised access to specific autobiographical material in distressed trauma survivors reflecting a process of affect regulation.