Assessment of abnormal personality in childhood: a Delphi survey of questionnaire data

As an investigation into the feasibility of recording personality status from questionnaire data in younger people we used a three phase Delphi survey to assess items from the Christchurch Health and Development Study, administered at ages 12 to 16 years. Twelve experts took part in Phase I, and 22 in Phases II and III, 16 of whom were experts in adult personality disorder (PD), and 6 were experts who work with children. In total, 189 questions (55% of the total (238) in the questionnaires) were identified as possibly being related to personality abnormality in one or more clusters with high consensus. Experts who work with children were less likely to label features as related to personality than experts in PD (p < 0.001), and the four personality factors (equivalent to Mulder and Joyce's antisocial, asocial, asthenic, and anankastic) chosen for assessment showed variable agreement. Confirmatory factor analysis showed the best fitting model of the data was a 3 factor solution involving asocial/asthenic, antisocial, and anankastic factors. This represents the first attempt to use existing recorded data to code personality status and the results of this Delphi survey give some grounds for optimism that this approach has potential in the early identification of personality features.     

Exploring the perceptual spaces of faces, cars and birds in children and adults

While much developmental research has focused on the strategies that children employ to recognize faces, less is known about the principles governing the organization of face exemplars in perceptual memory. In this study, we tested a novel, child-friendly paradigm for investigating the organization of face, bird and car exemplars. Children ages 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, 11-12 and adults were presented with 50/50 morphs of typical and atypical face, bird and car parent images. Participants were asked to judge whether the 50/50 morph more strongly resembled the typical or the atypical parent image. Young and older children and adults showed a systematic bias to the atypical faces and birds, but no bias toward the atypical cars. Collectively, these findings argue that by the age of 3, children encode and organize faces, birds and cars in a perceptual space that is strikingly similar to that of adults. Category organization for both children and adults follows Krumhansl's (1978) distance-density principle in which the similarity between two exemplars is jointly determined by their physical appearance and the density of neighboring exemplars in the perceptual space.     

Target-directed visual attention is a prerequisite for action-specific perception

Witt et al. (2008) have recently shown that golfers who putt with more success perceive the hole to be bigger than golfers who putt with less success. In three experiments, we systematically examined whether this phenomenon, labelled action-specific perception, depends on directing visual attention towards the action target. In Experiment 1 we replicated previously reported action-specific effects on perception in golf putting. In 3 and 4 we directly assessed whether action-specific effects on perception in golf putting are dependent on focusing visual attention on the target. To this end, the participants performed the putting task while visual attention towards the target was either completely withheld (Experiment 2) or divided over the target and other task-relevant objects (Experiment 3). No action-specific effects were found when visual attention towards the action target was occluded or partially diverted from the target. Together, our results provide evidence to suggest that focusing visual attention on the target while performing the action is a prerequisite for the emergence of action-specific perception.     

What’s Unique About Immigrant Protest?

Increasingly, western democratic countries are bearing witness to immigrant protest, that is, protest by immigrants who are dissatisfied with their status in the host community. In protesting, the immigrants object to the ways in which various laws and practices have proved to be obstacles to their full integration. Because immigrants, upon entering, have consented to abide by the rules and regulations of the host state, it might be thought that these forms of civil disobedience are, effectively, contract violations. Immigrants might therefore be thought to have a particularly stringent duty to abide by the laws of their host state. This paper evaluates whether immigrants are indeed under a special duty to abide by the laws of their host state. First, it suggests that it is useful — although incomplete — to apply the device of the ‘contract’ to understanding the relationship between new immigrants and the host community. Second, it argues that there are limits to what can be demanded of and by immigrants as well as of and by host communities. It then turns to offering principles that help to evaluate the motivations of immigrant protestors, as well as that help guide their actions, when they believe that the community they have joined is treating them unjustly. These principles suggest that immigrant protest actions are subject to the restriction that they do not undermine the possibility of an inclusive democratic community.     

Relationship of negative self-schemas and attachment styles with appearance schemas

The purpose was to test, among women, the relationship between negative self-schemas and styles of attachment with men and women and two types of appearance investment (Self-evaluative and Motivational Salience). Predominantly Caucasian undergraduate women (N = 194) completed a modified version of the Relationship Questionnaire, the Young Schema Questionnaire-Short Form, and the Appearance Schemas Inventory-Revised. Linear multiple regression analyses were conducted with Motivational Salience and Self-evaluative Salience of appearance serving as dependent variables and relevant demographic variables, negative self-schemas, and styles of attachment to men serving as independent variables. Styles of attachment to women were not entered into these regression models because Pearson correlations indicated they were not related to either dependent variable. Self-evaluative Salience of appearance was related to impaired autonomy and performance negative self-schema and the preoccupation style of attachment with men, while Motivational Salience of appearance was related only to the preoccupation style of attachment with men.     

Motor asymmetry and substantia nigra volume are related to spatial delayed response performance in Parkinson disease

Studies suggest motor deficit asymmetry may help predict the pattern of cognitive impairment in individuals with Parkinson disease (PD). We tested this hypothesis using a highly validated and sensitive spatial memory task, spatial delayed response (SDR), and clinical and neuroimaging measures of PD asymmetry. We predicted SDR performance would be more impaired by PD-related changes in the right side of the brain than in the left. PD (n = 35) and control (n = 28) participants performed the SDR task. PD participants either had worse motor deficits on the right (RPD) or left (LPD) side of the body. Some participants also had magnetic resonance imaging for measurement of their substantia nigra (SN) volumes. The LPD group performed worse on the SDR task than the RPD and control groups. Right SN volume accounted for a unique and significant portion of the variance in SDR error, with smaller volume predicting poorer performance. In conclusion, left motor dysfunction and smaller right SN volume are associated with poorer spatial memory.     

The human Müller-Lyer illusion in goalkeeping

We examined whether a goalkeeper can influence a penalty-taker's actions by assuming postures that mimic Müller-Lyer configurations. The results of two studies indicate that (i) goalkeeper posture affects the perception of the goalkeeper's height in a manner consistent with the Müller-Lyer illusion; (ii) this influences penalty-taking accuracy; and (iii) a posture which resembles a wing-out Müller-Lyer configuration results in wider and lower throws.     

Prospective and positive mental imagery deficits in dysphoria

We know less about positive mental imagery than we do about negative mental imagery in depression. This study examined the relationship between depressed mood and the subjective experience of emotion in imagined events; specifically, prospective imagery, and imagery in response to emotionally ambiguous stimuli. One hundred and twenty-six undergraduates completed measures of depression, imagery vividness for future events, and a homograph interpretation task in which they generated images and subsequently rated image pleasantness and vividness. As predicted, compared to low dysphoria, high dysphoria was associated with poorer ability to vividly imagine positive (but not negative) future events. These findings were augmented by the observation that high dysphorics provided lower pleasantness ratings of images generated in response to homographs they interpreted as positive. We suggest that an imbalance in the inability to vividly imagine positive but not negative future events may curtail the ability of high dysphorics to be optimistic. High dysphoric individuals are further disadvantaged: even when they interpret ambiguity positively, the resulting images they generate are associated with less positive affect. Therapeutic strategies that address both such positive-specific imagery biases hold promise for depression treatment innovation.     

Premarital precursors of marital infidelity

Premarital precursors of infidelity were evaluated in a sample of 72 couples (N = 144) who were taking part in a longitudinal study of marriage. Premarital self-report and observational data were compared for couples who experienced infidelity and those who did not experience infidelity in the first years of marriage. Couples in which the male engaged in marital infidelity were characterized, premaritally, by significantly lower male sexual satisfaction, lower male positive communication, and higher female invalidation, whereas couples in which the female went on to engage in infidelity were characterized, premaritally, by significantly lower levels of female positive communication, higher levels of male and female negative communication, and higher levels of male and female invalidation. Implications of the findings for future research on the prediction and prevention of infidelity are discussed.     

Stable implicit motor processes despite aerobic locomotor fatigue

Implicit processes almost certainly preceded explicit processes in our evolutionary history, so they are likely to be more resistant to disruption according to the principles of evolutionary biology [Reber, A. S. (1992). The cognitive unconscious: An evolutionary perspective. Consciousness and Cognition, 1, 93-133.]. Previous work (e.g., [Masters, R. S. W. (1992). Knowledge, (k)nerves and know-how: The role of explicit versus implicit knowledge in the breakdown of a complex motor skill under pressure. British Journal of Psychology, 83, 343-358.]) has shown that implicitly learned motor skills remain stable under psychological pressure and concurrent cognitive demands, and recently [Poolton, J. M., Masters, R. S. W., & Maxwell, J. P. (2007). Passing thoughts on the evolutionary stability of implicit motor behaviour: Performance retention under physiological fatigue. Consciousness and Cognition, 16(2), 456-468.] showed that they also remain stable under conditions of anaerobic fatigue that would have significantly challenged the survival skills of our ancestors. Here we examine the stability of an implicitly learned motor skill under fatigue conditions that primarily tax a different physiological system (the aerobic system), but which have equally strong evolutionary connotations. Participants acquired a throwing task by means of an errorless (implicit) learning method or an errorful (explicit) method. Motor performance in the errorless condition, but not the errorful condition, remained stable following an exhaustive VO2 max. running test. Our findings replicate and extend the work of Poolton et al., providing further support for Reber's evolutionary distinction between implicit and explicit processes.