The impact of exposure to images of ideally thin models in TV commercials on eating behavior: an experimental study with women diagnosed with bulimia nervosa

This study investigates whether eating behavior in women with diagnosed bulimia nervosa is influenced by prior exposure to images of ideally thin models. Twenty-six participants diagnosed with bulimia nervosa (BN) and 30 normal controls (NC) were exposed to body-related and neutral TV commercials; then food that typically triggers binge eating was provided, and the amount of food eaten was measured. No significant difference for food intake between NC and BN could be found, but food intake for BN was predicted by the degree of thoughts related to eating behaviors during exposure to the thin ideal. No impact of general body image or eating pathology on food intake could be found. The results emphasize the importance of action-relevance of dysfunctional cognitions for the maintenance of eating-disordered behaviors in women with bulimia nervosa, when exposed to eating-disorder-specific triggers.     

Determinants of central processing order in psychological refractory period paradigms: central arrival times, detection times, or preparation?

Three psychological refractory period (PRP) experiments were conducted to assess the effect of central arrival times at the bottleneck on task order scheduling. In Experiment 1, a visual first task (plus-minus symbol discrimination) was combined with an auditory second task (left-right tone judgement) in a standard PRP paradigm with constant task order. In Experiment 2, the order of the tasks varied unpredictably. In Experiment 3, visual-auditory dual-task trials were randomly mixed with single-task trials. To dissociate central arrival times from stimulus detection times, the perceptual stage of the visual task was extended using stimulus degradation. Most importantly, no evidence for a first-come, first-served principle at the central bottleneck was found with the employed paradigms. Instead, the results indicated that preparation (Experiment 1) and the detection times of the stimuli (Experiments 2 and 3) were the main determinants of central processing order in the present study. In the light of previous research, the results indicate that central processing order can be influenced by various factors. The interplay between these factors seems to depend highly on the conditions and requirements of the employed experimental paradigm.     

Vergleich zweier diagnostischer Ans?tze zur Erfassung der Sexualfantasien p?dophiler M?nner

Two diagnostic approaches to measure sexual fantasies, the Wilson Sexual Fantasy Questionnaire (WSFQ; Wilson 1988, Sex Marital Ther 3:45) as a quantitative self-report measure and the qualitative content analysis categories for the fantasy content, have been examined regarding their quality and capability for identifying pedophilic fantasies. For this purpose 33 men from the general community were selected and compared with 24 adult men from the project ??Kein Täter werden?? (avoid being a perpetrator) at the Institute of Sexology and Sexual Medicine, Charité Clinical Center, Berlin, all fulfilling diagnostic criteria of pedophilia according to DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision) (American Psychiatric Association 2000, Washington). The examination revealed that the reliability of the WSFQ scales (Cronbach??s ??) varied between moderate and good. The interrater reliability coefficients of content analysis categories ranged between moderate and predominantly good and very good. The WSFQ identified a generalized impersonal character only as a main feature of pedophilic fantasies and proved to have limited capability for identification of specific contents of sexual fantasies of persons with these diagnoses. In contrast, content analysis categories allowed identification of a set of specific features of the fantasized partners, pedophilic men and the sexual contacts in addition to the age and prepubertal body of a preferential partner which might be traced back to the preference for prepubertal age. Replication studies are necessary for evaluation of the current findings on the basis of a representative sample of men with pedophilia. These findings might be of primary use for the diagnosis of pedophilia.     

Perceived intergroup threat and attitudes of host community members toward immigrant acculturation

The authors expected the extent to which host community members (a) perceive immigrants as threatening, (b) believe that the immigrants are able to assimilate to the host community (permeability), and (c) consider their presence in the host community as legitimate to predict attitudes towards immigrant acculturation. The authors designed Study 1 to examine attitudes of Germans toward Turkish immigrants. Participants were 227 German white-collar and blue-collar workers. As expected, ethnocentric acculturation attitudes positively correlated with perceived threat and negatively correlated with perceived legitimacy and perceived permeability. However, only perceived threat contributed uniquely to the prediction of the attitudes. In Study 2, the authors applied an experimental manipulation of perceived threat. Before answering attitude questions, participants read magazine articles with a threatening, enriching, or irrelevant content. The manipulation had the predicted impact on the self-reported attitudes toward immigrants. However, the salience of threatening or enriching aspects of the Turkish culture did not affect implicitly measured attitudes.     

Traumatization of group leaders in their work with displaced persons

Displaced persons are a special, threatened group of people, participants in this war, who were suddenly forced to abandon their homes. The majority of them were, overnight, left without anything they had, some even without their closest family. They all have one thing in common: they have all lost so much. Work with such people is directed toward overcoming their feelings of loss and abandonment and preventing psychical decompensation. Groups of displaced persons temporarily sheltered in the Rijeka region have been observed to be markedly regressed, with increased sensitivity, a low degree of tolerance, great demands on society and strongly expressed projective tendencies. Therapists suffer personal traumatization in working with displaced persons. This paper describes the reactions and feelings of group leaders caused by manifestations of group dynamics in different phases of exile.     

A vignette study of novices' interviewing skills of asylum seekers

The aim of the current research was to replicate Van Veldhuizen, Horselenberg, Landstrom, et al.’s (2017) vignette study among novice Estonian police cadets to map their interviewing skills. Sixty-one police cadets from the Estonian Academy of Security Sciences were asked to respond to one of four vignettes that contained fictitious asylum narratives. Two of the vignettes contained no evidence for the origin of the asylum seeker, and the other two contained no evidence for the claim of persecution. The cadets were asked to formulate five questions that would help them to assess the credibility of the applicant's claim. We coded the style, type, and content of the questions. Our analyses showed that, in line with best practice, the cadets mainly formulated open questions in an information-gathering style. A thematic analysis revealed that when a claim about origin was assessed, cadets typically formulated questions about life in the country of origin, identity documents, and the flight to Europe. When assessing a persecution claim, in contrast, they mostly formulated case-specific questions.     

Why extraverts are happier than introverts: the role of mood regulation

Three studies tested the hypotheses that extraverts demonstrate better mood maintenance abilities than introverts and that these mood regulation abilities can account for the higher habitual happiness of extraverts. Using self- and peer-rated trait measures, Study 1 provided multimethod evidence that mood maintenance, but not mood repair, accounted for the link between extraversion and pleasant-unpleasant trait mood. Study 2 replicated this finding in a different sample of self-reports. Using a within-subjects design, Study 3 demonstrated that when confronted with an affectively ambivalent situation, extraverts maintained a more positive affect balance than introverts. Habitual mood maintenance mediated the effect of extraversion on pleasant-unpleasant affect change. Taken together, the findings support a self-regulation explanation of the extraversion-pleasant affect link.     

Fear conditioning in panic disorder: Enhanced resistance to extinction

Enhanced conditionability has been proposed as a crucial factor in the etiology and maintenance of panic disorder (PD). To test this assumption, the authors of the current study examined the acquisition and extinction of conditioned responses to aversive stimuli in PD. Thirty-nine PD patients and 33 healthy control participants took part in a differential aversive conditioning experiment. A highly annoying but not painful electrical stimulus served as the unconditioned stimulus (US), and two neutral pictures were used as either the paired conditioned stimulus (CS+) or the unpaired conditioned stimulus (CS-). Results indicate that PD patients do not show larger conditioned responses during acquisition than control participants. However, in contrast to control participants, PD patients exhibited larger skin conductance responses to CS+ stimuli during extinction and maintained a more negative evaluation of them, as indicated by valence ratings obtained several times throughout the experiment. This suggests that PD patients show enhanced conditionability with respect to extinction.     

Trauma and Religiousness

Victims of traumatic events who experience re-traumatization often develop a highly ambivalent relationship to God and all religiosity as extremely conflictual. On the one hand, they may choose to blame God for not having protected them, for having left them to feel so alone, for having been indifferent to them or they may even turn their wrath upon God, as the source of cruelty. Often though, the traumas experienced by individuals prompt them to turn to God and religion in search of help. This gives reason for the need of new and up-to-date research that can help elucidate why some people choose to seek help in religion and others turn away from it.     

Uncertainty is associated with increased selective attention and sustained stimulus processing

Uncertainty about future threat has been found to be associated with an overestimation of threat probability and is hypothesized to elicit additional allocation of attention. We used event-related potentials to examine uncertainty-related dynamics in attentional allocation, exploiting brain potentials’ high temporal resolution and sensitivity to attention. Thirty participants performed a picture-viewing task in which cues indicated the subsequent picture valence. A certain-neutral and a certain-aversive cue accurately predicted subsequent picture valence, whereas an uncertain cue did not. Participants overestimated the effective frequency of aversive pictures following the uncertain cue, both during and after the task, signifying expectancy and covariation biases, and they tended to express lower subjective valences for aversive pictures presented after the uncertain cue. Pictures elicited increased P2 and LPP amplitudes when their valence could not be predicted from the cue. For the LPP, this effect was more pronounced in response to neutral pictures. Uncertainty appears to enhance the engagement of early phasic and sustained attention for uncertainly cued targets. Thus, defensive motivation related to uncertainty about future threat elicits specific attentional dynamics implicating prioritization at various processing stages, especially for nonthreatening stimuli that tend to violate expectations.