Psychopathy and traumatic stress

This study examined the relationship between psychopathy and traumatic stress. First, a sample of 48 male patients in a security hospital was assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist (Hare, 2003) and the Stanford Acute Stress Reactions Questionnaire (SASRQ; Cardena, Classen, Koopman, & Spiegel, 1996). Linear regression analyses suggested that the affect deficit component of psychopathy was the best negative predictor of avoidance, dissociation, and re-experiencing symptoms. The 13 highest-scoring psychopathy participants were then compared to the 13 lowest-scoring participants. Psychopaths differed from controls in terms of number but not type of traumatic events. They obtained significantly lower SASRQ total score, reflecting a lower level of traumatic symptomatology. The results are discussed in connection with the emotional deficit component of psychopathy.     

Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis and structural invariance with age of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF)—French version

The parent and teacher forms of the French version of the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) were used to evaluate executive function in everyday life in a large sample of healthy children (N = 951) aged between 5 and 18.

Several psychometric methods were applied, with a view to providing clinicians with tools for score interpretation. The parent and teacher forms of the BRIEF were acceptably reliable. Demographic variables (such as age and gender) were found to influence the BRIEF scores. Confirmatory factor analysis was then used to test five competing models of the BRIEF's latent structure. Two of these models (a three-factor model and a two-factor model, both based on a nine-scale structure) had a good fit. However, structural invariance with age was only obtained with the two-factor model.

The French version of the BRIEF provides a useful measure of everyday executive function and can be recommended for use in clinical research and practice.     

Visual and auditory facilitation in auditory spatial localization

It has previously been shown that adults localize unseen auditory targets more accurately with their eyes open than closed. The interpretation usually proposed to explain this phenomenon is that auditory spatial information is referred or translated to a visual frame of reference. The present experiments show that the presence of an auditory reference point facilitates auditory localization judgements in the same manner as a visual reference point does. Although our results do not support the visual frame of reference hypothesis, they suggest that the auditory and the visual modalities are strongly linked in their localizing processes.     

Charismatic leadership,environmental dynamism,and performance

Most studies relating charismatic leadership to performance have limitations concerning selection of criterion measures and investigation of moderators. Therefore, this study examines relationships between charismatic leadership and multiple performance outcomes under different levels of environmental dynamism (i.e., level of environmental uncertainty, degree of technological change) and per type of Chief Executive Officer (firm owner versus managing director). Results revealed that charismatic leadership was positively related to common-source and multi-source perceptual performance outcomes (i.e., subordinates' positive work attitude) and to organization profitability, but unrelated to organization liquidity and solvency. The relationship between charismatic leadership and perceptual performance was stronger under conditions of environmental uncertainty than under conditions of environmental certainty. Furthermore, charismatic leadership was more strongly related to organization profitability for firm owners than for managing directors who do not own their firm. The results are discussed and several potentially fruitful avenues for future research on charismatic leadership and employee as well as organizational performance are presented.     

Semantic Hyperpriming in Normal Aging: A Consequence of Instructions?

Abstract

Semantic hyperpriming has consistently been found in normal aging. However, because the standard instructions to test semantic priming are generally ambiguous (focusing on both accuracy and speed), it is difficult to account for hyperpriming in older adults. By using the direct and mediated priming paradigms, this study investigates whether older adults' response mode at testing may explain hyperpriming. First, we show that, under identical conditions, inducing a response mode that favors speed leads to greater priming effects in older adults. The pattern of results is similar to what is observed under standard instructions. Second, prompting a response mode that favors accuracy leads to greater priming effects in younger adults. We discuss various explanations for these findings and conclude, in accordance with the Ratcliff, Thapar, Gomez, and McKoon (2004a Ratcliff, R., Thapar, A., Gomez, P. and McKoon, G. 2004a. A diffusion model analysis of the effects of aging in the lexical-decision task. Psychology and Aging, 19: 278–289. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) diffusion model, that hyperpriming in normal aging is contingent on older adults' response mode at testing.     

How “American” is Barack Obama? The Role of National Identity in a Historic Bid for the White House

Against the backdrop of the 2008 presidential election, we examined the extent to which the American identity was implicitly and explicitly associated with Barack Obama compared to Tony Blair (Study 1), Hillary Clinton (Study 2), and John McCain (Studies 3 and 4). When conscious control was relatively limited and targets were categorized based on race, the American identity was less strongly associated with Obama than with the other candidates. This effect was stronger than when the candidates were categorized based on their personal identity (Studies 1–4), gender (Study 2), political affiliation (Study 3), or age (Study 4). In addition, the extent to which candidates were differentiated in terms of implicit and explicit associations with the American identity predicted the relative willingness to actively support them.     

Non-selective lexical access in bilinguals is spontaneous and independent of input monitoring: Evidence from eye tracking

Language non-selective lexical access in bilinguals has been established mainly using tasks requiring explicit language processing. Here, we show that bilinguals activate native language translations even when words presented in their second language are incidentally processed in a nonverbal, visual search task. Chinese–English bilinguals searched for strings of circles or squares presented together with three English words (i.e., distracters) within a 4-item grid. In the experimental trials, all four locations were occupied by English words, including a critical word that phonologically overlapped with the Chinese word for circle or square when translated into Chinese. The eye-tracking results show that, in the experimental trials, bilinguals looked more frequently and longer at critical than control words, a pattern that was absent in English monolingual controls. We conclude that incidental word processing activates lexical representations of both languages of bilinguals, even when the task does not require explicit language processing.     

Subjective expected utility without preferences

This paper proposes a theory of subjective expected utility based on primitives only involving the fact that an act can be judged either “attractive” or “unattractive”. We give conditions implying that there are a utility function on the set of consequences and a probability distribution on the set of states such that attractive acts have a subjective expected utility above some threshold. The numerical representation that is obtained has strong uniqueness properties.     

Physiological profile of fighters influences training organisation in combat sports: response to Del Vecchio, Hirata, and Franchini (2011)

The article by Del Vecchio, et al. (2011) provides relevant information to trainers about the effort-pause ratio during mixed martial arts matches. Taking into account the physiological profiles of fighters would increase interest in these findings.