The neural correlates of alcohol-related aggression

Alcohol intoxication is implicated in approximately half of all violent crimes. Over the past several decades, numerous theories have been proposed to account for the influence of alcohol on aggression. Nearly all of these theories imply that altered functioning in the prefrontal cortex is a proximal cause. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, 50 healthy young men consumed either a low dose of alcohol or a placebo and completed an aggression paradigm against provocative and nonprovocative opponents. Provocation did not affect neural responses. However, relative to sober participants, during acts of aggression, intoxicated participants showed decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex, caudate, and ventral striatum, but heightened activation in the hippocampus. Among intoxicated participants, but not among sober participants, aggressive behavior was positively correlated with activation in the medial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These results support theories that posit a role for prefrontal cortical dysfunction as an important factor in intoxicated aggression.     

Psychological characteristics of infertile couples: can they predict pregnancy and treatment persistence?

The paper describes an exploratory study of the relative importance of different psychological variables for the prediction of (a) pregnancies and (b) treatment continuation in a sample of 140 couples seeking specialized infertility treatment one year after their first contact with an infertility clinic. The couples filled out questionnaires dealing with psychological and interpersonal functioning, marital and life satisfaction, child-related attitudes, causal attribution of infertility and general expectations towards the treatment. It could be shown that the psychological variables explain a relatively small amount of the variance of the pregnancy criterion. Nevertheless, there were some indications supporting the hypothesis that psychological complaints can be seen as a ‘risk factor’ associated with a lower pregnancy rate. Couples who had terminated treatment after one year indicated a higher amount of psychological and interpersonal complaints (females) as well as partner problems (males and females), and a dominance of internal attributions of the fertility problem. This result—which might help to develop strategies for counselling couples making use of the new reproductive technologies—highlights the importance of attribution and cognitive appraisal in coping with infertility. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Zur Bedeutung der Psychoendokrinologie in der Psychosomatik

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Mood and memory for tightly organized social information

The frequently cited finding that mood-congruent information can be better recalled than mood-incongruent information is tested using categorically organized stimulus material which imposes a systematic structure on the recall process. A target person was described with respect to six categories of social behaviour, with predominantly desirable behaviours in some categories and predominantly undesirable behaviours in others. Participants were induced either an elated mood state or a neutral state using Velten's procedure. Instructions (impression formation versus memory) were also manipulated. Although the mood manipulation apparently worked and did influence the impression judgments of the target person, it did not selectively facilitate the recall of mood-congruent material, neither at the level of specific items nor at the categorical level. However, when only deviating behaviours are considered which do not fit the structural constraints, mood-congruent information is indeed better recalled. To interpret these results, it is argued that the manifestation of mood effects depends on the restrictions of different tasks or response modes. Three other findings were obtained: Superior recall of redundant, structurally consistent information compared with deviating information; an advantage of positive over negative information which is confined to the impression formation condition; and, surprisingly, an incongruency effect for the encoding mood which may reflect the deeper processing of incongruent material.     

Reasons for Actions and Desires

It is an assumption common to many theories of rationality that allpractical reasons are based on a person's given desires. I shall callany approach to practical reasons which accepts this assumption a `Humean approach'.In spite of many criticisms, the Humean approach has numerous followers who take it to be the natural and inevitable view of practical reason. I will develop an argument against the Humean view aimingto explain its appeal, as well as to expose its mistake. I focus on just one argument in favour of the Humean approach, which I believe can be constructed as the background idea of many Humean accounts: the argument from motivation.I first present the argument from motivation and explain why it seems so compelling. However, I then develop an equally compellingobjection to desire-based approaches to reason, showing that they cannot accommodate the justificatory role of reasons. I show that this objection suggests that at least one of the premises of the argument from motivation must be false. And, finally, I argue thatwe should reject the premise that claims that only desires can explain actions. This result is fatal for desire-based views of practical reason. My conclusion is that practical reasons should be based not on desires, but on values.     

Semantic priming by irrelevant speech

To-be-ignored, task-irrelevant speech disrupts serial recall performance relative to a quiet control condition. In most studies, the content of the auditory distractors had no effect on their disruptive potential, one’s own name being one of the few exceptions. There are two possible explanations of this pattern: (1) Semantic features of the irrelevant speech are usually not processed, except for highly relevant auditory distractors, or (2) semantic processing of the irrelevant speech always occurs, but usually does not affect serial recall performance. To test these explanations, we presented to-be-ignored auditory distractor words drawn from different categories while participants memorized visual targets for serial recall. Afterwards, participants were invited to what they believed to be an unrelated norming study, in which they were required to spontaneously produce words from the categories from which the auditory distractor words were drawn. Previously ignored words were produced with a higher probability than words from a parallel, nonpresented set, demonstrating that features of to-be-ignored, task-irrelevant speech that do not interfere with immediate serial recall performance are nevertheless processed semantically and may have substantial effects on subsequent behavior.