Sleep Quality and the Subjective Experience of Autobiographical Memory: Differential Associations by Memory Valence and Temporality

The primary goal of the present research was to examine associations between sleep quality and the subjective experience of autobiographical events. In an online study, 141 university students reported on past events that varied by valence (positive or negative) and temporality (most significant or from the previous 2 weeks); they also completed measures of sleep quality and depression. Relative to participants with good sleep quality, participants with poor sleep quality thought more about their negative experiences, reported negative events that occurred more frequently, and used more negative emotion words when describing recent negative events. In some instances, depressive symptoms mediated the relation between sleep quality and elements of autobiographical reports. Future experimental work should examine the directionality of these effects, with the ultimate goal of improving sleep quality, mental health, and the manner in which individuals discuss and make meaning of their negative life events. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The costly burden of an inauthentic self: insecure self-esteem predisposes to emotional exhaustion by increasing reactivity to negative events

Background and objectives: A long research tradition has investigated the impact of stress on university students by assuming that individuals have a limited reservoir of resources, and that negative events and circumstances progressively drain resources thereby producing exhaustion. A recent research tradition, instead, has focused on the detrimental consequences of discrepant levels of implicit (ISE) and explicit (ESE) self-esteem on the development of stress-related symptoms. The present research attempted to merge the aforementioned approaches, with the aim of explaining significant predictors of stress.

Design: Within the framework of a Longitudinal Structural Equation Model, we followed a moderated-mediated approach.

Method: A sample of university students (N?=?209; 66% females) completed a questionnaire battery including measures of ISE, ESE, perceptions of negative events, and emotional exhaustion. Participants were assessed once a week for eight consecutive weeks.

Results: ISE significantly moderated the relationship between ESE and negative events; in turn, the latter significantly predicted emotional exhaustion. Monte Carlo method for assessing mediation showed that negative events significantly mediated the relationship between incongruent self-esteem and emotional exhaustion.

Conclusions: The detrimental role of incongruent self-esteem has been corroborated. Practical implications and suggestions for future research dealing with stress in a university setting were provided.     

Clinical Mutual Attunement and the Development of Therapeutic Process: A Preliminary Study

Despite the identification of many factors that play a central role in the development of the psychotherapy process, there is still a lack of evidence about the basic relational mechanisms that pave the way to its working. In this pilot study, we focus on nonverbal microprocessual attunement as the basic mechanism grounding the displacing of discrete factors in shaping the clinical process. Two single sessions of two short-term psychodynamic treatments, selected respectively from a good- and a poor-outcome treatment, have been coded in terms of patient and therapist speech rate, coordination in ruptures, resolution of the therapeutic alliance, and patient's displayed thinking processes. Two dynamic structural equation models focusing on clinical attunement as a factor able to activate the interplay of the assessed clinical dimensions have been theoretically designed and tested in both cases. The driven theoretical structural equation models fit the data, suggesting a different role of nonverbal attunement as a moderating factor. The obtained results are consistent with the hypothesis claiming that a good-outcome psychotherapy session is characterized by a mechanism of clinical attunement that enforces the therapist–patient relationship and promotes the integration of formal thinking processes that affect emotional and cognitive domains.     

Psychological distress and coping in nasopharyngeal cancer: an explorative study in Western Europe

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is the head and neck cancer with the greatest impact on patients’ quality of life. The aim of this explorative study is to investigate the psychological distress, coping strategies and quality of life of NPC patients in the post-treatment observation period. Twenty-one patients disease-free for at least two years were assessed with a medical and a psycho-oncological evaluation. Clinically relevant depressive symptoms (CRD) were present in 23.8% of patients and 33.3% reported clinically relevant anxiety symptoms (CRA). Patients with CRD and CRA showed a significantly higher score in the use of hopelessness/helplessness and anxious preoccupation coping strategies and a worse quality of life. Even in the post-treatment period, about a quarter of patients showed CRD and CRA. Results showed that patients with high anxiety or depressive symptoms seem to use dysfunctional coping strategies, such as hopelessness and anxious preoccupation, more than patients with lower levels of anxiety and depression. The use of these styles of coping thus seems to be associated to a higher presence of CRA or CRD symptomatology and to a worse quality of life.     

Cheating the Lie Detector: Faking in the Autobiographical Implicit Association Test

ABSTRACT— The autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) was recently introduced in this journal as a new and promising lie-detection tool. The initial report found 91% accuracy in determining which of two autobiographical events was true. It was suggested that the aIAT, unlike other lie-detection tests, is resistant to faking. We investigated whether participants can strategically alter their performance on the aIAT. Experiment 1 showed that participants guilty of a mock theft were able to obtain an innocent test outcome. Two additional experiments showed that guilty participants can fake the aIAT without prior experience with the aIAT and when a response deadline is imposed. The aIAT is subject to the same shortcomings as other lie-detection tests.     

Temperamental profiles and linguistic development: Differences in the quality of linguistic production in relation to temperament in children of 28 months

The temperamental constellations that can be found in the infant population may influence the development trajectories of single domains of knowledge, such as that relative to language. The main objective of this study is to identify temperamental profiles to which one associates different levels of linguistic competence and to identify the profile associated with the highest risk for language acquisition. The temperamental characteristics of a sample of 106 children of 28 months attending day-care centres were surveyed and three temperamental profiles were highlighted: a profile typical of the Italian population which grouped most of the children; another made up of easily distractible and not very persistent children, who show a poor capacity to modulate motor activity and finally, the third with children inhibited in new situations. A comparison of the three groups on the basis of the level of linguistic competence revealed important differences regarding certain indices such as the vocabulary size and composition: in particular, the group of “inattentive” children has a more “immature” vocabulary composition, characterised by the presence of more primitive components of the lexical repertory.     

Are Persons Low in Self-Control Rational and Deterrable?

This work addresses a question raised by Wright et al. (2004 Wright , Richard T. and Scott H. Decker. 1994 . Burglars on the Job: Street life and Residential Breakins . Boston : Northeastern University Press . [Google Scholar]) pertaining to the rationality and deterrability of individuals with low self-control. According to some, all persons are presumed to be equally rational; according others, individuals who possess little self-control, who are impulsive and present-oriented are less likely to be influenced by a perceived risks and costs of punishment; and according to a third group of scholars, those who do possess such self-control/restraint are either not motivated toward offending or are inhibited by moral constraints and are, thus, unresponsive to sanction threats. These rival predictions are examined with the use of self-report survey data on academic dishonesty from a sample of undergraduate college students. Across a tremendous number of models employing a variety of functional forms for the effects of perceived sanction threats, we consistently observed that the effects of perceived sanction threats on college students' self-reported academic dishonesty did not vary by their level of offending propensity (self-control).     

Escaping from Rama: Portraits of Indian women

This study examines visual, post-colonial portraits of the Indian women of the Sanskrit epics, in order to show the sociocultural, historical-ideological roots of this aesthetic. After independence, Hindu movements found in the epics a female archetype, who stands for the Hindu community. Post-colonial visual representations maintained this idealistic characterisation within a binary system, according to which women can be angelic guarantors of the social order or devilish, sexually uncontrolled creatures. This ambiguity derives from the double nature of the female principle of the world, shakti, and the visual storytelling tradition or chitrakatha. Using the same Indian storytelling tradition, female points of view have begun to criticise this nationalistic, ‘male gaze’. In the graphic novel Sita's Ramayana, Rama and male activities, particularly war, are secularised and criticised as selfish by female characters, foremost of whom is Sita, a model of the devoted and pure bride or pativrata.     

Unconscious Semantic Priming Influences Performance of Visuomotor Tasks Differently but the Effects are Similar in Young and Older Adults

We examined the effects of semantic priming of attention on two sequentially presented visuomotor tasks, traffic judgments and saccadic adaptation. Priming was accomplished with the scrambled sentence task: participants formed meaningful sentences from a list of words where a word denoting wide attention focus was involved. The results showed that semantic priming influenced positively saccade adaptation (its’ benefit increased) while it attenuated visuomotor performance in the traffic task (RT of hand movements increased). We found the effects of priming on both tasks’ performance to be comparable in young and older participants. It was suggested that semantic priming effect on visuomotor tasks depended on the cognitive resources which were needful as for the priming as for the primed task.     

Same kinematics but different objects during action observation: Detection times and motor evoked potentials

Motor resonance refers to the fact that an observed action is online subliminally reenacted. The aim of the present paper was to verify if, on equal terms of kinematics, the to-be-grasped object's intrinsic properties are influencing the observers' motor behaviour. A detection time and a single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation experiment were performed to verify the effects of a change of object's intrinsic properties artificially made on a video showing a grasping action. In particular, the object substituting the original one was not graspable by the showed movement. Results indicated an influence of object's intrinsic properties: Detection times were delayed and motor evoked potentials were reduced when the movement shown was not suitable to grasp the object. These results are interpreted as an evidence that during grasping action observation the motor system of the observer is influenced not only by the seen movements but also by the to-be-grasped object.