Frustration Discomfort Scale (FDS). A Psychometric Study of the Italian Version

The Frustration Discomfort Scale (FDS, Harrington 2005a) was developed as a multidimensional measure of frustration intolerance. Frustration intolerance plays an important role in behavioral and cognitive model of emotional problems (Harrington 2006). The aim of this study is to translate the original English version of FDS into Italian and to assess the validity and reliability of the Italian version for application among Italian population. The Italian version of FDS-R, with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale were administered on-line to 497 subjects aged from 18 to 66 years old. The exploratory factor analysis suggested a solution with four factors, plus a general factor. The factor analysis supports a multidimensional model of frustration intolerance but the distribution of the items is different. The internal consistency appears optimal for all four factors (range .637–.866). Despite encouraging evidence, the factor structure and other features of the FDS-R are yet to be firmly established.     

Is systemic thinking really extraneous to common sense?

Systemic therapists assume, but have not yet proved that ordinary people: (i) normally do not use triadic thinking and (ii) are able, thanks to therapists' interviewing techniques, to construct triadic explanations. To test these assumptions this study analyses the explanations provided by 400 undergraduates of an unexpected piece of behaviour framed in four stimulus situations where the breadth of the observation field was manipulated. The results show that triadic explanations are unusual and increase with the widening of the field of observation from the monad to the triad. It is the ‘enigmatic’ triadic situation – adding a puzzling discrepancy between the actors' forms of behaviour – that elicits more triadic explanations. This suggests that therapists should explore with clients the contradictions disclosed by the widening of the field of observation and support reframings actively co‐constructed with them instead of ‘pre‐packaged’ ones.     

Discrimination of small quantities by fish (redtail splitfin, Xenotoca eiseni)

Discrimination of quantity has been argued to rely on two non-verbal representational systems: an object file system (OFS) for representing small values (≤3–4) and an analog magnitude system (AMS) for representing large magnitudes (>4). Infants’ ability to discriminate 1 versus 2, 1 versus 3, 2 versus 3, but not 1 versus 4 or 2 versus 4 seems to prove the independence of such systems. Here, we show that redtail splitfin fish (Xenotoca eiseni) performed relative quantity estimations preferring to approach the location previously occupied by the larger in number between two groups of conspecifics (no longer visible at test) in sets of 1 versus 2 and 2 versus 3 items, but failed at 3 versus 4 items, thus showing the same set-size limit as infants for discrimination of small quantities. However, when tested with quantities that spanned the boundary of the two systems, that is, 1 versus 4 and 2 versus 4, fish succeeded. These results thus point to either the use of continuous physical variables and/or the use of the AMS also for small numerousness in fish in this task.     

Intellectual Profiles and Violent Behavior in Juvenile Delinquents

Hemispheric laterality, measured by the Wechsler Verbal IQ-Performance IQ differential score, in a large group of delinquents (N = 101) was not associated with violent-nonviolent behavior. Delinquents were, however, likely to be relatively more impaired on verbal than on nonverbal intellectual capacities.     

Senseless Messaging: Advertising Images of Illegal Driving and Deviant Behavior

We review messaging within automobile advertisements that normalizes and glamorizes reckless driving behavior. Our content analysis of video advertisements illustrates the use of the automobile in ways that are both illegal and dangerous. Advertisements with hazardous driving images occur more often in our sample than all other types of marketing strategies. Messages include deviance from distributional norms (atypical vehicle use); illegal or immoral driving behaviors that put others at risk; and questionable judgments on the part of manufacturers that use advertisement imagery to increase sales while assuming little of the public costs associated with accidents, injuries, and preventable fatalities on roadways.     

A Genetically Informed Study of the Covariation Between Childhood Anxiety Dimensions and Social Competence

We investigated the nature of latent shared etiological elements in 398 Italian twin pairs aged 8–17, explaining covariation between high levels of anxiety symptoms and low social competence. We found significant negative correlations between Child Behaviour Checklist/6–18 Social Competence Scale and three (Panic Anxiety, Separation Anxiety, Social Anxiety) out of five Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders anxiety subscales. Results from causal analysis seem to exclude the hypothesis that co-occurrence between Anxiety Symptoms and Social Competence could be due to a direct phenotypic effect of one trait upon the other. Multivariate analysis suggested that both genetic and shared environmental components contribute to the phenotypic correlation between Social Competence and Anxiety Subscales, whereas unique environmental factors have a negligible influence. This means that both common genetic and shared environmental causal factors contribute simultaneously to increase risk of having low Social Competence and high Anxiety scores. In particular, covariation with Social Competence seems to be influenced by both genetic and shared environmental causal components in Separation Anxiety and Social Anxiety, whereas environmental factors have an irrelevant influence for covariation with Panic/Somatic Anxiety Subscale. Our results support the adoption of a broader view of the relationships between psychopathology and diminished social competences in childhood for both clinicians and educators.     

The evolution of alexia in two cases of posterior cortical atrophy

Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is an uncommon presentation of Alzheimer's disease (AD), characterised by prevalent anatomo-functional involvement of posterior cortical areas. Accordingly, the main clinical features at onset are disorders of high-order visual processing, such as alexia and impairments of visuo-spatial and visuo-constructional abilities. The clinical features in the early stages of disease are variable, and they have been suggested to stem from prevalent ventral or dorsal brain pathology, and/or asymmetric hemispheric involvement. With disease progression, these differences tend to blur with the increasing severity of neuropsychological dysfunction. We report two PCA patients showing different patterns of reading impairment (respectively, letter-by-letter reading and neglect dyslexia). A follow-up study suggested that the qualitative features of alexia remain distinctive with disease evolution. In addition, single photon emission tomography (SPECT) studies revealed different patterns of hypoperfusion, consistent with the alexia types. A careful reading assessment can provide important insights to the pattern of progression of the disease in patients with PCA up to the late stages of the pathology.     

Collaboration in implicit memory: evidence from word-fragment completion and category exemplar generation

Psychological Research - Recent studies have begun to investigate the effects of collaboration on explicit tests such as free recall, cued recall, and recognition. In contrast, little is known...