Speed of Eating as a Determinant of the Bulimic Desire to Vomit

ABSTRACT

A single-case controlled study found that a bulimic's desire to vomit was virtually eliminated by slowed eating, but not by rapid eating. The present study attempted to determine whether this same relation was exhibited by a larger number (N = 6) of bulimics who were instructed to eat at a fast or a slow rate in a between-subjects reversal design. For all 6 participants, the urge to vomit was found to be greater during fast versus slow eating after comparable amounts of food intake. Clinically, these results suggest that eating slowly might be incorporated into treatment for bulimic vomiting.     

Professional Counseling in Taiwan: Past to Future

Because of the recent introduction of a licensure law, professional counseling has grown rapidly in Taiwan after decades of slow development. The authors provide a historical review of the development of professional counseling in Taiwan and discuss the current status and future trajectory of professional counseling in Taiwan.     

Shame in Sexual Minorities: Stigma,Internal Cognitions,and Counseling Considerations

Theorists, clinicians, and researchers have suggested that shame is a central concern in the lives of sexual minority individuals. Cognitive theorists believe that shame occurs when a person fails to achieve his or her standards, which are often based on social, cultural, and spiritual values. Although it is asserted that stigma causes shame among members of a sexual minority, the empirical evidence suggests that negative internal cognitions are partly responsible. By targeting negative beliefs, counselors can help sexual minorities reduce their sense of shame, particularly around issues related to sexual identity. The authors offer counseling strategies for reducing shame in sexual minority clients.     

Central synaptic mechanisms underlie short-term olfactory habituation in Drosophila larvae

Naive Drosophila larvae show vigorous chemotaxis toward many odorants including ethyl acetate (EA). Chemotaxis toward EA is substantially reduced after a 5-min pre-exposure to the odorant and recovers with a half-time of ～20 min. An analogous behavioral decrement can be induced without odorant-receptor activation through channelrhodopsin-based, direct photoexcitation of odorant sensory neurons (OSNs). The neural mechanism of short-term habituation (STH) requires the (1) rutabaga adenylate cyclase; (2) transmitter release from predominantly GABAergic local interneurons (LNs); (3) GABA-A receptor function in projection neurons (PNs) that receive excitatory inputs from OSNs; and (4) NMDA-receptor function in PNs. These features of STH cannot be explained by simple sensory adaptation and, instead, point to plasticity of olfactory synapses in the antennal lobe as the underlying mechanism. Our observations suggest a model in which NMDAR-dependent depression of the OSN-PN synapse and/or NMDAR-dependent facilitation of inhibitory transmission from LNs to PNs contributes substantially to short-term habituation.     

Implicit Coping Responses to Racism Predict African Americans' Level of Psychological Distress

African Americans report experiencing discrimination on a frequent basis, and these experiences have been linked to psychological distress. Coping responses to racism have been suggested to mediate the relationship between discrimination and distress. This study introduces the first measure of African Americans' implicit emotional and coping responses to racism and examines the measure's ability to predict psychological distress. The Go/No-Go Association Task (Nosek &; Banaji, 2001 Nosek , B. A. , &; Banaji , M R. ( 2001 ). The go/no-go association task . Social Cognition , 19 , 625 – 664 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) was adapted to assess African Americans' implicit association of racial prejudice with each of four coping and two emotional responses. Anxiety and general psychological distress were assessed with the Brief Symptom Inventory. Greater implicit association between prejudice and “seeking support” was found to predict lower anxiety and general distress, demonstrating the potential utility of implicit measures in assessing coping responses to racism and their consequences.     

Children’s sense of reality: The development of orbitofrontal reality filtering

Orbitofrontal reality filtering denotes a memory control mechanism necessary to keep thought and behavior in phase with reality. In adults, it is mediated by the orbitofrontal cortex and subcortical connections and its failure induces reality confusion, confabulations, and disorientation. Here we investigated for the first time the development of this mechanism in 83 children from ages 7 to 11 years and 20 adults. We used an adapted version of a continuous recognition task composed of two runs with the same picture set but arranged in different order. The first run measures storage and recognition capacity (item memory), the second run measures reality filtering. We found that accuracy and reaction times in response to all stimulus types of the task improved in parallel across ages. Importantly, at no age was there a notable performance drop in the second run. This means that reality filtering was already efficacious at age 7 and then steadily improved as item memory became stronger. At the age of 11 years, reality filtering dissociated from item memory, similar to the pattern observed in adults. However, performance in 11-year-olds was still inferior as compared to adults. The study shows that reality filtering develops early in childhood and becomes more efficacious as memory capacity increases. For the time being, it remains unresolved, however, whether this function already depends on the orbitofrontal cortex, as it does in adults, or on different brain structures in the developing brains of children.     

Emmy Grant: Immigration as Repetition of Trauma and as Potential Space

Some environments are so toxic that one needs to move far away to extricate oneself from their poisonous field of gravity. The desire to escape a noxious interpersonal constellation in a corrupt society can be a motivating factor in the choice to leave one’s country. Oedipus fled from Corinth to evade the fate of murdering his father and marrying his mother, as predicted by the oracle at Delphi, only to find himself in Thebes, where he was born, murdering his father and marrying his mother, thus fulfilling the prophecy he set out to escape. Like Oedipus, immigrants frequently find themselves in the kind of milieu they were hoping to leave behind. Life in a strange land, far from a familiar environment may recapitulate and even intensify the disjointed experience of a poisoned childhood. Away from one’s original environment reality no longer intrudes upon fantasy, and one’s destructive introjects gain free reign. The past remains arrested and it can easily turn into an imaginary static realm. Paradoxically though, immigration can also facilitate healing. Exile can become a haven, a potential space, if you will, in which to develop the capacity to think and build linkages and process a disturbing personal and historico-political domain.     

A cross-cultural study of relationships between daily social interaction and the five-factor model of personality

Two studies, one in the United States (N = 130) and another in Germany (N = 100), examined relationships between daily social interaction and the traits of the Five-Factor Model. In both studies, student participants described their social interactions for 2 weeks using the Rochester Interaction Record. In both countries, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were positively related to reactions to social interaction, whereas Neuroticism was unrelated to reactions to interactions. In the United States, Extraversion and Openness were positively related to reactions to interactions, whereas these factors were not related to reactions to interactions in Germany. In the United States, Extraversion was positively related to how socially active participants were, whereas none of the FFM traits was related to amount of social interaction in the German sample. In both countries, Extraversion was positively related to percent of interactions involving friends. The results highlight the importance of taking into account the sociocultural milieus within which personality unfolds.     

Ethics of neuroimaging in pediatric development

Neuroimaging in pediatrics is accompanied by all the ethical dilemmas associated with neuroimaging in adults, magnified significantly. The defining characteristics of childhood make working ethically with the population particularly problematic. Children have not developed the rational capabilities necessary to make informed decisions and the variability and change associated with development contribute to heightened risks and/or benefits of any procedure and limit interpretation of data. As a consequence, fewer pediatric than adult neuroimaging research studies have been done, further limiting general knowledge of the field. Significant strides have been made just within the past few years with the collection of normative data sets of healthy children. Recommendations on how to proceed with pediatric neuroimaging studies while ensuring ethical treatment of the participants are presented.