Relationships between schizotypal features,trait anticipatory and consummatory pleasure,and naturalistic hedonic States

Motivation and Emotion - Deficient anticipatory and preserved consummatory pleasure are hypothesized in schizophrenia-spectrum conditions. However, corresponding findings regarding schizotypy are...     

Coping self-efficacy mediates the effects of negative cognitions on posttraumatic distress

Although cognitive distortions have predicted posttraumatic distress after various types of traumatic events, the mechanisms through which cognitive distortions influence posttraumatic distress remain unclear. We hypothesized that coping self-efficacy, the belief in one's own ability to manage posttraumatic recovery demands, would operate as a mediator between negative cognitions (about self, about the world, and self-blame beliefs) and posttraumatic distress. In the cross-sectional Study 1, data collected among 66 adult female victims of child sexual abuse indicated that coping self-efficacy mediated the effects of negative cognitions about self and about the world on posttraumatic distress. The same pattern of results was found in a longitudinal Study 2, conducted among 70 survivors of motor vehicle accidents. Coping self-efficacy measured at 1 month after the trauma mediated the effects of 7-day negative cognitions about self and about the world on 3-month posttraumatic distress. In both studies self-blame was not related to posttraumatic distress and the effect of self-blame on posttraumatic distress was not mediated by coping self-efficacy. The results provide insight into a mechanism through which negative cognitions may affect posttraumatic distress and highlight the potential importance of interventions aimed at enhancing coping self-efficacy beliefs.     

Cognitive performance and morning levels of salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase in children reporting high vs. low daily stress perception

The aim of the present study was to assess the effects of daily stress perception on cognitive performance and morning basal salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase levels in healthy children aged 9-12. Participants were classified by whether they had low daily perceived stress (LPS, n = 27) or a high daily perceived stress (HPS, n = 26) using the Children Daily Stress Inventory (CDSI). Salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase were measured at awakening and 30 minutes later. Cognitive performance was assessed using the Cognitive Drug Research assessment system. The HPS group exhibited significantly poorer scores on speed of memory (p < .05) and continuity of attention (p < .05) relative to the LPS group. The HPS group also showed significantly lower morning cortisol levels at awakening and at +30 minutes measures in comparison with the LPS group (p < .05), and mean morning cortisol levels were negatively correlated with speed of memory (p < .05) in the 53 participants. No significant differences were observed between both groups in alpha-amylase levels. These findings suggest that daily perceived stress in children may impoverish cognitive performance via its modulating effects on the HPA axis activity.     

Rawlsian Civic Education: Political not Minimal

abstract In Political Liberalism and later work John Rawls has recast his theory of justice as fairness in political terms. In order to illustrate the advantages of a liberal political approach to justice over liberal non‐political ones, Rawls discusses what kind of education might be required for future citizens of pluralistic and democratic societies. He advocates a rather minimal conception of civic education that he claims to derive from political liberalism. One group of authors has sided with Rawls’ political perspective and educational proposal, holding that a political approach and educational requirements that are not too demanding would have the advantage of being acceptable to a wide range of citizens with different religious, moral and philosophical perspectives. A second group of authors have criticized Rawls’ educational recommendations, holding that the production of a just society composed of reasonable citizens requires a more demanding civic education and, hence, that the political approach is not viable. The present paper argues that both groups are only partially right, and that there is a third way to understand civic education in Rawlsian terms, a way that is political but not minimal.     

Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence

Despite being able to rapidly and accurately infer their own and other peoples’ visual perspectives, healthy adults experience difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective when the two perspectives are in conflict; they experience egocentric and altercentric interference. We examine for the first time how the age of an observed person (adult vs. child avatar) influences adults’ visual perspective-taking, particularly the degree to which they experience interference from their own or the other person’s perspective. Participants completed the avatar visual perspective-taking task, in which they verified the number of discs in a visual scene according to either their own or an on-screen avatar’s perspective (Experiments 1 and 2) or only from their own perspective (Experiment 3), where the two perspectives could be consistent or in conflict. Age of avatar was manipulated between (Experiment 1) or within (Experiments 2 and 3) participants, and interference was assessed using behavioral (Experiments 1–3) and ERP (Experiment 1) measures. Results revealed that altercentric interference is reduced or eliminated when a child avatar was present, suggesting that adults do not automatically compute a child avatar’s perspective. We attribute this pattern to either enhanced visual processing for own-age others or an inference on reduced mental awareness in younger children. The findings argue against a purely attentional basis for the altercentric effect, and instead support an account where both mentalising and directional processes modulate automatic visual perspective-taking, and perspective-taking effects are strongly influenced by experimental context.     

The illusion of control: Sequential dependencies underlie contingent attentional capture

The degree to which humans have top-down control over which information they process remains a central debate within the attention literature. Most of the evidence supporting the top-down control of visuospatial attention has come from cueing paradigms in which target stimuli are preceded by cues that are similar or dissimilar from the target. These studies find that the cues similar to targets capture attention, but dissimilar cues do not, suggesting the top-down control of attention. Here, we used a modified cueing paradigm to investigate an alternative possibility that the cue type differences are due to sequential dependency effects occurring between cue and target processing rather than the top-down control of attention. When individuals searched for color targets, we replicated contingent capture effects in RTs, which are susceptible to sequential dependencies, but memory performance was always best at the cued locations, regardless of the cue’s identity. When individuals searched for onset targets, we observed contingent capture in both tasks. These results demonstrate the utility of the memory probe paradigm and suggest an asymmetry between how strongly onsets and color defined cues capture attention.     

Psychological Assessment of Catatonic Schizophrenia

Probably due to the rarity of the disorder and the general inability of catatonic patients to cooperate with standardized assessment, no data exist documenting the psychological features associated with catatonic schizophrenia that may appear on psychological tests. This study utilized standard assessment techniques to examine clinical hypotheses regarding the psychogenic correlates of catatonic conditions from the performance of one man on psychological tests. In accordance with previous theory, test findings indicated frequent constriction, rigidity, and negativism in conjunction with compulsive traits. Experiences of cognitive and self-fragmentation were juxtaposed with a formal, mechanistic body ego; disorganization and discontinuity were countered with attempts at self-cohesion. Depressed feelings and human interest were apparent, although interpersonal relatedness was frequently characterized by an avoidant, distancing style.     

Elevated disgust sensitivity in blood phobia

In order to demonstrate elevated disgust sensitivity and facilitated disgust learning in patients suffering from blood injection injury phobia, 23 phobics and 20 controls underwent an evaluative conditioning experiment. They were presented with picture pairs consisting of affectively neutral pictures (CS), which were followed by either disgust-inducing, fear-inducing, pleasant, or neutral scenes (US). During the presentation we recorded the electromyogram (EMG) of the musculus levator labii as a specific disgust indicator. Affective ratings for the pictures were determined before and after conditioning. Also, CS-US contingency verbalisation (CV) was assessed. Phobics reported a greater overall disgust sensitivity, experienced stronger feelings of disgust, and showed greater EMG responses while viewing disgust-eliciting scenes than control subjects. Evaluative conditioning occurred equally in both groups and depended on CV.     

Recognition memory for single items and for associations is similarly impaired following damage to the hippocampal region

The formation of new associations between items is critical for establishing episodic memories. It has been suggested that the hippocampus is essential for creating such associations but is not involved, or is much less involved, in memory for single items. In Experiment 1, we tested controls and amnesic patients with bilateral lesions thought to be limited primarily to the hippocampal region in both single-item and associative recognition memory tasks. In the single-item task, a conventional recognition memory task was administered in which participants studied either houses or faces and were tested for their ability to recognize the individual items. In the associative task, participants studied paired pictures of houses and faces with instructions that encouraged associating the two stimuli, and were tested for their ability to recognize the specific pairings that were presented at study. Like the controls, the amnesic patients performed more poorly on the associative task. Relative to the controls, the amnesic patients were impaired to a similar extent on the single-item and associative tasks. In Experiment 2, the performance of the amnesic patients was improved by increasing the number of presentations of the study lists (eight presentations instead of one). On both the single-item and associative tests, the performance of the amnesic patients after eight presentations was now identical to the performance of the controls who had been given only one presentation of the study list. Thus, the associative condition was not disproportionally difficult for the amnesic patients. These results are consistent with the idea that the hippocampus is similarly involved in single-item and associative memory.     

The change-of-standard effect: Distorted standards and adjusted impressions

Previous accounts of the memory distortion known as the change-of-standard effect hypothesize that participants form a relative impression of a target at encoding and later use that impression with the average of all items to recall the target (Higgins & Lurie, 1983). In three experiments, we investigated the standard and the integration of the standard with the relative impression. Experiments 1 and 2 show that participants’ subjective average at recall is distorted toward recent stimuli: It is computed when required and is therefore affected by the items’ accessibility at that time. Furthermore, the impression’s influence on recall is relatively small when the context changes between encoding and decoding. Experiment 3 shows that this change in the impression’s influence occurs only when the participant integrates information across sessions, suggesting that such tasks make participants aware of the changed context and cause them to adjust the use of their impression in recalling the target.