Overvaluation of shape and weight in binge eating disorder, bulimia nervosa, and sub-threshold bulimia nervosa

Increasing empirical evidence supports the validity of binge eating disorder (BED), a research diagnosis in the appendix of DSM-IV, and its inclusion as a distinct and formal diagnosis in the DSM-V. A pressing question regarding the specific criteria for BED diagnosis is whether, like bulimia nervosa (BN), it should be characterized by overvaluation of shape and weight. This study compared features of eating disorders in 436 treatment-seeking women comprising four groups: 195 BED participants who overvalue their shape/weight, 129 BED participants with subclinical levels of overvaluation, 61 BN participants, and 51 participants with sub-threshold BN. The BED clinical overvaluation group had significantly higher levels of specific eating disorder psychopathology than the three other groups which did not differ significantly from each other. Findings suggest that overvaluation of shape and weight should not be considered as a required criterion for BED because this would exclude a substantial proportion of BED patients with clinically significant problems. Rather, overvaluation of shape and weight warrants consideration either as a diagnostic specifier or as a dimensional severity rating as it provides important information about severity within BED.     

The distribution of fixation durations during reading: effects of stimulus quality

Participants' eye movements were recorded as they read single sentences presented normally, presented entirely in faint text, or presented normally except for a single faint word. Fixations were longer when the entire sentence was faint than when the sentence was presented normally. In addition, fixations were much longer on a single faint word embedded in normal text, compared to when the entire sentence was faint. The primary aim of the study was to examine the influence of stimulus quality on the distribution of fixation durations. Ex-Gaussian fitting revealed that stimulus quality affected the mean of the Normal component, but in contrast to results from single-word tasks (Plourde & Besner, 1997), stimulus quality did not affect the exponential component, regardless of whether one or all words were faint. The results also contrast with the finding (Staub, White, Drieghe, Hollway, & Rayner, 2010) that the word frequency effect on fixation durations is an effect on both of the critical distributional parameters. These findings are argued to have implications for the interpretation of the role of stimulus quality in word recognition, and for models of eye movement control in reading.     

Neural activation underlying cognitive control in the context of neutral and affectively charged pictures in children

The neural correlates of cognitive control for typically developing 9-year-old children were examined using dense-array ERPs and estimates of cortical activation (LORETA) during a go/no-go task with two conditions: a neutral picture condition and an affectively charged picture condition. Activation was estimated for the entire cortex after which data were exported for four regions of interests (ROIs): ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and orbitofrontal/ventromedial prefrontal cortex (OFC/VMPFC). Results revealed faster reaction times, greater N2 activation, and greater prefrontal activation for the affectively charged picture condition than the neutral picture condition. The findings are discussed in reference to the impact of affective stimuli on recruitment of specific brain regions involved in cognitive control.     

Social anxiety mediates the effect of autism spectrum disorder characteristics on hostility in young adults

Problems with social anxiety are frequently reported in people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). It is possible that social anxiety, when present, exacerbates the experience of hostility and other forms of aggression in relation to ASD symptoms. This study sought to determine if social anxiety symptoms mediate the relationship between features of ASD and feelings of hostility in young adults. Self-report measures of social anxiety, ASD, and facets of aggression were collected in a non-clinical sample (n = 618) of college students. Social anxiety was found to partially mediate the relationship between ASD features and self-reported hostility. There was also evidence for inconsistent mediation, such that social anxiety dampened the strength of the relationship between ASD symptoms and verbal and physical aggression. Findings highlight the potential influence of associated psychiatric symptoms in people with ASD. In addition, dimensional conceptualization of ASD symptoms, as opposed to a categorical approach solely, may be a useful approach to studying complex personality processes.     

The experience of force: the role of haptic experience of forces in visual perception of object motion and interactions, mental simulation, and motion-related judgments

Forces are experienced in actions on objects. The mechanoreceptor system is stimulated by proximal forces in interactions with objects, and experiences of force occur in a context of information yielded by other sensory modalities, principally vision. These experiences are registered and stored as episodic traces in the brain. These stored representations are involved in generating visual impressions of forces and causality in object motion and interactions. Kinematic information provided by vision is matched to kinematic features of stored representations, and the information about forces and causality in those representations then forms part of the perceptual interpretation. I apply this account to the perception of interactions between objects and to motions of objects that do not have perceived external causes, in which motion tends to be perceptually interpreted as biological or internally caused. I also apply it to internal simulations of events involving mental imagery, such as mental rotation, trajectory extrapolation and judgment, visual memory for the location of moving objects, and the learning of perceptual judgments and motor skills. Simulations support more accurate judgments when they represent the underlying dynamics of the event simulated. Mechanoreception gives us whatever limited ability we have to perceive interactions and object motions in terms of forces and resistances; it supports our practical interventions on objects by enabling us to generate simulations that are guided by inferences about forces and resistances, and it helps us learn novel, visually based judgments about object behavior.     

Adaptation to novel accents by toddlers

Word recognition is a balancing act: listeners must be sensitive to phonetic detail to avoid confusing similar words, yet, at the same time, be flexible enough to adapt to phonetically variable pronunciations, such as those produced by speakers of different dialects or by non‐native speakers. Recent work has demonstrated that young toddlers are sensitive to phonetic detail during word recognition; pronunciations that deviate from the typical phonological form lead to a disruption of processing. However, it is not known whether young word learners show the flexibility that is characteristic of adult word recognition. The present study explores whether toddlers can adapt to artificial accents in which there is a vowel category shift with respect to the native language. Nineteen‐month‐olds heard mispronunciations of familiar words (e.g. vowels were shifted from [a] to [æ]: ‘dog’ pronounced as ‘dag’). In test, toddlers were tolerant of mispronunciations if they had recently been exposed to the same vowel shift, but not if they had been exposed to standard pronunciations or other vowel shifts. The effects extended beyond particular items heard in exposure to words sharing the same vowels. These results indicate that, like adults, toddlers show flexibility in their interpretation of phonological detail. Moreover, they suggest that effects of top‐down knowledge on the reinterpretation of phonological detail generalize across the phono‐lexical system.     

How semantic categorization influences inhibitory processing in middle-childhood: an Event Related Potentials study

Throughout middle-childhood, inhibitory processes, which underlie many higher order cognitive tasks, are developing. Little is known about how inhibitory processes change as a task becomes conceptually more difficult during these important years. In adults, as Go/NoGo tasks become more difficult there is a systematic decrease in the P3NoGo response, indicating the use of effective inhibitory strategies (Maguire et al., 2009). This paper investigates the age at which children employ similar inhibitory strategies by studying behavioral and Event Related Potential (ERP) measures of response inhibition for three Go/NoGo tasks. Seventeen 7-8 year-olds and twenty 10-11-year-olds completed three Go/NoGo tasks that differed in the level of categorization necessary to respond. Both age groups displayed slower reaction times as the tasks became more difficult. Further, both groups displayed the predicted Go vs. NoGo P3 amplitude differences in the two simplest tasks, but no significant P3 differences for the most complex task. The reason for this pattern of responses was different in the different age groups. Similar to adults in previous work, the oldest children showed an attenuation of the P3 NoGo response with task difficulty, and no corresponding changes in the Go amplitude. The younger children displayed the opposite pattern, a significant increase in the Go amplitude with task difficulty, and no changes in the NoGo response. These response patterns indicate that efficient inhibitory strategies are developing throughout middle-childhood.     

Causal judgement from contingency information: Judging interactions between two causal candidates

In two experiments participants judged the extent to which occurrences and non-occurrences of an effect could be attributed to an interaction between two causal candidates A and B. In Experiment 1 judgements were influenced by the proportion of instances normatively evaluated as confirmatory for the interaction interpretation, when the objective contingency was held constant. Information about instances in which both candidates were present and the effect occurred was more influential than information about instances in which both candidates were absent and the effect did not occur. In Experiment 2 the occurrence rate of the effect when both candidates were present, when A alone was present, when B alone was present, and when both were absent was manipulated. Interaction judgements were mainly determined by occurrence rate when both were present. There was also a significant effect of occurrence rate when both were absent, but the other two occurrence rates had no significant effect. These results are interpreted as supporting a general model in which causal judgements are made according to the proportion of instances evaluated as supporting the interpretation being judged.     

A dual identity-electronic contact (DIEC) experiment promoting short- and long-term intergroup harmony

Existing intergroup harmony programs have been short in length with little long-term evaluation of their true effectiveness. This experiment addresses this limitation through the development and evaluation of a new intergroup harmony program that integrates dual identity and contact tenets. At Time 1, 116 Australian Muslim and 104 Australian Christian first-year high school students attending religiously segregated schools completed pre-test measures of intergroup bias, intergroup anxiety, prejudice, and outgroup knowledge. Eight months later, in the next year of school, these students were allocated to either the nine-week dual identity-electronic or E-contact (DIEC) program that involved Muslim and Christians interacting via a synchronous internet chat tool, or the control condition where they completed the program within their religious groups with no recategorization. All participants completed the same pre-test measures at two weeks (Time 2) and 6-months (Time 3) post-program. At Time 2, for students in the DIEC condition, intergroup bias and intergroup anxiety decreased significantly, and outgroup knowledge increased significantly, compared to the control condition. In the case of intergroup bias, the decrease was maintained at Time 3. Moderation effects of ingroup identification and outgroup friendship, and mediation effects of intergroup anxiety were also found. These encouraging findings highlight that carefully designed E-contact programs can successfully promote intergroup harmony in both the short- and long-term.     

Parents’ Reports of Children’s Internalizing Symptoms: Associations with Parents’ Mental Health Symptoms and Substance Use Disorder

This brief report examined the unique associations between parents’ ratings of child internalizing symptoms and their own depression and anxiety in families with parental substance use disorder (SUD). Further, we examined whether parental SUD (father only, mother only, both parents) was related to discrepancy in mothers’ and fathers’ reports of children’s internalizing symptoms. Participants were 97 triads (fathers, mothers) in which one or both parents met criteria for SUD. Polynomial regression analyses were conducted to examine whether father-mother reports of child internalizing symptoms had unique associations with parents’ own symptoms of depression and anxiety while controlling for child gender, child age, and SUD diagnoses. Controlling for fathers’ symptoms and other covariates, mothers experiencing more depression and anxiety symptoms reported more symptoms of child internalizing symptoms than did fathers. Mothers’ and fathers’ SUD was associated with higher anxiety symptoms among mothers after controlling for other variables. A second set of polynomial regressions examined whether father-mother reports of child internalizing symptoms had unique associations with parents’ SUD diagnoses while controlling for child gender and child age. After controlling for mothers’ symptoms and other covariates, parents’ reports of children’s internalizing symptoms were not significantly associated with either parent’s SUD or parental SUD interactions (i.e., both parents have SUD diagnoses). Taken together, mothers’ ratings of children’s internalizing symptoms may be accounted for, in part, by her reports of depression and anxiety symptoms.