Personality vulnerabilities to psychopathology: relations between trait structure and affective-cognitive processes

The present research examined (a) the relations among various affective-cognitive vulnerabilities to psychopathology, (b) the relations between vulnerabilities and dispositional traits, and (c) the mediating role of vulnerabilities between dispositional traits and psychopathological symptoms. Self-report questionnaires were administered to two independent samples in Study 1 (total N=274), whereas a longitudinal experience-sampling method was employed in Study 2 (N=100). All samples consisted of college students. Results suggested that affective-cognitive vulnerabilities showed a pattern of intercorrelations consistent with a 2-factor model representing general vulnerability to internalizing and externalizing psychopathology, respectively. The vulnerabilities also revealed common and unique aspects when mapped onto the trait structure represented by the Five-Factor Model. Most important, affective-cognitive vulnerabilities were found to constitute proximal-specific mechanisms that mediated between distal-broad dispositional vulnerabilities, such as Neuroticism, and different psychopathological symptoms. Our data support a model of personality-psychopathology relations that benefits from an integration of both the dispositional trait and social-cognitive approaches.     

Electroencephalographic responses to photographs: a case study of three women with distinct adult attachment interview classifications

This preliminary study explored whether neurophysiological responses to visual stimuli, including attachment-related pictures, differed based on attachment status. Along with self-reported valence ratings and reaction times, recorded electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to a total of 100 images, 25 each of Positive, Negative, Neutral, and Personal (each participant's parents and child), were analyzed within and among three mothers with three attachment statuses (Dismissing, Preoccupied, and Secure), as judged by the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). All three mothers gave their highest pleasantness ratings for Personal photographs. However, differences emerged when cross-region Alpha2 activation patterns in response to each picture type were compared amongst attachment categories. Alpha2 activation recorded during viewing of the participants' children's photographs was similar to viewing Negative pictures for mothers with insecure (Dismissing and Preoccupied) status; whereas the Alpha2 activation of the mother with Secure status towards photographs of her child was similar to Positive pictures. Different patterns of hemispheric asymmetry in Beta1 frequency when processing different picture types were also found. The mother with Dismissing status showed significantly stronger left-hemisphere Beta1 activation across all image types. The Preoccupied mother showed significantly stronger right-hemisphere Beta1 activation for all but the Neutral images, during which activation did not differ between the two hemispheres. The mother with Secure status showed significantly stronger Beta1 activation in the left hemisphere for all but parental Personal photos, during which activation did not differ between the two hemispheres. Implications from the current findings and future research possibilities are discussed.     

Religiousness,Spirituality, and Psychological Distress in Taiwan

Most of the previous research on religion and mental health has focused solely on Western, predominantly Christian societies. Using a 2004 national survey of 1,881 adults in Taiwan, this study investigates the relationships between multidimensional measures of religiousness/spirituality and psychological distress in an Eastern context. Our findings differ from previous studies in the West, showing that: (1) religious-based supernatural beliefs are associated with more distress; (2) daily prayer is associated with less distress; (3) engaging in secular-based supernatural activities like fortune-telling is related to more distress; and (4) the frequency of religious attendance is unrelated to levels of distress. Broader theoretical and empirical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Support for anterior temporal involvement in semantic error production in aphasia: new evidence from VLSM

Semantic errors in aphasia (e.g., naming a horse as “dog”) frequently arise from faulty mapping of concepts onto lexical items. A recent study by our group used voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) methods with 64 patients with chronic aphasia to identify voxels that carry an association with semantic errors. The strongest associations were found in the left anterior temporal lobe (L-ATL), in the mid- to anterior MTG region. The absence of findings in Wernicke’s area was surprising, as were indications that ATL voxels made an essential contribution to the post-semantic stage of lexical access. In this follow-up study, we sought to validate these results by re-defining semantic errors in a manner that was less theory dependent and more consistent with prior lesion studies. As this change also increased the robustness of the dependent variable, it made it possible to perform additional statistical analyses that further refined the interpretation. The results strengthen the evidence for a causal relationship between ATL damage and lexically-based semantic errors in naming and lend confidence to the conclusion that chronic lesions in Wernicke’s area are not causally implicated in semantic error production.     

Exploring the Valence‐Framing Effect: Negative Framing Enhances Attitude Strength

In his now‐classic research on inoculation theory, McGuire (1964 ) demonstrated that exposing people to an initial weak counterattitudinal message could lead to enhanced resistance to a subsequent stronger counterattitudinal message. More recently, research on the valence‐framing effect ( Bizer & Petty, 2005 ) demonstrated an alternative way to make attitudes more resistant. Simply framing a person's attitude negatively (i.e., in terms of a rejected position such as anti‐Democrat) led to more resistance to an attack on that attitude than did framing the same attitude positively (i.e., in terms of a preferred position such as pro‐Republican). Using an election context, the current research tested whether valence framing influences attitude resistance specifically or attitude strength more generally, providing insight into the effect's mechanism and generalizability. In two experiments, attitude valence was manipulated by framing a position either negatively or positively. Experiment 1 showed that negatively framed attitudes were held with more certainty than were positively framed attitudes. In Experiment 2, conducted among a representative sample of residents of two U.S. states during political campaigns, negatively framed attitudes demonstrated higher levels of attitude certainty and attitude‐consistent behavioral intentions than did attitudes that were framed positively. Furthermore, the effect of valence framing on behavioral intentions was mediated by attitude certainty. Valence framing thus appears to be a relatively low‐effort way to impact multiple features associated with strong attitudes.     

Locomotor body scheme

The concept of body schema has been introduced and widely discussed in the literature to explain various clinical observations and distortions in the body and space representation. Here we address the role of body schema related information in multi-joint limb motion. The processing of proprioceptive information may differ significantly in static and dynamic conditions since in the latter case the control system may employ specific dynamic rules and constraints. Accordingly, the perception of movement, e.g., estimation of step length and walking distance, may rely on a priori knowledge about intrinsic dynamics of limb segment motion and inherent relationships between gait parameters and body proportions. The findings are discussed in the general framework of space and body movement representation and suggest the existence of a dynamic locomotor body schema used for controlling step length and path estimation.     

Social status, masculinity, and testosterone in young men

Among other things, sexual selection theory posits that in species with limited male parental investment, males should evolve biological mechanisms to competitively dominate or otherwise compete with one another. It is unclear whether such proposed mechanisms would influence status hierarchies in small human groups. We report the results of a study investigating possible effects of prenatal (index-to-ring finger length ratio or 2D:4D) and salivary testosterone, and masculine identification, on status among 71 male college students living in nine residential groups. The results indicate no role of either prenatal or salivary testosterone in maintaining status hierarchies in these groups. A possible explanation is that peer-assessed status in these groups was arrived at cooperatively rather than through dominance contests.     

How do social fears in adolescence develop? Fear conditioning shapes attention orienting to social threat cues

Social fears emerging in adolescence can have negative effects on emotional well-being. Yet the mechanisms by which these risks occur are unknown. One possibility is that associative learning results in fears to previously neutral social stimuli. Such conditioned responses may alter subsequent processing of social stimuli. We used a novel conditioning task to examine how associative processes influence social fear and attention orienting in adolescents. Neutral photographs were paired with socially rewarding or aversive stimuli during conditioning; a dot-probe task then assessed biases in attention orienting. The social conditioning task modified subjective ratings of the neutral stimuli. Moreover, for the neutral stimulus that was paired with the aversive stimulus, the strength of conditioning showed a relationship with subsequent attentional vigilance. The findings elucidate mechanisms by which negative peer experiences during adolescence may affect emotional processing.     

Immunizing against prejudice: effects of disease protection on attitudes toward out-groups

Contemporary interpersonal biases are partially derived from psychological mechanisms that evolved to protect people against the threat of contagious disease. This behavioral immune system effectively promotes disease avoidance but also results in an overgeneralized prejudice toward people who are not legitimate carriers of disease. In three studies, we tested whether experiences with two modern forms of disease protection (vaccination and hand washing) attenuate the relationship between concerns about disease and prejudice against out-groups. Study 1 demonstrated that when threatened with disease, vaccinated participants exhibited less prejudice toward immigrants than unvaccinated participants did. In Study 2, we found that framing vaccination messages in terms of immunity eliminated the relationship between chronic germ aversion and prejudice. In Study 3, we directly manipulated participants' protection from disease by having some participants wash their hands and found that this intervention significantly influenced participants' perceptions of out-group members. Our research suggests that public-health interventions can benefit society in areas beyond immediate health-related domains by informing novel, modern remedies for prejudice.