Affective deficits and pain insensitivity in schizophrenia

Affective deficits have long been considered a prominent feature of schizophrenia and play a central role in recent theory and research on the pathophysiology of this disorder. However, it has recently been argued that current approaches to the conceptualization and assessment of affective flattening in schizophrenia are confounded by the social and neuromotor deficits that are also prevalent in this disorder. Insensitivity to pain in individuals with schizophrenia — a phenomenon that has been reported frequently but never systematically investigated — provides one approach to examining affective flattening unconfounded by social and neuromotor deficits. Two studies are described in which signal detection theory measures of thermal pain sensitivity were examined in patients with schizophrenia, mood disorder, and normal controls; in addition, in the patients with schizophrenia, the relationships between these measures and measures of affective deficits were examined. Patients with schizophrenia had significantly poorer sensory discrimination of painful thermal stimuli than control subjects, but did not differ from controls with respect to their response criterion for reports of pain; patients with mood disorder had a significantly higher (i.e., more stoical) criterion for reports of pain than controls. As predicted, among the patients with schizophrenia, higher response criterion was significantly correlated with greater affective flattening and less intense affective experience (as well as with fewer positive symptoms and poorer premorbid adjustment). The results of these studies suggest that pain insensitivity in schizophrenia may reflect affective as well as sensory abnormalities, and that pain insensitivity in schizophrenia may provide a method for studying affective flattening in this disorder that is relatively independent of the social and neuromotor deficits that confound existing measures of this symptom. Continued examination of the relationship between pain insensitivity and affective deficits in schizophrenia is also important because numerous clinical reports have suggested that pain insensitivity is detrimental to health and can have life-threatening consequences in individuals with this disorder.This research was supported, in part, by research grants from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to Robert H. Dworkin (NS-30714) and W. Crawford Clark (NS-09263, NS-20248).     

Separation anxiety disorder in a sample of children of divorce

Anxiety in children through separation from parents is one of the most frequent psychological problems in the infantile population. Children of divorce are more vulnerable to suffer this disorder due to the abrupt separation from one of the parents after the break-up, which they may experience as a traumatic event that predisposes them to react anxiously in daily separations. The purpose of this study is to examine the presence of symptoms of separation anxiety and general anxiety in a Spanish sample of 95 students of ages between 8 and 12 years. They were compared to a group of children of similar ages and sex whose parents are not divorced. The results show that children of divorce present higher levels of separation anxiety than the children whose parents remain together. Moreover, they show significant levels of generalized anxiety, but similar to that of the other group of children (undivorced parents). The clinical implications of these findings are discussed, emphasizing the importance of cooperation and frequent contact of the children with both parents to promote their security and autonomy.     

Attention to low- and high-spatial frequencies in categorizing facial identities, emotions and gender in children with autism

This study was aimed at investigating face categorization strategies in children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). Performance of 17 children with ASD was compared to that of 17 control children in a face-matching task, including hybrid faces (composed of two overlapping faces of different spatial bandwidths) and either low- or high-pass filtered faces. Participants were asked to match faces on the basis of identity, emotion or gender. Results revealed that children with ASD used the same strategies as controls when matching faces by gender. By contrast, in the identity and the emotion conditions, children with ASD showed a high-pass bias (i.e., preference for local information), contrary to controls. Consistent with previous studies on autism, these findings suggest that children with ASD do use atypical (local-oriented) strategies to process faces.     

Risk perception as a function of risk exposure amongst rock climbers

ObjectivesThe first objective was to examine the extent to which climbers' climbing safety perceived competence (CSPC) and perceived own absolute (POAR) and comparative (PCR) risk of getting seriously injured whilst climbing is related to risk exposure. The second objective was to examine which variables influence POAR and PCR.MethodTwo hundred and thirty-five climbers (M = 32, SD = 10.2 years of age) completed the following questionnaires: a CSPC scale specifically developed to assess perceived ability to practice climbing safely; indirect measures of PCR, consisting in the subtraction of the participants' assessment of their own risks from their assessment of other climbing referents' risks; and the Life Orientation Test-Revised, measuring dispositional optimism (DO). Participants were approached in their practices sites from Mediterranean regions, and were divided into groups based on their climbing practice's risk exposure; that is, high risk: traditional climbing (TRAD; n = 42); moderate risk: leading (LEAD; n = 89); and low risk: either top-roping (TOP; n = 51) or indoor bouldering (IND; n = 53).ResultsAnalyses of variance showed that TRAD expressed higher CSPC and higher POAR than the other groups. PCR also differed amongst the groups. More specifically, TRAD expressed comparative pessimism and LEAD expressed comparative optimism, as their POAR was, respectively, higher and lower than their perceived average climber's risk. TOP and IND perceived their own risk in a similar way to that of the average climber. Regression analyses showed that DO did not influence POAR or PCR. Past injury episode was positively related to POAR and negatively related to the propensity to express comparative optimism, though only amongst TRAD and LEAD.ConclusionsClimbers' risk perception accurately reflected their risk exposure. Climbers whose climbing modality involves higher risks acknowledged so when evaluating their own absolute and comparative risks of getting seriously injured whilst climbing.     

XS-DIF: program for analysis of Differential Item Functioning in Excel

XS-DIF is a program for detection of Differential Item Functioning (DIF) using Item Response Theory (IRT). It calculates Lords Chi-Square, Raju's Signed Area and Unsigned Area, and Kim and Cohen's Closed-interval signed area and Closed-interval unsigned area. XS-DIF was designed to be executed in Excel 2000 and it has a capacity of analysis of up to 100 items. It is useful to support data analysis of research projects and in detection and teaching processes in DIF.     

Etiologic Subtypes of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Brain Imaging, Molecular Genetic and Environmental Factors and the Dopamine Hypothesis

Multiple theories of Attention-Deficit/Hyper- activity Disorder (ADHD) have been proposed, but one that has stood the test of time is the dopamine deficit theory. We review the narrow literature from recent brain imaging and molecular genetic studies that has improved our understanding of the role of dopamine in manifestation of symptoms of ADHD, performance deficits on neuropsychological tasks, and response to stimulant medication that constitutes the most common treatment of this disorder. First, we consider evidence of the presence of dopamine deficits based on the recent literature that (1) confirms abnormalities in dopamine-modulated frontal-striatal circuits, reflected by size (smaller-than-average components) and function (hypoactivation); (2) clarifies the agonist effects of stimulant medication on dopaminergic mechanisms at the synaptic and circuit level of analysis; and (3) challenges the most-widely accepted ADHD-related neural abnormality in the dopamine system (higher-than-normal dopamine transporter [DAT] density). Second, we discuss possible genetic etiologies of dopamine deficits based on recent molecular genetic literature, including (1) multiple replications that confirm the association of ADHD with candidate genes related to the dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) and the DAT; (2) replication of differences in performance of neuropsychological tasks as a function of the DRD4 genotype; and (3) multiple genome-wide linkage scans that demonstrate the limitations of this method when applied to complex disorders but implicate additional genes that may contribute to the genetic basis of ADHD. Third, we review possible environmental etiologies of dopamine deficits based on recent studies of (1) toxic substances that may affect the dopamine system in early development and contribute substantially to the etiology of ADHD; (2) fetal adaptations in dopamine systems in response to stress that may alter early development with lasting effects, as proposed by the developmental origins of health and disease hypothesis; and (3) gene-environment interactions that may moderate selective damage or adaptation of dopamine neurons. Based on these reviews, we identify critical issues about etiologic subtypes of ADHD that may involve dopamine, discuss methods that could be used to address these issues, and review old and new theories that may direct research in this area in the future.     

Discrediting Identity Work: Understandings of Intimate Partner Violence by Transgender Survivors

This study explores how individuals can actively work to discredit identity work. We examine eighteen transgender victims’ accounts of intimate partner violence (IPV), providing insight into how abusers undermine victims’ constructions of self-concepts. Our findings illustrate two primary strategies of discrediting identity work: altercasting and targeting sign-vehicles, including controlling through props. Empirically examining the accounts of transgender IPV victims’ experiences contributes to addressing a serious gap in research on transgender IPV victims, while expanding theoretical understandings of processes of discrediting identity work within the context of abusive intimate relationships.     

Human biological and nonbiological point-light movements: Creation and validation of the dataset

Human action perception is so powerful that people can identify movement efficiently in the absence of pictorial information, such as in point-light displays. Interest is growing in this type of stimulus for research in neuroscience. This interest stems from the advantage of separating the component of pure human action kinematics from other pictorial information, such as facial expression and muscle contraction. Although several groups have previously developed datasets of human point-light actions, due to the lack of datasets composed of daily actions with short durations, we developed 20 biological and 40 control (scrambled) point-light movements by using the technique of recording people wearing reflector patches. The videos are about 1 s long. Subsequently, we performed a judgment task in which 100 participants (50 male and 50 female) evaluated each video according to three categories: human action resemblance, performed action, and gender of actor. We present the mean scores of each evaluation for each video, and further propose a selection of the most suitable videos to be used as human point-light action displays and scrambled point-light displays for control. Finally, we discuss our findings on the gender attributions of the point-light displays.     

Implicit connectives of algebraizable logics

An extensions by new axioms and rules of an algebraizable logic in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi is not necessarily algebraizable if it involves new connective symbols, or it may be algebraizable in an essentially different way than the original logic. However, extension whose axioms and rules define implicitly the new connectives are algebraizable, via the same equivalence formulas and defining equations of the original logic, by enriched algebras of its equivalente quasivariety semantics. For certain strongly algebraizable logics, all connectives defined implicitly by axiomatic extensions of the logic are explicitly definable.Special issue of Studia Logica: Algebraic Theory of Quasivarieties Presented by M. E. Adams, K. V. Adaricheva, W. Dziobiak, and A. V. Kravchenko