Changes over time from baseline poor self-rated health: for whom does poor self-rated health not predict mortality?

The aim of this study was to understand for whom and why poor self-rated health (SRH) is a less valid predictor of longevity or future health by examining the predictors of decline in health among people with poor baseline SRH. The sample included 409 participants in the Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Study of the old-old (75+) in Israel, who were self-respondents and rated their health as poor at baseline and their status was known at follow-up 3.5 years later: deceased/moved to proxy interview/remained in poor SRH/or improved SRH. Baseline measures included self-reported medical status, physical, cognitive, psychological and social functioning. Findings showed that less decline in health was predicted by less difficulty in physical and cognitive functioning at baseline and by a more active physical and social life, after controlling for socio-demographics. Most of the predictors retained a unique contribution in a multivariate model, suggesting that engagement in meaningful activities serves as an indicator of better health and longer survival even within a group of old-old people in poor health. It may reflect greater social support, contribute to fitness and/or provide a sense of mastery, which could explain similar findings regarding gender and race/ethnicity groups for whom SRH is a less potent predictor of mortality.     

Applicability increases the effect of misattribution on judgment

Feelings and cognitions influence judgment through attribution. For instance, the attribution of positive feelings and cognitions to a stimulus leads to a positive judgment of that stimulus. We examined whether misattribution is moderated by the applicability of a distractor to the judgment question. For instance, when are people more likely to attribute to a target person the affective and cognitive experiences triggered by a kitten – when trying to judge the person’s cuteness or trustworthiness? The kitten triggers experiences specifically relevant to cuteness, but people might more easily suspect the kitten’s potential influence when judging cuteness rather than trustworthiness. Using the Affect Misattribution Procedure, we found that applicability increases the effect of misattribution on valenced judgments. The results emphasise the importance of specific information (rather than only general valence) in attribution and suggest that high applicability of distractors to the judgment question does not elicit effective correction.     

Recent research on children’s testimony about experienced and witnessed events

Research on memory development has increasingly moved out of the laboratory and into the real world. Whereas early researchers asked whether confusion and susceptibility to suggestion made children unreliable witnesses, furthermore, contemporary researchers are addressing a much broader range of questions about children’s memory, focusing not only on children’s frailties but also on their competencies. In this review, we emphasize work on factors that promote the retrieval and accurate recounting of experienced or witnessed events and the implications of these findings for forensic interview practices. Research shows that children are capable of providing accurate information about their experiences, although their ability to convey the information is affected not only by the qualities of their memories, but also by the types of retrieval mechanisms employed and the quality of the communication between them and their interlocutors. We thus discuss several characteristics of to-be-remembered events that affect memory and are relevant to children’s recall in applied settings; retrieval conditions and their effects on the amount and accuracy of the information that children report; and research on investigative interviews conducted in forensic contexts. Because many of the variables that influence memory are age-related, developmental changes in children’s ability to accurately report, and recount their experiences are highlighted.     

Attachment Style and Family Functioning as Discriminating Factors in Eating Disorders

This study sought to examine the extent to which family environment and attachment styles are concurrently related to eating disorders. The Adult Attachment Scale and the Family Environment Scale were administered to 25 anorexic and 33 bulimic female patients at intake in an eating disorder clinic, and 37 age-matched female controls. Eating disorder patients were found to be less secure, more avoidant, and more anxious than controls. The families of eating disorder patients were found to be less cohesive, expressive, and encouraging of personal growth than were controls. Low encouragement of personal growth and uncertain attachment styles may be manifestations of family difficulties in supporting the child during the process of separation individuation, and exploration of the outside world.     

“Anticipating” Gibson’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Passion of the Christ</Emphasis>: The controversy over Cecil B. De Mille’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The King of Kings</Emphasis>

Cecil. B. De. Milles epic production The King of Kings (1927), though not the first to recreate a Passion Play, raised first a quiet and then a more public Jewish outcry, which lead to rancor and, eventually, changes, if minor, in the film. The Anti-Defamation League also reached an agreement with the Motion Picture Producers Association allowing it to preview potentially problematic films. Jews were especially outraged at De Milles pernicious portrayal of Caiaphas, but saw the film in its entirety as arousing anti-Semitism. De Mille himself felt misunderstood. By contrast, Mel Gibsons, The Passion of the Christ (2004), which uses cinema realite to create a sense of horror, evoked an immediate public uproar, although with no concessions on Gibsons part. Following the story of reactions to The King of Kings compared to reactions to The Passion of the Christ provides important perspective on the evolving Jewish self image in the United States between 1927 and today.     

Intact visual discrimination of complex and feature-ambiguous stimuli in the absence of perirhinal cortex

The perirhinal cortex is known to be important for memory, but there has recently been interest in the possibility that it might also be involved in visual perceptual functions. In four experiments, we assessed visual discrimination ability and visual discrimination learning in severely amnesic patients with large medial temporal lobe lesions that included complete lesions of perirhinal cortex. Experiment 1 tested complex visual object perception. Experiments 2a and 2b tested in two different ways the ability to discriminate between feature-ambiguous images, which was reported to be impaired in monkeys with perirhinal lesions. Experiment 3 involved images that were successfully discriminated in Experiment 2a and asked patients to learn across 20 trials which of the images had been designated as "correct." Patients performed as well as controls in Experiments 1, 2a, and 2b, but one of the patients had difficulty in Experiment 3 when the task required remembering from trial to trial which image was "correct." These findings indicate that perirhinal cortex is not needed for visual perception across a wide range of visual perceptual tasks.     

The practical ethics of linguistic integration: Three challenges

Public debates on linguistic integration as a socially desired outcome often share a prevailing sentiment that newcomers ought to “learn the language.” But the intensity of that sentiment is rarely accompanied by an equally robust understanding of what, precisely, it means in practice. This results in a notion of linguistic integration with an inbuilt tension between a seemingly pragmatic and commonsensical appearance, on the one hand, and a minimal action-guidance capacity, on the other hand. This paper explores this intriguing tension, and it identifies three moral and practical challenges that this challenge presents to the normative theorizing of the practical ethics of linguistic integration: (1) a predicament of arbitrary treatment; (2) the interpersonal structure of social and linguistic learning; and (3) the affective dimension of linguistic integration.     

Subjective value determines initial dominance in binocular rivalry

Does subjective reward value influence early visual perception? During binocular rivalry, one eye receives an image that is incompatible with the image the other eye receives. People consciously experience perceiving one image; the other image is suppressed from conscious awareness. We tested if subjective value functions as an endogenous influence (i.e., one internal to the perceiver) on dominance during rivalry. Images associated with rewards achieved initial perceptual dominance more often than images associated with cost (Study 1, Methods, Participants and procedures, Stimuli and presentation, Experimental counterbalancing conditions, Results, Study 2, Methods, Participants, Stimuli and presentation, Procedure, Results, Reports of letters v. numbers seen as initial percept, Reports of dot location, Study 3). Value facilitated perception of rewarding images but did not inhibit perception of costly images (Study 3). Additionally, when rewards benefited a disliked person, no bias in perceptual dominance was observed. Subjective value biased dominance despite accuracy incentives and was not explained by frequency of exposure, implicit learning, response bias, or task-specific accessibility. We discuss implications for the influence of motivated influences on perception, a phenomenon we call wishful seeing.     

Pathological organizations and psychic retreats in eating disorders

A set of characteristic symptoms allow for the relatively straightforward diagnosis of eating disorders. Simultaneously and paradoxically, underlying the eating disorders are a wide variety of personality organizations/disorders, stretching from the neurotic to the borderline and narcissistic, and even to conditions approaching psychosis. This paper will argue that the inherent commonalities can be ascribed to pathological organizations of a similar nature and quality, operational across the spectrum of eating disorders and functioning in a particular, sadomasochistic way. The typical forms that eating disorders take are based on the specific ways that food and the body are used, that is, symptom manifestation. These distinctive symptom manifestations appear to be related to Steiner's (1982, 1993) notion of a psychic retreat. Pathological organizations and psychic retreats are latent until called upon either sporadically or continuously. When activated, these defensive structures operate like a complex psychic skeleton around which the unique psychodynamics of each patient become rearranged and thereby transformed.