Mechanisms of contextual control when contexts are informative to solve the task

An experiment was conducted using a human instrumental learning task with the goal of evaluating the mechanisms underlying the deleterious effect of context-switching on responding to an unambiguous stimulus when contexts are informative to solve the task. Participants were trained in a context-based reversal discrimination in which two discriminative stimuli (X and Y) interchange their meaning across contexts A and B. In context A, discriminative stimulus Z consistently announced that the relationship between a specific instrumental response (RI) and a specific outcome (O1) was in effect. Performance in the presence of stimulus Z was equally deteriorated when the test was conducted outside the training context, regardless of whether the test context was familiar (context B) or new (context C). This result is consistent with the idea that participants code all the information presented in an informative context as context-specific with the context playing a role akin to an occasion setter.     

The Problem of Many Hands: Climate Change as an Example

In some situations in which undesirable collective effects occur, it is very hard, if not impossible, to hold any individual reasonably responsible. Such a situation may be referred to as the problem of many hands. In this paper we investigate how the problem of many hands can best be understood and why, and when, it exactly constitutes a problem. After analyzing climate change as an example, we propose to define the problem of many hands as the occurrence of a gap in the distribution of responsibility that may be considered morally problematic. Whether a gap is morally problematic, we suggest, depends on the reasons why responsibility is distributed. This, in turn, depends, at least in part, on the sense of responsibility employed, a main distinction being that between backward-looking and forward-looking responsibility.     

General self-efficacy and health-related quality of life after myocardial infarction

Fatigue after myocardial infarction (MI) has been found to be distressing. A person's self-efficacy will influence his/her health behavior and plays an active role in tackling illness consequences. This study investigated associations between fatigue, disturbed sleep, general self-efficacy, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in a sample of 145 respondents admitted to hospital for MI two years earlier. The aim was to identify the predictive value of general self-efficacy and to elucidate mediating factors between self-efficacy and HRQoL. General self-efficacy measured four months after MI was positively related to HRQoL after two years. In tests of indirect effects, fatigue meditated the effects between self-efficacy and the physical and the mental dimension of HRQoL, respectively. The indirect effect of disturbed sleep went through that of fatigue. To conclude, patients who suffer from post-MI fatigue may need support aimed at helping them increase their self-efficacy as well as helping them adapt to sleep hygiene principles and cope with fatigue, both of which will have positive influences on HRQoL.     

Our element: Flesh and democracy in Merleau-Ponty

Although Merleau-Ponty??s early phenomenology of perception and his essays on art, politics, and language already showed an affinity between the aesthetic phenomena of expression and style and the political and cultural dynamics of society at large, this paper specifically focuses on his late theorizing of the notion of flesh and its relevance to his late understanding of politics and democracy. The emergence of flesh as a concept was contemporary to Merleau-Ponty??s break with Marxism as a philosophical model and with revolutionary dialectics as a political project. It is by showing that such a break was consistently grounded on his theorizing of the being flesh of both the body and of society that this paper shows Merleau-Ponty??s unique contribution to democratic theory and to contemporary political philosophy. In the course of this analysis, it will become clear that in philosophically breaking with the position of a ??no that is a yes????i.e. the model of the revolution, which implies a total negation of the given that becomes a total affirmation of the new order (dictatorship) once in power??he would politically embrace the Weberian ??heroic liberalism????or his ??non-communist left????of parliamentary democracy.     

Recognition memory deficits in mild cognitive impairment

ABSTRACT There is no agreement on the pattern of recognition memory deficits characteristic of patients diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Whereas lower performance in recollection is the hallmark of MCI, there is a strong controversy about possible deficits in familiarity estimates when using recognition memory tasks. The aim of this research is to shed light on the pattern of responding in recollection and familiarity in MCI. Five groups of participants were tested. The main participant samples were those formed by two MCI groups differing in age and an Alzheimer's disease group (AD), which were compared with two control groups. Whereas one of the control groups served to assess the performance of the MCI and AD people, the other one, composed of young healthy participants, served the purpose of evaluating the adequacy of the experimental tasks used in the evaluation of the different components of recognition memory. We used an associative recognition task as a direct index of recollection and a choice task on a pair of stimuli, one of which was perceptually similar to those studied in the associative recognition phase, as an index of familiarity. Our results indicate that recollection decreases with age and neurological status, and familiarity remains stable in the elderly control sample but it is deficient in MCI. This research shows that a unique encoding situation generated deficits in recollective and familiarity mechanisms in mild cognitive impaired individuals, providing evidence for the existence of deficits in both retrieval processes in recognition memory in a MCI stage.     

Shifts in color discrimination during early pregnancy

The present study explores two hypotheses: a) women during early pregnancy should experience increased color discrimination ability, and b) women during early pregnancy should experience shifts in subjective preference away from images of foods that appear either unripe or spoiled. Both of these hypotheses derive from an adaptive view of pregnancy sickness that proposes the function of pregnancy sickness is to decrease the likelihood of ingestion of foods with toxins or teratogens. Changes to color discrimination could be part of a network of perceptual and physiological defenses (e.g., changes to olfaction, nausea, vomiting) that support such a function. Participants included 13 pregnant women and 18 non-pregnant women. Pregnant women scored significantly higher than non-pregnant controls on the Farnsworth-Munsell (FM) 100 Hue Test, an objective test of color discrimination, although no difference was found between groups in preferences for food images at different stages of ripeness or spoilage. These results are the first indication that changes to color discrimination may occur during early pregnancy, and is consistent with the view that pregnancy sickness may function as an adaptive defense mechanism.     

Validation of a Spanish version of the Muscle Appearance Satisfaction Scale: Escala de Satisfacción Muscular

The psychometric properties of a Spanish version of the Muscle Appearance Satisfaction Scale (MASS; Mayville, Williamson, White, Netemeyer, & Drab, 2002) were examined using a sample of five hundred and sixty-one male weightlifters. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the 19-item Spanish version of the MASS called the Escala de Satisfacción Muscular (ESM), was represented by five subscales similar to the original MASS. Internal consistency of the measure was good (α=.86-.95), and various measures of construct validity indicated that the ESM may be a useful measure of Muscle Dysmorphia symptoms among Spanish speaking populations.     

Neurobıology of Repressıon: A Hypothetıcal Interpretatıon

Freud lived in a time when technology was incapable of explaining the biological correlates of the mental processes he described in psychoanalytic theory. During the last two decades, advances in neuroimaging methods and neuroscience have provided new insights for understanding mind-brain collaboration. Neurobiological underpinnings of psychoanalytical concepts have been an area of interest in recent years. This paper will suggest a new hypothesis for neurobiology of repression. This hypothesis will be discussed with the help of our knowledge about neurobiological mechanisms underlying perception of the emotional significance of an event, memory formation of an emotionally arousing stimulus, role of prefrontal cortex in modulation of subcortical information, neural mechanisms of suppression and molecular mechanisms of memory erasure. We suggest that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and especially its caudal part plays a major role for repression of childhood traumatic events. Possible molecular mechanism of memory erasure in repression is long term depression of glutamatergic neurotransmission between prefrontal cortex- thalamus- limbic system.     

The relationships between Internet addiction, subjective vitality, and subjective happiness

The aim of the present study is to examine the relationships between Internet addiction, subjective vitality, and subjective happiness. The participants were 328 university students who completed a questionnaire package that included the Online Cognition Scale, the Subjective Vitality Scale, and the Subjective Happiness Scale. According to the results, subjective vitality and subjective happiness were negatively predicted by Internet addiction. On the other hand, subjective happiness was positively predicted by subjective vitality. In addition, subjective vitality mediated the relationship between Internet addiction and subjective happiness. Results were discussed in light of the literature.     

Interpretation and method

Abstract

Interpretation started as the central tool of psychoanalytic theory, but it has undergone changes, just as the theory it was based on has evolved. Not only have these significant changes been determined by cultural trends, but different authors have also contributed to their evolution through their approaches to various other pathologies besides neurosis. Today, the cure process is divided between those who believe that therapeutic efficiency should be based on the different interpretation models, and those who maintain that it can be only sustained by the modifying capacity of the therapeutic relationship. Both positions are supposedly upheld by the results of tests that both models believe are sufficient proof but that, in the current author's opinion, lead back to the type of pathology they arose from, although they may at times attempt to cover the entire theoretical spectrum. The position upheld by Gedo—who considers that the psychoanalyst's intervention will depend on the degree of evolution that the pathology has achieved—is of great interest for specific practice. Hence, the more primitive levels require a treatment founded on holding, whereas more evolved pathologies require a more classic level of interpretation. This implies that the stages of a particular patient's evolution may require interventions at different levels, even though these may be founded on different theoretical models. This model, which we may brand as eclectic, is basically the one we find underpinning different theoretical models, which effectively appear to integrate others.