Development of visuomanual tracking in 5- to 9-year-old boys

Visuomanual sinusoidal tracking is investigated in 5- to 9-year-old children. The proportion of successful performances steadily increases with age, but adult proficiency is never attained even by those who can perform the task. Moreover, the progress in proficiency—as measured by systems analysis techniques—is not monotonic and suggests the presence of distinct stages in the development of visuomotor coordination. Qualitative analysis of unsuccessful performance demonstrates that failures cannot be ascribed only to insufficient motor coordination and emphasizes the role of cognitive and representational factors even in such a simple task.     

Jung’s Axioms: An Introduction to Jung’s “Note on Number”

This article is an introduction to C. G. Jung’s handwritten note on natural numbers (in this issue), which became the basis of Marie-Louise von Franz’s book Number and Time. I present the historical background of Jung’s note and discuss part of its content using mostly Jung’s own words.     

Extreme appraisals of internal states and bipolar symptoms: the Hypomanic Attitudes and Positive Predictions Inventory

The Hypomanic Attitudes and Positive Predictions Inventory (HAPPI; W. Mansell, 2006) was developed to assess multiple, extreme, self-relevant appraisals of internal states. The present study aimed to validate the HAPPI in a clinical sample. Participants (N = 50) with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder (confirmed by a structured clinical interview) completed a series of questionnaires pertaining to clinical factors, reward motivation, cognitive style, symptoms, and functioning at baseline, in addition to the HAPPI. Over the following 4 weeks, participants were asked to complete self-report measures of symptoms (activation, perceived conflict, depression, and well-being), as well as work and social functioning, twice weekly. The authors hypothesized that the HAPPI would be associated with prospective bipolar symptoms and functioning, when controlling for baseline symptoms and potentially confounding measures. The HAPPI was positively, independently associated with activation and conflict after 4 weeks. Furthermore, individual HAPPI factors were associated with activation, conflict, and depression. The results provided preliminary support for the predictive validity of the HAPPI in a clinical sample. The HAPPI could be used in the future as a tool in cognitive behavioral therapy for bipolar disorder to identify problematic beliefs and guide formulation.     

Doping in sport and enhancement medicine

The reason that gives doping in sport a deeper philosophical and ethical dimension is the emergence of a new medical paradigm: enhancement medicine. The question of enhancing performance in sport has become part of a broader societal debate on human enhancement. The gradual blurriness of the boarders between therapeutic medicine and enhancement medicine constitutes the most spectacular and the most troublesome form of these modifications. In the contemporary biomedicine, the new medicines and technologies can be used not only to cure the patients but also to enhance human capacities. This evolution represents a paradigmatic change in the medical practice: it is not the mere restoration of health which is expected anymore, nor the promotion of health. What is required is the improvement of performance and the perfectibility of the human being, including in the field of sport. Competitive sport could become the main laboratory of enhancement medicine. The intersection of science and sport raises fundamental philosophical, ethical and policy issues that cannot be answered easily. The prohibition and the war on doping is not the only solution.     

Contextual conditioning in rats as an animal model for generalized anxiety disorder

Animal models of psychiatric disorders are important translational tools for exploring new treatment options and gaining more insight into the disease. Thus far, there is no systematically validated animal model for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a severely impairing and difficult-to-treat disease. In this review, we propose contextual conditioning (CC) as an animal model for GAD. We argue that this model has sufficient face validity (there are several symptom similarities), predictive validity (it responds to clinically effective treatments), and construct validity (the underlying mechanisms are comparable). Although the refinement and validation of an animal model is a never-ending process, we want to give a concise overview of the currently available evidence. We suggest that the CC model might be a valuable preclinical tool to enhance the development of new treatment strategies and our understanding of GAD.     

Cognitive and affective Theory of Mind in mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease

Theory of Mind (ToM) allows one's own and others' cognitive and emotional mental states to be inferred. Although many patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) display impaired social functioning as their disease progresses, very few studies have investigated ToM in AD. Those that have done so suggest that patients' ToM deficits are the consequence of other cognitive impairments. The aim of this study was thus to investigate changes in both the cognitive and the affective dimensions of ToM in AD, using tasks designed to circumvent the patients' comprehension difficulties. Sixteen mild to moderate AD patients and 15 healthy controls matched on age, sex and education level underwent cognitive (preference judgment and first‐ and second‐order false belief) and affective (Reading the Mind in the Eyes) ToM assessments. Comprehension of false belief stories was verified and an additional neuropsychological examination was undergone. We observed impaired performances by AD patients on all the ToM tasks. While working memory and executive functioning impairments contributed to the deterioration in the more complex aspects of cognitive ToM abilities as highlighted by a correlation analysis, we failed to observe any comprehension difficulties in patients who performed poorly on simple cognitive ToM tasks, which suggests that AD truly affects cognitive ToM.     

The perceptual magnet effect in Australian English vowels

Recent research (Kuhl, 1991) has suggested that the internal structure of vowel categories is graded in terms of stimulus goodness. It has been proposed that a best instance stimulus reflects a central point or prototype, which effectively renders within-category members perceptually more similar. Discrimination experiments suggest a nonlinear relationship between acoustic and perceptual space near category centers (Iverson & Kuhl, 1995b). This phenomenon has been described as the perceptual magnet effect. The present study investigated the presence of the perceptual magnet effect in five Australian vowel categories. Australian English speakers identified, rated, and discriminated between a pool of 32 vowel stimuli that varied in F1 and F2 values. The results from Experiments 1 and 2 showed that subjects were able to judge the quality and identify of each stimulus and that a general grading of stimulus quality was reported. This was not symmetrical, and the subjects' responses varied considerably. In Experiment 3, closer control of the methodology in the discrimination task and of contextual factors influencing the test materials was exercised. Despite this, evidence of the warping of perceptual space in discrimination data was not found. In general, these results do not provide support for the existence of the perceptual magnet effect, and explanations for this finding are discussed.     

Electrical stimulation of the brain for psychiatric disorders

Despite advances in therapies, there remain psychiatric patients who are extremely ill and cannot be helped by classic psychiatric treatments, including psychotherapy and drug therapy. Certain of these patients may be helped by use of bilateral brain lesioning. The complication rate of standard stereotactic psychosurgery techniques is very low. The main rationale for the continued experimental use of deep brain stimulation (DBS) in neurosurgery for mental disorders is its reversibility. This reversibility is not an advantage in terms of the benefits obtained, but rather if side effects emerge. In addition, electrical stimulation may provide patients with some autonomy for their treatment. The first, very preliminary results of electrical stimulation for obsessive-compulsive disorder and for a small heterogeneous group of patients with other psychiatric disorders have been published. Electrical stimulation of the brain for psychiatric disorders may become a new treatment option for certain intractable psychiatric disorders. Nevertheless, the mechanism of action of DBS in psychiatric disorders is unknown, and the experience with this modality is extremely limited. The first results look promising, but this treatment option may prove unusable for some time because of a lack of knowledge of appropriate brain stimulation targets and technical problems such as the availability of sufficient current supply.