Health Is Associated With Antiparasite Behavior and Fear of Disease-Relevant Animals in Humans

Evolutionary arms races between humans and parasites resulted in a set of behavioral adaptations that serve as parasite-avoidance mechanisms. We investigated associations among reported health of the respondent, antiparasite behavior, and sensitivity to disgust and fear of disease-relevant and irrelevant animals. Ninety-seven participants (15–19 years old) rated their fear and disgust at 25 colorful pictures of disease-relevant and disease-irrelevant invertebrates. Consistent with previous work, we found that participants reported greater fear and disgust of disease-relevant invertebrates relative to disease-irrelevant invertebrates. Better perceived health correlated with lower fear of disease-relevant invertebrates. Sensitivity to disgust correlated with reported antiparasite behaviors. Contrary to expectations, we found a positive correlation between antiparasite behavior and reported health, which suggests that antiparasite behavior influences perceived health (but not vice versa), and we found that males perform more antiparasite behaviors than females. These results support the idea that disgust and fear of disease-relevant objects are adaptive emotions that prevent contact with contagious objects, especially in individuals with low perceived health.     

Young Tennis Players’ Competitive Task Involvement and Performance: The Role of Goal Orientations,Contextual Motivational Climate,And Coach-Initiated Motivational Climate

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of situational and dispositional factors in contributing to competitive task involvement and performance in young tennis players. One hundred fifty-one adolescent tennis players and their coaches participated in the study. Participants responded to instruments measuring pre-game dispositional goal orientations and perceptions of the motivational climate and post-game task involvement in the competition by assessing concentration, loss of self-consciousness, and autotelic experience, perceptions of coach-initiated motivational climate in competition, and self-evaluation of game performance. In addition, coaches evaluated the players’ performance. Results showed that task involvement was predicted by players’ perceptions of a coach-initiated learning motivational climate in competition. Loss of self-consciousness was predicted by the players’ perceptions of a coach-initiated performance climate in competition. Finally, coaches’ and players’ assessment of performance were predicted by autotelic experience, concentration, and by perception of coach-initiated learning and performance orientation in competition.     

Alcohol increases hypnotic susceptibility

One approach to hypnosis suggests that for hypnotic experience to occur frontal lobe activity must be attenuated. For example, cold control theory posits that a lack of awareness of intentions is responsible for the experience of involuntariness and/or the subjective reality of hypnotic suggestions. The mid-dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex and the ACC are candidate regions for such awareness. Alcohol impairs frontal lobe executive function. This study examined whether alcohol affects hypnotisability. We administered 0.8 mg/kg of alcohol or a placebo to 32 medium susceptible participants. They were subsequently hypnotised and given hypnotic suggestions. All participants believed they had received some alcohol. Participants in the alcohol condition were more susceptible to hypnotic suggestions than participants in the placebo condition. Impaired frontal lobe activity facilitates hypnotic responding, which supports theories postulating that attenuation of executive function facilitates hypnotic response, and contradicts theories postulating that hypnotic response involves enhanced inhibitory, attentional or other executive function.     

Egg arrangement in avian clutches covaries with the rejection of foreign eggs

In birds, the colour, maculation, shape, and size of their eggs play critical roles in discrimination of foreign eggs in the clutch. So far, however, no study has examined the role of egg arrangement within a clutch on host rejection responses. We predicted that individual females which maintain consistent egg arrangements within their clutch would be better able to detect and reject foreign eggs than females without a consistent egg arrangement (i.e. whose eggs change positions more often across incubation). We tested this “egg arrangement hypothesis” in blackbirds (Turdus merula) and song thrush (T. philomelos). Both species are suitable candidates for research on egg rejection, because they show high inter-individual variation and individual repeatability in egg rejection responses. As predicted, using our custom-defined metrics of egg arrangement, rejecter females’ clutches showed significantly more consistent patterns in egg arrangement than acceptor females’ clutches. Only parameters related to blunt pole showed consistent differences between rejecters and acceptors. This finding makes biological sense because it is already known that song thrush use blunt pole cues to reject foreign eggs. We propose that a disturbance of the original egg arrangement pattern by the laying parasite may alert host females that maintain a consistent egg arrangement to the risk of having been parasitized. Once alerted, these hosts may shift their discrimination thresholds to be more restrictive so as to reject a foreign egg with higher probability. Future studies will benefit from experimentally testing whether these two and other parasitized rejecter host species may rely on the use of consistent egg arrangements as a component of their anti-parasitic defence mechanisms.     

Buddhism as a value source in the course of new identity and lifestyle formation in the Czech Republic

This study is focused on cultural phenomena of contemporary Europe: the creation of a new religious identity without cultural precedent in European cultural history. It will concentrate on non-Asian Buddhist converts, who have adopted religious world views different from those of their ethnic heritage and the mainstream culture they live in and who use Buddhism as the value-source for their children's upbringing. The parents who, to a certain degree, master Buddhist practice and are attached to this particular religious culture, accumulate a specific religious capital which develops when there are higher levels of religious participation, knowledge and experience, including social networks. The aim of my study is to illustrate how accumulated religious capital and value models affect parental choice regarding children's education. How are these values transmitted within the families of different Buddhist streams? What is the role of the local Buddhist community in family life?     

Identification and Small Sample Estimation of Thurstone's Unrestricted Model for Paired Comparisons Data

The interpretation of a Thurstonian model for paired comparisons where the utilities' covariance matrix is unrestricted proved to be difficult due to the comparative nature of the data. We show that under a suitable constraint the utilities' correlation matrix can be estimated, yielding a readily interpretable solution. This set of identification constraints can recover any true utilities' covariance matrix, but it is not unique. Indeed, we show how to transform the estimated correlation matrix into alternative correlation matrices that are equally consistent with the data but may be more consistent with substantive theory. Also, we show how researchers can investigate the sample size needed to estimate a particular model by exploiting the simulation capabilities of a popular structural equation modeling statistical package.     

Self-deception and self-knowledge

The aim of this paper is to provide an account of a certain variety of self-deception based on a model of self-knowledge. According to this model, one thinks that one has a belief on the basis of one’s grounds for that belief. If this model is correct, then our thoughts about which beliefs we have should be in accordance with our grounds for those beliefs. I suggest that the relevant variety of self-deception is a failure of self-knowledge wherein the subject violates this epistemic obligation. I argue that construing this type of self-deception as a failure of self-knowledge explains two important aspects of it: The tension that we observe between the subject’s speech and her actions, and our inclination to hold the subject responsible for her condition. I compare this proposal with two other approaches to self-deception in the literature; intentionalism and motivationalism. Intentionalism explains the two aspects of self-deception but it runs into the so-called ‘paradoxes’ of self-deception. Motivationalism avoids those paradoxes but it cannot explain the two aspects of self-deception.     

Functional Mobility in a Divided Attention Task in Older Adults With Cognitive Impairment

ABSTRACT. Motor disorders may occur in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and at early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD), particularly under divided attention conditions. We examined functional mobility in 104 older adults (42 with MCI, 26 with mild AD, and 36 cognitively healthy) using the Timed Up and Go test (TUG) under 4 experimental conditions: TUG single task, TUG plus a cognitive task, TUG plus a manual task, and TUG plus a cognitive and a manual task. Statistically significant differences in mean time of execution were found in all four experimental conditions when comparing MCI and controls (p < .001), and when comparing MCI and AD patients (p < .05). Receiver-operating characteristic curve analyses showed that all four testing conditions could differentiate the three groups (area under the curve > .8, p < .001 for MCI vs. controls; area under the curve > .7, p < .001 for MCI vs. AD). The authors conclude that functional motor deficits occurring in MCI can be assessed by the TUG test, in single or dual task modality.     

Altered sleep in Borderline Personality Disorder in relation to the core dimensions of psychopathology

The aim of the study was to review the literature regarding sleep disturbances in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and to relate the reported sleep alterations to the underlying core dimensions of BPD pathology. We present a qualitative and theoretical review regarding the empirical studies that investigated objective and subjective sleep quality in BPD and in different psychiatric conditions showing high co‐morbidity with this disorder. We show that disturbed sleep including sleep fragmentation, alterations in Slow Wave Sleep and REM sleep, and dysphoric dreaming are prevalent symptoms in BPD. We provide a framework relating the specific sleep alterations to the core dimensions of BPD pathology in order to clarify the inconsistencies of the different findings. The specific sleep disturbances in BPD seem to be related to different dimensions of psychopathological functioning and may have detrimental consequences on waking affect and cognition. Investigating disturbed sleep in BPD in relation to waking symptoms and underlying neural functioning would shed more light on the nature of this complex disorder. Moreover, a stronger emphasis on sleep disturbances would enrich the treatment protocols of BPD.