Trait anxiety and dynamic adjustments in conflict processing

Recently, it has been assumed that high- and low-trait-anxious subjects differ in the way they use fundamental cognitive control mechanisms. The present study was designed to further elucidate this topic by focusing on trial-to-trial adjustments in neuronal correlates of conflict processing. An electroencephalogram was recorded while subjects (N=71) performed a gender discrimination version of the Stroop task. The conflict-related N400 of the ERP was influenced by an interaction between trait anxiety and previous trial context: An additional negative-going deflection in the N400 range was observed when the target—distractor pairing of the directly preceding trial was incongruent, but only in highly anxious subjects. Thus, highly anxious subjects appear to more strongly engage neuronal modules involved in conflict monitoring when previously exposed to a high stimulus-response conflict. These results indicate that trait anxiety is crucially linked to the way the cognitive system dynamically adapts to recent demands.     

Patienten mit einer wahnhaften Depression in der Maßregel nach § 63 StGB

Delinquency of depressed patients numerically plays a minor role in criminal or civil law. Compared with the high prevalence of affective disorders in the general population, the frequency of patients in forensic psychiatric hospitals with the respective disorder as a main diagnosis is low. The spectrum of possible crimes committed by depressed subjects essentially comprises disease-characteristic offences, amongst which cases of extended suicide or attempted suicide are the foremost and most tragic offences. Based on 2 case reports notions of extended suicide as well as questions of forensic assessment are discussed.     

Position Sense Dysfunction Affects Proximal and Distal Arm Joints in Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder

It is unclear, whether proprioceptive dysfunction in developmental coordination disorder (DCD) is localized affecting only specific joints or whether it is generalized affecting proximal and distal joints. Thus, this study assessed position sense acuity at the elbow and wrist in twenty children with DCD (age: 9–11 yrs.) using a joint position matching paradigm. Position sense bias (systematic error) at either joint was not significantly higher in DCD children when compared to typically developing children (TD). However, DCD children exhibited significantly lower position sense precision (random error) than TD children at both elbow and wrist. That is, response reliability to proprioceptive stimuli is altered in DCD. Our findings are consistent with a view that proprioceptive dysfunction in DCD is generalized in nature.     

Disturbed prefrontal and temporal brain function during emotion and cognition interaction in criminal psychopathy

Impaired emotional responsiveness has been revealed as a hallmark of psychopathy. In spite of an increasing database on emotion processing, studies on cognitive function and in particular on the impact of emotion on cognition in psychopathy are rare. We used pictures from the International Affective Picture Set (IAPS) and a Simon Paradigm to address emotion-cognition interaction while functional and structural imaging data were obtained in 12 healthy controls and 10 psychopaths. We found an impaired emotion-cognition interaction in psychopaths that correlated with a changed prefrontal and temporal brain activation. With regard to the temporal cortex, it is shown that structure and function of the right superior temporal gyrus is disturbed in psychopathy, supporting a neurobiological approach to psychopathy, in which structure and function of the right STG may be important.     

Horse sense: social status of horses (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Equus caballus</Emphasis>) affects their likelihood of copying other horses’ behavior

Animals that live in stable social groups need to gather information on their own relative position in the group's social hierarchy, by either directly threatening or by challenging others, or indirectly and in a less perilous manner , by observing interactions among others. Indirect inference of dominance relationships has previously been reported from primates, rats, birds, and fish. Here, we show that domestic horses, Equus caballus, are similarly capable of social cognition. Taking advantage of a specific "following behavior" that horses show towards humans in a riding arena, we investigated whether bystander horses adjust their response to an experimenter according to the observed interaction and their own dominance relationship with the horse whose reaction to the experimenter they had observed before. Horses copied the "following behavior" towards an experimenter after watching a dominant horse following but did not follow after observing a subordinate horse or a horse from another social group doing so. The "following behavior," which horses show towards an experimenter, therefore appears to be affected by the demonstrator's behavior and social status relative to the observer.     

Creating flexible work arrangements through idiosyncratic deals

A survey of 887 employees in a German government agency assessed the antecedents and consequences of idiosyncratic arrangements individual workers negotiated with their supervisors. Work arrangements promoting the individualization of employment conditions, such as part-time work and telecommuting, were positively related to the negotiation of idiosyncratic deals ("i-deals"). Worker personal initiative also had a positive effect on i-deal negotiation. Two types of i-deals were studied: flexibility in hours of work and developmental opportunities. Flexibility i-deals were negatively related and developmental i-deals positively related to work-family conflict and working unpaid overtime. Developmental i-deals were also positively related to increased performance expectations and affective organizational commitment, while flexibility i-deals were unrelated to either.     

Distributed skill functions and the meshing of knowledge structures

The scope of knowledge space theory was extended by bringing into the picture the underlying skills and capabilities that are relevant to solving the problems in a knowledge domain. A major challenge to this approach comes from the need to aggregate distributed information on (partially) overlapping domains and skill sets. The notion of a distributed skill function is introduced for formalizing the integration of several skill functions that represent the assignment of skills to problems. It is shown that their consistency is captured by the meshability of the delineated knowledge structures. This result draws upon a characterization of the meshing of finite or infinite collections of knowledge structures, which extends and generalizes previous results on the binary case. The discussion covers implications for knowledge assessment and for practical applications, such as integrating skill assignments coming from different experts or distributed resources in technology-enhanced learning.     

Von der Triade zum triangulären Raum

The concepts of oedipal triangle and early triangulations emphasize the significance of triadic relational experiences as well as corresponding phantasies for the psycho-sexual development and for mental functioning in psycho-analytic view. The connection of these triadic concepts with a symbolic and cultural framework leads to a fourth pole. It is only through this extension of the triad by a fourth pole to which the triadic scene is relating to that we can speak of a “triangular space” (Britton). By this turn of the existing two-dimensional concepts of triangulation into a three-dimensional space of imagination the experience inside the triad is becoming connected with the outside world. Thus the familiaristic reduction of thinking in the two-dimensional triangle father-mother-child is suspended in favour of a view which makes it possible to describe aspects of therapeutic triangulation more precisely.     

Bewältigung des unerfüllten Kinderwunsches

The article reviews current research in relation to two aspects of involuntary childlessness; firstly, the extent to which involuntary childlessness can be considered a critical life-event and secondly, the short-term effects of childlessness on life-satisfaction and well-being. A study is reported in which 68 middle-aged women (45 to 65 years) who are long term childless because of infertility, are investigated. The study focuses on the extent to which unfilled desire for a child has long term effects on well-being and life-satisfaction. The control group comprised 68 women who did not suffer from fertility problems and became pregnant spontaneously. Life-satisfaction and well-being were assessed using the life-satisfaction questionaire (FLZ; Fahrenberg et al. 2000) and the SCL-90-R (Symptome-Checklist, Derogatis, the German version of Franke 1995). The study shows clearly that psychological well-being is significantly lower in childless middle-aged women compared to women of the same mean age, who have a child. No significant differences were found in social well-being and health. The results support the view that unwanted childlessness may become a chronic stressor. Unintentionally childless middle-aged women do not constitute a clinical group whose need for psychotherapy is urgent. However, the development of specific counselling for women who fail to conceive and those who remain childless in the long term is recommended.     

Testing unidimensionality in polytomous Rasch models

A fundamental assumption of most IRT models is that items measure the same unidimensional latent construct. For the polytomous Rasch model two ways of testing this assumption against specific multidimensional alternatives are discussed. One, a marginal approach assuming a multidimensional parametric latent variable distribution, and, two, a conditional approach with no distributional assumptions about the latent variable. The second approach generalizes the Martin-Löf test for the dichotomous Rasch model in two ways: to polytomous items and to a test against an alternative that may have more than two dimensions. A study on occupational health is used to motivate and illustrate the methods.The authors would like to thank Niels Keiding, Klaus Larsen and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments to a previous version of this paper. This research was supported by a grant from the Danish Research Academy and by a general research grant from Quality Metric, Inc.