Utility of virtual reality environments to examine physiological reactivity and subjective distress in adults who stutter

PurposeVirtual reality environments (VREs) allow for immersion in speaking environments that mimic real-life interactions while maintaining researcher control. VREs have been used successfully to engender arousal in other disorders. The purpose of this study was to investigate the utility of virtual reality environments to examine physiological reactivity and subjective ratings of distress in persons who stutter (PWS).MethodSubjective and objective measures of arousal were collected from 10 PWS during four-minute speeches to a virtual audience and to a virtual empty room.ResultsStuttering frequency and physiological measures (skin conductance level and heart rate) did not differ across speaking conditions, but subjective ratings of distress were significantly higher in the virtual audience condition compared to the virtual empty room.ConclusionVREs have utility in elevating subjective ratings of distress in PWS. VREs have the potential to be useful tools for practicing treatment targets in a safe, controlled, and systematic manner.     

Neuropsychological Features of Lesion-related Epilepsy in Adults: An Overview

Lesional epilepsy is thought to be a direct consequence of focal brain lesions of dysgenetic, neoplastic, vascular, or traumatic origin. It has been estimated that at least half of all epilepsies are the result of such lesions. The current discussion includes an overview of the cognitive and behavioral presentations in adults with epilepsy secondary to focal pathology. The neuropsychological presentation in this population is influenced by many factors, including the location and nature of the underlying lesion, seizure characteristics, the effects of treatment, and patient variables. Few studies attempt to disentangle the specific contributions of these variables to cognitive performance. However, where available studies examining the separable effects of seizure-related variables on cognitive functioning in individuals with lesional epilepsy are also reviewed. This overview includes a discussion of focal malformations of cortical and vascular development and select foreign tissue and acquired lesions.     

Traits, personal strivings and well-being

Traits and motivational units are two elements of widely acknowledged relevance in personality psychology. In fact, some multi-level models have stressed the differences between traits, which are the most generic and decontextualized units of analysis, and middle-level units, which are more closely related to motivational processes and more contextualized in time, space or specific roles. Personal strivings, which are defined as what people typically intend to do, hold a prominent place among middle-level units. Nevertheless, surprisingly little is still known about the relationship between traits and striving dimensions; likewise, little is known about the inter-relationships between traits, strivings and well-being. In this study, we used the NEO-PI-R, Personal Striving Assessment Packet (PSAP) and various well-being measures (viz., positive affect, negative affect, satisfaction with life and purpose in life) on a sample of 405 adults. We found Neuroticism and Extraversion to be related to perceived efficacy in the struggle for strivings; Extraversion, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness to relate to striving intensity dimensions, and a variety of striving dimensions to be significantly related to well-being. A joint analysis of traits, strivings and well-being revealed that traits may indirectly affect well-being via specific striving dimensions, although the mediational effects are slight and both traits and strivings appear to make separate significant contributions to the prediction of well-being. Broadly speaking, the results suggest that units of analysis originating from rather disparate traditions should be integrated in order to develop a consilient view of personality levels.     

Predicting the psychological health of older adults: Interaction of age-based rejection sensitivity and discriminative facility

We hypothesize that older adults who anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely react to social rejection because of their old age (i.e., have high age-based rejection sensitivity) are vulnerable to depression and poor social functioning. We further hypothesize that the association between age-based rejection sensitivity and poor psychological health would be attenuated among older adults who possess adequate cognitive coping ability—they can discern and respond discriminatively to subtle variations in situational demands (i.e., have high discriminative facility). Based on the results of a focus group study, we constructed an age-based rejection sensitivity measure, which predicts greater depression, poorer social functioning, greater loneliness, and lower life satisfaction among individuals in late adulthood. As hypothesized, the relationship between age-based rejection sensitivity and poor psychological health was weaker among older adults with high (vs. low) discriminative facility.     

Resilience is a good predictor of hopelessness even after accounting for stressful life events, mood and personality (NEO-PI-R)

A better understanding of the relation between protection and vulnerability may advance our understanding of mental health. Therefore the purpose of this study was to examine the incremental validity of the Resilience Scale for Adults (RSA) as a predictor for level of hopelessness. A healthy sample (N = 532) completed the Beck Hopelessness Scale, a list of Stressful Life Events (SLE), the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 (HSCL-25), NEO-PI-R (NEO Personality Inventory Revised) and the RSA. The relations between the variables were explored with correlations and multiple hierarchical regression analyses. The results indicated that the RSA measures important protective factors that significantly predict lower levels of hopelessness even when accounting for age, gender, SLE, HSCL-25 and NEO-PI-R. This study supports the notion that the protective resilience factors in the RSA have unique contributions over and above established constructs of stressful life events, depressive and anxiety symptoms and personality in predicting hopelessness, supporting the incremental validity of the RSA.     

Sensitivity to spacing changes in faces and nonface objects in preschool-aged children and adults

Sensitivity to variations in the spacing of features in faces and a class of nonface objects (i.e., frontal images of cars) was tested in 3- and 4-year-old children and adults using a delayed or simultaneous two-alternative forced choice matching-to-sample task. In the adults, detection of spacing information was robust against exemplar differences for faces but varied across exemplars for cars (Experiment 1A). The 4-year-olds performed above chance in both face and car discrimination even when differences in spacing were very small (within ±1.6 standard deviations [SDs]) and the task involved memory components (Experiment 1B), and the same was true for the 3-year-olds when tested with larger spacing changes (within ±2.5 SDs) in a task that posed no memory demands (Experiment 2). An advantage in the discrimination of faces over cars was found at 4 years of age, but only when spacing cues were made more readily available (within ±2.5 SDs). Results demonstrate that the ability to discriminate objects based on feature spacing (i.e., sensitivity to second-order information) is present at 3 years of age and becomes more pronounced for faces than cars by 4 years of age.     

Developmental changes in face recognition during childhood: Evidence from upright and inverted faces

Adults are experts at recognizing faces but there is controversy about how this ability develops with age. We assessed 6- to 12-year-olds and adults using a digitized version of the Benton Face Recognition Test, a sensitive tool for assessing face perception abilities. Children's response times for correct responses did not decrease between ages 6 and 12, for either upright or inverted faces, but were significantly longer than those of adults for both face types. Accuracy improved between ages 6 and 12, significantly more for upright than inverted faces. Inverted face recognition improved slowly until late childhood, whereas there was a large improvement in upright face recognition between ages 6 and 8, with a further enhancement after age 12. These results provide further evidence that during childhood face processing undergoes protracted development and becomes increasingly tuned to upright faces.     

The role of historical intuitions in children's and adults' naming of artifacts

It is commonly assumed that artifacts are named solely on the basis of properties they currently possess; in particular, their appearance and function. The experiments presented here explore the alternative proposal that the history of an artifact plays some role in how it is named. In three experiments, children between the ages of 4 and 9 years and adults were presented with familiar artifacts whose appearance and function were then radically altered. Participants were tested as to whether they believed that the modified objects were still members of the artifact kind. Results indicate that object history becomes increasingly important over the course of development.     

Reciprocal Relations between Emerging Adults’ Representations of Relationships with Mothers,Fathers, and Romantic Partners

This study employed a fully cross-lagged, longitudinal model to examine reciprocal relations between representations of relationships with parents and romantic partners at ages 20 and 22. Representations were assessed with continuous measures of dismissing/avoidant and preoccupied relationship styles across the attachment and affiliation systems for parents, and across the attachment, affiliation, and caregiving systems for romantic partners. Earlier relationships with both mothers and fathers independently predicted changes in later views of romantic relationships, and earlier romantic relationships predicted changes in later views of relationships with both mothers and fathers. This evidence of a developmental system of interconnected representations across relationships has theoretical implications about the nature of working models, and practical implications alerting parents to the onset of dating as a potentially fertile context for changes in their relationships with children.