Conscious awareness of action potentiates sensorimotor learning

Many everyday skills are unconsciously learned through repetitions of the same behaviour by binding independent motor acts into unified sets of actions. However, our ability to be consciously aware of producing newly and highly trained motor skills raises the question of the role played by conscious awareness of action upon skill acquisition. In this study we strengthened conscious awareness of self-produced sequential finger movements by way of asking participants to judge their performance in terms of maximal fluency after each trial. Control conditions in which participants did not make any judgment or performance-unrelated judgments were also included. Findings indicate that conscious awareness of action, enhanced via subjective appraisal of motor efficiency, potentiates sensorimotor learning and skilful motor production in optimising the processing and sequencing of action units, as compared to the control groups. The current work lends support to the claim that the learning and skilful expression of sensorimotor behaviours might be grounded upon our ability to be consciously aware of our own motor capability and efficiency.     

When to cooperate and when to compete: Emotional intelligence in interpersonal decision-making

This study examined the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI), assessed with an ability test, and interpersonal decision-making using the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game (PDG). Previous research found that individuals who self-report high EI tend to cooperate more than others in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. We relativize these findings by showing that individuals scoring high on an ability measure of EI choose effective strategies to deal with three different PDG conditions during real interactions. This suggests that emotionally intelligent individuals are not rigidly predisposed to cooperate regardless of others’ behavior. Instead, EI is associated with the capacity to respond flexibly to others’ strategies and to the interaction context in order to maximize long-term gains – even when this means competing rather than cooperating.     

Anxiety and speaking in people who stutter: An investigation using the emotional Stroop task

People with anxiety disorders show an attentional bias towards threat or negative emotion words. This exploratory study examined whether people who stutter (PWS), who can be anxious when speaking, show similar bias and whether reactions to threat words also influence speech motor planning and execution. Comparisons were made between 31 PWS and 31 fluent controls in a modified emotional Stroop task where, depending on a visual cue, participants named the colour of threat and neutral words at either a normal or fast articulation rate. In a manual version of the same task participants pressed the corresponding colour button with either a long or short duration. PWS but not controls were slower to respond to threat words than neutral words, however, this emotionality effect was only evident for verbal responding. Emotionality did not interact with speech rate, but the size of the emotionality effect among PWS did correlate with frequency of stuttering. Results suggest PWS show an attentional bias to threat words similar to that found in people with anxiety disorder. In addition, this bias appears to be contingent on engaging the speech production system as a response modality. No evidence was found to indicate that emotional reactivity during the Stroop task constrains or destabilises, perhaps via arousal mechanisms, speech motor adjustment or execution for PWS.Educational objectives: The reader will be able to: (1) explain the importance of cognitive aspects of anxiety, such as attentional biases, in the possible cause and/or maintenance of anxiety in people who stutter, (2) explain how the emotional Stroop task can be used as a measure of attentional bias to threat information, and (3) evaluate the findings with respect to the relationship between attentional bias to threat information and speech production in people who stutter.     

Validación transcultural de una escala de clima emocional para ámbitos organizacionales penitenciarios

Assuming that the perception of emotional climate results in the social interaction of the individual with environmental events, this study is based on the need for a tool to assess the climate in a stressful environment like prisons. The objective is to adapt an emotional climate scale, whilst establishing the factors that shape it and their relationship to the level of burn-out in prison workers in their work, and seeking to determine the degree of stability at a transcultural level. The participants were 728 prison workers in Colombia (N = 506, 369 men and 137 women) and in Spain (N = 222, 164 males and 58 females), with ages ranging from 18 to 60 years, and were mainly prison guards. The tools used were the CEP- Organizational Emotional Climate in Prisons (Ruiz, 2007a, 2007b) and the Burnout Inventory-MBI by Maslach and Jackson (1981). Using confirmatory factor analysis, the results show a two-factor structure: a positive and negative climate, offering good consistency, both for subscales and global scale, as evaluated in both prison climates, although with significant differences at the transcultural level. The stress variable exhibit differential convergence with respect to each of the contexts evaluated, and identify differential contextual variables. The results are discussed at the level of involvement for a better understanding of the bifactorial structure of emotional climate and its implications for future research and intervention level.     

Understanding non-work presenteeism: Relationships between emotional intelligence,boredom, procrastination and job stress

Non-work related presenteeism refers to the behaviour of employees who engage in personal activities instead of work-related activities whilst at work. Currently, limited research exists concerning non-work related presenteeism, despite the suggestion that it can financially impact organisations more than absenteeism. The aim of the present study was to examine whether any significant relationships existed between non-work related presenteeism and four theoretically linked psychological variables: emotional intelligence (EI), job stress, boredom, and procrastination. Data was collected via an online questionnaire. A sample of 57 male and 127 female full-time employees across several industries and organisations completed the surveys. As hypothesised, a significant relationship was observed between non-work related presenteeism and EI (r = −0.25), boredom (r = 0.33) and procrastination (r = 0.26). Self-reported levels of job stress, however, were not significantly related to non-work related presenteeism. These results suggest that developing EI and improving job-related engagement may decrease non-work presenteeism.     

THE IMAGO DEI AS A WORK IN PROGRESS: A PERSPECTIVE FROM PALEOANTHROPOLOGY

This article considers the imago Dei from the perspective of paleoanthropology. We identify structural, functional, and relational elements of the imago Dei that emerged mosaically during human evolution. Humans are unique in their ability to relate to each other and to God, and in their membership of cultural communities where shared attention, the transmission of moral norms, and symbolic behavior are important elements. We discuss similarities between our approach and the concept of theosis adopted in the Eastern Orthodox Church.     

应急救援团队的个体与团队情境意识：社会网络关系的调节作用

采用地震后建筑物倒塌,被困人员转运的任务情景,以99名消防指挥系大四学员为被试,研究个体情境意识和团队情境意识的关系,以及社会网络关系中的网络密度和结构洞指标在其中的调节作用。结果表明：(1)个体情境意识与团队情境意识不相关,即团队情境意识不是个体情境意识的简单相加;(2)共享情境意识对团队情境意识有负向影响：个体情境意识之间的差异越大,团队情境意识就越高;(3)对于网络密度较大的团队,结构洞对共享情境意识和团队情境意识的关系起到正向调节的作用;(4)对于网络密度较小的团队,结构洞对共享情境意识和团队情境意识的关系起到负向调节的作用。     

Profile Analysis of Psychological Symptoms Associated With Misophonia: A Community Sample

Misophonia is characterized by extreme aversive reactions to certain classes of sounds. It has recently been recognized as a condition associated with significant disability. Research has begun to evaluate psychopathological correlates of misophonia. This study sought to identify profiles of psychopathology that characterize misophonia in a large community sample. A total of N = 628 adult participants completed a battery of measures assessing anxiety and anxiety sensitivity, depression, stress responses, anger, dissociative experiences, obsessive-compulsive symptoms and beliefs, distress tolerance, bodily perceptions, as well as misophonia severity. Profile Analysis via Multidimensional Scaling (PAMS) was employed to evaluate profiles associated with elevated misophonia and those without symptoms. Three profiles were extracted. The first two accounted for 70% total variance and did not show distinctions between groups. The third profile accounted for 11% total variance, and showed that misophonia is associated with lower obsessive-compulsive symptoms for neutralizing, obsessions generally, and washing compared to those not endorsing misophonia, and higher levels of obsessive-compulsive symptoms associated with ordering and harm avoidance. This third profile extracted also showed significant differences between those with and without misophonia on the scale assessing physical concerns (that is, sensitivity to interoceptive sensations) as assessed with the ASI-3. Further research is called for involving diagnostic interviewing and experimental methods to clarify these putative mechanisms associated with misophonia.     

La gestion des émotions et ses déficits,chez les personnes atteintes de douleur chronique : une revue systématisée des études relatives à l’alexithymie, à l’intelligence émotionnelle, à la régulation émotionnelle et au coping

The goal of this review is to synthesize the data of scientific literature on emotional management and its deficits in chronic pain. We used terms referenced in databases and MesH terms (of the United States National Library of Medicine) to perform a literature search in a powerful online search engine (EBSCOhost research databases). Four hundred and forty-nine papers, taken from international reviews and published of 1994 (because it is in the middle of the 1990s that this theme begins to be handle) to the end of January, 2015, are identified by a total 5 electronic databases with predefined keywords about emotions and chronic pain. Forty-six of which met the inclusion criteria, according to their title, their summary and their complete text. The findings suggest that some emotional management strategies and its deficits can maintain a vicious circle of negative emotional states with physiological and psychopathological consequences. Several studies show that alexithymia, emotional ambivalence and emotional suppression have a deleterious impact on pain, emotional distress (depression, anxiety) and disability. In spite of some contradictions concerning the nature of this effect (sensory or affective pain intensity or even duration of pain), it seems that alexithymia is a major variable implied in chronic pain. Inversely, experiential acceptance has a beneficial effect on psychological distress (depression, anxiety and stress). Emotional disclosure (of stressful or traumatic events) can decrease pain intensity but not disability and mental health. Likewise, emotional expression in daily life seems beneficial, but when the expression of the positive and negative feelings are distinguished, emotional expression of negative feelings increases pain, disability and distress. The whole of these findings emphasize the need to further research about emotional management in chronic non-cancer pain. It is necessary to identify and control the source of potential bias. Some hypotheses have been proposed to explain these findings. In the future, it would be interesting to use a multifactorial approach to investigate the interactions between various processes of emotional management in chronic pain patients.