The relationship between responsiveness to social and monetary rewards and ADHD symptoms

Alterations in reward processing are frequently reported in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). One important factor affecting reward processing is the quality of reward as social and monetary rewards are processed by different neural networks. However, the effect of reward type on reward processing in ADHD has not been extensively studied. Hence, in the current study, an exploratory research was conducted to investigate the effect of reward type (i.e., social or monetary) on different phases of reward processing. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) during a spatial attention paradigm in which cues heralded availability and type of the upcoming reward and feedbacks informed about the reward earned. Thirty-nine (19 males) healthy individuals (age range: 19-27 years) participated in the study. ADHD symptoms were assessed by using ADHD self-report scale (ASRS). Our results revealed a consistent negative correlation between the hyperactivity subscale of ASRS and almost all social-feedback related ERPs (P2, P3, and FRN). ERP amplitudes after social feedbacks were less positive for P2 and P3 and more negative for FRN for individuals with greater hyperactivity levels. Our findings suggest that hyporesponsiveness to social feedbacks may be associated with hyperactivity. However, the results have to be confirmed with clinical populations.     

Codes of Commitment to Crime and Resistance: Determining Social and Cultural Factors over the Behaviors of Italian Mafia Women

This article categorizes thirty-three women in four main Italian Mafia groups and explores social and cultural behaviors of these women. This study introduces the feminist theory of belief and action. The theoretical inquiry investigates the sometimes conflicting behaviors of women when they are subject to systematic oppression. I argue that there is a cultural polarization among the categorized sub-groups. Conservative radicals give their support to the Mafia while defectors and rebels resist the Mafia. After testing the theory, I assert that emancipation of women depends on the strength of their beliefs to perform actions against the Mafiosi culture.     

A Process-Ontological Account of Work

This essay offers a process-ontological account of work, addressing two challenges in particular. First, I try to show that even though the phenomenon of work is extremely diverse, all occurrences to which the word ‘work’ correctly applies — according to the current semantic intuitions of the relevant linguistic community — share the feature of being: the creation of something of value. Second, guided by this initial conceptual delineation of the phenomenon, I argue that traditional ontology would face fundamental difficulties in giving an ontological analysis of work, which can be surmounted in a Whiteheadian framework. I take Whitehead's analysis of an actual occasion as a model for an analysis of work that explains how toil (exertion of effort) can result in the accomplishment of a desired end. On this basis of this explanatory model the complex dynamicity that we experience in work as the creation of something of value can be accounted for in the well-defined terms of an ontological theory.     

Prospects for Religious Studies in Turkey

This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in Teaching Theology and Religion 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of the curriculum, student learning goals, and pedagogical techniques employed in their courses. Wendy Wiseman taught Humanities courses at Ozyegin University in Istanbul from 2008‐2013, taught Religious Studies at Indiana University the following year, and returned to Istanbul to teach at Beykent University. Burak Kesgin is Chair of Sociology at Beykent University, with a focus on political economy and sociology of religion.     

Personality or Role? Comparisons of Turkish Leaders Across Different Institutional Positions

Personality approaches to politics are often criticized for not examining the effect that institutional role constraints have on individual beliefs and preferences. When leaders appear to change their stance when they change roles, it is assumed that roles have a determining influence. Modern personality theory and contemporary sociological role theory, however, view the effects of roles as interacting with agents’ personalities. In this article, we investigate this question by comparing personality profiles of three Turkish leaders (Özal, Demirel, and Gül) during their tenure as prime minister and during their subsequent time as president. For Gül, we perform an additional comparison during his time as foreign minister. The personality profiles are in the form of quantitative scores generated from machine‐coded content analysis of leaders’ words using the Leadership Trait Analysis method. We hypothesize that different leaders will be more susceptible to changing role contexts, depending on core personality traits, and that different traits are more likely to change with new roles. Overall, our results suggest that leaders’ traits are fairly resistant to changes across roles and that task orientation is the most likely trait to change as leaders adapt to different role demands and expectations. This study makes a contribution to our understanding of the interaction between personality and political contexts by offering specific theoretically derived hypotheses and by empirically and statistically examining a preliminary set of expectations that could be applied more broadly to other leaders.     

Event rate and reaction time performance in ADHD: Testing predictions from the state regulation deficit hypothesis using an ex-Gaussian model

According to the state regulation deficit (SRD) account, ADHD is associated with a problem using effort to maintain an optimal activation state under demanding task settings such as very fast or very slow event rates. This leads to a prediction of disrupted performance at event rate extremes reflected in higher Gaussian response variability that is a putative marker of activation during motor preparation. In the current study, we tested this hypothesis using ex-Gaussian modeling, which distinguishes Gaussian from non-Gaussian variability. Twenty-five children with ADHD and 29 typically developing controls performed a simple Go/No-Go task under four different event-rate conditions. There was an accentuated quadratic relationship between event rate and Gaussian variability in the ADHD group compared to the controls. The children with ADHD had greater Gaussian variability at very fast and very slow event rates but not at moderate event rates. The results provide evidence for the SRD account of ADHD. However, given that this effect did not explain all group differences (some of which were independent of event rate) other cognitive and/or motivational processes are also likely implicated in ADHD performance deficits.