Neuropsychological effects of stress on social phobia with and without comorbid depression

BACKGROUND: The influence of stress on neuropsychological functioning was assessed in socially phobic (SP), comorbid socially phobic/major depression (CM), and asymptomatic control subjects (AC) under baseline and stressor conditions. METHODS: Subjects were 33 clinically diagnosed undergraduates aged 18 to 41 years. Neuropsychological measures included the Trail Making Test, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), Spatial Span, and Digit Span administered during a baseline condition and a psychosocial stress condition (videotaping). RESULTS: Spatial Span scores were reduced for SP during stress, improved for AC, and showed no change for CM. TMT B times showed an interaction effect, with completion time improving significantly less for SP than for AC and CM during stress. Analyses of the normative data for WCST total errors indicated that AC and CM improved significantly during stress, while SP performance declined during stress. CONCLUSIONS: The present findings suggest that comorbid depressed versus non-depressed SP subjects respond uniquely to stress in terms of their neuropsychological functioning and self-reported mood and experiences; generalized social phobia may be associated with spatial working memory disturbance during social stress. Therefore, situations involving potential social and personal evaluation (e.g., examinations or presentations) may have a significant impact on the neuropsychological functioning of SP individuals.     

Making Men of Steel: Superhero Exposure and the Development of Hegemonic Masculinity in Children

Sex Roles - Superheroes are extremely popular among children, adolescents, and adults in the United States (and worldwide). However, there is little research on the impact of superhero exposure on...     

Satisfied Pigs and Dissatisfied Philosophers: Schlesinger on the Problem of Evil

I argue that George Schlesinger's proposed solution to the problem of evil fails because: (1) the degree of desirability of state of a being is not properly regarded as a trade-off between happiness on the one hand and potential on the other; (2) degree of desirability of state is not capable of infinite increase; (3) there is no hierarchy of possible beings, but at most an ordering of such beings in terms of preferences; (4) the idea of such a hierarchy is anyway morally repulsive. Schlesinger is right that the problem of evil disappears, but what makes it vanish is a recognition of the limits of our concepts of satisfaction and happiness, not the incoherent claim that satisfaction or happiness is capable of unlimited increase.