Attenuation of Hippocampal 11beta-Hydroxysteroid Dehydrogenase Type 1 by Chronic Psychosocial Stress in the Tree Shrew

11beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11beta-HSD-1) catalyses the interconversion of active cortisol and corticosterone with inert cortisone and 11-dehydrocorticosterone, thus regulating glucocorticoid access to intracellular receptors. In rats, chronic glucocorticoid excess or stress increases 11beta-HSD-1 in the hippocampus, producing suggestions that it may attenuate the deleterious effects of chronic glucocorticoid excess. However, 11beta-HSD-1 predominantly catalyses 11beta-reduction in the intact liver and hippocampal cells, thus regenerating active glucocorticoids from inert substrate. We studied 11beta-HSD activity in the tissues of male tree shrews following 28 days of sustained psychosocial stress or exogenous administration of cortisol. In the hippocampus, chronic psychosocial stress attenuated 11-HSD-1 activity (69 +/- 9% of control), whereas cortisol alone had no effect. In the liver, both chronic stress and cortisol administration decreased 11beta-HSD-1 activity (47 +/- 11% and 49 +/- 4% fall, resp.). Attenuation of 11beta-HSD-1 within tissues may reflect a homeostatic mechanism designed to minimise the adverse effects of prolonged stress and/or glucocorticoid excess.     

Exploring the Evocation of Verbal Perspective Taking Using a Linguistic Relational Triangulation Questionnaire (RTQ-MST9)

The Psychological Record - The present article exhibits the use of a linguistic multiple-choice questionnaire format for evoking relational triangulation performances while examining whether...     

Semantic false memories in the form of derived relational intrusions following training

Contemporary behavior analytic research is making headway in characterizing memory phenomena that typically have been characterized by cognitive models, and the current study extends this development by producing "false memories" in the form of functional equivalence responding. A match-to-sample training procedure was administered in order to encourage participants to treat groups of unrelated English words as being interchangeable. Following training, participants were presented with a list of words from within one of the groups for a free recall test and a recognition test. Results showed that participants were more likely to falsely recall and recognize words that had been assigned to the same group as the list words during prior training, relative to words not assigned to the same group and relative to words that co-occurred with list words. These results indicate that semantic relatedness can be experimentally manipulated in order to produce specific false memories.     

Deictic Relational Frames and Relational Triangulation: An Open Letter in Response to Kavanagh,Barnes-Holmes,and Barnes-Holmes (2020)

The Psychological Record - Kavanagh et al. (2020) aimed to provide a comprehensive review of the perspective taking literature, including how the topic has been addressed by researchers of...     

Support Groups for Suicide Survivors: Results of a Survey of Group Leaders

To update and expand Rubey and McIntosh's (1996) survivors of suicide support groups report, SPAN USA completed a survey of U.S. support group leaders (n = 100; 24% completion). There are now more survivor groups (from 280 to 417), and the majority of groups now have a survivor leader (78% vs. 25%). Groups continue to be small (88% < 10 members per session) and meet on a monthly basis (55%). Sharing continues to be a universal experience in groups, which tend to be open‐ended (85%). Current groups are newer, and more operate without a sponsor. Further research is needed to examine group member perspectives and effectiveness of groups.     

Youth Media Lifestyles

In this article, the concept of “media lifestyles” is adopted in order to develop a comprehensive approach toward youth engagement in communication media. We explore how 503 Dutch eighth grade students with full access to new technology combine a broad range of media by focusing on their engagement with media while taking various contexts of use into account. Four different media lifestyles of media omnivores, networkers, gamers, and low‐frequency users are described. Furthermore, we show how the methodology we used is able to provide more insight into how the distinguished media lifestyles were codetermined by particular media, functions and social contexts. Finally, the implications for the Uses & Gratifications theory are discussed.     

Contextual influence over deriving others' true beliefs using a relational triangulation perspective‐taking protocol (RT‐PTP‐M1)

This paper introduces the relational triangulation framework as a functional contextual expansion of the established Relational Frame Theory (Hayes, Barnes‐Holmes, & Roche, 2001) account of perspective‐taking. Initial support for the new framework is provided through data collected with a novel relational triangulation perspective‐taking protocol configured in the present study to show contextual influence over deriving true belief in others following the direct training of a “seeing leads to knowing” repertoire (Leslie & Frith, 1988). Eight verbally competent adults were directly trained to make operant discriminations on a first set of target stimuli (i.e., the identities of three distinct figurines) and then directly trained to make contextually controlled deictic pointing responses to a second set of target stimuli (i.e., to the relative location of a target beacon according to the signaled spatial perspective of the self vs. two others). The test for derivation was whether the stimuli that had directly acquired contextual control over deictic perspective‐taking during training would spontaneously exert contextual control over figurine discrimination relative to the spatial perspective of the two others. That is, passing the test for derivation required participants to infer that the others would “report what they were seeing” the same way that the self would if the self were in their position, suggesting coordination of the self and others. Seven of the eight participants exhibited the intended derivation of the others' “true beliefs,” confirming successful relational triangulation perspective‐taking protocol configuration for this purpose.     

Derived false memories using a respondent‐type (ReT) procedure

The present investigation used a respondent‐type (ReT) training procedure to generate derived false memories. A one‐to‐many ReT training procedure was implemented in order to establish two stimulus equivalence classes, each consisting of one shape and 24 random words (i.e., Class 1 and Class 2). A partial test for stimulus equivalence with a subset of stimuli from each class followed. Failing an equivalence test resulted in additional ReT training and equivalence testing on new subsets of stimuli. After passing an equivalence test, participants were presented with 12 study‐list words from Class 1 for memorization, followed by a distraction task. Finally, free recall and recognition tests for the study‐list words were implemented. False recall and false recognition were more frequent for nonstudied Class 1 words than for nonstudied Class 2 words. These derived false‐memory effects were more pronounced among those participants exhibiting more training and testing cycles and higher accuracy on stimulus equivalence tests. Furthermore, false recall and false remembering of nonstudied Class 1 words were more frequent for words that had been equivalence‐tested than for words that had not been equivalence‐tested. These results show how responses to contiguous stimuli could produce derived false memories and also highlight the role played by the equivalence test in increasing their emergence.