On the refractoriness of somesthetic temporal acuity

Preconditioning, with a burst of electrical pulse stimuli elevates the threshold for temporal acuity as measured with a technique requiring the S to detect a short gap in an otherwise regular burst of similar stimuli. Only a small amount of backward inhibition can be observed. The temporal duration of the inhibitory effect (up to 700 msec.) suggests that repetitive after-discharges of second-order afferents in Ike spinal cord may underlie this behavioral measure by actually filling in the intervals which are used by the S to make the judgment. The phenomenon is thus thought to be a disruption of a true temporal judgment rather than one indirectly mediated by an amplitude judgment, and as such it represents a significant datum on the temporal resolving power of time dimensions of neural coding.     

Transfer of newly acquired stimulus valence between identities in dissociative identity disorder (DID)

Patients with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) frequently report episodes of interidentity amnesia, that is amnesia for events experienced by other identities. The goal of the present experiment was to test the implicit transfer of trauma-related information between identities in DID. We hypothesized that whereas declarative information may transfer from one identity to another, the emotional connotation of the memory may be dissociated, especially in the case of negative, trauma-related emotional valence. An evaluative conditioning procedure was combined with an affective priming procedure, both performed by different identities. In the evaluative conditioning procedure, previously neutral stimuli come to refer to a negative or positive connotation. The affective priming procedure was used to test the transfer of this acquired valence to an identity reporting interidentity amnesia. Results indicated activation of stimulus valence in the affective priming task, that is transfer of emotional material between identities.     

Interidentity amnesia for neutral,episodic information in dissociative identity disorder

Interidentity amnesia is considered a hallmark of dissociative identity disorder (DID) in clinical practice. In this study, objective methods of testing episodic memory transfer between identities were used. Tests of both recall (interference paradigm) and recognition were used. A sample of 31 DID patients was included. Additionally, 50 control subjects participated, half functioning as normal controls and the other half simulating interidentity amnesia. Twenty-one patients subjectively reported complete one-way amnesia for the learning episode. However, objectively, neither recall nor recognition scores of patients were different from those of normal controls. It is suggested that clinical models of amnesia in DID may be specified to exclude episodic memory impairments for emotionally neutral material.     

Let's Have Fun Tonight: The Role of Pleasure in Daily Recovery from Work

The present study aims to advance insight into the role of pleasure in the daily effort‐recovery cycle. Specifically, using a within‐individual study design, we examine the associations between the pleasure employees experience during the evening after work and their recovery state that evening and at various points in time during the next workday. We also investigate associations between employees' recovery state at the end of the workday and the pleasure they experience during the subsequent evening. Multilevel analyses show that on days when employees experience higher levels of pleasure during the evening after work, they have a more favorable recovery state during that evening. Importantly, the extent to which employees experience pleasure during the evening after work is also positively related to their recovery state during the next workday. Finally, our study shows that on days when employees are in a more unfavorable recovery state at the end of the workday, they experience lower levels of pleasure during the subsequent evening after work. This study increases our insight into the role of pleasure in recovering from work and underlines the importance of engaging in pleasant activities after work.     

On becoming neutral: effects of experimental neutralizing reconsidered

Behaviour Research and Therapy 34 (1996) 889–898 found that writing out a negative thought produced anxiety and an urge to neutralize the thought, that instructing participants to neutralize the thought reduced anxiety/neutralization urge in the short run (i.e. within 2 min), but that in the control group 20 min without instruction was attended by the same reduction in anxiety/urge to neutralize (“natural decay”). The observations were made with pariticipants who scored high on “thought action fusion” and the experiment was set up as exerimental model of obsessions. We repeated the study with participants that were not selected on thought action fusion. All the findings reported by Behaviour Research and Therapy 34 (1996) 889–898 were replicated. Correlational analysis indicated that the strength of the effect was not related to scores on scales measuring “thought action fusion”. Behaviour Research and Therapy 34 (1996) 889–898 did not assess whether non-neutralizing was followed by immediate reductions in distress. We did assess this and found that the larger part of the immediate reduction of distress after neutralization also occurs when no neutralization instruction is given. The effects of neutralization instructions in the present type of experiment are considerably less powerful than suggested earlier.     

Coping behavior and locus of control in children1

Several investigators report a distinction between inward (withdrawn, somaticizing, fearful) behavior and outward (antisocial, hostile, aggressive) behavior. The present study was designed to clarify the relationship between type of coping behavior and locus of control (i.e., the attribution of causality to internal vs. external factors) for children aged 4 to 12 years. Two locus of control (LOC) instruments were administered—the Nowicki-Strickland and a new measure which distinguished between LOC for desirable and undesirable events. Measures of coping behavior were completed by parents. Results indicated that the new LOC scale related to type of coping behavior: external LOC children tended to have a greater proportion of inward behavior. Furthermore, desirable-event items were better able to distinguish between inward and outward behavior than were undesirable-event items. The Nowicki-Strickland scale was significantly correlated with the new scale, but not with coping behavior. Replication of the findings was obtained in a subsequent study. Discussion centered on the relationship between generalized perceptions of control and situationally manipulated perceptions of control, and differences between perceptions of control involved in inward and outward behavior.     

Measuring fear of movement/(re)injury in chronic low back pain using implicit measures

Fear of movement/(re)injury is assumed to contribute to the development and maintenance of chronic low back pain (CLBP) in a subgroup of patients. Studying fear of movement/(re)injury with implicit attitude measures, without the awareness of the patient, might be a valuable addition to self-report questionnaires. The aims of the current study were to investigate whether CLBP patients demonstrate more implicit fear of movement/(re)injury than healthy controls, and whether 2 implicit measures are related to each other, and to an explicit self-report measure of fear of movement/(re)injury. A group of 66 CLBP patients and 30 healthy controls took part in this study. In addition to self-report questionnaires, fear of movement/(re)injury was implicitly assessed by the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST) and the Go-No-Go-Association Task (GNAT) that aimed to determine the association between back-stressing movements and the evaluation "threatening". On both implicit tasks it was found that neither CLBP patients nor healthy controls demonstrated implicit fear of movement/(re)injury, and that CLBP patients did not differ from healthy controls in their level of implicit fear of movement/(re)injury. In general, no associations were found between the EAST and the GNAT, or between implicitly measured and self-reported fear of movement/(re)injury. One major caveat in drawing inferences from these findings is the poor reliability of these implicit measures. Research towards the psychometric properties of these measures should first be expanded before modifying, and applying, them to more complex domains such as fear of movement/(re)injury.     

Memory transfer for emotionally valenced words between identities in dissociative identity disorder

The present study aimed to determine interidentity retrieval of emotionally valenced words in dissociative identity disorder (DID). Twenty-two DID patients participated together with 25 normal controls and 25 controls instructed to simulate DID. Two wordlists A and B were constructed including neutral, positive and negative material. List A was shown to one identity, while list B was shown to another identity claiming total amnesia for the words learned by the first identity. The identity claiming amnesia was tested for intrusions from list A words into the recall of words from list B and recognition of the words learned by both identities. Test results indicated no evidence of total interidentity amnesia for emotionally valenced material in DID. It is argued that dissociative amnesia in DID may more adequately be described as a disturbance in meta-memory functioning instead of an actual retrieval inability.