Perceived racism and cardiovascular reactivity and recovery to personally relevant stress.

This study evaluated cardiovascular responses (CVR) to an active speech task with blatantly discriminatory (BRC) versus neutral (NRC) stimuli and an anger recall task in a sample of Black men (N = 73; age 18 to 47). Diastolic blood pressure scores were higher for NRC versus BRC stimuli during anger recall (p = .05). Moreover, persons in the NRC group who perceived high levels of racism (vs. no racism or BRC group) during active speech showed larger increases in blood pressure across postspeech rest, anger recall, and subsequent rest (p = .03). The notable elevation in CVR in response to an ambiguous event extends current models of racism suggesting that subtle racism is a psychosocial stressor that erodes health through chronically elevated CVR.     

Family satisfaction with medical care after traumatic brain injury

Ratings during acute and follow-up care by 35 families having members with traumatic brain injury showed none of the medical facilities met families' needs though some aspects of patients' care were rated higher in hospitals. Findings suggest comprehensive surveys are needed.     

Dances with dogs: interspecies play and a case for sympoietic enactivism

Animal Cognition - I argue that an enactivist framework has more explanatory power than traditional philosophical theories of cognition when it comes to understanding the mechanisms underlying...     

Experimental evaluation of matching via a commercially available basketball video game

Many recent nonlaboratory-based quantitative analyses of behavior have relied on archival competitive sporting data. However, the ratio-based reinforcement schedules in most athletic competitions and the correlational nature of archival data analyses raise concern over the contributions of such findings to the behavior analytic literature. The current experiment evaluated whether matching in a human operant paradigm would approximate matching observed in nonlaboratory-based sports data. To this end, we used in-game attributes to parametrically manipulate 2- and 3-point shooting in a commercially available basketball video game. The behavior of 6 of 9 participants conformed to the generalized matching equation. These results suggest matching in sporting contexts may be a product of restricted nonindependent concurrent random-ratio schedules. Implications of this experiment, including those in applied behavior analysis and potential influence on gamification, are discussed.     

Fantasy proneness, dissociation, and DSM-IV axis II symptomatology

Scores on the Inventory of Childhood Memories and Imaginings (S. C. Wilson & T. X. Barber, 1981) identified fantasizers and controls who were administered the Structured Interview for DSM-IV Personality (SIDP-IV; B. Pfohl, N. Blum, & M. Zimmerman, 1994) and the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES; E. M. Bernstein & F. W. Putnam, 1986). Fantasizers had increased rates of Cluster A and B personality disorders but were equivalent to controls in Cluster C diagnoses. For both Clusters A and B, 55% of the fantasizers received clinical diagnoses. Fantasizers had significantly higher DES, DES-T (N. G. Waller, F. W. Putnam, & E. B. Carlson, 1996), and Normal Dissociative Index scores. Although nearly one half of the fantasizers' DES-T patterns were classified within the pathological dissociative taxon (N. G. Waller & C. A. Ross, 1997), none of the controls and only 10.03% of the original screening sample received this classification. Both Axis II pathology and pathological dissociation were associated with fantasy proneness.     

A behavioral study of alpha-1b adrenergic receptor knockout mice: increased reaction to novelty and selectively reduced learning capacities

Knockout mice lacking the alpha-1b adrenergic receptor were tested in behavioral experiments. Reaction to novelty was first assessed in a simple test in which the time taken by the knockout mice and their littermate controls to enter a second compartment was compared. Then the mice were tested in an open field to which unknown objects were subsequently added. Special novelty was introduced by moving one of the familiar objects to another location in the open field. Spatial behavior and memory were further studied in a homing board test, and in the water maze. The alpha-1b knockout mice showed an enhanced reactivity to new situations. They were faster to enter the new environment, covered longer paths in the open field, and spent more time exploring the new objects. They reacted like controls to modification inducing spatial novelty. In the homing board test, both the knockout mice and the control mice seemed to use a combination of distant visual and proximal olfactory cues, showing place preference only if the two types of cues were redundant. In the water maze the alpha-1b knockout mice were unable to learn the task, which was confirmed in a probe trial without platform. They were perfectly able, however, to escape in a visible platform procedure. These results confirm previous findings showing that the noradrenergic pathway is important for the modulation of behaviors such as reaction to novelty and exploration, and suggest that this is mediated, at least partly, through the alpha-1b adrenergic receptors. The lack of alpha-1b adrenergic receptors in spatial orientation does not seem important in cue-rich tasks but may interfere with orientation in situations providing distant cues only.     

Imagine Me and You,I Do: Effects of imagined intergroup contact on anti‐fat bias in the context of job interviews

Imagined intergroup contact (IIC) has been demonstrated to alleviate prejudice toward social groups as a whole, but the extent to which it prevents biases in ratings of individual job candidates has not yet been examined. This study uses a simulated employment interview where a female candidate either higher or lower in body fat is rated by participants who have undergone an IIC or a control manipulation. IIC successfully alleviated discrimination in ratings of interviewee competence but had no significant effect on ratings of warmth. Competence ratings fully mediated the effect of the two‐way interaction of IIC and interviewee body fat on a dichotomous hiring recommendation provided 1 week later. IIC may be an effective and inexpensive intervention for reducing bias in job interview contexts.     

Incremental validity of the MMPI-2 PSY-5 scales in assessing self-reported personality disorder criteria

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) Personality Psychopathology-Five (PSY-5) scales were developed to measure abnormal personality symptomatology. The present study examines the incremental validity of the PSY-5 scales beyond the clinical and content scales in assessing criteria associated with personality disorders. The current sample includes 240 male and 407 female clients from private practice settings who completed the MMPI-2 and the Multiaxial Diagnostic Inventory (MDI), a self-report checklist of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., revised) symptoms. Six of the MDI personality disorder scales, conceptually related to the PSY-5 scales, are used as criteria. Hierarchical regression analyses determine the incremental validity of each PSY-5 scale. In most analyses, PSY-5 scales add a significant increment of variance to the clinical and content scales. Implications of the results are discussed.