Psychological risk factors in cardiovascular diseases

Recent research has shown that psychological risk factors play an important role in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases. The so-called ‘coronary prone behaviour pattern’ predominates, an important part of which is the ‘Type A behaviour pattern’. This is characterized by a marked ambition, a constant feeling of being under pressure, due to latent aggression and to a striving to dominate. For cerebrovascular diseases the so-called ‘pressured pattern’ as a risk factor has been found to be typical which is comparable to the Type A behaviour. Psychological risk factors and their components are not equally important for different vascular diseases. Besides the explanation of the question as to how far psychological processes really are involved in the development of vascular diseases, the research on psychological risk factors serves as a foundation for psychosomatic theories.     

Fos protein expression in olfactory-related brain areas after learning and after reactivation of a slowly acquired olfactory discrimination task in the rat

Fos protein immunodetection was used to investigate the neuronal activation elicited in some olfactory-related areas after either learning of an olfactory discrimination task or its reactivation 10 d later. Trained rats (T) progressively acquired the association between one odor of a pair and water-reward in a four-arm maze. Two groups of pseudotrained rats were used: PO rats were not water restricted and were submitted to the olfactory stimuli in the maze without any reinforcement, whereas PW rats were water-deprived and systematically received water in the maze without any odorous stimulation. When the discrimination task was well mastered, a significantly lower Fos immunoreactivity was observed in T rats compared to PW and PO rats in most of the analyzed brain areas, which could reflect the post-acquisition consolidation process. Following memory reactivation, differences in Fos immunoreactivity between trained and some pseudotrained rats were found in the anterior part of piriform cortex, CA3, and orbitofrontal cortex. We also observed that Fos labeling was significantly higher in trained rats after memory reactivation than after acquisition of the olfactory task in most of the brain areas examined. Our results support the assumption of a differential involvement of neuronal networks after either learning or reactivation of an olfactory discrimination task.     

Grief experiences and expectance of suicide

Suicide is generally viewed as an unexpected cause of death. However, some suicides might be expected to a certain extent, which needs to be further studied. The relationships between expecting suicide, feeling understanding for the suicide, and later grief experiences were explored. In total, 142 bereaved participants completed the Grief Experience Questionnaire and additional measurements on expectance and understanding. Results supported the prediction of a link between expecting suicide and understanding the suicide. Higher expectance and understanding were related to less searching for explanation and preoccupation with the suicide. There was no direct association with other grief experiences. We conclude that more attention should be brought to the relation between expecting the suicide of a loved one and later grief responses in research and in clinical practice.     

The impact of aging and hearing status on verbal short-term memory

The aim of this study is to assess the impact of hearing status on age-related decrease in verbal short-term memory (STM) performance. This was done by administering a battery of verbal STM tasks to elderly and young adult participants matched for hearing thresholds, as well as to young normal-hearing control participants. The matching procedure allowed us to assess the importance of hearing loss as an explanatory factor of age-related STM decline. We observed that elderly participants and hearing-matched young participants showed equal levels of performance in all verbal STM tasks, and performed overall lower than the normal-hearing young control participants. This study provides evidence for recent theoretical accounts considering reduced hearing level as an important explanatory factor of poor auditory-verbal STM performance in older adults.     

The procedural epistemic value of deliberation

Collective deliberation is fuelled by disagreements and its epistemic value depends, inter alia, on how the participants respond to each other in disagreements. I use this accountability thesis to argue that deliberation may be valued not just instrumentally but also for its procedural features. The instrumental epistemic value of deliberation depends on whether it leads to more or less accurate beliefs among the participants. The procedural epistemic value of deliberation hinges on the relationships of mutual accountability that characterize appropriately conducted deliberation. I will argue that it only comes into view from the second-person standpoint. I shall explain what the second-person standpoint in the epistemic context entails and how it compares to Stephen Darwall’s interpretation of the second-person standpoint in ethics.     

Traitement de concepts à connotation émotionnelle positive selon la quantité d'indices de récupération accessibles

This study examines the processing of emotionally positive words in memory. The processing level of the stimuli during encoding (low‐level or deep‐level processing) and the retrieval type (free recall or recognition) were varied. An effect of the valence was observed in the “low‐level processing—free recall” condition. Subjects recall more positive words than neutral ones when few retrieval cues are available. This result is confirmed by a qualitative analysis which shows an organized recall according to the emotional valence only for the “low level” condition. The results and the implications of this research are discussed in relation to Bower's theory (1981, 1987).     

Directed forgetting and aging: the role of retrieval processes, processing speed, and proactive interference

The directed forgetting effect obtained with the item method is supposed to depend on both selective rehearsal of to-be-remembered (TBR) items and attentional inhibition of to-be-forgotten (TBF) items. In this study, we investigated the locus of the directed forgetting deficit in older adults by exploring the influence of recollection and familiarity-based retrieval processes on age-related differences in directed forgetting. Moreover, we explored the influence of processing speed, short-term memory capacity, thought suppression tendencies, and sensitivity to proactive interference on performance. The results indicated that older adults' directed forgetting difficulties are due to decreased recollection of TBR items, associated with increased automatic retrieval of TBF items. Moreover, processing speed and proactive interference appeared to be responsible for the decreased recall of TBR items.     

Der biopsychosoziale Krankheitsbegriff in der Praxis

Many of the recent approaches in diagnostics and therapy, e. g. the behavioral medicine, consider themselves as “holistic” or “multidimensional”. By closer consideration, however, it turns out, that while more or less referring back to the system-theoretically founded “bio-psycho-social model” (Engel, Weiner et al.) its implications are not taken seriously in practice. Presenting a concrete work project (“simultaneous diagnostics”) we will show, how to implement this (theoretically potent) bio-psycho-social conception of disease in clinical practice. It can be clearly seen, that it cannot replace the conventional reductional approach of medicine which focusses on the examination of single processes and structures under simplified conditions. On the contrary, such reductionism remains indispensable, because to be able to grasp any higher (more complex) structure one has to know its elements. Comprehensive explanation of phenomena, however, is not possible in a reductionist way. Therefore, the bio-psycho-social disease model in its operationalization is not a new way of medicine, rather an expanded approach to diagnostical and therapeutic issues.     

Effect of syllabic neighbourhood as a function of syllabic neighbour length

The concept of syllabic neighbours (words sharing the same first syllable) is central in the interpretive framework of syllabic effects in visual word recognition. However, the definition of this concept remains surprisingly vague, so it is not clear whether or not syllabic competition is driven by words of similar syllabic length. The present study aimed to refine the definition by investigating the effect of higher-frequency syllabic neighbourhood as a function of syllabic neighbour length (similar syllabic length to the target words vs. any syllabic length). In both standard and go/no-go lexical decision tasks, the data showed that increasing the number of higher-frequency syllabic neighbours had an influence only when this number was computed from words of the same syllabic length as the target. Syllabic neighbours may therefore be considered as words sharing the first syllable and the total number of syllables with the target. Implications for accounts of syllable neighbourhood effects are discussed.     

The Political Egalitarian’s Dilemma

Political egalitarianism is at the core of most normative conceptions of democratic legitimacy. It finds its minimal expression in the “one person one vote” formula. In the literature on deliberative democracy, political equality is typically interpreted in a more demanding sense, but different interpretations of what political equality requires can be identified. In this paper I shall argue that the attempt to specify political equality in deliberative democracy is affected by a dilemma. I shall illustrate the political egalitarian’s dilemma by a hypothetical choice between two informational bases for political equality: Rawlsian primary goods and Amartya Sen’s capability approach. The political egalitarian’s dilemma reveals a clash between the requirement of ensuring equal possibilities to participate in the democratic process and the requirement of subjecting substantive judgments to deliberative evaluation. As such, the dilemma is a variant of the procedure vs. substance dilemma that is well-known in democratic theory. While it has sometimes been argued that deliberative democracy solves the tension between procedure and substance, the political egalitarian’s dilemma shows that this tension continues within deliberative democracy.