An anxiety-induced bias in the perception of a bistable point-light walker

Human sensitivity for social cues is exquisite, as illustrated by the ease with which simplified point-light movements invoke social and emotional responses. Compared to faces, these biological motion stimuli only recently started to be used to explore questions regarding social cognition and anxiety. We presented human point-light walkers that could be perceived as facing towards or facing away from the observer, and tested whether participants with high social anxiety would perceive these bistable stimuli differently, because this type of stimuli has particular relevance for them. The results showed that observers with high social anxiety tended to see walkers as facing away more frequently than those with low social anxiety. This may mean that high socially anxious observers are biased towards the more positive perceptual alternative because they are motivated to protect themselves against threatening social experiences, but we also explore alternative explanations. The findings are in line with the evidence for a positivity bias in perception, also called wishful seeing, but in contrast with the attentional negativity bias often found in social anxiety. We discuss reasons for this divergence and possible limitations of the current study.     

Linking impulsivity and inhibitory control using manual and oculomotor response inhibition tasks

Separate cognitive processes govern the inhibitory control of manual and oculomotor movements. Despite this fundamental distinction, little is known about how these inhibitory control processes relate to more complex domains of behavioral functioning. This study sought to determine how these inhibitory control mechanisms relate to broadly defined domains of impulsive behavior. Thirty adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 28 comparison adults performed behavioral measures of inhibitory control and completed impulsivity inventories. Results suggest that oculomotor inhibitory control, but not manual inhibitory control, is related to specific domains of self-reported impulsivity. This finding was limited to the ADHD group; no significant relations between inhibitory control and impulsivity were found in comparison adults. These results highlight the heterogeneity of inhibitory control processes and their differential relations to different facets of impulsivity.     

A new approach to the assessment of structural personality pathology: Theory-driven profile interpretation of the Dutch Short Form of the MMPI

This article presents a new approach to the assessment of structural personality pathology: theory-driven profile interpretation of the Dutch Short Form of the MMPI (DSFM). The assessment method integrates results of a self-report personality questionnaire with psychodynamic theoretical concepts to yield a working hypothesis about underlying structural features of personality. As an illustration, results of a validation study with psychotic phenomena in projective drawings as the external criterion are described. Results show that the DSFM profiles, that are presumed to measure psychotic vulnerability predict psychotic phenomena in projective drawings, after statistically controlling for the effect of age, the single scales that are being used to construct the profiles and their statistical interaction.Results suggest that theory-driven profile interpretation of the DSFM may be considered a time and cost efficient method to derive a working hypothesis about structural vulnerability.     

Heterogeneous inhibition processes involved in different facets of self-reported impulsivity: evidence from a community sample

Whiteside and Lynam (Whiteside, S. P., & Lynam, D. R. (2001). The Five Factor Model and impulsivity: Using a structural model of personality to understand impulsivity. Personality and Individual Differences, 30, 669-689) clarified the multifaceted nature of impulsivity by identifying four distinct facets of self-reported impulsive behaviors: urgency, (lack of) premeditation, (lack of) perseverance, and sensation seeking. Building on work by Bechara and Van der Linden (Bechara, A., & Van der Linden, M. (2005). Decision-making and impulse control after frontal lobe injuries. Current Opinion in Neurology, 18, 734-739), the main objective of this study was to investigate the hypothesis that perseverance and urgency map onto the two distinct inhibitory functions distinguished by Friedman and Miyake (Friedman, N. P., & Miyake, A. (2004). The relations among inhibition and interference control functions: A latent-variable analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 101-135): prepotent response inhibition and resistance to proactive interference. Participants (N = 126) completed the UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale and three tasks: a recent-negatives task to assess proactive interference in working memory, and two Go/No-Go tasks at different paces, the slower of which also assessed task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs). Consistent with the hypothesis, TUTs were positively correlated with lack of perseverance, and multiple regressions revealed that urgency was specifically related to errors in prepotent response inhibition, and lack of perseverance to errors due to difficulties overcoming proactive interference.     

Individual differences in chess expertise: a psychometric investigation

Starting from controversies over the role of general individual characteristics (especially intelligence) for the attainment of expert performance levels, a comprehensive psychometric investigation of individual differences in chess expertise is presented. A sample of 90 adult tournament chess players of varying playing strengths (1311-2387 ELO) was screened with tests on intelligence and personality variables; in addition, experience in chess play, tournament participation, and practice activities were assessed. Correlation and regression analyses revealed a clear-cut moderate relationship between general (and in particular numerical) intelligence and the participants' playing strengths, suggesting that expert chess play does not stand in isolation from superior mental abilities. The strongest predictor of the attained expertise level, however, was the participants' chess experience which highlights the relevance of long-term engagement for the development of expertise. Among all analysed personality dimensions, only domain-specific performance motivation and emotion expression control incrementally contributed to the prediction of playing strength. In total, measures of chess experience, current tournament activity, intelligence, and personality accounted for about 55% of variance in chess expertise. The present results suggest that individual differences in chess expertise are multifaceted and cannot be reduced to differences in domain experience.     

When stereotype knowledge prevents retrieval-induced forgetting

In the present study, we examined the effects of stereotypes and the typicality of traits in retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). The participants in the experiment practiced half of the high-typicality, low-typicality or control traits associated with the name of a stereotype (athlete, scientist) or with the name of a person (Mikel, Jon). With the person name the high-typicality, low-typicality or control traits produced no evidence of stereotype activation. The traits were processed as independent features and generated RIF both immediately and at a one-week interval. Stereotype activation during encoding facilitated the integration of high-typicality traits, avoiding RIF in immediate and one-week recall. Moreover, both high-typicality and low-typicality traits benefited from stereotypes in one-week recognition. These findings show that previous knowledge contributes to integrate stereotypic traits that would otherwise compete for retrieval, thus producing RIF.     

Rumination is characterized by valence-specific impairments in switching of attention

The ability to flexibly switch attention between emotional and non-emotional information in working memory is considered important in stress-resilience and is impaired in mood disorders. A recent theory claims that this component of attention is specifically related to ruminative thought. To further investigate this claim we report two new experiments using the internal shift task (IST). In Experiment 1 (N = 27) we examined the stability of switching ability measured using the IST through examination of internal consistency (stability within the task) and test–retest-reliability (stability over time) over two weeks. Results indicate relatively high stability of switching ability measured with the IST. In Experiment 2 the IST was administered to a pre-selected undergraduate sample of high (N = 20) and low ruminators (N = 20). The main findings were that rumination was related to attentional switching impairments, specifically in the context of emotional information. The switching impairments were most pronounced when negative information was held in working memory. The attentional switching impairments were most strongly related to the depressive brooding component of rumination. The results of this study lend further support to the proposed link between rumination and switching abilities.