Stress, caffeine and psychosis-like experiences-A double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment.

OBJECTIVE: Psychosis-like perceptual distortions can occur in the general population, and both stress and caffeine can enhance the proneness to psychosis-like experiences, such as hallucinations. The current study aims to explore the effects of acute caffeine intake and acute stress on perceptual distortions in a double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment. METHODS: Regular caffeine consumers (n = 92) and non/low consumers (n = 89) were assigned to 100 mg caffeine/placebo and stress/no stress conditions. The White Christmas Paradigm (WCP) was used to measure hallucination-like symptoms, and bias towards threat-related words was used as an indicator of persecutory ideation. Participants reported their daily caffeine intake, and completed the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale, the Persecutory Ideation Questionnaire and the Marlow-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. RESULTS: Acute stress slightly increased hallucination-like experiences, but not recall bias, while the small amount of caffeine had a time-dependent effect on recall bias. Proneness to persecutory ideation was positively and social desirability was negatively correlated with recall bias towards threat-related words, while proneness to hallucinations positively correlated with hallucination-like experiences. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that psychosocial stress-in line with the diathesis-stress model-can lead to the enhancement of hallucination-like experiences.

Count on arousal: introducing a new method for investigating the effects of emotional valence and arousal on visual search performance.

There is a large body of research, indicating that threatening stimuli with evolutionary history are prioritised in visual processing. It has been proposed that all threatening stimuli are prioritised, irrespective of evolutionary age, but it was argued that the method used to produce the results was not suitable for investigating the phenomenon. We present a new visual search task and provide evidence that it is an appropriate tool for future research. In Experiment 1, we investigated how the influence of emotional stimuli on visual search performance varies with valence (negative, positive, and neutral) and arousal (medium and high). Negative valence found to have a greater impact. Furthermore, our results underscore the importance of controlling for arousal. Experiment 2 confirmed these findings and also revealed that negative valence decreases performance by diverting attention away from the task, but arousal can compensate for this by increasing attentional capacity. This mechanism does not seem to be affected by the evolutionary history of the stimulus. In Experiment 3, we reproduced these results using a touchscreen monitor and controlling for variance in low-level visual features. We claim that these results support the notion of preferential processing of threatening cues, regardless of evolutionary origin. However, the level of threat, i.e., how arousing the cue is, has to be taken into account to explain the findings.

DEVELOPING NUMERICAL ABILITY IN CHILDREN WITH MATHEMATICAL DIFFICULTIES USING ORIGAMI (.).

Certain aspects of numerical processing show a connection with spatial abilities. Spatial abilities may be enhanced through the practice of origami. It is possible that the development of spatial abilities will support the development of numerical processing. The goal was to investigate whether spatial and numerical skills can be developed using origami and the folding of three-dimensional shapes. During the course of the 10-wk. training program, consisting of weekly 60-min. sessions, the performance of children with mathematical difficulties showed considerable improvement in spatial and numerical tasks as compared to the control group of children with mathematical difficulties.

[The effect of prostitution on the stability of romantic relationships. Empirical testing of an evolutionary model]. / Hogyan hat a prostitucio a kapcsolatok stabilitasara? Egy evolucious modell empirikus tesztelese.

OBJECTIVES: Until now prostitution has only been explained from two evolutionary points of view. According to the short-term mate choice strategy approach motives for seeking prostitutes are to be found in the nature of male sexuality. Another theory - the evolutionary interpretation of female promiscuity's motivational base - indirectly completes the understanding of prostitution. This theory emphasizes the adaptive benefits of female promiscuity under certain circumstances. The aim of our study was to test a third idea (Adaptive Support Theory), according to which women in long-term relationships support their partners' (husbands') sexual relations with prostitutes. METHODS: University female students (n=208, age mean±SD=23.55±7.13, min=18, max=50) completed our questionnaire. RESULTS: Female participants are presumed to recognize the advantages and threats of their partners' sexual relations with prostitutes compared to other possible forms of betrayal. Hence it is hypothesized that women overtly support the possibility of their partners' relations with prostitutes. Our results show that women are able to assess the favorable and unfavorable effects of their partners' relations with prostitutes. At the same time they do not directly support this form of betrayal over other possibilities. However, female participants were more approving of their partners' relations with prostitutes (in a thought- experiment), than they guessed their partner would demand such services. CONCLUSIONS: According to our model women living in long-term relationship are adaptively interested in their partner's cheating on them with a prostitute (rather than engaging in other kinds of sexual relations), because this finance based external sexual liaison is the least threatening for the stability of the long-term relationship.

[Family rituals and family identity]. / Családi rituálek es családi identitás.

INTRODUCTION: This study presents a research project which aimed at exploring the relationship between family rituals and family identity. We investigated which aspects of family rituals bear a predictive value in relation to the significance and intensity of identifying with the family. METHODS: Data was collected from 293 adult parents using the "Family Ritual Questionnaire" and "Inclusion of In group in the Self Scale". RESULTS: Our results confirm that all aspects of family rituals have a positive relation with the measured extent of identifying with the family. Certain aspects of family rituals and the so called meaning-factor have significant predictive value in terms of the intensity of family identification. IMPLICATION: The results of the investigation, which had a slightly different design from previous research projects in this field, confirm propositions that the actual practice of family rituals plays a significant role in the identification processes of the family. Further research of the theme is likely to provide useful insights in the field of applied psychology as well.

Is a snake scarier than a gun? The ontogenetic-phylogenetic dispute from a new perspective: The role of arousal.

Organisms have to be able to detect threats in order to activate their defensive mechanisms. Previous research has suggested that evolutionary old stimuli have an advantage during visual processing. Recent evidence indicates that negative emotional stimuli have a greater effect on the cognitive system regardless of evolutionary relevance. We suggest that the arousal level of the stimuli could account for these mixed results. We investigated how visual processing is influenced by evolutionary relevant and modern threatening emotional stimuli. Furthermore, we manipulated the level of arousal (medium, high) of the threatening cues. Participants performed an odd-one-out visual search task, in which the target was always a threatening picture. Our results showed that participants detected modern threatening targets faster than they did evolutionary relevant ones. However, the interaction with arousal revealed that this was only true at high-arousal level; there was no difference between evolutionary relevant and modern threatening targets when presented at medium-arousal level. To our knowledge, to date this is one of the first studies to show the importance of the arousal level of stimuli. On the basis of our findings, we suggest that increasing arousal level only heightens visual search performance with modern threatening cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Investigating evolutionary constraints on the detection of threatening stimuli in preschool children.

Numerous objects and animals could be threatening, and thus, children learn to avoid them early. Spiders and syringes are among the most common targets of fears and phobias of the modern word. However, they are of different origins: while the former is evolutionary relevant, the latter is not. We sought to investigate the underlying mechanisms that make the quick detection of such stimuli possible and enable the impulse to avoid them in the future. The respective categories of threatening and non-threatening targets were similar in shape, while low-level visual features were controlled. Our results showed that children found threatening cues faster, irrespective of the evolutionary age of the cues. However, they detected non-threatening evolutionary targets faster than non-evolutionary ones. We suggest that the underlying mechanism may be different: general feature detection can account for finding evolutionary threatening cues quickly, while specific features detection is more appropriate for modern threatening stimuli.

Straightness as the main factor of the hErmann grid illusion.

The generally accepted explanation of the Hermann grid illusion is Baumgartner's hypothesis that the illusory effect is generated by the response of retinal ganglion cells with concentric ON-OFF or OFF-ON receptive fields. To challenge this explanation, we have introduced some simple distortions to the grid lines which make the illusion disappear totally, while all preconditions of Baumgartner's hypothesis remain unchanged. To analyse the behaviour of the new versions of the grid, we carried out psychophysical experiments, in which we measured the distortion tolerance: the level of distortion at which the illusion disappears at a given type of distortion for a given subject. Statistical analysis has shown that the distortion tolerance is independent of grid-line width within a wide range, and of the type of distortion, except when one side of each line remains straight. We conclude that the main cause of the Hermann grid illusion is the straightness of the edges of the grid lines, and we propose a theory which explains why the illusory spots occur in the original Hermann grid and why they disappear in curved grids.

EEG early evoked gamma-band synchronization reflects object recognition in visual oddball tasks.

EEG was recorded in 3 visual oddball experiments during presentation of natural photos of butterflies and plants in order to study the early gamma activity evoked by familiar and novel stimuli. In all three experiments a picture of one specific butterfly served as the target and the subjects' task was to silently count them. In Experiment 1 neutral stimuli were individual pictures of butterflies from other species, in Experiment 2 neutral stimuli were individual pictures of plants and in Experiment 3 both types of neutral stimuli were applied. Phase-locking factor was computed by complex sinusoid wavelet method. Consistent with other studies, significant phase-locked gamma-synchronization was found at 80-140 ms post stimulus interval in the 20-50 Hz range at parietal and occipital sites in response to the repeating target. Non-target stimuli did not evoke similar activity in the gamma-frequency range. The observed difference can be explained if we assume that the repeated experience of an object may lead to the rapid formation of a neural assembly representing the object causing the repetition priming effect. In our study the single target stimulus was introduced to the subjects before the experiment, whereas individual non-target stimuli were unfamiliar images. Thus, subjects could form a neural representation of the target only. We suggest, that the early phase-locked gamma-activity in the 20-50 Hz range might reflect the activation of the neural representation of the familiar target stimulus.