Psychological inflexibility and valuing happiness: Dangerous liaisons.

Previous evidence has shown that excessive valuing happiness may relate to lower psychological wellbeing across cultures. Considering the lack of data with Spanish population, we examined the relation between tightly holding happiness emotion goals and subjective wellbeing in a sample of Spanish women, and explored the mediation role exerted by psychological inflexibility components (namely, cognitive fusion and experiential avoidance) in the relation between valuing happiness and subjective wellbeing. A female adult sample (n = 168) filled out measures of excessive valuing happiness, psychological inflexibility, positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction. Valuing happiness only showed positive total effects on negative affect and strong direct effects on both cognitive fusion and experiential avoidance. Analyses revealed the mediating roles exerted by psychological inflexibility components, with experiential avoidance leading to lower pleasure; and cognitive fusion leading to greater displeasure and lower life satisfaction. Psychological inflexibility components explained between 40 and 80% of the total effect of valuing happiness on our outcome variables. Our findings highlight the need for further research on the benefits of hedonic vs. values-based approaches to happiness.

Derived generalization of attentional bias for laboratory-induced threat: Yes but.

There is laboratory evidence that fear conditioning underlies the emergence of attentional bias (AB) for threat. Our main objective was to test, for the first time, whether derived or symbolic responding contributes to the generalization of AB across non-conditioned stimuli. Participants were all university students (N = 86) with no pre-existing conditions. We first employed an exogenous cueing paradigm with two color slides (i.e., A1 or to-be CS+, and A2 or to-be CS-) serving as cues, and loud white noise serving as unconditioned stimulus during conditioning trials. We then employed a match-to-sample procedure to establish a derived equivalence relation between color A1 and arbitrary shape C1 as well as between color A2 and arbitrary shape C2. Next, we investigated the transfer of AB across non-conditioned stimuli: participants performed the same spatial cueing task with non-conditioned C1 and C2 stimuli serving as cues. Results replicated previous findings on the conditioning basis of AB, and most importantly, showed preliminary evidence of AB transfer: those participants who appraised C1 and not C2 as a signal of impending noise showed AB toward C1. This is the first laboratory demonstration that AB may generalize to stimuli physically unrelated to directly conditioned threats. Unfortunately, the small number of participants showing this effect calls for cautious considerations.

Academic Competence, Teacher-Student Relationship, and Violence and Victimisation in Adolescents: The Classroom Climate as a Mediator.

School violence is a serious social and public health problem prevalent worldwide. Although the relevance of teacher and classroom factors is well established in the literature, few studies have focused on the role of teacher perceptions in school violence and victimisation and the potential mediational role of classroom climate in this relationship. A total of 2399 adolescents (50% girls), aged between 11 and 18 years (M = 14.65, SD = 1.78) and enrolled in five Spanish Secondary Compulsory Education schools completed measures of classroom climate, school violence towards peers and perception of peer victimisation, and their teachers informed about their academic competence and the teacher-student relationship. Correlational analyses revealed that whereas academic competence perceived by the teacher was negatively related to overt violence and victimisation, its relationship with pure relational violence was positive. Structural equation modelling analyses showed that variables of classroom climate (involvement, affiliation, and teacher support) perceived by the students functioned as partial mediators between teacher perceptions of academic competence and of teacher-student relationship and violence and victimisation. In the mediational model, teacher perception of academic competence acted as a direct protective factor against violence and victimisation, and teacher perception of teacher-student relationship acted as a direct risk for violence, as well as an indirect protective factor through classroom climate for victimisation. The interpretation of these results points to the importance of the teacher's subjective perceptions in the prevention of violence and victimisation problems and their practical implications for the classroom climate perceived by students.

School Violence towards Peers and Teen Dating Violence: The Mediating Role of Personal Distress.

School violence towards peers and teen dating violence are two of the most relevant behaviour problems in adolescents. Although the relationship between the two types of violence is well established in the literature, few studies have focused on mediators that could explain this empirical relationship. We departed from the evidence that relates anger, emotional distress and impaired empathy to teen dating violence and juvenile sexual offending, to explore the role of personal distress, i.e., a self-focused, aversive affective reaction to another's emotion associated with the desire to alleviate one's own, but not the other's distress; as a possible mechanism linking school violence towards peers and teen dating violence in a sample of Spanish adolescents. We also explored the prevalence of emotional and physical teen dating violence, both occasional and frequent, and the differences between boys and girls. A total of 1055 adolescents (49.2% boys and 50.8% girls) aged between 11 and 17 years (M = 14.06, SD = 1.34) who had had at least one romantic relationship within the last year, completed measures of school violence towards peers, teen dating violence, and personal distress. Statistical analyses revealed that occasional and frequent teen dating violence (both physical and emotional) was more frequent in girls than in boys, and that personal distress functioned as a partial mediator, with an overall model fit higher for boys than girls: in boys, partial mediation occurred for both physical and emotional teen dating violence; in girls, partial mediation occurred only for physical violence. The interpretation of the results is tentative given the novel nature of the study, and points to the evidence of the emotional costs of school violence and the importance of emotion and behavior regulation to undermine the social costs of personal distress.

Differential outcomes training improves face recognition memory in children and in adults with Down syndrome.

Previous studies have demonstrated that the differential outcomes procedure (DOP), which involves paring a unique reward with a specific stimulus, enhances discriminative learning and memory performance in several populations. The present study aimed to further investigate whether this procedure would improve face recognition memory in 5- and 7-year-old children (Experiment 1) and adults with Down syndrome (Experiment 2). In a delayed matching-to-sample task, participants had to select the previously shown face (sample stimulus) among six alternatives faces (comparison stimuli) in four different delays (1, 5, 10, or 15s). Participants were tested in two conditions: differential, where each sample stimulus was paired with a specific outcome; and non-differential outcomes, where reinforcers were administered randomly. The results showed a significantly better face recognition in the differential outcomes condition relative to the non-differential in both experiments. Implications for memory training programs and future research are discussed.

Improving delayed face recognition in Alzheimer's disease by differential outcomes.

OBJECTIVE: Previous studies have demonstrated the benefit of the differential outcomes procedure (DOP) in human learning. In the present study we aimed to explore whether the DOP might also help to overcome the face recognition memory deficit commonly observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. METHOD: A delayed matching-to-sample task was used. Participants were instructed to choose which of the 4 alternative faces (comparison stimuli) matched the previously seen face (sample stimulus). Either short (5 seconds) or long (25 seconds) delays were interposed between the sample and the comparison stimuli. In the differential outcomes condition each sample face was paired with its own outcome. In contrast, in the nondifferential condition, outcomes were randomly arranged. RESULTS: The differential outcomes effect (DOE) was evident in the AD patients with both accuracy and latency data. That is, they showed a significantly better and faster delayed face recognition when differential outcomes were arranged. The analyses also revealed a significant main effect of delay; participants were slower in the 25 seconds condition than in the 5 seconds condition, but the difference was higher in the patients than in the controls. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate, to our knowledge for the first time, that face recognition memory in patients with Alzheimer is improved when differential outcomes are used and draw attention to the potential of this procedure as a therapeutic technique.

Visual working memory in deaf children with diverse communication modes: improvement by differential outcomes.

Although visual functions have been proposed to be enhanced in deaf individuals, empirical studies have not yet established clear evidence on this issue. The present study aimed to determine whether deaf children with diverse communication modes had superior visual memory and whether their performance was improved by the use of differential outcomes. Severely or profoundly deaf children who employed spoken Spanish, Spanish Sign Language (SSL), and both spoken Spanish and SSL modes of communication were tested in a delayed matching-to-sample task for visual working memory assessment. Hearing controls were used to compare performance. Participants were tested in two conditions, differential outcome and non-differential outcome conditions. Deaf groups with either oral or SSL modes of communication completed the task with less accuracy than bilingual and control hearing children. In addition, the performances of all groups improved through the use of differential outcomes.

Differential outcomes aid the formation of categorical relationships between stimuli.

The differential outcome effect is when learning is enhanced through the application of different outcomes to different conditions of a task. Here we explore whether one difference in learning with differential outcomes is an enhanced categorisation of objects. We demonstrate that participants learning conditional discriminations are better able to identify previously unpaired objects as belonging to the same category when differential outcomes were used in learning these stimuli.

Enhancing recognition memory in adults through differential outcomes.

It has been widely demonstrated that the differential outcomes procedure (DOP) facilitates both the learning of conditional relationships and the memory for the conditional stimuli in animal subjects. For conditional discriminations in humans, the DOP also produces an increase in the speed of acquisition and/or final accuracy. However, the potential facilitative effects of differential outcomes in human memory have not been fully assessed. In the present study, we aimed to test whether this procedure improves performance on a recognition memory task in healthy adults. Participants showed significantly better delayed face recognition when differential outcomes were used. This novel finding is discussed in the light of other studies on the differential outcomes effect (DOE) in both animals and humans, and implications for future research are presented.

Improvement of age-related memory deficits by differential outcomes.

BACKGROUND: The differential outcomes procedure (DOP) has proved useful to improve discrimination learning in both animals and humans. Here we adapted DOP to assess its utility to overcome the memory loss commonly associated with normal aging. METHODS: In a delayed matching-to-sample task, subjects were exposed to a man's face, and after a delay, they were required to decide if the previously seen face was within a set of six men's faces. For half the subjects, each sample face was paired with its own outcome (differential outcomes condition); outcomes were randomly arranged for the remaining half of subjects (non-differential condition). Either short (5 second) or long (30 second) delays were interposed between the sample and the comparison stimuli. RESULTS: Results showed that relative to younger adults, older adults' performance decreased with the longer delay. However, the use of differential outcomes was able to reverse the detrimental effect of the increased delay in the elderly group, raising their performance to the level shown by younger adults. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate, for the first time, that DOP can help elderly people overcome their memory limitations, and they draw attention to the potential of this procedure as a therapeutic technique.

Los efectos de la anfetamina administrada en el córtex prefrontal medial sobre las diferencias individuales en polidipsia inducida por programa / Individual differences on schedule-induced polydipsia: differential effects of prefrontal cortex amphetamine infusion

El objetivo de esta investigación fue determinar si la administración de anfetamina en el córtex prefrontal medial tendría un efecto diferente en los sujetos divididos en altos y bajos bebedores en la tarea de polidipsia inducida por programa. Los sujetos del experimento fueron ratas Wistar macho que fueron, en primer lugar, sometidas durante 20 días, a una tarea de polidipsia inducida por programa (PIP) según un programa de TiempoFijo 60 segundos (TF 60s). El paso por esta tarea permitió dividir a los sujetos en altos y bajos bebedores en función de si su media de consumo de agua estaba por encima o por debajo de la mediana del grupo, respectivamente. Posteriormente, los animales fueron canulados, y tras 10 días de recuperación de la bebida inducida, se les administró anfetamina en el córtex prefrontal medial. Los resultados indican la existencia de un efecto diferencialde la anfetamina sobre los animales altos y bajos bebedores. Estos resultados son discutidos sobre la hipótesis de un comportamiento diferencial del sistema dopaminérgico entre las dos poblaciones

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of amphetamine on rats classified in high and low drinkers in a schedule-induced polydipsia (SIP) task. First, male Wistar rats were submitted to a schedule-induced polydipsia (SIP) procedure for 20 days and divided in high and low drinkers if their average water intake was above or below the group median, respectively. Then subjects were submitted to surgery, and after 10 days of schedule-induced drinking recovery, amphetamine was administered in the medial prefrontal cortex. Results indicate a differential effect of amphetamine on high and low drinkers. Those results were discussed on the hypothesis of a different dopaminérgic function between high and low drinkers

Acquisition of schedule-induced polydipsia by rats in proximity to upcoming food delivery.

Food-deprived rats that receive intermittent delivery of small amounts of food develop excessive drinking--specifically, schedule-induced polydipsia (SIP). A main characteristic of SIP is its occurrence at the beginning of interfood intervals. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate that SIP can be developed toward the end of interfood intervals, in closer proximity to upcoming than to preceding food delivery. In Experiment 1, two groups were exposed to a fixed-time (FT) 30-sec food schedule with water available during the first or the last 15 sec of each interfood interval. Two additional groups, which had access to water throughout, were exposed to FT 30-sec or FT 15-sec schedules of food presentation. The FT 30-sec group with free access to water developed the highest level of intake; similar and intermediate levels were induced in all the remaining groups. In Experiment 2, three groups of rats were exposed to an FT 90-sec food schedule with water available during the first, the second, or the last 30 sec of each interfood interval. One additional group with access to water throughout was exposed to the FT 90-sec schedule of food presentation. The group with free access to water developed a higher level of consumption than did the other groups, but by the end of training none of the four groups showed statistical differences in polydipsic drinking. Results show that adjunctive drinking can be developed in proximity to upcoming food delivery even with long interfood intervals.