Selective processing of masked and unmasked verbal threat material in anxiety: Influence of an immediate acute stressor

Attentional biases for threat were investigated using a computerised version of the emotional Stroop task. The study examined the influence of state and trait anxiety by employing a student sample assigned to high trait anxious (HTA; n = 32) or low trait anxious (LTA; n = 32) groups on the basis of questionnaire scores, and state anxiety was manipulated within participants through the threat of electric shock. Threatening words that were either unrelated (e.g., cancer, danger) or related to the threat of shock (e.g., electrocute, shock) were presented to participants both within and outside of awareness. In the latter condition a backward masking procedure was used to prevent awareness and exposure thresholds between the target and mask were individually set for each participant. For unmasked trials the HTA group showed significant interference in colour naming for all threat words relative to control words when performing under the threat of shock, but not in the shock safe condition. For the masked trials, despite chance performance in being able to identify the lexical status of the items, HTA participants showed facilitated colour naming for all threat words relative to control items when performing under threat of shock, but this effect was not evident in the shock safe condition. Neither valence of the items nor the threat of shock influenced colour naming latencies in either exposure mode for the LTA group.

The effects of assessment type on verbal ratings of conditional stimulus valence and contingency judgments: Implications for the extinction of evaluative learning

Recent research on causal learning found (a) that causal judgments reflect either the current predictive value of a conditional stimulus (CS) or an integration across the experimental contingencies used in the entire experiment and (b) that postexperimental judgments, rather than the CS's current predictive value, are likely to reflect this integration. In the current study, the authors examined whether verbal valence ratings were subject to similar integration. Assessments of stimulus valence and contingencies responded similarly to variations of reporting requirements, contingency reversal, and extinction, reflecting either current or integrated values. However, affective learning required more trials to reflect a contingency change than did contingency judgments. The integration of valence assessments across training and the fact that affective learning is slow to reflect contingency changes can provide an alternative interpretation for researchers' previous failures to find an effect of extinction training on verbal reports of CS valence.

Validity of verbal autopsy procedures for determining cause of death in Tanzania

Objectives: To validate verbal autopsy (VA) procedures for use in sample vital registration. Verbal autopsy is an important method for deriving cause-specific mortality estimates where disease burdens are greatest and routine cause-specific mortality data do not exist. Methods: Verbal autopsies and medical records (MR) were collected for 3123 deaths in the perinatal/neonatal period, post-neonatal < 5 age group, and for ages of 5 years and over in Tanzania. Causes of death were assigned by physician panels using the International Classification of Disease, revision 10. Validity was measured by: cause-specific mortality fractions (CSMF); sensitivity; specificity and positive predictive value. Medical record diagnoses were scored for degree of uncertainty, and sensitivity and specificity adjusted. Criteria for evaluating VA performance in generating true proportional mortality were applied. Results: Verbal autopsy produced accurate CSMFs for nine causes in different age groups: birth asphyxia; intrauterine complications; pneumonia; HIV/AIDS; malaria (adults); tuberculosis; cerebrovascular diseases; injuries and direct maternal causes. Results for 20 other causes approached the threshold for good performance. Conclusions: Verbal autopsy reliably estimated CSMFs for diseases of public health importance in all age groups. Further validation is needed to assess reasons for lack of positive results for some conditions.

Verbal and physical aggression in couples where the female partner is drinking heavily

This study evaluated (i) frequencies of aggression in maritally distressed problem drinking (DP) women relative to controls, (ii) aggression, marital satisfaction, and partner drinking in predicting female drinking, and (iii) discrepant within-couple drinking in predicting marital distress. The sample included 27 DP women, 24 maritally distressed nonproblem drinking women (DNP women), and 24 women with neither problem (NDNP women). DP women reported frequencies of physical aggression similar to DNP women, but less male verbal aggression than DNP women. Predictors of female drinking were marital satisfaction and male drinking, but aggression did not predict female drinking. Female marital satisfaction was predicted by interspousal discrepancies in drinking after accounting for verbal aggression.

Television satire, decmocracy and the decay of public language: John Clarke's verbal caricature

This paper examines the contributions of John Clarke to the field of political satire through his interviews with straight-man Bryan Dawe on ABC TV’s The 7.30 Report. Clarke’s work represents one of the last vestiges of what was once a vigorous satiric tradition in TV comedy, specifically the practice of political caricature. There was The Mavis Bramston Show in the 1960s and The Naked Vicar Show in the 1970s, while The Gillies Report in the 1980s was probably the best example of sustained political caricature in television comedy. Even in later sketch-based shows such as Fast Forward and The Late Show in the early 1990s, political caricature was a significant component of the material, whereas it seems to have all but disappeared from current television comedy. The paper investigates the disappearance of this type of comedy from Australian television screens and also discusses why the longevity, consistency, not to mention accuracy, of Clarke’s satire is so important in the current political climate. Clarke’s political caricature is almost entirely language-based, expertly parodying the spin-doctored rhetoric of our elected representatives and business leaders. This leads to a secondary focus of the paper, which is a discussion of Clarke’s unique form of satire in the context of what an historian (and former satirist) identifies as ‘the decay of public language’.

A Comunicação Não-Verbal: especial relevância à função espaço-território da (comunicação) proxémica"

Aristotle said "Man is a social animal," that does not know how to live isolated and need interaction with their peers. Over several millenniums the man was found many ways to communicate – from smoke signals to sign language or even writing – and this need not slowed down over the years, instead of this, became increasingly glaring. Communication has become increasingly imperative in our lives. But the communication has long ceased to be seen merely as a transmission of words. Nowadays, in the today's society, the man relates to others through two levels: verbal and non-verbal. These two dimensions of communication arise often together, completing or in opposition to, even if the human being does not realize it. Proxemics, as one of the areas covered in Non-Verbal Communication is responsible for studying the distances and proximities that are between people and spaces and how each of us do to protect and defend their personal territory. Will be the Gender, Age, Profession or the Barriers to Communication able to significantly influence the proxemic? The present study will answer to these questions.

Event related potential (ERP) evidence for selective impairment of verbal recollection in abstinent recreational methylenedioxymethamphetamine (“Ecstasy”)/polydrug users

Objectives Ecstasy is a recreational drug whose active ingredient, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), acts predominantly on the serotonergic system. Although MDMA is known to be neurotoxic in animals, the long-term effects of recreational Ecstasy use in humans remain controversial but one commonly reported consequence is mild cognitive impairment particularly affecting verbal episodic memory. Although event-related potentials (ERPs) have made significant contributions to our understanding of human memory processes, until now they have not been applied to study the long-term effects of Ecstasy. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of past Ecstasy use on recognition memory for both verbal and non-verbal stimuli using ERPs. Methods We compared the ERPs of 15 Ecstasy/polydrug users with those of 14 cannabis users and 13 non-illicit drug users as controls. Results Despite equivalent memory performance, Ecstasy/polydrug users showed an attenuated late positivity over left parietal scalp sites, a component associated with the specific memory process of recollection. Conlusions This effect was only found in the word recognition task which is consistent with evidence that left hemisphere cognitive functions are disproportionately affected by Ecstasy, probably because the serotonergic system is laterally asymmetrical. Experimentally, decreasing central serotonergic activity through acute tryptophan depletion also selectively impairs recollection, and this too suggests the importance of the serotonergic system. Overall, our results suggest that Ecstasy users, who also use a wide range of other drugs, show a durable abnormality in a specific ERP component thought to be associated with recollection.