Cutting stress off at the pass: Reducing vigilance and responsiveness to social threat by manipulating attention.

Personality processes relating to social perception have been shown to play a significant role in the experience of stress. In 5 studies, the authors demonstrate that early stage attentional processes influence the perception of social threat and modify the human stress response. The authors first show that cortisol release in response to a stressful situation correlates with selective attention toward social threat. Second, the authors show in 2 laboratory studies that this attentional pattern, most evident among individuals with low self-esteem, can be modified with a repetitive training task. Next, in a field study, students trained to modify their attentional pattern to reduce vigilance for social threat showed lower self-reported stress related to their final exam. In a final field study with telemarketers, the attentional training task led to increased self-esteem, decreased cortisol and perceived stress responses, higher confidence, and greater work performance. Taken together, these results demonstrate the impact of antecedent-focused strategies on the late-stage consequences of social stress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Romantic attachment in individuals with physical disabilities.

Objective: To examine the relationship between adult attachment style and physical disability in intimate romantic relationships. Method: Participants were 50 individuals with adult-onset spinal cord injuries (SCI) and 50 individuals with congenital disabilities (CON) living in the community. The main outcome measures were adult attachment style and dyadic relationship adjustment. Results: Participants with SCI and CON did not differ in rates of secure versus insecure attachment, and the rates of neither group differed significantly from rates reported for persons without disability. Dyadic adjustment was clearly predicted by attachment variables and differed between the participants with SCI and those with CON; individuals with SCI reported greater total dyadic adjustment. Avoidance showed a strong negative association with dyadic satisfaction, but no association was found with dyadic cohesion. Social participation variables were associated with dyadic adjustment. For instance, mobility was positively associated with dyadic satisfaction. Conclusions: Dyadic adjustment in people with disabilities, as in other groups, is affected by attachment style, but disability and social participation variables may also affect dyadic adjustment. Clinicians should consider differences in attachment styles among persons with disabilities and their implications for intimate close relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developing the vegetation drought response index for South Korea (VegDRI-SKorea) to assess the vegetation condition during drought events

South Korea has experienced severe droughts and water scarcity problems that have influenced agriculture, food prices, and crop production in recent years. Traditionally, climate-based drought indices using point-based meteorological observations have been used to help quantify drought impacts on the vegetation in South Korea. However, these approaches have a limited spatial precision when mapping detailed vegetation stress caused by drought. For these reasons, the development of a drought index that provides detailed spatial-resolution information on drought-affected vegetation conditions is essential to improve the country’s drought monitoring capabilities, which are needed to help develop more effective adaptation and mitigation strategies. The objective of this study was to develop a satellite-based hybrid drought index called the vegetation drought response index for South Korea (VegDRI-SKorea) that could improve the spatial resolution of agricultural drought monitoring on a national scale. The VegDRI-SKorea was developed for South Korea, modifying the original VegDRI methodology (developed for the USA) by tailoring it to the available local data resources. The VegDRI-SKorea utilizes a classification and regression tree (CART) modelling approach that collectively analyses remote-sensing data (e.g. normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)), climate-based drought indices (e.g. self-calibrated Palmer drought severity index (PDSI) and standardized precipitation index (SPI)), and biophysical variables (e.g. elevation and land cover) that influence the drought-related vegetation stress. This study evaluates the performance of the recently developed VegDRI-SKorea for severe and extreme drought events that occurred in South Korea in 2001, 2008, and 2012. The results demonstrated that the hybrid drought index improved the more spatially detailed drought patterns compared to the station-based drought indices and resulted in a better understanding of drought impacts on the vegetation conditions. The VegDRI-SKorea model is expected to contribute to the monitoring of drought conditions nationally. In addition, it will provide the necessary information on the spatial variations of those conditions to evaluate local and regional drought risk assessment across South Korea and assist local decision-makers in drought risk management.     

Multisensory recognition of actively explored objects.

Shape recognition can be achieved through vision or touch, raising the issue of how this information is shared across modalities. Here we provide a short review of previous findings on cross-modal object recognition and we provide new empirical data on multisensory recognition of actively explored objects. It was previously shown that, similar to vision, haptic recognition of objects fixed in space is orientation specific and that cross-modal object recognition performance was relatively efficient when these views of the objects were matched across the sensory modalities (Newell, Ernst, Tjan, & Bülthoff, 2001). For actively explored (i.e., spatially unconstrained) objects, we now found a cost in cross-modal relative to within-modal recognition performance. At first, this may seem to be in contrast to findings by Newell et al. (2001). However, a detailed video analysis of the visual and haptic exploration behaviour during learning and recognition revealed that one view of the objects was predominantly explored relative to all others. Thus, active visual and haptic exploration is not balanced across object views. The cost in recognition performance across modalities for actively explored objects could be attributed to the fact that the predominantly learned object view was not appropriately matched between learning and recognition test in the cross-modal conditions. Thus, it seems that participants naturally adopt an exploration strategy during visual and haptic object learning that involves constraining the orientation of the objects. Although this strategy ensures good within-modal performance, it is not optimal for achieving the best recognition performance across modalities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The developmental trajectories of attention focusing, attentional and behavioral persistence, and externalizing problems during school-age years.

The developmental trajectories of attention focusing (by parents' and teachers' reports) and attentional and behavioral persistence (observed during a laboratory task)--2 indexes of effortful control--and externalizing problems from ages 5 to 10 years were examined for 356 children combined from a pair of 3-wave (2 years apart) longitudinal studies. The authors identified clusters of children with distinct trajectories for these variables and examined the links between the effortful control trajectories and the externalizing problem trajectories. Although attention focusing remained relatively stable, attentional and behavioral persistence continued to show mean-level changes (especially among the children with lower levels of persistence). Children with high and stable trajectories of effortful control tended to exhibit low and stable trajectories of externalizing problems, whereas those with lower and/or less stable trajectories of effortful control showed more elevated and/or fluctuating trajectories of externalizing problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What's the use of being happy? Mood states, useful objects, and repetition priming effects.

Two experiments involving 99 undergraduate participants sought to examine the influence of mood states on encoding speed within lexical decision and pronunciation tasks. Mood states were measured naturalistically in Experiment 1 and manipulated in Experiment 2. Stimuli consisted of nouns representing useful (e.g., food) and nonuseful (e.g., lint) objects. Mood states had no implications for initial encoding speed. However, when the same words were presented a 2nd time (i.e., repeated), happy individuals displayed a tendency to encode useful words faster than nonuseful ones. Thus, mood states influenced repetition priming on the basis of stimulus valence. The authors propose that happiness sensitizes individuals to useful or rewarding objects, which in turn creates a stronger memory trace for such stimuli in the future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linkages between spouses' psychological distress and marital conflict in the home.

To elucidate the processes that underlie the established association between psychopathology and marital functioning, researchers have given attention to how symptomatic individuals manage their interpersonal contexts, particularly during the handling of disagreements. In the current study, the authors evaluate the role of marital conflict strategies in relation to wives' and husbands' psychological distress levels. A sample of 100 community-based couples completed assessments of psychological distress and diaries describing marital conflict that occurred at home during a 15-day reporting period. Findings from multilevel modeling of dyadic data revealed associations between both spouses' psychological distress and multiple behavioral and emotional conflict expressions in the home. Psychological symptoms uniquely predicted the occurrence of certain conflict expressions, even when accounting for global negative marital sentiments. The findings encourage subsequent consideration of marital conflict expressions and resolution strategies when studying processes involved in the marriage-psychological adjustment link. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Color constancy from mutual reflection

Mutual reflection occurs when light reflected from one surface illuminates a second surface. In this situation, the color of one or both surfaces can be modified by a color-bleeding effect. In this article we examine how sensor values (e.g., RGB values) are modified in the mutual reflection region and show that a good approximation of the surface spectral reflectance function for each surface can be recovered by using the extra information from mutual reflection. Thus color constancy results from an examination of mutual reflection. Use is made of finite dimensional linear models for ambient illumination and for surface spectral reflectance. If m and n are the number of basis functions required to model illumination and surface spectral reflectance respectively, then we find that the number of different sensor classes p must satisfy the condition p(2 n+m)/3. If we use three basis functions to model illumination and three basis functions to model surface spectral reflectance, then only three classes of sensors are required to carry out the algorithm. Results are presented showing a small increase in error over the error inherent in the underlying finite dimension models.     

Prediction of slip resistance in climbing systems

The objective of this study was to develop a predictive model describing the slip resistance of various climbing surfaces. In a four-factor experiment, seven commonly used metal grating step surfaces were evaluated, along with four types of shoe soles (crepe, leather, ribbed-rubber, and oil-resistant-rubber); three contaminant conditions (dry, wet-water, and diesel fuel); and direction of force application. The results showed that the available slip resistance coefficients (ASRC) varied primarily as a function of sole material and contaminants. This result and the significant interactions between sole and step surfaces suggest that the appropriate selection of shoe soles and control of contaminants may be the most effective way of attaining adequate ASRC values. A predictive equation was developed using multiple regression which described the evaluated conditions with binary indicator variables. To increase the equation's applicability, the step surfaces were described in terms of generic features such as: painted vs. bare metal surface; ring vs. point protrusions; edge orientation; contact area, and protrusion height gradient. The equation explained 89% of the variance in the original data. In a validation study, the equation explained 80% of the variance in slip resistance for a new step surface under the original set of sole, contaminant, and directionality conditions.     

NMscatt: a program for calculating inelastic scattering from large biomolecular systems using classical force-field simulations

Computational tools for normal mode analysis, which are widely used in physics and materials science problems, are designed here in a single package called NMscatt (Normal Modes & scattering) that allows arbitrarily large systems to be handled. The package allows inelastic neutron and X-ray scattering observables to be calculated, allowing comparison with experimental data produced at large scale facilities. Various simplification schemes are presented for analyzing displacement vectors, which are otherwise too complicated to understand in very large systems.

Program summary

Title of program:NMscattCatalogue identifier:ADZA_v1_0Program summary URL:http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/ADZA_v1_0.htmlProgram obtainable from:CPC Program Library, Queen's University of Belfast, N. IrelandLicensing provisions:noNo. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.:573 535No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.:4 516 496Distribution format:tar.gzProgramming language:FORTRAN 77Computer:x86 PCOperating system:GNU/Linux, UNIXRAM:Depends on the system size to be simulatedWord size:32 or 64 bitsClassification:16.3External routines:LAPACKNature of problem: Normal mode analysis, phonons calculation, derivation of incoherent and coherent inelastic scattering spectra.Solution method: Full diagonalization (producing eigen-vectors and eigen-values) of dynamical matrix which is obtained from potential energy function derivation using finite difference method.Running time: About 7 hours per one k-point evaluation in sampling all modes dispersion curves for a system containing 3550 atoms in the unit cell on AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+.