Death imagery and death anxiety

This study investigated the relationship between positive/negative death imagery and death anxiety. Subjects were 179 undergraduate students at a large, private, midwestern university. Results reveal that on five measures of death anxiety the subjects with low death anxiety scores had significantly more positive death images than did those with high death anxiety scores. The few subjects who imagined death to be young (N = 14) had a significantly more positive image of death than those who perceived it to be an old person. Death was seen as male by 92% of the male respondents and 74% of the female respondents. Significant differences in death imagery and death anxiety were found between subjects enrolled in an introductory psychology course and those enrolled in a thanatology course. No sex differences in death anxiety or positive/negative death imagery were found.     

Facial electromyographic responses to vocal affect expressions

In this study we investigated facial electromyographic (EMG) responses to vocal affect expressions. We also measured emotion-related action tendencies by requesting the subjects to indicate their tendency to approach or withdraw from the person uttering the stimulus word. In addition, emotional contagion (EC) was measured with a questionnaire-based scale. The results showed that hearing the expression of anger increased EMG activity in the subjects' brow region more than hearing contentment. In contrast, the expression of contentment activated the periocular muscle region more than anger. The expressions of anger elicited behavioral withdrawal responses, whereas the neutral expressions and contentment evoked approach responses. Subjects scoring low and high on EC exhibited different patterns of EMG responses. The results support the view that negative and positive affects are contagious from hearing human vocal affect expressions.     

Personality correlates of autobiographical memory

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between personality traits and autobiographical memory. Ninety-one (91) undergraduates completed an autobiographical memory questionnaire, describing experiences of unpleasant emotional episodes, and then rating their qualities: Vividness, emotionality, influence, and so on. They also completed a number of personality inventories, including the Yatabe-Guilford Personality Inventory and Self-Acceptance Inventory. Results indicated that emotionally stable and high-activity subjects perceived past unpleasant episodes as more positive, although there was no qualitative difference. Compared with emotionally unstable and low-activity subjects, they also had a higher self-acceptance score, and acknowledged and accepted own shortcomings. People with adaptive personality appear to have positive views on many aspects of the self. These findings were interpreted from the self-schema perspective of memory.     

The effect of representation of a person on the impression rating

The relationship between representation of a person and evaluative impression of that person was investigated by presenting two stimulus persons, each by six trait adjectives, to subjects of the impression group, memory group, and category group. The representation was measured by two kinds of RTs and the amount of recall, and the evaluative impression by ratings on S-D items. When subjects' representation of a stimulus person contained less information for impression ratings, the resulting impression was stable and consistent with the implicit personality theory. As the amount of the information increased in the order of the impression, category, and memory groups, however, the stability of the impression ratings declined even for the same stimulus person.     

Reflex Modification in Psychosis-Prone Young Adults

The present study examined modification of the startle reflex in psychosis-prone and normal control subjects, using a continuous pure tone prestimulus (S1) and an intense white noise startle stimulus (S2). Reflex modification conditions consisted of stimulus pairs with onset asynchronies of 60, 120, and 2000 ms with a startle-alone condition as control. Startle was indexed by the eyeblink, which was measured by vertical electro-oculography. Subjects were identified as psychosis-prone by their high scores on the Perceptual Aberration or the Physical Anhedonia scales. Group differences in blink magnitude inhibition were observed between perceptual aberration and control subjects during short stimulus onset asynchronies, with perceptual aberrators showing significantly less inhibition than controls at 120 ms. No differences were evident between anhedonic and control subjects at the two short onset asynchronies nor were there any significant between-group differences when the interval between stimuli was long (2000 ms). These results suggest that subjects with perceptual aberrations may share with schizophrenics and other schizophrenia-spectrum subjects an underdeveloped mechanism which in normal subjects is presumed to operate during preattentive processing and functions to protect sensory information from the interfering effects of subsequent stimuli.     

Conditioning with facial expressions of emotion: Effects of CS sex and age

Two experiments examined the effects of facial expressions of emotion as conditioned stimuli (CSs) on human electrodermal conditioning and on a continuous measure of expectancy of the shock unconditioned stimulus. In Experiment 1, the CS+ was a picture of a person displaying an angry face and CS? was a neutral face. For half of the subjects, the expressions were depicted by males, for the other half by females. Male subjects showed larger skin conductance responses to pictures of males than did females. The responding of female subjects was the same regardless of the sex of the person in the picture. In Experiment 2, the CS+ and CS? were pictures of an angry or a happy face. For half of the subjects, the expressions were depicted by adult males, for the other half by preadolescent males, Subjects displayed greater differentiation when an adult male depicting anger was employed as the CS+ than when a preadolescent male depicting anger was the CS+. There were no differences when an adult or a child displayed happiness.     

Effects of Electrodermal Lability and Stimulus Significance on Electrodermal Response Amplitude to Stimulus Change

The effects of electrodermal lability and stimulus significance on the amplitude of the skin conductance response (SCR) component of the orienting response (OR) to stimulus change were examined. Subjects were pre-selected in terms of the frequency of nonspecific responses (NSRs) displayed during a period of no stimulation. In Experiment 1 (N = 56), high and low NSR male subjects received 12 presentations of a 5-sec, 1000 Hz tone followed by a test trial on which tone frequency was 500 Hz. Half of the subjects in each NSR group were required to perform a reaction time (RT) response to stimulus offset. Although high NSR groups and RT groups displayed larger test-trial responses than low NSR and no-RT groups respectively, stimulus change alone was sufficient to produce an increase in SCR amplitude. In Experiment 2 (N = 40), high and low NSR male subjects received 12 visually-presented female names, and on trial 13, half the subjects in each NSR group received their own name, while the other half received a neutral male name. High NSR groups and own-name groups displayed larger test-trial responses than low NSR groups and neutral-name groups respectively. However, stimulus change alone was sufficient to produce an increase in SCR amplitude in the high NSR group. The results are interpreted as indicating that stimulus change alone is sufficient to produce an increase in OR amplitude, and that the relationship between stimulus change and stimulus significance is additive rather than multiplicative.     

Focused analgesia and generalized relaxation produce differential hypnotic analgesia in response to ascending stimulus intensity.

This study was designed in order to examine the effects of different types of hypnotic suggestion on hypnotic analgesia. Generalized relaxation and focused analgesia were induced in seven high-hypnotizable (HH) and eight low-hypnotizable (LH) subjects. Subjects were not aware to which group they belonged. The two groups did not differ in their expectation rates to achieve analgesia under hypnosis. Pain intensity and unpleasantness were rated on visual analogue scales in response to painful electrical stimuli, delivered in random order in five ascending intensities. Both focused analgesia and generalized relaxation decreased pain intensity significantly (P < 0.01). However, stimulus-intensity response curves differed under the two hypnotic conditions. As stimulus intensity became higher pain reduction was enhanced under focused analgesia, while a constant reduction occurred under generalized relaxation. The interaction between hypnotic state and stimulus intensity was significant for focused analgesia (P < 0.05) but not for generalized relaxation (P > 0.07), difference became more pronounced when analyzed for HH subjects only (P < 0.002 for analgesia, P > 0.10 for relaxation). Pain reduction was significantly higher in HH than in LH subjects under focused analgesia (P < 0.02) but not under generalized relaxation (P > 0.5). We conclude that by utilizing two modes of hypnotic suggestions in response to ascending stimuli, we were able to discover two components of hypnotic analgesia. One shows a parallel shift in the stimulus-response function, has features similar to placebo and bears no clear relationship to hypnotic susceptibility. The other shows a slope change in the stimulus-response curve and has a positive relationship to hypnotic susceptibility.     

Stimulus generalization and anxiety in schizophrenic and normal subjects.

Sixty schizophrenics and 60 normal subjects were compared on a test of stimulus generalization. The generalization stimuli were lines differing in length. Both schizophrenics and normals were divided into two groups (30 subjects each) and trained either on a short line or on a long line. In addition to the generalization stimuli, subjects were presented with an irrelevant stimulus (circle). Although there was a significant difference between the generalization gradients of the groups, this difference was limited to generalization stimuli away from the negative training stimulus. The concept of peak shift was invoked to interpret these data. That the groups did not respond to the irrelevant stimulus is inconsistent with interference theory and gives some support to the differentiation between conceptual overinclusion and perceptual overinclusion. The relationship between stimulus generalization and scores on the Manifest Anxiety Scale was inconsistent.     

Factors related to speed of assembling blocks without boundary frames after trials with the frames

Three frames that enclose equal areas for a rectangle, a Greek cross, and an isosceles triangle were used to study how 122 subjects learned to fill the frames rapidly with five blocks for five trials, and then the effect of requiring the shapes to be assembled for five more trials without the frames. Assembling all three shapes during each trial caused interference. Many instances occurred of a shape taking longer to be assembled on trial 6 than on trial 1. During the last five trials, the appropriate frame was provided whenever 3 minutes elapsed. Subjects with no 3-minute failures had a higher IQ than the others. Men's assembly time correlated with scores on a visual closure test; proficient men benefited in the frameless situation from their closure skill.     

An epidemiological study of hepatitis C virus infection in a local district in Japan

Mass screening of anti-HCV in Iyo city, Japan was performed. Sera from 136 subjects were tested for anti-HCV by ELISA (Ortho Diagnostic Inc.). Anti-HCV was positive in 13 subjects (9.6%). The familial study for anti-HCV revealed 2 persons positive for anti-HCV in 2 families each, while only 1 person was positive in each of the 8 other families. Two females were positive for both anti-HCV and HBsAg, and all of their 3 children were negative for anti-HCV and positive for HBsAg. Positive rate of anti-HCV was higher in subjects who had a history of blood transfusion or "Chinese acupuncture" than that in those who did not. These results indicate that not only blood transfusion but also "Chinese acupuncture" and intrafamilial transmission are possible routes of HCV infection. The rate of vertical transmission of HCV is definitely lower than that of HBV.     

Comparison of the Brener-Jones and Whitehead Procedures for Assessing Cardiac Awareness

The similarities between the discrimination scores derived from the Brener-Jones and Whitehead procedures for assessing cardiac awareness were examined. Subjects were provided with no performance feedback at any time, and were simply instructed to attend to afferent sensations of heartbeats. Twenty-four male and female subjects were run under both procedures in a single session. Half of each gender were run in the order Brener-Jones/Whitehead and half in the order Whitehead/Brener-Jones. Subjects were given 50 trials of each procedure separated by a short rest interval. Three indices of discrimination were calculated for each procedure: number of correct calls, P(I), and 2 arcsin √P(A). Correlations between Brener-Jones and Whitehead derived scores were weak and negative. Measures of physiological activity showed little indication of differential physiological arousal during or over trials.     

Preattentive processing of feared stimuli in blood-injection-injury fearful subjects

This research aimed to study the defence responses of blood-injection-injury (BII) fearful subjects elicited by the preattentive processing of their feared objects and by an abrupt acoustic stimulus. We selected 21 BII fearful subjects and 25 non-fearful controls from an initial sample of 128 women, according to their scores on the Fear Survey Scale (damage subscale) and the Mutilation Questionnaire. Subjects were exposed to a burst of white noise to promote a defence response, and to 48 pictures, depicting mutilations, as well as other affective contents, displayed through a backward masking procedure. Heart rate (HR), skin conductance response (SCR) and corrugator supercilii activity were continuously recorded throughout the task. Both groups showed similar SCRs, EMG activity and cardiac defence responses to the acoustic stimulus, though fearful subjects showed greater initial HR deceleration than controls. While BII fearful subjects displayed the usual defence response when exposed to a non-feared threatening stimulus, the preattentive processing of the pictures did not reveal autonomic differences between fearful subjects and controls. Mutilation pictures, however, evoked the greatest EMG activity, but only in the fearful group. These data further extend previous research on conscious perception of blood-related stimuli in BII fearful subjects, by showing a failure to recruit autonomic defence responses when blood-related pictures appear outside of conscious awareness.     

Personality and extinction of a conditioned electrodermal response

This study investigated personality differences in extinction of a conditioned EDR. The subjects were selected on the basis of EPI neuroticism and impulsivity scores. Subjects with scores on, or near, the sample means were excluded. Fifty-one subjects underwent an aversive discrimination conditioning procedure. The reinforcement was 75 per cent, the UCS was 100 dB white noise for 1 sec, while the CS was one of five different coloured lights of 2 sec duration. The UCS was presented at CS termination. Subjects were informed of the CS--UCS contingency before the acquisition phase and informed of the onset of the extinction phase. Subjects high on impulsivity showed significantly (P less than 0.01) greater extinction of the discrimination than subjects low on impulsivity.