1,720,977 research outputs found
Influence of empathy and psychopathic traits on emotional psychophysiological responses in women.
Full text linkPsychopathy is traditionally defined as a personality disorder characterized by two main factors: “Emotional Detachment” and “Antisocial Behavior”. With respect to the first factor, classic diagnostic criteria for psychopathy include lack of empathy, emotional callousness, lack of guilt or remorse, and egocentricity. With regard to the second factor, psychopathic individuals show an impulsive behavior without regard for consequences, an absence of long-term goals, perseverative responses, irresponsibility, antisocial and criminal behavior (Hare, 1993).
Cleckley (The Mask of Sanity, 1941) defined two types of psychopaths: “Successful” and “Unsuccessful”. “Unsuccessful” psychopaths present with the typical profile of the disorder, entailing emotional detachment and also antisocial behavior. They manifest violent and criminal behavior and serve several terms of imprisonment. “Successful” psychopaths present with emotional detachment, but a high IQ, and familiar and social favorable environment keeps them away from troubles. Nevertheless, they are egocentric, conspirers, and callous, and their behavior, even if not criminal or illegal, typically violates ethical and moral norms.
In past years, several studies have been conducted in forensic facilities and jails, on “unsuccessful” criminal psychopaths, thus producing interesting results, but poorly applicable to normal population. It’s important to extend these studies to “Successful” psychopaths in the community, and to explore analogies and discontinuities between these two categories. Also, research in detention institutes is often focused on male psychopaths, due to the predominant presence of this gender into jail, hence the importance to study female psychopathy and to analyze similarities and differences between the two genders in the characterization of the disorder.
The main goal of the present project was to investigate the emotional regulation in women with high empathic or “successful” psychopathic traits and empathic and psychopathic traits selected from the healthy community.
In the first study, we analyzed the influence of empathy on subjective evaluation of emotional pictures and emotional psychophysiological responses (startle reflex, ERPs) in healthy women. Results showed how different levels of empathy had an influence on evaluation of valence and arousal elicited by emotional stimuli. Participants with low empathy levels rated negative pictures as more pleasant, and both positive and negative pictures as less arousing than the group with high empathy levels, indicating a reduced perceived bodily activation. With regards to startle reflex responses and event-related potentials, no differences between the two groups were found.
In the second study, we analyzed individual differences in subjective evaluations and affective psychophysiological responses (startle reflex, ERPs) elicited by emotional pictures, in women with low and high baseline startle responses. The two groups (Low Responders vs. High Responders) did not differ in their subjective evaluation of the pictures, but they differed in their affective modulation of the startle reflex: while the High Responders showed an inhibition of the reflex in response to pleasant stimuli, and a potentiation of the reflex in response to unpleasant stimuli, the Low Responders did not show an affective modulation of the reflex in response to any emotional stimulus. Low Responders also manifested reduced cortical responses while viewing emotional stimuli, compared to High Responders.
The main goal of the third study was to analyze the capability of Decision-making and cortical responses measured by ERPs in women with high psychopathic traits and a control group through the Iowa Gambling Task. Participants with high psychopathic traits showed perseverative responses during the performance, hyposensitivity to punishment, and hypersensitivity to rewards, compared to the control group.
The forth study aimed at examining the associations between the triarchic conceptualization of psychopathy (measured by the three factors: boldness, meanness, disinhibition), as measured by the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure, and the Narcissistic construct, as measured by the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, in undergraduate students. Several facets of narcissism were found to be related to distinctive configurations of psychopathic traits. The Narcissistic Personality Inventory revealed to capture both the grandiose and vulnerable aspects of narcissism.
In conclusion, the first three studies evidenced how women with low empathy and high psychopathic traits show impairment in emotional regulation and in decision-making capabilities. “Successful” psychopaths can cause relevant physical and moral damages to individuals and society. The fourth study provided a better understanding of the relationship between psychopathy and narcissism
Greater general startle reflex is associated with greater anxiety levels: a correlational study on 111 young women
Full text linkStartle eyeblink reflex is a valid non-invasive tool for studying attention, emotion and psychiatric disorders. In the absence of any experimental manipulation, the general (or baseline) startle reflex shows a high inter-individual variability, which is often considered task-irrelevant and therefore normalized across participants. Unlike the above view, we hypothesized that greater general startle magnitude is related to participants’ higher anxiety level. 111 healthy young women, after completing the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, were randomly administered 10 acoustic white noise probes (50 ms, 100 dBA acoustic level) while integrated EMG from left and right orbicularis oculi was recorded. Results showed that participants with greater state anxiety levels exhibited larger startle reflex magnitude from the left eye (r109=0.23, p<0.05). Furthermore, individuals who perceived the acoustic probe as more aversive reported the largest anxiety scores (r109=0.28, p<0.05) and had the largest eyeblinks, especially in the left eye (r109 = 0.34, p<0.001). Results suggest that general startle may represent a valid tool for studying the neural excitability underlying anxiety and emotional dysfunction in neurological and mental disorders
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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