The error-related negativity (ERN/Ne) and error positivity (Pe) have been associated with error detection and response monitoring. More recently, heart rate (HR) and skin conductance (SC) have also been shown to be sensitive to the internal detection of errors. An enhanced ERN has consistently been observed in anxious subjects and there is some…

Auditory stream segregation (or streaming) is a phenomenon in which 2 or more repeating sounds differing in at least 1 acoustic attribute are perceived as 2 or more separate sound sources (i.e., streams). This article selectively reviews psychophysical and computational studies of streaming and comprehensively reviews more recent…

This report traces the immunological components of the cancer process and illustrates how vital a role is played by stress. The work of the Simontons is used to discuss the relationship between stress, the immune system and cancer. Hypnotic visualization techniques and their effects on the immune system are also reviewed. (Author)

Theories of agency--the feeling of being in control of one's actions and their effects--emphasize either perceptual or cognitive aspects. This study addresses both aspects simultaneously in a finger-tapping paradigm. The tasks required participants to detect when synchronization of their taps with computer-controlled tones changed to…

To better understand the origins of autonomic reactivity during marital interactions, this study examined the psychophysiological profiles of prototypically secure (vs. insecure) and deactivating (vs. hyperactivating) adults while they talked about areas of disagreement with their (pre)marital partners. Adults who idealized their caregivers…

The presence of three or more minor and/or major anomalies in an individual with mental retardation may indicate not just a developmental relationship between the retardation and malformation syndromes, but a common cause for the entire retardation malformation syndrome. Tables, Bibliography. (Author)

The ability of bisection procedures to specify the form of the psychophysical scale depends upon the precision of the technique. It is demonstrated that this precision is a function of the stimulus interval bisected. The testing of interval scale properties of derived scales is discussed. (Author/JKS)

Examined relations among adrenocortical stress reactivity, infant emotional or proneness-to-distress temperament, and quality of attachment in 66 infants tested at 9 and 13 months. Adrenocortical activity was not associated with attachment classifications. Significant only at 9 months, elevations in cortisol were small. (RH)

The 1954 article by Eliot Stellar provided the theoretical focus for a great deal of research on the biological bases of human behavior. Future attention to the infrastructure of behaviors being studied, combined with reductionistic studies of neurons, will fulfill the potential contribution to behavioral neuroscience implicit in Stellar's…

Objective: Antisocial behavior frequently occurs in families. This study investigated whether autonomic hypoarousal and hyporesponsivity, which have been observed in antisocial individuals of all ages, are passed from fathers to male offspring. Method: The study included 44 boys with early-onset conduct disorder and 36 healthy controls (8 to 13…

This meta-analysis of 58 resting baseline studies, 25 startle studies, 17 standardized trauma cue studies, and 22 idiographic trauma cue studies compared adults with and without posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on psychophysiological variables: facial electromyography (EMG), heart rate (HR), skin conductance (SC), and blood pressure.…

Attempts to explain the experience of somatic complaints among children and adolescents suggest that they may in part result from the influence of particular strategies for coping with anger on the longevity of negative emotions. To explore these relationships British (n = 393) and Dutch (n = 99) children completed a modified version of the…

A literature review and associated recommendations for research and testing of artistic judgment (AJ) are presented. Studies of AJ aptitude testing and related research are reviewed. G. T. Fechner's psychophysical, G. P. Birkhoff's mathematical, H. J. Eysenck's factor analytic, and D. E. Berlyne's psychobiological approaches to AJ are discussed.…