Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Why Clowns Taste Funny: The Relationship Between Humor And Semantic Ambiguity, Tristan A. Bekinschtein, Matthew H. Davis, Jennifer M. Rodd, Adrian M. Owen

Psychology Publications

What makes us laugh? One crucial component of many jokes is the disambiguation of words with multiple meanings. In this functional MRI study of normal participants, the neural mechanisms that underlie our experience of getting a joke that depends on the resolution of semantically ambiguous words were explored. Jokes that contained ambiguous words were compared with sentences that contained ambiguous words but were not funny, as well as to matched verbal jokes that did not depend on semantic ambiguity. The results confirm that both the left inferior temporal gyrus and left inferior frontal gyrus are involved in processing the semantic …

Neuroimaging Social Emotional Processing In Women: Fmri Study Of Script-Driven Imagery., Paul A Frewen, David J A Dozois, Richard W J Neufeld, Maria Densmore, Todd K Stevens, Ruth A Lanius

Psychology Publications

Emotion theory emphasizes the distinction between social vs non-social emotional-processing (E-P) although few functional neuroimaging studies have examined whether the neural systems that mediate social vs non-social E-P are similar or distinct. The present fMRI study of script-driven imagery in 20 women demonstrates that social E-P, independent of valence, more strongly recruits brain regions involved in social- and self-referential processing, specifically the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate/precuneus, bilateral temporal poles, bilateral temporoparietal junction and right amygdala. Functional response within brain regions involved in E-P was also significantly more pronounced during negatively relative to positively valenced E-P. Finally, the effect for …

Culture’S Consequences On Coping: Theories, Evidence, And Dimensionalities, B.C.H Kuo

Psychology Publications

While the influence of culture on coping has been implicated conceptually in the stress-coping literature for sometime, empirical research on cross-cultural coping has gained momentum only recently. The past two decades witnessed a significant growth in the research and the knowledge base of culture and coping, as well as an increased call by scholars for more culturally and contextually informed stress-coping paradigms. In view of this critical development, the present article intends to systematically review and take stock of the theoretical and empirical knowledge that has emerged from the cumulative cultural coping research. Specifically, this corpus of literature was summarized …

Indigenous Crisis Counselling In Taiwan: An Exploratory Qualitative Case Study Of An Expert Therapist, B.C.H Kuo

Psychology Publications

In this study, we adopted a single qualitative case study method to explore and examine indigenous approaches to crisis counseling in Taiwan, through the distinct lens of an expert Taiwanese counseling psychologist. In-depth, open-ended interviews were conducted with the psychologist (as the case) to document her lived clinical experiences counseling a grief-stricken Taiwanese family in crisis (as the context). Using open-code data analysis, five cultural themes were abstracted from the interviews: a) significance of counselor’s authority and expertness; b) primacy of client-counselor rapport and relationship; c) centrality of collective familism; d) observance of indigenous grief response and process; and e) …

Cultural Variations In Work Stress And Coping In An Era Of Globalization, B.C.H Kuo

Psychology Publications

It is now widely recognized that countries around the world are becoming increasingly interconnected, and that both public and private organizations are of necessity becoming increasingly global. As political, legal, and economic barriers recede in this environment, cultural barriers emerge as a principal challenge to organizational survival and success. It is not yet clear whether these global realities will cause cultures to converge, harmonize, and seek common ground or to retrench, resist, and accentuate their differences. In either case, it is of paramount importance for both managers and organizational scholars to understand the cultural crosscurrents underlying these changes. With contributions …

Discrimination History, Backlash Fear, And Ethnic Identity Among Arab Americans: Post-9/11 Snapshots, Sylvia C. Nassar-Mcmillan, Richard G. Lambert, Julie Hakim-Larson

Psychology Publications

The authors examined discrimination history, backlash fear, and ethnic identity of Arab Americans nationally at 3 times, beginning shortly after September 11, 2001. Relations between variables were moderate, and discrimination history and backlash fear were statistically significant predictors of ethnic identity. Implications for acculturation and ethnic identity are discussed.

Los autores examinaron la historia de la discriminación, el miedo a las reacciones violentas, y la identidad étnica de individuos Americanos de origen Árabe a nivel nacional en 3 momentos distintos, comenzando poco tiempo después del 11 de Septiembre de 2001. Las relaciones entre las variables fueron moderadas, y la historia …

Measuring Cognitive Errors: Initial Development Of The Cognitive Distortions Scale (Cds), Roger Covin, David J. A. Dozois, Avital Ogniewicz, Pamela M. Seeds

Psychology Publications

The ability to assess and correct biases in thinking is central to cognitive-behavioral therapy. Although measures of cognitive distortions exist, no measure comprehensively assesses the cognitive errors that are typically cited in the literature. The development and initial validation of the Cognitive Distortions Scale (CDS), a questionnaire that measures the tendency to make 10 cognitive distortions (e.g., mindreading, catastrophizing, all-or-nothing thinking) as they occur in interpersonal and achievement domains, is described. Across two studies, undergraduate students (n = 318) completed the CDS and other clinically relevant measures. The CDS and its two subscales appear to exhibit good psychometric properties; …

False Recall In The Deese–Roediger–Mcdermott Paradigm: The Roles Of Gist And Associative Strength, David R. Cann, Ken Mcrae, Albert N. Katz

Psychology Publications

Theories of false memories, particularly in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm, focus on word association strength and gist. Backward associative strength (BAS) is a strong predictor of false recall in this paradigm. However, other than being defined as a measure of association between studied list words and falsely recalled nonpresented critical words, there is little understanding of this variable. In Experiment 1, we used a knowledge-type taxonomy to classify the semantic relations in DRM stimuli. These knowledge types predicted false-recall probability, as well as BAS itself, with the most important being situation features, synonyms, and taxonomic relations. In three subsequent experiments, …