Trauma type affects recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among online respondents in the UK and Ireland.

Background: Mental Health Literacy (MHL) predicts help-seeking for mental health difficulties. Public surveys show high recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in relation to military contexts, but this has not been investigated with other sources of trauma.

Methods: A self-selecting sample of 2960 participants from UK and Ireland completed an online survey.

Individual differences in cognitive-flexibility: the influence of spontaneous eyeblink rate, trait psychoticism and working memory on attentional set-shifting.

Individual differences in psychophysiological function have been shown to influence the balance between flexibility and distractibility during attentional set-shifting [e.g., Dreisbach et al.

Individual differences in cognitive control: the role of psychoticism and working memory in set-shifting.

Set-shifting refers to a process of cognitive control which is shown through flexible behavioural adaptation to changes in task parameters or demands, such as the switching of an explicit rule (extra-dimensional rule shifting) or the reversal of a reinforcement-contingency (reversal-learning). Set-shifting deficits are widely documented in specific neuropsychological disorders, but seldom investigated in relation to normally-occurring individual differences. In a sample of healthy adults (N=78, 28% male), we demonstrate that Working Memory and trait Psychoticism have independent involvement in extra-dimensional rule shifting as measured using an analogue of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.

A note on DeCaro, Thomas, and Beilock (2008): further data demonstrate complexities in the assessment of information-integration category learning.

DeCaro et al. [DeCaro, M. S.