Symptomatology and neuropsychological functioning in cannabis using subjects at ultra-high risk for developing psychosis and healthy controls.

Objective: The relationship between cannabis use and psychosis has been studied intensively. Few data, however, are available on the relationship between cannabis use, ultra-high risk for developing psychosis and neurocognition. The aim of the present cross-sectional study was therefore to investigate the relationship between cannabis use, ultra-high-risk (UHR) symptoms and cognitive functioning in UHR patients and healthy controls.

Pre-adolescent gender differences in associations between temperament, coping, and mood.

Relationships between temperament, coping, depressive and aggressive mood in 8-12-year-old boys (n = 185) and girls (n = 219) were investigated, with a focus on gender differences. Children completed two self-report questionnaires: the Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire-Revised and Children's Coping Strategies Checklist-Revised1. Comparing boys and girls on three temperament dimensions, positive affectivity, negative affectivity and effortful control, girls scored higher than boys on the first two dimensions.

Appetitive and aversive classical conditioning of female sexual response.

Introduction: There is only limited evidence for appetitive classical conditioning of female sexual response, and to date modulation of female sexual response by aversive conditioning has not been studied.

Aim: The aim of this article is to study appetitive and aversive classical conditioning of sexual responses in women.

Main Outcome Measures: Vaginal pulse amplitude was assessed by vaginal photoplethysmography and ratings of affective value were obtained.

Unconscious classical conditioning of sexual arousal: evidence for the conditioning of female genital arousal to subliminally presented sexual stimuli.

Introduction: Although the assumption that sexual behavior is at least partly learned is common across theories of sexual behavior, classical conditioning of sexual response in women has been seldom studied.

Aim: The study of unconscious classical conditioning of appetitive sexual responses in women.

Main Outcome Measures: Vaginal pulse amplitude assessed by vaginal photoplethysmography, and ratings of sexual affective value.

Nonconscious processing of sexual information: a generalization to women.

Sexually competent stimuli may nonconsciously activate sexual memory and set up sexual responding. In men, subliminally presented sexual pictures facilitated recognition of sexual information. The goal of the two experiments reported here was to investigate to what extent this result can be generalized to women.

Preliminary evidence for an automatic link between sex and power among men who molest children.

Understanding critical motivational processes of sexual offenders may ultimately provide important clues to more effective treatments. Implicit, automatic cognitive processes have received minimal attention; however, a lexical decision experiment revealed automatic links between the concepts of power and sex among participants who self-reported attraction to sexual aggression. The current study replicates this experiment with a group of male child molesters and forensic and analogue controls.

Visual performance of adults with prelingual auditory impairment.

Reaction times and picture evaluations by 18 adults with hearing loss were compared with those of 18 matched controls during two visual priming tasks. In Task 1, participants reacted to sexual and plant target pictures (while influenced by similar preceding pictures) by pressing "sex" or "plant" buttons. In Task 2, they evaluated target Japanese ideographs (while influenced by preceding positive or negative facial expressions as prime pictures) by pressing "positive" or "negative" buttons.

Sexual behavior and responsiveness to sexual stimuli following laboratory-induced sexual arousal.

Sexual excitement can be seen as an action disposition. In this study sexual arousal was expected to generate sexual action and to increase interest and responsiveness to sexual stimuli. In two experiments, male and female participants were exposed to a neutral or a sexual film.

Conscious processing of sexual information: mechanisms of appraisal.

To elucidate some of the activational mechanisms of sexual response, this study investigated the effects of conscious appraisal of sexual and neutral stimuli on a categorization task and on ratings of sexual arousal. Conscious appraisal is dependent on memory, regulatory, and attentional processes, interacting with one another. It is proposed that regulation is activated by attention, furnished by representations from implicit and explicit memory.

Priming the sexual system: implicit versus explicit activation.

We investigated implicit versus explicit activation of the sexual system using a priming paradigm in which sexual slides were preceded by either sexual or neutral primes. In the first experiment, primes were made inaccessible to conscious cognitive elaboration. Identification of sexual targets was facilitated by sexual primes, indicating that sexual representations in memory can be activated automatically.

Conscious processing of sexual information: interference caused by sexual primes.

The concept Sexual Content-Induced Delay (SCID) refers to a hesitancy in decision making related to erotic material (Geer & Bellard, 1996; Geer & Melton, 1997). Empirical evidence about SCID stems from lexical decision tasks. Our previous studies also showed SCID effects in sex versus neutral categorization tasks in which pictures were used.