New Research From Clinical Psychological Science

Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science:

Suppression of Competing Memories in Substance-Related and Addictive Disorders: A Retrieval-Induced Forgetting Study

Davide Francesco Stramaccia, Barbara Penolazzi, Anna Laura Monego, Amalia Manzan, Luigi Castelli, and Giovanni Galfano

When researchers study inhibitory control in people with substance-abuse issues, they often do so by looking at the inhibition of overt motor behaviors. In this study, the authors examined an internal aspect of inhibitory control: the inhibition of episodic memories. Healthy participants and participants with substance-abuse disorders studied a list of 84 word pairs from 12 different semantic categories. Participants then practiced only some of the words from half of the categories. When participants were tested on all of the words, the researchers found that participants with substance-abuse disorders showed impaired retrieval-induced forgetting (i.e., the forgetting of related information caused by information retrieval). This finding indicates that those with substance-abuse problems have difficulty suppressing competing memories, shedding light on the scope of inhibitory-control problems in those with substance-abuse disorders.

Etiology of Triarchic Psychopathy Dimensions in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Robert D. Latzman, Christopher J. Patrick, Hani D. Freeman, Steven J. Schapiro, and William D. Hopkins

The triarchic model describes psychopathology as comprising three biobehavioral constructs: boldness, meanness, and disinhibition. In the current study, the genetic and environmental contributions to variability in triarchic psychopathy dimensions were examined in a sample of 178 chimpanzees. Colony staff members rated mother- and nursery-raised chimpanzees on triarchic dimensions. Many of the animals in the sample were related, allowing for heritability estimates of triarchic traits. The researchers found that all three dimensions showed heritability among the mother-reared — but not the nursery-reared — subsamples. Genetic and environmental influences accounted for covariation in meanness and boldness in mother-reared chimpanzees, whereas environmental influences mainly accounted for covariation between boldness and the other two psychopathy dimensions. These findings indicate that there are both environmental and genetic contributions to triarchic psychopathy dimensions that vary based on early rearing experiences.