It is increasingly acknowledged that cognitive impairment can play an important role in depression vulnerability. Therefore, cognitive remediation strategies, and cognitive control training procedures have gained attention in recent years as possible interventions for depression. Recent studies suggest a small to medium effect on indicators of depression vulnerability. Despite initial evidence for the efficacy and effectiveness of CCT, several central questions remain. In this paper we consider the key challenges for the clinical implementation of CCT, including exploration of potential working (...) mechanisms and related to this, moderators of training effects, necessary conditions under which CCT could be optimally administered, such as dose requirements and training schedules, and how CCT could interact with or augment existing treatments of depression. Revisiting the CCT literature, we also reflect upon the possibilities to evolve toward a stratified medicine approach, in which individual differences could be taken into account and used to optimize prevention of depression. (shrink)

Depression is theorized to be caused in part by biased cognitive processing of emotional information. Yet, prior research has adopted a reductionist approach that does not characterize how biases i...

Several versions of the dot probe detection task are frequently used to assess maladaptive attentional processes associated with a broad range of psychopathology and health behavior, including eating behavior and weight. However, there are serious concerns about the reliability of the indices derived from the paradigm as measurement of attentional bias toward or away from salient stimuli. The present paper gives an overview of different attentional bias indices used in psychopathology research and scrutinizes three types of indices calculated from a (...) pictorial version of the dot probe task to assess food-related attentional biases in children and youngsters with and without obesity. Correlational analyses reveal that dynamic scores are dependent on general response speed. Reliability estimates are low for the traditional and probability indices. The higher reliability for the dynamic indices is at least partially explained by general response speed. No significant group differences between youth with and without obesity are found, and correlations with weight are also non-significant. Taken together, results cast doubt on the applicability of this specific task for both experimental and individual differences research on food-related attentional biases in youth. However, researchers are encouraged to make and test adaptations to the procedure or computational algorithm in an effort to increase psychometric quality of the task and to report psychometric characteristics of their version of the task for their specific sample. (shrink)

SummaryThe last charcoal iron blast furnace in the United States shut down in 1945. The most obvious reason for the extraordinary longevity of this industry was the almost unlimited supply of virgin timber in the United States. Although an obvious explanation, it is deceptive. The much more crucial reason for the longevity of the American charcoal iron industry was the technical difficulties involved in adapting coke- and coal-smelted iron to existing industrial processes. Until these technological problems could be overcome, charcoal (...) iron was able to preserve a place for itself in the industrial environment of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By concentrating their attention on the rapid advance of coke-smelted iron from 1870 onward, historians of the American iron industry have neglected this ability of the older iron technology to adapt to the new industrial conditions. (shrink)

"Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance" (1927) schreibt ein Stück philosophischer Problemgeschichte und geht der Frage nach, "ob und inwiefern die Gedankenbewegung des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts bei aller Mannigfaltigkeit der Problemansätze und bei aller Divergenzen der Lösungen eine in sich geschlossene Einheit bildet". Provoziert durch Burckhardts Renaissancestudie, die die Philosophie der Zeit unberücksichtigt läßt, versucht Cassirer nachzuweisen, daß auch die Renaissancephilosophie Teil einer "geistigen Gesamtbewegung" ist und eigene systematische Mittelpunkte besitzt.

"Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance" (1927) schreibt ein Stück philosophischer Problemgeschichte und geht der Frage nach, "ob und inwiefern die Gedankenbewegung des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts bei aller Mannigfaltigkeit der Problemansätze und bei aller Divergenzen der Lösungen eine in sich geschlossene Einheit bildet". Provoziert durch Burckhardts Renaissancestudie, die die Philosophie der Zeit unberücksichtigt läßt, versucht Cassirer nachzuweisen, daß auch die Renaissancephilosophie Teil einer "geistigen Gesamtbewegung" ist und eigene systematische Mittelpunkte besitzt.

Ernst H. Gombrich criticized abstract painting with several remarks scattered around his wide oeuvre. I argue that his view of abstract paintings is coherent with the account of pictorial representation he put forward in Art and Illusion, show some limits of such view, and maintain that, although several of Gombrich’s criticisms of abstract painting should be rejected, some of his remarks are insightful and worthy of consideration.