The effects of verbal information on children's fear beliefs about social situations

Two experiments explored the role of verbal information in changing children’s fearrelated beliefs about social situations. In Experiment 1, 118 6- to 8- and 12- to 13-year-olds heard positive, negative, or no information about individuals’ experiences of three social situations. Fear beliefs regarding each situation were assessed before and after this manipulation. Verbal information had no significant influence on children’s fear beliefs. In Experiment 2, the same paradigm was used with 80 12- to 13-year-olds, but the information took the form of multiple attitude statements about the situations expressed by groups of peers, older children, or adults. An affective priming task of implicit attitudes was used to complement the explicit questions about fear beliefs. Negative information influenced both explicit and implicit fear beliefs. The source of information and the child’s own social anxiety did not moderate these effects. Implications for our understanding of the socialisation of childhood fears are discussed

Selective visual attention for ugly and beautiful body parts in eating disorders

Body image disturbance is characteristic of eating disorders, and current treatments use body exposure to reduce bad body feelings. There is however little known about the cognitive effects of body exposure. In the present study, eye movement registration (electroculography) as a direct index of selective visual attention was used while eating symptomatic and normal control participants were exposed to digitalized pictures of their own body and control bodies. The data showed a decreased focus on their own 'beautiful' body parts in the high symptomatic participants, whereas inspection of their own 'ugly' body parts was given priority. In the normal control group a self-serving cognitive bias was found: they focused more on their own 'beautiful' body parts and less on their own 'ugly' body parts. When viewing other bodies the pattern was reversed: high symptom participants allocated their attention to the beautiful parts of other bodies, whereas normal controls concentrated on the ugly parts of the other bodies. From the present findings the hypothesis follows that a change in the processing of information might be needed for body exposure to be successful

Nanolithography : status and challenges

With the help of immersion lithography and multiple patterning, photolithography has been the key technology over the last decade in manufacturing of ICs, microchips and MEMS devices. Continuous rapid shrinking of feature size made the authorities to seek alternative patterning methods that can go beyond classic photographic limits. Some promising techniques have been proposed as next generation lithography and further technological progress are required to make them significant and reliable to meet the current demand. EUVL is considered as the main candidate for sub-10 nm manufacturing because of its process simplicity and reduced operating cost. Remarkable progress in EUVL has been made and the tools will be available for commercial operation soon. EBL, FIB and X-ray lithography are used for patterning in R&D, mask/mold fabrication and low volume chip design. DSA have already been realized in lab and further effort will be needed to make it as NGL solution. NIL has emerged attractively due to its simple process-steps, high-throughput, high-resolution and low cost and become one of the commercial platforms for nanofabrication

Impulsivity predicts treatment outcome in obese children

Treatment for obesity is still running short, particularly on the long term. However, some people do take advantage of treatments and are able to retain their weight loss. What makes the difference between those who can keep their weight loss and those who cannot? One possible predictor of relapse in obesity treatment is impulsivity. Overall, obese people are found to be more impulsive than lean people, especially obese binge eaters. Intuitively, it would make sense that the most impulsive people are less able to keep control over eating behaviour. Therefore, impulsivity could serve as an obstacle for treatment. In the present study impulsivity was measured with a behavioural task (the stop signal task) in 26 obese children. Overweight of the children was measured before and after treatment and at 6 and 12 months follow ups. The results show that impulsivity was related to overweight at all moments: The most impulsive children were the most overweight ones; even after 12 months. Moreover, impulsivity predicted therapy success: the most impulsive children lost less weight. Impulsivity appears to contribute to the difference between succeeding or failing in attempts to lose weight