Bauer, Ben

This study aimed to explore relationships between impulsivity scores, cannabis use, and performance on vigilance, attention, and decision making tasks. We also investigated whether cannabis use related to self-reported risk taking behaviours, including risky driving, openness to engage with cryptocurrency markets, or gambling behaviour. The regular recreational cannabis users had significantly higher impulsivity scores and tendency to use other substances than non-users. The regular cannabis users had better performance efficiency than non-users for hit targets on the vigilance task, but not the other two target trial types. The regular cannabis users made significantly fewer errors than non-users on the verbal Stroop task. There were no significant performance differences on the Iowa Gambling Task between the regular recreational cannabis users and non-users. None of our other hypotheses explorations yielded statistically significant results.

Author Keywords: cannabis, cryptocurrency, gambling, impulsivity, Stroop, vigilance

While preferences for symmetry are seemingly universal, they can be seen at their most extreme among individuals high in trait incompleteness. As yet, it is unclear why incompleteness yields heightened symmetry preferences. Summerfeldt et al. (2015) speculated that individuals high in incompleteness may develop heightened preferences for symmetry due to its greater perceptual fluency. Accordingly, the aim of the present set of three experiments was to examine this relationship. Implicit preferences for symmetry were measured using a modified version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) reported by Makin et al. (2012). Experiments 1 (N = 24) and 2 (N = 24) examined whether the general implicit preferences for symmetry and influence of perceptual fluency reported by Makin et al. (2012) extended to a within-subjects design. Experiment 3 (N = 86) examined whether trait incompleteness is related to greater implicit preferences for symmetric stimuli, and whether perceptual fluency affects this association. Results showed that incompleteness and implicit preferences were related, and that incompleteness-related differences in preferences were eliminated when the patterns were equally perceptually fluent, supporting the idea that incompleteness-related preferences for symmetry are linked to perceptual fluency. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Autistic traits are characterized by difficulties with socialization, preference for order, and rigid and repetitive behaviour patterns. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of two measures of autistic traits, the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and the Sub-threshold Autistic Trait Questionnaire (SATQ), and their associations with the HEXACO personality framework. The relationships between self-objectification, Need for Cognition (NFC), and autistic traits were also examined. In a student sample (N = 294), autistic traits were found to be negatively related to eXtraversion, but unrelated to self-objectification and NFC. However, individual subscales of the SATQ and AQ revealed different personality profiles, suggesting a non-unitary composition of the autistic trait measures. The AQ's subscales failed to be represented in its factor structure. Intercorrelations between SATQ and AQ subscales showed that some subscales were uncorrelated with others. These concerns challenge whether autistic traits should be considered as a downwards extrapolation of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Author Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Autistic Traits, HEXACO, Need for Cognition, Self-Objectification