The affective neuroscience personality scales (ANPS) aims to measure brain affective systems with the help of seven subscales: PLAY, SEEK, CARE, FEAR, ANGER and SADNESS, along with a spirituality subscale. From an affective neuroscience perspective, personality is substantially related to constitutional and developmental strengths and weaknesses in these basic subcortical emotional systems shared by all mammals. This study summarizes the standardization of the Turkish ANPS and its comparison to American ANPS norms. The Turkish translation of ANPS has been completed by 890 participants (245 of these composing an adult group and the remaining composing the university students group). 327 students out of this sample also completed a Goldberg-based Big-Five Scales (B5S), which was included in the validation of the Turkish ANPS. The obtained means and intercorrelations of the subscales on ANPS show both similarities and differences with the results attained from the study of Americans with ANPS. Gender comparisons in both cultures are mostly the same, with females having higher scores on SADNESS, CARE and Spirituality. The intercorrelations between Turkish version of ANPS and the B5S are mostly in line with the intercorrelations obtained in the original American study. Based on the results, the Turkish ANPS has sufficient reliability and construct validity. The similarities among the two ANPS studies are discussed in terms of the universal characteristics of basic affective systems, whereas the differences are discussed in the light of influences of cultural norms-as Turkish culture is more collectivistic than American culture which is more individualistic. The results of our study shows the need of carrying out further cross-cultural affective neuroscience researches to observe the influence of culture on the development of basic affective systems.

The blocking phenomenon was investigated in the sexual response system of male Japanese quail. Access to a live female quail served as the unconditioned stimulus (US). The same audiovisual cue served as the pretrained stimulus in all ofthe experiments. Following asymptotic conditioning ofthe audiovisual cue, a second conditioned stimulus (CS2) was added. In Experiment 1, CS2 was a rectangular wood block that had little or no resemblance to a female quail and could not support copulatory behavior. In Experiment 2, CS2 was a terrycloth object that had no quail parts but could support copulatory behavior, and, in Experiment 3, CS2 was a terrycloth object that had a taxidermically prepared head of a female quail added. The terrycloth-only object supported more rapid conditioning than did the wood block, but the blocking effect was obtained with both kinds of stimuli. Approach responding to the terrycloth + head object required pairing it with copulatory opportunity, and the terrycloth + head object supported at least as rapid conditioning as did the terrycloth-only object. However, responding to the terrycloth + head object was not blocked by the pretrained audiovisual cue. These results indicate that the blocking effect occurs in sexual conditioning even with stimulus objects that can support copulation. However, the addition of species-typical head cues to an object makes that object such a powerful stimulus that conditioned approach responding to it cannot be blocked by a previously conditioned arbitrary audiovisual cue.One of the cornerstones of contemporary investigations and interpretations of Pavlovian conditioning is the blocking effect, which was originally demonstrated by Kamin (1969) in a standard fear conditioning preparation with rat subjects. In the first phase of the blocking experiment, the rats received a noise conditioned stimulus (CS) paired with a shock unconditioned stimulus (US).

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This article presents the development of a 60-item self-report known as the Four Systems Anxiety Questionnaire (FSAQ). The FSAQ assesses anxiety on four components: somatic, cognitive, behavioral, and feeling. The FSAQ was given to 218 first-year university students, 54 anxiety patients attending clinical psychology departments, and 14 agoraphobic patients pre- and postpsychological treatment. Results reveal satisfactory reliability and validity levels. In addition, we proved that the FSAQ is sensitive to change following psychological treatment.

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