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Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a potentially life-threatening condition arising from a wide variety of pathophysiologic mechanisms. Effective treatment requires a systematic diagnostic approach to identify all reversible mechanisms. Many of these mechanisms are relevant to those afflicted with obesity. The unique mechanisms of PH in the obese include obstructive sleep apnea, obesity hypoventilation syndrome, anorexigen use, cardiomyopathy of obesity, and pulmonary thromboembolic disease. Novel mechanisms of PH in the obese include endothelial dysfunction and hyperuricemia. A wide range of effective therapies exist to mitigate the disability of PH in the obese.

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Three experiments were conducted to examine cognitive processes involved in self-conscious behavior. According to Hull and Levy (1979), self-consciousness is associated with processes involved in self-referent encoding. The present studies advance the more specific hypothesis that self-consciousness is involved with the aspect of self-reference associated with the activation of knowledge about the self. Experiment I used a self-reference paradigm and found that self-consciousness increased the extent to which a manipulation of accessible self-knowledge influenced self-refereni encoding. Experiment 2 used a self-perception paradigm and found that self-consciousness increased the extent to which a manipulation of accessible self-knowledge affected subsequent self-perception. Experiment 3 used a correlational design to demonstrate how cognitive processes associated with selfreference may mediate self-conscious behavior. Individual differences in self-referent encoding were associated with individual differences in self-consciousness; both variables were associated with increased affective reactions to self-relevant feedback; and partial ing out individual differences in selfreferent encoding eliminated the effects of self-consciousness. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for reconciling various theories of self-consciousness.Recent research on the self has focused on the notion that self acts as a cognitive schema (e.g., Markus, 1977) or prototype (e.g.. Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984) for processing information. According to this view, self exists as one's mental representation of oneself, no different in principle from mental representations that a person has concerning other ideas, objects, and events and their attributes and implications. In other words, the self is a concept, not unlike other concepts, thai is stored in memory as a knowledge structure, not unlike other knowledge structures. (Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984. p. 2) To test the hypothesis that self exists as a schema or prototype, researchers have used a number of experimental paradigms originally developed by cognitive psychologists. This research has shown that information processed with reference lo the self is more easily recalled than information processed according to other schemes (e.g.. Bower & Gilligan, 1979;Rogers, Kuiper. & Kirker, 1977). In the typical paradigm, words rated according to whether or not they "describe you" are subsequently more likely to be recalled than words rated according to their structural (e.g., length) or semantic (e.g., meaning) characteristics. This "self-reference effect" is thought to occur because information encoded with reference to a well-organized self-schema is processed more efficiently and hence is more readily accessible for subsequent recall.Results of studies that have used other cognitive paradigms Special thanks are extended to Stephanie Creswell for her assistance in conducting Experiment 3.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed lo Jay G.