Although the link between sex and attachment was made decades ago (Hazan & Shaver, 1987), theories on sexual and attachment functioning have been developed in relative isolation. Recent efforts to integrate both literatures have been complicated by the fact that the sex-attachment link has been approached from very different perspectives, including biological, evolutionary, developmental, cognitive, and social psychology approaches. Also, at the empirical level, research on sex and attachment lacks overarching synthesis. This article gives an overview of the most important theoretical ideas and empirical insights on sex and attachment. It starts with describing general models that approach the sex-attachment link from an evolutionary and neurobiological perspective. Then, it summarizes theoretical and empirical ideas of attachment theory and describes how attachment style differences are manifested in intimate and sexual relationships. Research so far has been limited to studying the predicted link between sex and attachment in terms of broad descriptives, and it would benefit the literature to specify the processes and pathways that mediate the sex-attachment link. After a short discussion of the functional similarities between the sexual and the attachment systems, the article describes some specific--dynamical--models that focus on the emotional and cognitive-motivational processes through which attachment schemas influence sexual experiences. Such an emotion-motivational perspective on sex and attachment can help to organize theoretical ideas and empirical findings and eventually promote an integrative view on how attachment dynamics can interact with sexual experiences.

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Objectives Molecular assays on nasopharyngeal swabs remain the cornerstone of COVID-19 diagnostic. The high technicalities of nasopharyngeal sampling and molecular assays, as well as scarce resources of reagents, limit our testing capabilities. Several strategies failed, to date, to fully alleviate this testing process (e.g. saliva sampling or antigen testing on nasopharyngeal samples). We assessed the clinical performances of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid antigen (N-antigen) ELISA detection in serum or plasma using the COVID-19 Quantigene® (AAZ, France) assay. Methods Performances were determined on 63 sera from 63 non-COVID patients and 227 serum samples (165 patients) from the French COVID and CoV-CONTACT cohorts with RT-PCR confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, including 142 serum (114 patients) obtained within 14 days after symptoms’ onset. Results Specificity was 98.4% (95% confidence interval [CI], 95.3 to 100). Sensitivity was 79.3% overall (180/227, 95% CI, 74.0 to 84.6) and 93.0% (132/142, 95% CI, 88.7 to 97.2) within 14 days after symptoms onset. 91 included patients had a sera and nasopharyngeal swabs collected in the same 24 hours. Among those with high nasopharyngeal viral loads, i.e. Ct value below 30 and 33, only 1/50 and 4/67 tested negative for N-antigenemia, respectively. Among those with a negative nasopharyngeal RT-PCR, 8/12 presented positive N-antigenemia; the lower respiratory tract was explored for 6 of these 8 patients, showing positive RT-PCR in 5 cases. Conclusion This is the first evaluation of a commercially available serum N-antigen detection assay. It presents a robust specificity and sensitivity within the first 14 days after symptoms onset. This approach provides a valuable new option for COVID-19 diagnosis, only requiring a blood draw and easily scalable in all clinical laboratories.

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The present studies investigated whether men and women differ in cognitivemotivational processing of sexual stimuli in order to better understand the commonly

The present study investigated the relative contribution of bottom-up and top-down control to task selection in the voluntary task switching (VTS) procedure. In order to manipulate the efficiency of top-down control, a concurrent working-memory load was imposed during VTS. In three experiments bottom-up factors such as stimulus repetitions, repetition of irrelevant information and stimulus-task associations were introduced to investigate their influence on task selection. We observed that the tendency to repeat tasks was stronger under load, suggesting that top-down control counteracts the automatic tendency to repeat tasks. The results also indicated that task selection can be guided by several elements in the environment, but that only the influence of stimulus repetitions depend on the efficiency of top-down control. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed within the interplay between top-down and bottom-up control that underlies the voluntary selection of tasks. R596BVoluntary task switching under load 3Many researchers assume that goal-directed behavior relies on the intentional and controlled activation of task goals (Baddeley, 1992;Logan & Gordon, 2001;Miller & Cohen, 2001). However, several studies demonstrated that task goals can also be activated automatically by information in the environment (e.g. Mattler, 2003;Mayr & Bryck, 2007;Verbruggen & Logan, 2009) or by the retrieval of previously formed associations between a stimulus and a particular goal (e.g. Verbruggen & Logan, 2008;Waszak, Hommel & Allport, 2003). In the present study we examined the contribution of top-down and bottom-up activation of task goals in voluntary task switching (VTS).In VTS, subjects switch between cognitive tasks. They are free to select the task to perform, as long as each task is selected an approximate equal number of times and subjects do not follow a predictable pattern of task selections (Arrington, 2008;Arrington & Logan, 2004;2005;Liefooghe, Demanet, & Vandierendonck, 2009;Mayr & Bell, 2006). A general finding is that subjects repeat tasks more often than they switch (Arrington & Logan, 2005). This task-repetition bias has been linked to the efficiency of top-down control processes involved in the voluntary selection of task goals. For example, Mayr and Bell (2006) argued that subjects tend to repeat tasks because the task of the previous trial is still the most active one when selecting a new task. In order to overcome this bias, the activated task has to be inhibited. Thus, selection of tasks would depend on top-down control processes (see also Arrington & Logan, 2004, 2005. However, several studies showed that bottomup processes also contribute to task selection in VTS (e.g. Arrington, 2008) and Mayr and Bell (2006) observed that the task-repetition bias was stronger when the stimulus of the previous trial was repeated compared to when the stimulus alternated. This stimulus-repetition effect suggests that voluntary task selection is not completely immune to bottom-up priming effects....

Current models of sexual responding emphasize the role of contextual and relational factors in shaping sexual behavior. The present study used a prospective diary design to examine the temporal sequence and variability of the link between sexual and relationship variables in a sample of couples. Studying sexual responding in the everyday context of the relationship is necessary to get research more aligned with the complex reality of having sex in a relationship, thereby increasing ecological validity and taking into account the dyadic interplay between partners. Over the course of 21 days, 66 couples reported every day on their sexual desire, sexual activity (every morning), and relationship quality (every evening). In addition, we examined whether the link between these daily variables was moderated by relationship duration, having children, general relationship satisfaction, and sexual functioning. Results showed that the sexual responses of women depended on the relationship context, mainly when having children and being in a longer relationship. Male sexual responding depended less on contextual factors but did vary by level of sexual functioning. Several cross-partner effects were found as well. These results verify that relational and sexual variables feed forward into each other, indicating the need to incorporate interpersonal dynamics into current models of sexual responding and to take into account variability and dyadic influences between partners.

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