National Norms and Correlates of the PHQ-8 and GAD-7 in Parents of School-age Children

Anxiety and depressive disorders are global public health concerns, and research suggests that these disorders are common in parents and can adversely influence family functioning. However, little is known about normative levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms in parents of school-age children. The present study reports on generalized anxiety and depressive symptoms in 1570 parents and guardians of a nationally representative sample of children ages five to twelve years using two widely used and validated questionnaires: the eight-item variant of the Patient Health Questionnaire depression scale (PHQ-8) and the seven-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7). Moderate to severe levels of generalized anxiety symptoms were reported in 12.7% of the total sample and moderate to severe levels of depressive symptoms were reported in 14.1% of the sample; 17.7% of the sample reported moderate to severe levels of either generalized anxiety or depressive symptoms. This percentage was higher for females, younger parents and guardians, and parents and guardians reporting lower household incomes. These data, collected online in early 2018, may be useful for researchers and clinicians studying and treating anxiety and depression in parents. Further, these data provide a baseline for researchers currently studying the impact of changes related to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (e.g., school closures) on the mental health of parents of school-age children.

     

The costs of changing the representation of action: response repetition and response-response compatibility in dual tasks

In 5 experiments, the authors investigated the costs associated with repeating the same or a similar response in a dual-task setting. Using a psychological refractory period paradigm, they obtained response-repetition costs when the cognitive representation of a specific response (i.e., the category-response mapping) changed (Experiment 1) but benefits when it did not change (Experiment 2). The analogous pattern of results was found for conceptually similar (i.e. compatible) responses. Response-response compatibility costs occurred when the cognitive representations of the compatible responses were different (Experiments 3A & 3B), but compatibility benefits occurred when they were the same (Experiment 4). The authors interpret the costs of repeating an identical or compatible response in terms of a general mechanism of action selection that involves coding the task-specific meaning of a response.     

The role of response selection for inhibition of task sets in task shifting

Response selection in task shifting was explored using a go/no-go methodology. The no-go signal occurred unpredictably with stimulus onset so that all trials required task preparation but only go trials required response selection. Experiment 1 showed that shift costs were absent after no-go trials, indicating that response processes are crucial for shift costs. In Experiment 2, backward inhibition was absent after no-go trials. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that response selection, rather than execution, causes backward inhibition. All 4 experiments showed effects of preparation time in go trials, suggesting that advance preparation must have also occurred in no-go trials. The authors concluded that inhibition of irrelevant task sets arises only at response selection and that residual shift costs reflect such persisting inhibition.     

Inductive reasoning and judgment interference: experiments on Simpson's paradox

In a series of experiments on inductive reasoning, participants assessed the relationship between gender, success, and a covariate in a situation akin to Simpson's paradox: Although women were less successful then men according to overall statistics, they actually fared better then men at either of two universities. Understanding trivariate relationships of this kind requires cognitive routines similar to analysis of covariance. Across the first five experiments, however, participants generalized the disadvantage of women at the aggregate level to judgments referring to the different levels of the covariate, even when motivation was high and appropriate mental models were activated. The remaining three experiments demonstrated that Simpson's paradox could be mastered when the salience of the covariate was increased and when the salience of gender was decreased by the inclusion of temporal cues that disambiguate the causal status of the covariate.     

The role of temporal unpredictability for process interference and code overlap in perception-action dual tasks

Two experiments explore interference in dual tasks. The first task required perceptual judgment of the movement direction (left vs right) of a briefly presented stimulus; the second task was a tone-discrimination reaction-time (RT) task. Participants reported their judgment at leisure. In 50% of the trials they were told to ignore the stimulus (no report). The directions of stimulus movement and response in the RT task could either be the same or different, establishing cross-task compatibility (CTC) relations. We varied the degree of temporal unpredictability by using two stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOA, 100 ms vs 1200 ms) for the task stimuli. In Experiment 1, SOA was varied randomly within blocks of trials in one group and between blocks in another group. In Experiment 2, only the short SOA was used in one group and only the long SOA in another group. In both experiments, we observed substantially longer RTs with the short compared with the long SOA, regardless of whether there was temporal certainty (blocked or constant SOA) or uncertainty (random SOA) about stimulus onset. We assume that the process of encoding into short-term memory in one task interferes with concurrent retrieval processes (i.e., response selection) in the other task. This process interference effect was strongly reduced in no-report trials. Furthermore, we found shorter RT in compatible than in incompatible trials. This CTC effect diminished with long SOA but occurred even in no-report trials, implying that it refers to an automatically activated and then decaying code that primes response selection in the RT task.     

The power of the spoken word: sociolinguistic cues influence the misinformation effect

We investigated whether the sociolinguistic information delivered by spoken, accented postevent narratives would influence the misinformation effect. New Zealand subjects listened to misleading postevent information spoken in either a New Zealand (NZ) or North American (NA) accent. Consistent with earlier research, we found that NA accents were seen as more powerful and more socially attractive. We found that accents per se had no influence on the misinformation effect but sociolinguistic factors did: both power and social attractiveness affected subjects' susceptibility to misleading postevent suggestions. When subjects rated the speaker highly on power, social attractiveness did not matter; they were equally misled. However, when subjects rated the speaker low on power, social attractiveness did matter: subjects who rated the speaker high on social attractiveness were more misled than subjects who rated it lower. There were similar effects for confidence. These results have implications for our understanding of social influences on the misinformation effect.     

When is ignorance bliss? The effects of inaccurate self-assessments of knowledge on learning and attrition

Two studies were conducted to examine the implications of inaccurate self-appraisals in online training. Self-assessment of knowledge moderated the effects of trainees’ performance on subsequent performance and attrition. Performance was highest after uniformly positive ratings (i.e., high self-assessment and high performance), followed by underestimation, overestimation, and uniformly negative ratings, respectively. Attrition was lowest after uniformly positive ratings, followed by underestimation, uniformly negative ratings, and overestimation, respectively. Effort had a more positive effect on performance following low than high self-assessments and this interaction fully mediated the self-assessment/performance interaction on subsequent performance. Commitment had a more negative effect on subsequent attrition following low than high self-assessments and this interaction fully mediated the self-assessment/performance interaction on subsequent attrition. Finally, trainee conscientiousness affected their behavior when their performance and self-assessments were inconsistent—overestimating and underestimating performance increased attrition more for trainees low in conscientiousness and impaired performance more for trainees high in conscientiousness.     

Modal preferences in creative problem solving

Embodied cognitive science appeals to the idea that cognition depends on the body as well as on the brain. This study looks at whether we are more likely to engage just the brain or enlist the body for complex cognitive functioning such as creative problem solving. Participants were presented with a puzzle based on De Bono's lateral thinking puzzles. The puzzle consisted of rotating and joining two-dimensional shapes to make a three-dimensional one. In one condition, participants were given the choice of either solving the puzzle mentally or through manipulation of the images on a computer screen. In another condition, the subjects had to solve the puzzle first mentally and then report which mode they would have preferred to solve the puzzle. Two more conditions were applied with slight variations. In all conditions, an overwhelming majority of participants chose to solve the puzzle by manipulation, even though there was not a significant increase on performance. It appeared that participants were making a conscious choice for the body to play a feedback-driven role in creative cognitive processing. This strong preference for manual manipulation over just mental representation, regardless of the impact on performance, would seem to suggest that it is our natural tendency to involve the body in complex cognitive functioning. This would support the theory that cognition may be more than just a neural process, and that it is a dynamic interplay between body, brain and world. The experiential feedback of the body moving through space and time may be an inherently important factor in creative cognition.     

Eye movements reveal sustained implicit processing of others' mental states

The ability to attribute mental states to others is crucial for social competency. To assess mentalizing abilities, in false-belief tasks participants attempt to identify an actor's belief about an object's location as opposed to the object's actual location. Passing this test on explicit measures is typically achieved by 4 years of age, but recent eye movement studies reveal registration of others' beliefs by 7 to 15 months. Consequently, a 2-path mentalizing system has been proposed, consisting of a late developing, cognitively demanding component and an early developing, implicit/automatic component. To date, investigations on the implicit system have been based on single-trial experiments only or have not examined how it operates across time. In addition, no study has examined the extent to which participants are conscious of the belief states of others during these tasks. Thus, the existence of a distinct implicit mentalizing system is yet to be demonstrated definitively. Here we show that adults engaged in a primary unrelated task display eye movement patterns consistent with mental state attributions across a sustained temporal period. Debriefing supported the hypothesis that this mentalizing was implicit. It appears there indeed exists a distinct implicit mental state attribution system.     

Current negative mood encourages changes in end-of-life treatment decisions and is associated with false memories

To investigate the effects of mood on people's end-of-life treatment decisions and their false memories of those decisions, participants took part in two sessions. At Time 1, participants were experimentally induced into positive or negative moods. They decided whether they would want to receive or refuse treatments in a range of hypothetical medical scenarios, such as tube feeding while in a coma. Four weeks later, at Time 2, participants were induced into the same or the opposite mood and made these decisions a second time. They also recalled their previous decisions. Participants in negative moods at Time 2 changed more of their current decisions and falsely remembered more of their previous decisions than participants in positive moods. These findings suggest that people's current moods influence whether they change their treatment decisions; current decisions in turn bias recall of past decisions.