Toward a further understanding of assent

Arranging assent opportunities is an increasingly common strategy for involving clients in therapeutic decisions within behavior analysis. Recent behavior-analytic articles have helped create a basic behavioral definition and conceptualization of assent, but much more guidance is needed for practitioners and researchers interested in embedding assent into their practices. The purpose of this article is to advance the conceptualization and understanding of assent and assent practices by refining previous definitions and conceptualizations of assent and providing six essential considerations for embedding assent into practice. The six considerations consist of determining the applicability and feasibility of assent, assessing assent-related skills, arranging assent procedures and teaching assent-related skills, arranging fair choices, selecting opportunities to assess assent, and informally assessing assent. Following the discussion of the considerations for assent practices, we issue a call for specific topics of research on assent.     

Trumping the causal influence account of causation

Here is a simple counterexample to David Lewis’s causal influence account of causation, one that is especially illuminating due to its connection to what Lewis himself writes: it is a variant of his trumping example

Toward a plausible event-causal indeterminist account of free will

Synthese - For those who maintain that free will is incompatible with causal determinism, a persistent problem is to give a coherent characterization of action that is neither determined by prior...     

Preschool children's understanding of causal connections

Preschool-aged children's understanding of causal mechanism was assessed by showing them a simple event sequence in which two objects moved in tandem. The central question was whether children would infer the presence of a mechanism linking the two objects whose movement covaried. This was tested by assessing five responses: actions when asked to move one object, explanations for how the object moved, predictions as to whether both objects would still move without a connection, inferences about the nature and location of the connection, and surprise when the objects moved without any apparent connection. The results from 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds indicated that an understanding of mechanism is firmly established by 5 years but fragile at 3 years and only revealed by some response modes. The implications of the results concerning how to characterize and test for early competence are discussed.     

An association account of false belief understanding

The elicited-response false belief task has traditionally been considered as reliably indicating that children acquire an understanding of false belief around 4 years of age. However, recent investigations using spontaneous-response tasks suggest that false belief understanding emerges much earlier. This leads to a developmental paradox: if young infants already understand false belief, then why do they fail the elicited-response false belief task? We postulate two systems to account for the development of false belief understanding: an association module, which provides infants with the capacity to register congruent associations between agents and objects, and an operating system, which allows them to transform these associations into incongruent associations through a process of inhibition, selection and representation. The interaction between the association module and the operating system enables infants to register increasingly complex associations on the basis of another agent’s movements, visual perspective and propositional attitudes. This allows us account for the full range of findings on false belief understanding.     

Toward a unified account of spacing effects in explicit cued-memory tasks

Memory for repeated items improves when presentations are spaced during study. This effect is found in memory tasks using different types of material, paradigms, and participant populations. Although several explanations have been proposed, none explains the presence of spacing effects in cued-memory tasks for unfamiliar stimuli. Two experiments assessed the spacing effect on a yes-no recognition-memory task using nonwords and words as targets. The main results showed that changing the font between repeated occurrences of targets at study removed the spacing effect for nonwords only. A 3rd experiment using lexical decision showed that the font manipulation reduced repetition priming of nonwords when items were repeated at Lag 0. These results suggest that short-term perceptual priming supports spacing effects in cued-memory tasks for unfamiliar stimuli.     

Levels of causal understanding in chimpanzees and children

We compare three levels of causal understanding in chimpanzees and children: (1) causal reasoning, (2) labelling the components (actor, object, and instrument) of a causal sequence, and (3) choosing the correct alternative for an incomplete representation of a causal sequence. We present two tests of causal reasoning, the first requiring chimpanzees to read and use as evidence the emotional state of a conspecific. Despite registering the emotion, they failed to use it as evidence. The second test, comparing children and chimpanzees, required them to infer the location of food eaten by a trainer. Children and, to a lesser extent, chimpanzees succeeded. When given information showing the inference to be unsound - physically impossible - 4-year-old children abandoned the inference but younger children and chimpanzees did not. Children and chimpanzees are both capable of labelling causal sequences and completing incomplete representations of them. The chimpanzee Sarah labelled the components of a causal sequence, and completed incomplete representations of actions involving multiple transformations. We conclude the article with a general discussion of the concept of cause, suggesting that the concept evolved far earlier in the psychological domain than in the physical.     

Toward a better understanding of loneliness in community-dwelling older adults

The purpose of this interpretive phenomenological study was to explore the meaning of loneliness in community-dwelling older adults and to understand their daily practices in coping with loneliness. The sample consisted of 8 women and 4 men. Interviews were conducted with the 12 participants utilizing several tools, including 3 separate interview guides and the UCLA Loneliness Scale, Version 3 (Russell, 1996). A critical finding was that many participants experienced loneliness as a result of disrupted meaningful engagement, due to age-related changes, as well as other losses, including death of spouse, retirement, and giving up the car. Two paradigm cases and themes representing the loneliness and coping experience emerged. Participant coping practices with loneliness included reaching out to others, helping those in need, and seeking companionship with pets. Many older adults are at risk for loneliness because of declining health and other age-related losses that prevent them from remaining engaged in meaningful relationships. Health care professionals can screen for loneliness to identify those at risk and can intervene to help older adults maintain connections. Recommendations for those caring for lonely older adults include active listening, vision and hearing screenings, transportation needs, pet therapy, volunteering, and engagement in social activities.     

Toward understanding understanding: The importance of feeling understood in relationships

People want to be understood by others, yet their perceptions of being understood are only modestly related to actually being understood by others. In this article, we provide an integrative theoretical model and review of research on the processes that contribute to feeling understood and misunderstood by others. The model highlights situational, dispositional, and relational factors that influence feeling understood and underscores the importance of feeling understood for relationship and personal well‐being. We also clarify definitional and measurement issues that have impeded progress in prior research.     

Illicit drug-related psychopharmacological violence: The current understanding within a causal context

This study reviews past research on psychopharmacological violence associated with illicit drug use within the criteria for causality. There appears to be prior evidence suggesting that illicit drug use and violent offending are related in certain circumstances; and other studies conclude that illicit drug use may be correlated with violent victimization. However, those studies that also adequately assessed temporal order do not strongly support an offender-based psychopharmacological link; and those that explored violent victimization are limited and inconclusive. More importantly, there are very few criminological efforts that assess the impact of illicit drug use on violence while also controlling for alternative individual-level causal explanations such as hormonal influences, genetic factors, variations in substance metabolism rates and intoxication decay, psychological functioning, concurrent alcohol and/or other drug use, gender differences, and illicit drug dosage. We offer suggestions for improving future assessments of illicit drug-related violent offending and victimization including capturing dosage and purity data, gauging temporal proximity of offender and victim intoxication relative to violent outcomes, and separating psychopharmacological factors (e.g., offender motivation and victim vulnerability) from economic and systemic circumstances.     

Toward a more complete understanding of the reciprocity of liking effect

It is proposed that the reciprocation of interpersonal attraction is a multifaceted process involving affective, cognitive, and behavioral elements, and that reciprocation can be interpreted using interdependence theory. Two studies investigated whether expressed attraction implies benevolent intentions and whether such intentions are differentially critical to reciprocated affective and behavioral attraction. Study 1 (N = 52) demonstrated that (a) an admirer's expressed attraction suggests an admirer's benevolent intentions toward the target, and (b) that benevolent intentions mediate reciprocated affective and behavioral attraction. Study 2 (N = 173) found a difference between affective and behavioral attraction: affective attraction was reciprocated in all cases; but behavioral attraction was not reciprocated when stated behavioral intentions were not consistent with intentions implied by the expressed attraction. Results support an interdependence theory perspective as particularly important for understanding why and what type of reciprocated attraction will occur. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Toward an understanding of the obese person

Attitudes, feelings, and family backgrounds of seven very obese women were studied by means of a religious history questionnaire. Some comments are made about this research tool. Three very prominent characteristics of these women were feelings of helplessness and powerlessness, a craving for love, and strong guilt feelings. A possible psychogenic factor in morbid obestity was observed in the backgrounds of five women; pertinent information on the other two was lacking. This factor is a dual dynamic of harshness and indulgence. The onset of obesity seemed to occur when indulgence became the dominating influence over harshness.