Do interpersonal features of social anxiety influence the development of depressive symptoms?

This study is a prospective examination of possible interpersonal features of social anxiety that might predict increases in depressive symptoms. It was hypothesised that social anxiety would be associated with avoidance of expressing emotion, lack of assertion, and interpersonal dependency and that these dysfunctional interpersonal styles would predict depressive symptoms one year later while controlling for Time 1 depressive symptoms. One hundred and two undergraduates completed interview and self-report measures of these interpersonal styles in addition to measures of social anxiety and depressive symptoms. Results indicated that social anxiety was associated with all three interpersonal styles. However, only avoidance of expressing emotions predicted Time 2 depressive symptoms. Theoretical implications of these results are discussed.     

Does prospective memory influence quality of life in community-dwelling older adults?

Older adults commonly experience declines in prospective memory, which describes one’s ability to “remember to remember,” and can adversely affect instrumental activities of daily living and healthcare compliance. However, the extent to which prospective memory failures may influence quality of life in typically aging older adults is not well understood. One-hundred and four community-dwelling older Australians (aged 50 to 82 years) were administered a comprehensive, neuropsychological battery that included the Memory for Intentions Screening Test (MIST), Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ), Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Questionnaire (IADLQ), and World Health Organization Quality of Life-8 (WHOQOL-8). Multiple regressions controlling for negative affect, medical comorbidities, and other neurocognitive functions revealed an interaction between prospective memory and instrumental activities of daily living in the concurrent prediction of quality of life. Among the 39 older adults who reported multiple problems on the IADLQ, lower performance-based prospective memory (MIST) and higher self-reported prospective memory failures in daily life (PRMQ) were significantly associated with lower quality of life (WHOQOL-8). Conversely, no significant associations were observed between prospective memory and quality of life in the 65 participants without IADL problems. Prospective memory difficulties adversely impact quality of life in community-dwelling older adults who experience problems independently managing their instrumental activities of daily living. These findings extend prior literature showing that prospective memory plays a unique role in the real-world outcomes of older adults and clinical populations and highlight the need to develop effective strategies to enhance prospective memory functioning in these vulnerable groups.     

Do situational expectations produce situational inferenes? The role of future expectations in directing inferential goals

Little is known about the conditions that lead observers to adopt different inferential goals in the context of their everyday lives. Four studies examined whether future expectations created situational inferential goals. In 2 quasiexperimental studies, students made more situational inferences for targets in their expected future careers. In 2 experiments, situational expectations were manipulated, and participants made more situational inferences when they expected to be in the same situation as the target. This tendency was stronger when observers devoted minimal cognitive effort to their inferences, suggesting that when observers have situational expectations, making situational inferences is less effortful than making dispositional inferences.     

Marital discord and well-being in older adults: is the association confounded by personality?

The associations between marital discord and multiple measures of well-being (depression, anxiety, life satisfaction, and self-esteem) were evaluated in a population-based sample of 416 couples in which the husband was 65 years or older. Results indicated that greater marital discord was associated with greater depression and lower life satisfaction and self-esteem. Furthermore, the associations between marital discord and well-being remained significant when statistically controlling for the rival explanation of the Big Five personality traits. Finally, there was little evidence for gender differences in the magnitude of the associations between marital discord and well-being. Findings suggest that marital discord is an important correlate of multiple measures of well-being in older individuals and that this association is not confounded by the Big Five personality traits.     

Do you see what I see? How social differences influence mindreading

Disagreeing with others about how to interpret a social interaction is a common occurrence. We often find ourselves offering divergent interpretations of others’ motives, intentions, beliefs, and emotions. Remarkably, philosophical accounts of how we understand others do not explain, or even attempt to explain such disagreements. I argue these disparities in social interpretation stem, in large part, from the effect of social categorization and our goals in social interactions, phenomena long studied by social psychologists. I argue we ought to expand our accounts of how we understand others in order to accommodate these data and explain how such profound disagreements arise amongst informed, rational, well-meaning individuals.     

Do older individuals adapt to their traits?: Personality–emotion relations among younger and older adults

Prominent lifespan theories posit that older adults are motivated to engage in emotion-regulation more frequently than younger adults. The present study follows from such theories and makes a novel prediction hitherto unexamined in the aging–emotion literature. Based on the idea that older adults more frequently regulate their emotions, it was predicted that traits, reflective of temperament or habit, would be less predictive of emotions among older adults (N = 60; M age = 74.9 years) than younger adults (N = 44; M age = 19.5 years). This hypothesis was confirmed across four of the Big 5 traits and, consistent with predictions, the moderating effects of age were particularly strong for negative emotions. The discussion focuses on the implications of the present findings for understanding age differences in personality, emotion, and emotion-regulation.     

Do provocateurs' emotion displays influence children's social goals and problem solving?

The social goals and social problem-solving of children who varied in social adjustment were examined in the context of hypothetical ambiguous provocation situations in which provocateurs' emotion displays were systematically manipulated. Children rated the importance of six different social goals and explained how they would solve the problems. Social adjustment was measured with rating and nomination sociometric procedures. Rejected-aggressive, rejected-nonaggressive, average-nonaggressive, and popular-nonaggressive children showed both commonalities and differences in rating the six social goals, the relative importance of the six social goals, and social problem-solving depending on the provocateur's emotion display. When provocateurs were happy, there were few group differences, but when provocateurs were angry or sad, rejected-aggressive children: a) rated hostile/instrumental goals more positively; b) rated prosocial goals less positively; and c) made problem-solving responses that were less friendly than those of other children. Results are discussed in relation to Lemerise and Arsenio's (2000) model of emotion and social information processing.     

A role of goals for social inhibition of return?

The social inhibition of return (sIOR) effect refers to the finding that response initiation times are longer if a movement is executed to a location where another person has responded to just before. Previous studies have examined the influence of the goal of the action on sIOR. In these studies, however, the movement endpoint and to-be-attained goal (e.g., touching/pressing a response key) were at the same spatial location. In the present two experiments, we disentangled movement endpoint and goal's identity and locations by means of introducing action effects that followed directly from a movement. Similar methods were previously shown powerful enough to clearly show the importance of action goals for other phenomena—a finding consistent with effect-based theories of action control, such as the ideomotor theory. The results of the present study revealed that sIOR was shaped by the movement endpoint location, not the goal's identity or location. That is, in both experiments, an sIOR effect was observed, but the magnitude of the sIOR effect was not modulated by repetitions/switches of goals or their locations. Thus, results indicate that goals play a negligible role in the emergence of the sIOR and, consequently, highlight the importance of action observation for the emergence of the sIOR effect.     

Do men with excessive alcohol consumption and social stability have an addictive personality?

The existence of an "addictive" personality has been extensively debated. The current study investigated personality in male individuals with excessive alcohol consumption (n=100) in comparison to a population-based control group (n=131). The individuals with excessive alcohol consumption were recruited by advertisements in a regional daily newspaper and controls from a population based Swedish Twin Registry. Personality was assessed by the Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP). Comparisons were made with normative data. Furthermore, by using a multivariate projection-based approach (Principal Component Analysis; PCA), hidden structures of traits and possible relationships among the individuals with excessive consumption and the controls was investigated. The individuals with excessive alcohol consumption as well as the controls had mean values within the normative range in all scales of the KSP. Moreover, the PCA analysis revealed no systematic between-group separation. Taken together, this result demonstrates that male individuals with excessive alcohol consumption do not have a personality different from that of a general population, which supports the notion of no "addictive personality".     

Does contingency in adults’ responding influence 12-month-old infants’ social referencing?

In two experiments we examined the influence of contingent versus non-contingent responding on infant social referencing behavior. EXPERIMENT 1: Forty 12-month-old infants were exposed to an ambiguous toy in a social referencing situation. In one condition an unfamiliar adult who in a previous play situation had responded contingently to the infant’s looks gave the infant positive information about the toy. In the other condition an unfamiliar adult who previously had not responded contingently delivered the positive information. EXPERIMENT 2: Forty-eight 12-month-old infants participated in Experiment 2. In this experiment it was examined whether the familiarity of the adult influences infants’ reactions to contingency in responding. In one condition a parent who previously had responded contingently to the infant’s looks provided positive information about the ambiguous toy, and in the other condition a parent who previously had not responded contingently provided the positive information. The infants looked more at the contingent experimenter in Experimenter 1, and also played more with the toy after receiving positive information from the contingent experimenter. No differences in looking at the parent and in playing with the toy were found in Experiment 2. The results indicate that contingency in responding, as well as the familiarity of the adult, influence infants’ social referencing behavior.     

Do inexperienced bumblebee foragers use scent marks as social information?

Bumblebees (Bombus spp.) foraging in the field typically reject flowers where they detect the olfactory footprints of previous visitors and hence avoid recently emptied inflorescences. A growing number of studies have begun to illustrate that associative learning shapes the development of this process, in both bumblebees and other bee species. This raises the question of what the default response to such marks is, but little is known about how inexperienced foragers use social information. Here, we offered flower-naive bees a choice between scent-marked flowers and unmarked alternatives and found that individuals neither avoided nor preferred marked flowers. Our findings provide no support for ‘hard-wired’ responses to scent marks in bumblebees and highlight the importance of associative learning in shaping social information use to match local circumstances.     

Movement control in older adults: does old age mean middle of the road?

Old age is associated with poorer movement skill, as indexed by reduced speed and accuracy. Nevertheless, reductions in speed and accuracy can also reflect compensation as well as deficit. We used a manual tracing and a driving task to identify generalized spatial and temporal compensations and deficits associated with old age. In Experiment 1, participants used a hand-held stylus to trace a path. In Experiment 2, participants steered along paths in a virtual reality driving simulator. In both experiments, participants were required to stay within the boundaries while we manipulated task difficulty by changing path width or movement speed. The older group showed worse performance in the highly constrained conditions. Corner cutting effectively reduces the curvature of bends but yields a greater risk of error (i.e., clipping the path or road edge). Corner cutting is thus less risky on wider paths, and we found that corner cutting increased for both age groups in both tasks when paths were wider. Crucially, we observed a greater degree of corner cutting in the young group compared with the old, suggesting the old group compensated for decreased motor skill with "middle-of-the-road" behavior. Enforcing increased speed caused all participants to increase corner cutting. Thus, older participants showed spatial compensation for decreased skill by biasing their position toward the middle of the path in both a manual and steering task. External constraints (narrow paths and fast speeds) prevented this strategy and revealed age-related declines in skills central to manual control and driving.     

Does contingency in adults’ responding influence 12-month-old infants’ social referencing?

In two experiments we examined the influence of contingent versus non-contingent responding on infant social referencing behavior. EXPERIMENT 1: Forty 12-month-old infants were exposed to an ambiguous toy in a social referencing situation. In one condition an unfamiliar adult who in a previous play situation had responded contingently to the infant’s looks gave the infant positive information about the toy. In the other condition an unfamiliar adult who previously had not responded contingently delivered the positive information. EXPERIMENT 2: Forty-eight 12-month-old infants participated in Experiment 2. In this experiment it was examined whether the familiarity of the adult influences infants’ reactions to contingency in responding. In one condition a parent who previously had responded contingently to the infant’s looks provided positive information about the ambiguous toy, and in the other condition a parent who previously had not responded contingently provided the positive information. The infants looked more at the contingent experimenter in Experimenter 1, and also played more with the toy after receiving positive information from the contingent experimenter. No differences in looking at the parent and in playing with the toy were found in Experiment 2. The results indicate that contingency in responding, as well as the familiarity of the adult, influence infants’ social referencing behavior.     

Do attentional focus instructions affect real-time reinvestment during level-ground walking in older adults?

Cognitive Processing - This study represents the first attempt in exploring whether attentional focus instructions could affect real-time reinvestment (conscious movement processing) in older...     

Do you believe in magic? Infants’ social looking during violations of expectations

Young infants tend to look longer at physical events that have unexpected outcomes than those that have expected outcomes, suggesting that they have knowledge of physical principles such as numerosity and occlusion (Baillargeon & Graber, 1987; Wynn, 1992). Although infants are typically tested in the presence of a caregiver, the social component of violations of expectations has received little attention. The present study investigated social looking during presumably expected and unexpected cognitive/perceptual events. Two experiments replicated the results of well-known physical knowledge experiments on addition/subtraction and occlusion in 6- (Experiments 1 and 2) and 9-month-old infants (Experiment 1), in that infants at both ages looked longer at unexpected than at expected events. Furthermore, infants at both ages initiated more looks at their caregivers' faces during unexpected than expected events. These findings are interpreted as suggesting that infants as young as 6 months of age actively seek to embed their experiences of unexpected physical/cognitive events in a social context.     

Do DSM-5 personality disorder proposals meet criteria for clinical utility?

The Work Group for the DSM-5 personality disorders has submitted their proposal to the professional community. In this paper, we consider the proposal in light of its ability to meet criteria for clinical utility as proposed by First and colleagues (2004). While the Work Group's proposal has addressed some of these concerns, we conclude that there remain several unanswered problems with how the proposal will improve the clinical utility of personality disorders section of the DSM-5. Though these concerns can be addressed to some extent in the field trials, it is incumbent upon the Work Group and clinical researchers to attend carefully to these issues so that shortcomings of previous diagnostic manuals are not repeated in the future.     

Is pessimism a risk factor for depressive mood among community-dwelling older adults?

This study examined two senses in which pessimism might be a risk factor for depressive mood among older adults. The first was that a pessimistic explanatory style would predict changes toward depressive mood when combined with stressful life events. The second was that predictive pessimism, or thinking that bad events will happen in the future, would predict changes in depressive symptoms. We found an interaction between explanatory style and life stressors, but it was the optimists who were at higher risk for depressive symptoms after negative life events. We also found support for predictive pessimism, however, as a predictor of depressive symptoms over time.     

Do infants perceive the social robot Keepon as a communicative partner?

This study investigates if infants perceive an unfamiliar agent, such as the robot Keepon, as a social agent after observing an interaction between the robot and a human adult. 23 infants, aged 9–17 month, were exposed, in a first phase, to either a contingent interaction between the active robot and an active human adult, or to an interaction between an active human adult and the non-active robot, followed by a second phase, in which infants were offered the opportunity to initiate a turn-taking interaction with Keepon.The measured variables were: (1) the number of social initiations the infant directed toward the robot, and (2) the number of anticipatory orientations of attention to the agent that follows in the conversation. The results indicate a significant higher level of initiations in the interactive robot condition compared to the non-active robot condition, while the difference between the frequencies of anticipations of turn-taking behaviors was not significant.     

Study time allocation deficit of older adults: The role of environmental support at encoding?

The present research evaluated both metacognitive and environmental support accounts of age-related changes in the way study time is adapted to task difficulty. The original aim was to examine whether providing environmental support at encoding would allow older adults to adjust their study time to the task difficulty by using effective encoding strategies. The difficulty of the learning task was manipulated by varying the strength of association of cue-target pairs (i.e., weak vs. strong associates). This allowed us to measure metacognitive control in aging and, specifically, the ability to adjust study time according to task difficulty. The level of environmental support at encoding was manipulated to examine whether it could be used by older adults to adjust their study time according to the task difficulty. In contrast to the classical literature on the effect of aging on metacognitive control, we found that older adults were able to adjust their study time to task difficulty when environmental support was provided. Furthermore, providing encoding strategies with information about their effectiveness helped older adults adjust their study time to task difficulty optimally by improving their strategy use and compensating for their associative memory deficit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).