Desire for personal feedback: Who wants it and what does it mean for psychotherapy?

Individual differences in desire for feedback did not exhibit any significant correlations with a variety of self-report personality dimensions. Additional survey studies indicated that a higher proportion of individuals in nonclinical as compared to clinical samples reported a strong desire to receive feedback about themselves. Subsequent studies revealed that the higher as compared to lower desire for feedback individuals: (1) were more willing to seek psychological help and to participate in therapy once in treatment; (2) exhibited more positive expectancies for change at the beginning of therapy; and (3) were more “responsive” to diagnostic feedback. Within the limitations of the present findings, the potential “adaptiveness” of desire for feedback is discussed and the negative motivational therapeutic consequences associated with a low desire for feedback are explored.     

Tigers and teapots: what does it mean to be alive?

The Symposium entitled 'Conceptual Knowledge: Developmental, Biological, Functional and Computational Accounts' was held at the British Academy, London, UK on 24-26 June 2002. It was funded by the British Academy with support from the Novartis Foundation, and organized by Lorraine Tyler (University of Cambridge, UK) and Tim Shallice (University College London, UK).     

Adlerian-oriented early memory research: what does it tell us?

Of the different approaches to interpreting early memories (EMs), Adlerian-oriented EM research comparatively has shown a most substantial increase in the past 10 years. I examine all Adlerian-oriented EM research appearing from 1981 through 1990. The majority of the research provides a tentative base of support for Adler's (1931) views about EMs. However, several deficiencies in these investigations are identified (e.g., a lack of pilot studies), and some recommendations are made for future EM studies.     

Soul: What does it mean for Russian children?

'Soul' is one of the fundamental categories of our consciousness. What does it mean for a child? Russian children from an urban area (n = 148) were interviewed to answer this question. The data shows that children understand soul as an internal phenomenon, which is responsible for the social, emotional and moral life of a person. Children believe that the soul has primacy over the body, serves to control and guide human behaviour and performs such functions as emotions, thinking, memory and wishes. Children communicate animistic, ethical and psychological meanings to the concept of soul. Comparative data obtained in four age groups of children (5-6, 6-7, 7-8, 9-10 year olds) are discussed.     

1/f noise in human cognition: Is it ubiquitous, and what does it mean?

Researchers in psychology are paying increasing attention to temporal correlations in performance on cognitive tasks. Recently, Thornton and Gilden (2005) introduced a spectral method for analyzing psychological time series; in particular, this method is tailored to distinguish transient serial correlations from the persistent correlations characterized by 1/f noise. Thornton and Gilden applied their method to word-naming data to support the claimed ubiquity of 1/f noise in psychological time series. We argue that a previously presented method for distinguishing transient and persistent correlations (e.g., Wagenmakers, Farrell, & Ratcliff, 2004) compares favorably with the new method presented by Thornton and Gilden. We apply Thornton and Gilden’s method to time series from a range of cognitive tasks and show that 1/f noise is not a ubiquitous property of psychological time series. Finally, we assess the theoretical developments in this area and argue that the development of well-specified models of the principles or mechanisms of human cognition giving rise to 1/f noise is long overdue.     

Models of verbal working memory capacity: what does it take to make them work?

Theories of working memory (WM) capacity limits will be more useful when we know what aspects of performance are governed by the limits and what aspects are governed by other memory mechanisms. Whereas considerable progress has been made on models of WM capacity limits for visual arrays of separate objects, less progress has been made in understanding verbal materials, especially when words are mentally combined to form multiword units or chunks. Toward a more comprehensive theory of capacity limits, we examined models of forced-choice recognition of words within printed lists, using materials designed to produce multiword chunks in memory (e.g., leather brief case). Several simple models were tested against data from a variety of list lengths and potential chunk sizes, with test conditions that only imperfectly elicited the interword associations. According to the most successful model, participants retained about 3 chunks on average in a capacity-limited region of WM, with some chunks being only subsets of the presented associative information (e.g., leather brief case retained with leather as one chunk and brief case as another). The addition to the model of an activated long-term memory component unlimited in capacity was needed. A fixed-capacity limit appears critical to account for immediate verbal recognition and other forms of WM. We advance a model-based approach that allows capacity to be assessed despite other important processing contributions. Starting with a psychological-process model of WM capacity developed to understand visual arrays, we arrive at a more unified and complete model.     

Distinguishing multi-voxel patterns and mean activation: Why, how, and what does it tell us?

The introduction of multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) community has brought a deeper appreciation for the diverse forms of information that can be present within fMRI activity. The conclusions drawn from MVPA investigations are frequently influenced by both the ability to decode information from multi-voxel patterns and mean activation levels. In practice, MVPA studies vary widely in why and how they test for differing overall response levels. In this article, I examine the place of univariate information in MVPA investigations. I first discuss the variety of interpretations given to finding univariate response differences. I go on to discuss some of the analysis approaches used to investigate and compare univariate and multivariate sources of information, which can illuminate their respective contributions. It will be important for the MVPA and general fMRI community to continue to discuss and debate these important issues.     

But what does it mean in practice? The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology from a practitioner perspective

The author offers some personal reflections on the relevance of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (JOOP) to human resource (HR) practitioners. Suggestions are made for how JOOP articles could be more relevant, and how their relevance could be made more explicit. These include (i) framing the research questions/hypotheses in terms that appeal to practitioner concerns as well as theoretical issues, (ii) more analysis of practical implications in the discussion section, (iii) more use of target articles with commentaries rather than special issues/sections, (iv) redirection of articles that focus primarily on method or instrument development to other journals and (v) making use of the World Wide Web. The arguments are illustrated with reference to papers recently published in JOOP.     

What does it take for context to support action memory?

Previous research on the relation between context and action memory has given ambiguous results. Some experiments have found positive context effects, whereas other experiments have failed to demonstrate a context effect in action memory. Under nonmotor encoding conditions orderly action-locus pairings have been found to yield better recall than random pairings, this not being the case with motor encoding (Helstrup, 1989 a ). Three new experiments explored whether memory for loci could be linked with memory for action–using modified replications. The first experiment provided item-specific reasons for the action-locus connections, whereas the second experiment used a whole-list relational context task. Both experiments indicated that contexts can influence action memory also under enactment conditions, with strongest effect for whole-list contexts. The third experiment demonstrated how a positive context effect can be removed when the functional value of whole-list relational support cues is reduced.     

Intentional artificial grammar learning: When does it work?

Actively searching for the rules of an artificial grammar has often been shown to produce no more knowledge than memorising exemplars without knowing that they have been generated by a grammar. The present study investigated whether this ineffectiveness of intentional learning could be overcome by removing dual task demands and providing participants with more specific instructions. The results only showed a positive effect of learning intentionally for participants specifically instructed to find out which letters are allowed to follow each other. These participants were also unaffected by a salient feature. In contrast, for participants who did not know what kind of structure to expect, intentional learning was not more effective than incidental learning and knowledge acquisition was guided by salience.     

What is free association and what does it measure?

This paper reports the results of a study of free association in which participants were asked to produce the first two words to come to mind. The findings were used to estimate the reliability of indices of strength and set size for different types of items and to model free association as a retrieval task. When confined to first responses, reliability was generally high for both indices, particularly for words with smaller sets of associates and stronger primaries. When second responses were included, reliability declined. A second response added new but weak items to the set, and, when the primary associate was not produced on the first opportunity, it tended not to be produced on the second. Relative to when multiple responses are requested, first-response free association provides more reliable indices of the relative strength and set size for a word's strongest associates. A model of free association assuming that a strength distribution underlies each response provided a good fit to the data.     

Manipulating social cues in baboon gesture learning: what does it tell us about the evolution of communication?

Animal Cognition - Reading the attentional state of an audience is crucial for effective intentional communication. This study investigates how individual learning experience affects subsequent...     

Effects of similarity and repetition on memory: registration without learning?

We investigated judgments of the frequency of test items (Y) that were highly similar to studied items (X) to test a prediction made by several memory models: that the judged frequency of Y should be proportional to the judged frequency of X. Whether stimuli were pictures or words, judged frequency of Y was bimodally distributed with 1 mode at zero, suggesting that frequency judgments involve a 2-stage process in which a zero judgment is made if there is a mismatch between retrieved information and the test item. Nonzero judgements, taken by themselves, were consistent with the prediction of proportionality. In 2 experiments, the percentage of zero judgments made to Y increased with repetition of X, but in 2 others the percentage did not change beyond frequency = 1. The percentage of "new" judgments in recognition memory followed this same pattern. Because the judged frequency of X increased even as X-Y discrimination showed no improvement, we characterize the result as "registration without learning."     

Septohippocampal acetylcholine: involved in but not necessary for learning and memory?

The neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh) has been accorded an important role in supporting learning and memory processes in the hippocampus. Cholinergic activity in the hippocampus is correlated with memory, and restoration of ACh in the hippocampus after disruption of the septohippocampal pathway is sufficient to rescue memory. However, selective ablation of cholinergic septohippocampal projections is largely without effect on hippocampal-dependent learning and memory processes. We consider the evidence underlying each of these statements, and the contradictions they pose for understanding the functional role of hippocampal ACh in memory. We suggest that although hippocampal ACh is involved in memory in the intact brain, it is not necessary for many aspects of hippocampal memory function.     

Discourse about discourse: what is it and how does it progress in Alzheimer's disease?

Discourse about discourse or a subject's comments about his/her performance during a discourse task can be defined as modalizing discourse (discours modalisateur; [Nespoulous, 1980]; [Nespoulous et al., 1998]). Since it does not convey the expected content of the discourse task (referential discourse), modalizing discourse has often been considered non-informative, and as such, has received little interest. The present study investigated the modalizing aspect of discourse production and its evolution in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Five AD patients produced a picture-induced narrative across five consecutive assessments. Two measures were derived: the modalizing/referential ratio (M/R ratio) and the percentage of repeated ideas. Results revealed that, compared to a group of 27 normal controls matched for age and education, AD patients: (1) obtained higher M/R ratios that tended to diminish as the number of assessments increased, and (2) produced higher percentages of repeated ideas throughout all assessments. These results suggest that modalizing discourse makes up a large proportion of AD patients' discourse and should be included in further studies to accurately describe their discourse behavior. The implications of modalizing discourse on preserved pragmatic abilities and its inclusion in comprehensive management programs of AD patients are discussed.     

What does it mean to trust blockchain technology?

This paper argues that the widespread belief that interactions between blockchains and their users are trust-free is inaccurate and misleading, since this belief not only overlooks the vital role played by trust in the lack of knowledge and control but also conceals the moral and normative relevance of relying on blockchain applications. The paper reaches this argument by providing a close philosophical examination of the concept referred to as trust in blockchain technology, clarifying the trustor group, the structure, and the normatively loaded nature of this trust relation. The paper ends by critically reflecting on two of the most promising values (decentralization and transparency) that can invite users’ trust in blockchain technology, arguing that there is a tension between the pressing values that are intended to be achieved by developers and the predicament situations caused by current blockchain implementations.