Aggression and psychological problems in juvenile male delinquents versus controls in russia: Alternative ways of “letting off steam”?

The purpose of this study is to investigate possible relationships between various subtraits of aggression and psychological symptoms in a sample of male delinquents. One hundred eighty-nine subjects from a juvenile correction center for delinquent adolescents and 117 control subjects from secondary schools in Arkhangelsk, Russia, were assessed by means of the Aggression Questionnaire and the Youth Self-Report. Significant correlations between hostility, anger, and some psychological problems (e.g., Withdrawn, Anxious/Depressed, Thought Problems) were found in both groups. At the same time, physical and verbal aggression was almost exclusively related to aggressive and delinquent behavior. The findings lend support to our proposed interactional model in which excitation, as a result of the interplay between cognitions and emotions, could be expressed either as socially accepted behavior, aggressive behavior, or psychological and somatic symptoms.     

“I’m a runner not a smoker”: Changes in identity as predictors of smoking cessation and physical activity

This study examined associations of changes in identity with physical activity and smoking within Run to Quit, a national multiple health behaviour change intervention that utilizes group-based learn-to-run clinics to assist participants in quitting smoking. It was hypothesized that the behaviour-change curriculum and running delivered via groups, would not only help participants mitigate physical symptoms of withdrawal but would also facilitate changes in smoking- and running-related identities. Further, changes in these identities (i.e., reduced smoker identity and increased runner identity) were hypothesized to predict smoking cessation and running behaviour. Adult smokers (n = 216) completed 10-week clinics in Running Room locations across Canada. Within the pre-post design, participants completed questionnaires assessing identity, physical activity, running frequency, and smoking status (including carbon monoxide [CO] testing) at weeks 1 and 10, as well as post-program interviews. Consistent with a priori hypotheses, runner identity increased, and smoker identity decreased from beginning to end of program (p’s<.001). Regression analyses indicated that reductions in smoker identity predicted reductions in CO levels (β = 0.302, p < .001) and increases in runner identity predicted increases in running frequency (β = 0.235, p = .001). While change in runner identity was correlated with quit outcomes and change in smoker identity correlated with running frequency (p’s<.001), they were not significant predictors in the other behaviour models, and neither was the interaction between the two identities. Although future experimental research is required, these findings, along with complimentary qualitative data, suggest changes in identity may be one potential avenue through which group-based physical activity assists smoking cessation.     

“Play it Again”: a new method for testing metacognition in animals

Putative metacognition data in animals may be explained by non-metacognition models (e.g., stimulus generalization). The primary objective of the present study was to develop a new method for testing metacognition in animals that may yield data that can be explained by metacognition but not by non-metacognition models. Next, we used the new method with rats. Rats were first presented with a brief noise duration which they would subsequently classify as short or long. Rats were sometimes forced to take an immediate duration test, forced to repeat the same duration, or had the choice to take the test or repeat the duration. Metacognition, but not an alternative non-metacognition model, predicts that accuracy on difficult durations is higher when subjects are forced to repeat the stimulus compared to trials in which the subject chose to repeat the stimulus, a pattern observed in our data. Simulation of a non-metacognition model suggests that this part of the data from rats is consistent with metacognition, but other aspects of the data are not consistent with metacognition. The current results call into question previous findings suggesting that rats have metacognitive abilities. Although a mixed pattern of data does not support metacognition in rats, we believe the introduction of the method may be valuable for testing with other species to help evaluate the comparative case for metacognition.     

Perceiving Discrimination in “Real Life”: Distinguishing Negative Events From Discrimination Attributions

The present survey study examined a sample of ethnic minority preadolescents (ages 9–13) and made the empirical distinction between their exposure to peer victimization and the extent to which they attributed this to discrimination. Both peer victimization and the attribution to discrimination were associated with lower self-esteem and more emotional problems, but the discrimination attribution buffered against the negative effect of victimization on self-esteem. Our findings concur with the widespread evidence for the harmful consequences of discrimination but also show that it can be self-protective to make attributions to discrimination in “real life.”     

Another Search for the “Hot” Cognitions: Appraisal, Irrational Beliefs, Attributions, and Their Relation to Emotion

One study examined the hypothesized status of appraisal and irrational beliefs relative to attributions, as proximal antecedents of emotion. In our study, which looked at 4 pairs of functional and dysfunctional negative emotions (i.e., concern/anxiety, sadness/depression, remorse/guilt, annoyance/anger), undergraduates (N = 120) reported on their attributions, appraisal, irrational beliefs, and emotions during past encounters associated with various negative events. Congruent with both Smith and Lazarus' (1993) appraisal theory and Ellis' (1994) cognitive theory of emotion, the results of this study indicate that the emotions (both functional and dysfunctional negative emotions) were more directly associated with appraisal and with irrational beliefs (dysfunctional negative emotions only) than they were with attributions. Also, irrational beliefs were strongly associated with appraisal; while demandingness (DEM) was associated more with primary appraisal, awfulizing/catastrophizing, low frustration tolerance, and global evaluation of human worth (including self-downing) were associated more with secondary appraisal. Dysfunctional emotions seem to involve primary appraisal associated with DEM while functional emotions involve primary appraisal associated with preferences. These findings lend to support the status of appraisal and irrational beliefs as the proximal cognitive antecedents of emotion and the status of irrational beliefs as a differencing factor between functional and dysfunctional emotions.     

Behavioral evidence for task-dependent “what” versus “where” processing within and across modalities

Task-dependent information processing for the purpose of recognition or spatial perception is considered a principle common to all the main sensory modalities. Using a dual-task interference paradigm, we investigated the behavioral effects of independent information processing for shape identification and localization of object features within and across vision and touch. In Experiment 1, we established that color and texture processing (i.e., a “what” task) interfered with both visual and haptic shape-matching tasks and that mirror image and rotation matching (i.e., a “where” task) interfered with a feature-location-matching task in both modalities. In contrast, interference was reduced when a “where” interference task was embedded in a “what” primary task and vice versa. In Experiment 2, we replicated this finding within each modality, using the same interference and primary tasks throughout. In Experiment 3, the interference tasks were always conducted in a modality other than the primary task modality. Here, we found that resources for identification and spatial localization are independent of modality. Our findings further suggest that multisensory resources for shape recognition also involve resources for spatial localization. These results extend recent neuropsychological and neuroimaging findings and have important implications for our understanding of high-level information processing across the human sensory systems.     

Intervention orientation: Quantification of “person-blame” versus “situation-blame” intervention philosophies

Almost from its inception at the Swampscott conference in 1965, community psychology has criticized interventions focusing solely on "person variables" or "blaming the victim." In order to begin to explore this orientation more scientifically, these studies created a measure to tap person- and situation-blame orientations of service providers working with adolescents in legal jeopardy. Its reliability and construct validity were examined; implications for other social problem areas and for further research questions are explored.     

Probabilistic versus “Pure” Volitional Orienting: a Monocular Difference

Human volitional orienting is typically assessed using Posner’s endogenous cuing task. As a volitional process, the literature has long emphasized the role of neocortical structures in this higher cognitive function. Based on recent data, we explored the possibility that subcortical channels may have a functional role in volitional orienting as measured by a Posner cuing task in which a nonspatial feature of a centrally presented cue is predictively related to the location of the target. In addition, we have compared this typical cuing task to a "purer" version, which does not involve the probability manipulation. A sensitive behavioral method was used to probe the contribution of monocular channels (mostly subcortical) in the two types of endogenous orienting tasks. In both tasks, a spatially informative cue and its ensuing target were presented to the same or different eyes at varying cue-target intervals. In the typically used endogenous task, the onset of facilitation was apparent earlier when the cue and target were presented to the same eye. In contrast, in the "pure" task no difference was found between the two eye-of-origin conditions. These data support the notion that endogenous facilitation, as measured in the typical Posner cuing task, involves lower monocular regions. Hence, in the typical endogenous task, which was developed to explore "volitional" orienting, a simple associative learning mechanism might elicit monocular, rapid orienting responses. Notably, the typical volitional orienting paradigm might be contaminated by simple contingency benefits and thus may not provide a pure measure of volitional processes.

     

“Socialism of science” versus “socialism of feelings”: Bogdanov and Lunacharsky

Translated from Russian by John Biggart     

Thinking “difference” differently: Cassirer versus Derrida on symbolic mediation

Cassirer’s approach to symbolic mediation differs in some important ways from currently prevailing approaches to meaning and signification such as semiology and its more recent poststructuralist varieties. Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms offers a theory of symbols that does not amount to a sign theory or semiology. It sketches out, rather, a dynamic and nonrepresentational framework in which an alternative notion of difference takes centre stage. In order to make the original features of Cassirer’s approach stand out, I will compare it with the approach of the perhaps most influential differential thinker of our day, Jacques Derrida. The philosophy of symbolic forms explicitly prefigures a great many of the insights and concerns of poststructuralism. Yet, there are some critical differences. Rather than rejecting the concepts of objectivity, identity, and truth on the premises established by traditional metaphysics, Cassirer chooses to redefine these concepts through a radical conceptual reframing. The result is a doctrine that—in Derridean parlance—neither jumps beyond the oppositions of metaphysics, nor tries to resolve them in a Hegelian synthesis—a doctrine, that is, that even though it appeals to origins, cannot so easily be dismissed as yet another instantiation of the metaphysics of presence.     

Comprehension of deictic locatives: The object “Behind” it

Forty-eight adult subjects were tested for their comprehension of the locative prepositionsin front of, in back of, ahead of, andbehind in an object manipulation task using two sets of referent objects: fronted and nonfronted. Nonfronted (deictic) objects were employed to verify a locative comprehension model (the canonical encounter) proposed by H. Clark. Results indicated near unanimous interpretation under fronted object conditions, while use of nonfronted objects resulted in inconsistent responses not uniformly supportive of the canonical encounter model. An alternative comprehension strategy is suggested. Implications of results to developmental and disordered language studies are discussed.     

Randomness and inductions from streaks: “Gambler’s fallacy” versus ”hot hand“

Sometimes people believe that a run of similar independent events will be broken (belief in thegambler’s fallacy) but, other times, that such a run will continue (belief in the hot hand). Both of these opposite inductions have been explained as being due to belief in a law of small numbers. We argue that one factor that distinguishes these phenomena is people’s beliefs about the randomness of the underlying process generating the events. We gave participants information about a streak of events but varied the scenarios in such a way that the mechanism generating the events should vary in how random the participants would judge it to be. A manipulation check confirmed our assumptions about the scenarios. We found that with less random scenarios, the participants were more likely to continue a streak.     

When do ratings implicate perception versus judgment? The “overgeneralization test” for top-down effects

ABSTRACT

When looking at an object—say, a banana—we can both directly perceive its visual qualities (e.g., its size) and also make higher-level judgments about its visual and non-visual properties (e.g., not only its size, but also its cost). Suppose you obtain a rating of a property such as size. Does that rating implicate seeing or merely higher-level judgment? The answer often matters a great deal -- e.g., determining whether such ratings imply “top-down” effects of cognition on perception. Too often, however, this distinction is ignored in empirical investigations of such effects. Here we suggest a simple test for when such ratings can be used to implicate perception: whenever the very same experiment “overgeneralizes” to an unambiguously non-perceptual factor, the results cannot be used to draw implications about perception, per se. As a case study, we investigate an empirical report alleging that conservatives perceive Barack Obama as darker skinned than liberals do. Two simple experiments show that the very same effects, measured via the same “representativeness” ratings, obtain with unambiguously non-perceptual and even silly factors (involving bright red horns vs. halos, rather than brightness differences). We suggest that this renders such methods unable to implicate visual processing and we recommend that “overgeneralization tests” of this type always be conducted in such contexts.     

“I remember/know/guess that I knew it all along!”: Subjective experience versus objective measures of the knew-it-all-along effect

The knew-it-all-along (KIA) effect occurs when individuals report that they previously knew something that they learned only recently. People often err when reporting the level of knowledge they had prior to feedback, but there is no research exploring the subjective experience of this effect. We incorporated a remember/just know/ guess judgment into a traditional (Experiment 1A: rating scale) and a modified-traditional (Experiment 1B: two-alternative forced choice) KIA procedure. Experiments 2A, 2B, and 3 were similar in format to Experiments 1A and 1B, but the trivia stimuli were replaced with word puzzles, which were expected to be better suited to inducing a feeling of having known it all along, because answers to trivia questions typically seem arbitrary, whereas word puzzles often give rise to ah-ha experiences. A KIA effect was observed in all the experiments, but an accompanying subjectivefeeling of having known it all along arose only with word puzzles.