On the role of rarity information in speakers’ choice of frame

In this article, we examine conversational behaviors when people describe the outcomes of uncertain events. We propose a new hypothesis, frame choice based on rarity information, that is built on the basis of one prominent measure of informativeness (i.e., self-information). The hypothesis predicts that when speakers can choose one of two logically equivalent frames for describing the outcome of an uncertain event (e.g., the results of the roll of a die or a medical operation), they prefer the frame denoting an event that is known or perceived to be rare. Four experiments using frame choice tasks provide evidence that speakers’ choice of frame is explained well by the rarity hypothesis.     

Patients’ Pregnancies During Treatment: The Influence of the Analyst’s Psychology

Psychoanalytic therapists are today far more aware of countertransference effects, intersubjectivity, and mutual influence. The area that has been explored least in this two-person appreciation of psychoanalytic process is the effect of the psychodynamics of the therapist in a wide sense—that is, how the therapist brings a whole psychology, with a wide array of potential transferences, to each treatment. Triggered by the unexpected announcement of a patient’s expecting a baby, the author reviewed his practice and found that a large portion of his women patients ages 30–45 had become pregnant during therapy or psychoanalysis. The particulars were varied: how much the patient wanted a baby, whether the treatment was psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, the patients’ personality structure. Was the analyst’s psychology a common factor? The paper presents three quite different case examples and examines whether and how the author’s developmental and inner experience of women, sexuality, pregnancy could have contributed to a dyadic process that, in turn, could lead to pregnancy. If such effects happen, then it is important to look beyond and behind “anonymity” and “neutrality,” as well as momentary countertransferences, to the real-life effects that we have in our treatments.     

The role of vocational identity development and motivational beliefs in undergraduates’ student engagement

The present study examined the role of vocational identity processes and motivational beliefs among 216 undergraduates’ level of student engagement (affective, behavioural and cognitive). Through regression analysis, in-depth career exploration was found to be positively related to the student engagement variables, while career self-doubt emerged as a negative predictor. Identification with commitment was also found to be positively associated with students’ affective and cognitive engagement, but not behavioural engagement. Furthermore, students’ perceived value in academic activities played a critical role in mediating these relationships. Despite the significant associations, other vocational identity processes (in-breadth career exploration, commitment making and career flexibility) and motivational beliefs (competence beliefs and perceived cost) failed to act as predictors and mediators, respectively, as hypothesised. Nonetheless, the current findings demonstrate the importance of vocational identity development in undergraduate students’ learning, and suggest a need for more identity interventions or career counselling services in college and pre-university contexts.     

Children’s judgements of the obligation to help: The role of relationships

ABSTRACT

Children at ages 7 (N = 24, M _age = 6.96, SD _age =.20), 9 (N = 29, M _age = 8.76, SD _age =.44), and 11 (N = 25, M _age = 10.76, SD _age =.66), and adults (N = 30) made judgements about the obligation to help when it conflicts with a personal desire. Across ages, the obligation to help was judged to be strongest when there were positive or neutral past interactions with the person in need of help, compared to mean past interactions. Expectation of a future friendship predicted the obligation to help, even after controlling for age and sex. However, we found no effect of children helping gender in-group members more. Evidence for altruism was not found: expected positive emotions did not predict the obligation to help. We conclude that an expectation of future relationship is the strongest predictor of helping obligation.     

The Hepatitis C treatment experience: Patients’ perceptions of the facilitators of and barriers to uptake,adherence and completion

Objective: This study explores the perceptions of patients receiving treatment for Hepatitis C to determine what factors influence their decision to commence treatment, ability to maintain adherence and complete their treatment program.

Design: Semi-structured interview techniques were used in a qualitative study of 20 patients undergoing treatment for Chronic Hepatitis C (CHC).

Main outcome measures: To explore patients’ perceived barriers and facilitators of Hepatitis C treatment adherence and completion.

Results: Analysis of patient interviews identified four key themes: (1) motivations for commencing CHC treatment – fear of death and ridding themselves of stigma and shame; (2) the influential role of provider communication – patients reported that information and feedback that was personalised to their needs and lifestyles was the most effective for improving adherence to treatment; (3) facilitators of treatment adherence and completion – social, emotional and practical support improved adherence and completion, as did temporarily ceasing employment; (4) barriers to treatment adherence and completion – these included side effects, stigma, a complicated dosing schedule and limitations of the public healthcare system.

Conclusion: To increase treatment adherence and completion rates, a patient-centred approach is required that addresses patients’ social, practical, and emotional support needs and adaptive coping strategies.     

‘Defrosting’ music chills with naltrexone: The role of endogenous opioids for the intensity of musical pleasure

The endogenous opioid system has been implicated during experiences of pleasure (i.e., from food or sex). Music can elicit intense emotional and bodily sensations of pleasure, called ‘Chills’. We investigated the effects of an opioid antagonist (50 mg naltrexone) or placebo (40 μg d3-vitamin) while listening to self-selected music or other ‘control’ music selected by another participant. We used a novel technique of continuous measurement of pleasantness with an eye tracker system, where participants shifted their eyes along a visual analogue scale, in the semblance of a thermometer so that, as the music unfolded, gaze positions indicated the self-reported hedonic experience. Simultaneously, we obtained pupil diameters. Self-reported pleasure remained unchanged by naltrexone, which – however – selectively decreased pupillary diameters during ‘Chills’. Hence, the endogenous μ-opioid signaling is not necessary for subjective enjoyment of music but an opioid blockade dampens pupil responses to peak pleasure, consistent with decreased arousal to the music.     

Five-year-olds’ beliefs about the discreteness of category boundaries for animals and artifacts

Research on adult concepts indicates that category structure varies by domain; adults view membership in animal categories as absolute but membership in artifact categories as graded. In this study, we examined domain differences in beliefs about category boundaries among young children (5-year-olds). The results indicated that young children, like adults, were less likely to endorse graded category membership for animal than for artifact categories. These domain differences could not be attributed to domain differences in typicality. Implications for conceptual development and for models of domain specificity in adult cognition are discussed.     

The gap between athletes’ and parents’ perceptions of parental practices: The role of gender

ObjectivesThe present study explored the differences between athletes’ and parents’ perceptions of parental practices (i.e., active involvement, directive, pressure, praise, and understanding behaviours implemented by parents in the context of their child’s sport) by considering athletes’ and parents’ gender.Designcross-sectional study.MethodParents (N = 352) and athletes (N = 256, M = 14.72 years) completed a questionnaire to measure their perceptions of parental practices in sport. Zero-order correlations were computed for the entire sample and each sub-group (i.e., father-daughter, father-son, mother-daughter, and mother-son). One-level multilevel model (level 1: respondent) was computed to measure the influence of the respondent on the perceptions of parental practices. Two-level multilevel model (level 1: respondent, level 2: dyad) estimated the impact of the athletes’ gender, parents’ gender, and their interaction on the differences in perceptions.ResultsCorrelations highlighted relatively modest concordance between perceptions of parents and adolescents. Multilevel models showed that compared to athletes, parents reported significantly less frequent use for directive behaviours (β = −0.29) and more frequent use for active involvement (β = −0.18) and praise and understanding (β = 0.27). Correlations and multilevel models showed that the differences between athletes’ and parents’ perceptions of parental practices differed according to gender. The differences in perceptions of the directive behaviours (β = −0.22) and active involvement (β = 0.22) were higher when the father was involved in the dyad compared to the mother.     

What role do lay beliefs about hypertension etiology play in perceptions of medication effectiveness?

BACKGROUND: Some people take the disease label "hypertension" literally; leading to the belief that increasing relaxation instead of medication is the best treatment for this condition. We experimentally tested the effect of such underlying beliefs on ratings of interventions for hypertension and compared alternative communication strategies to increase medication effectiveness ratings. METHODS: Outpatients (N = 152) with a known diagnosis of hypertension read a vignette describing an asymptomatic condition and recommended treatment. Experimental factors were the disease label (Hypertension vs. Korotkoff's Syndrome) and type of argument designed to persuade the reader that medication is most effective (Causal vs. Correlational). MEASURES: Background measures included demographics, beliefs that stress causes health problems and trust in physicians. Outcomes were effectiveness ratings for interventions to treat the condition. RESULTS: Participants who read a vignette describing "Hypertension" rated "relaxing more" as significantly more effective than participants exposed to the same condition but with the unfamiliar "Korotkoff's Syndrome" label, [F(1, 141) = 5.22, p = .024]. However, medication, reducing salty foods and losing weight were rated as more effective than relaxing more. Intervention ratings did not differ by type of argument presented. There was a significant interaction of disease label and trust in physicians [F(1, 125) = 7.01, p = .009]. Individuals with low trust rated medication as significantly less effective when exposed to an unfamiliar disease label. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms the effect of the hypertension disease label on ratings of different interventions for the condition. However, participants rated biomedically recommended interventions as more effective than those not endorsed.     

National identification and support for discriminatory policies: The mediating role of beliefs about laïcité in France

In France, laïcité is a legal principle enforcing State secularism. However, research indicates that Modern (vs. traditional) beliefs about laïcité (ML) help legitimate prejudice against minorities. From Social Identity Theory, we hypothesized that ML should be positively linked with national identification, stereotyping, prejudice and support for discrimination. Accordingly, we demonstrate that ML independently predicts support for discriminatory policies (Study 1a, N = 241) and Maghrebi IAT scores (Study 1b, N = 242). ML mediates the link between national identification and Generalized Prejudice (Study 2a, N = 215; Study 2d, N = 114) as well as Support for Discriminatory Policies (Study 2b, N = 250). Experimental corroboration of this mediation was provided (Study 2c, N = 100). An exploratory study showed that priming ML led to more support for discrimination through national identification (Study 3, N = 89). These results reveal the important intergroup regulation feature of ML beliefs in France.     

Addition in kindergarten: The role of mothers’ and teachers’ language

Data from a longitudinal investigation were used to examine the effects of mothers’ and teachers’ language on children’s developing mathematical competencies during the kindergarten year. Specifically, 1) mothers’ use of metamemory talk, or references to the process of remembering, and 2) teachers’ use of cognitive processing language (CPL), or instruction that encourages deep levels of processing and metacognition, were related to students’ addition skills in kindergarten. The findings indicated that while maternal metamemory talk was associated with children’s mathematical competencies at school entry, teachers’ use of CPL was associated with the amount of growth that students demonstrated across the year, especially regarding strategy use. The results highlight the need for additional research that examines students’ academic trajectories longitudinally as a function of the language to which they are exposed at home and school.     

The physician’s role in the protection of human research subjects

Responsibility for the protection of human research subjects is shared by investigators, research ethics committees, sponsors/funders, research institutions, governments and, the focus of this article, physicians who enrol patients in clinical trials. The article describes the general principles of the patient-physician relationship that should regulate the participation of physicians in clinical trials and proposes guidelines for determining when and how such participation should proceed. The guidelines deal with the following stages of the trial: when first considering participation, when deciding whether to enrol patients, when asking patients to participate, when the trial is underway and when it is completed.     

‘Bodies (that) matter’: the role of habit formation for identity

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - This paper will interpret Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and materialization as a theory of identity, and so put it into dialogue with a...     

The role of cue familiarity in adults’ strategy choices for simple addition

Are adults’ decisions to use direct memory retrieval for simple addition influenced by the familiarity of problem operands? We manipulated the familiarity of a subset of operands by having adults repeatedly practise specific additions (two+five=?; Experiment 1) or magnitude comparisons (two five, choose the larger; Experiment 2). Both experiments provided evidence that pre-exposure to single-digit operands increased reported use of direct retrieval for new combinations of the familiarised operands. RT and error patterns across experiments also supported the conclusion that increased use of retrieval facilitated performance. These results show that operand familiarity potentially plays a significant role in adults’ strategy choices for simple addition.     

The application of the random regret minimization model to drivers’ choice of crash avoidance maneuvers

This study explores the plausibility of regret minimization as behavioral paradigm underlying the choice of crash avoidance maneuvers. Alternatively to previous studies that considered utility maximization, this study applies the random regret minimization (RRM) model while assuming that drivers seek to minimize their anticipated regret from their corrective actions. The model accounts for driver attributes and behavior, critical events that made the crash imminent, vehicle and road characteristics, and environmental conditions. Analyzed data are retrieved from the General Estimates System (GES) crash database for the period between 2005 and 2009. The predictive ability of the RRM-based model is slightly superior to its RUM-based counterpart, namely the multinomial logit model (MNL) model. The marginal effects predicted by the RRM-based model are greater than those predicted by the RUM-based model, suggesting that both models should serve as a basis for evaluating crash scenarios and driver warning systems.     

The origins of belief representation: Monkeys fail to automatically represent others’ beliefs

Young infants’ successful performance on false belief tasks has led several researchers to argue that there may be a core knowledge system for representing the beliefs of other agents, emerging early in human development and constraining automatic belief processing into adulthood. One way to investigate this purported core belief representation system is to examine whether non-human primates share such a system. Although non-human primates have historically performed poorly on false belief tasks that require executive function capacities, little work has explored how primates perform on more automatic measures of belief processing. To get at this issue, we modified Kovács et al. (2010)’s test of automatic belief representation to examine whether one non-human primate species—the rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta)—is automatically influenced by another agent’s beliefs when tracking an object’s location. Monkeys saw an event in which a human agent watched an apple move back and forth between two boxes and an outcome in which one box was revealed to be empty. By occluding segments of the apple’s movement from either the monkey or the agent, we manipulated both the monkeys’ belief (true or false) and agent’s belief (true or false) about the final location of the apple. We found that monkeys looked longer at events that violated their own beliefs than at events that were consistent with their beliefs. In contrast to human infants, however, monkeys’ expectations were not influenced by another agent’s beliefs, suggesting that belief representation may be an aspect of core knowledge unique to humans.     

Hindsight bias and outcome bias in judging directors’ liability and the role of free will beliefs

Following a corporate disaster such as bankruptcy, people in general and damaged parties, in particular, want to know what happened and whether the company's directors are to blame. The accurate assessment of directors’ liability can be jeopardized by having to judge in hindsight with full knowledge of the adverse outcome. The present study investigates whether professional legal investigators such as judges and lawyers are affected by hindsight bias and outcome bias when evaluating directors’ conduct in a bankruptcy case. Additionally, to advance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying these biases, we also examine whether free will beliefs can predict susceptibility to hindsight bias and outcome bias in this context. In two studies (total N = 1,729), we demonstrate that legal professionals tend to judge a director's actions more negatively and perceive bankruptcy as more foreseeable in hindsight than in foresight and that these effects are significantly stronger for those who endorse the notion that humans have free will. This contribution is particularly timely considering the many companies that are currently going bankrupt or are facing bankruptcy amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.