Planning: Theoretical considerations and empirical evidence

Summary A study of processes rather than of abilities characterizes much of Luria's work on cognitive functions. The three major functional organizations in terms of cognitive functions are: arousal, coding, and planning. Each of these has been described with a special emphasis on planning. Tasks appropriate for demonstrating the processes of planning are discussed and the emergence of a planning factor through factor analytic work has been described. Considerations relating to the independence of planning and coding processes in the context of normal and abnormal development are presented next. Finally, planful behavior as an integral part of purposive behavior in humans is considered in the context of consciousness.     

Darwinian Happiness: Can the Evolutionary Perspective on Well-Being Help us Improve Society?

The concept of Darwinian Happiness was coined to help people take advantage of knowledge on how evolution has shaped the brain; as processes within this organ are the main contributors to well-being. Fortuitously, the concept has implications that may prove beneficial for society: Compassionate behavior offers more in terms of Darwinian Happiness than malicious behavior; and the probability of obtaining sustainable development may be improved by pointing out that consumption beyond sustenance is not important for well-being. It is difficult to motivate people to act against their own best interests. Darwinian Happiness offers a concept that, to some extent, combines the interests of the individual with the interests of society.     

A transgressive model of man

The transgressive model of man marks a rearrangement of existing psychological evidence. The human being is assumed to be a telic system acting in pursuit of a variety of goals. Of crucial importance is both protective and transgressive behavior. The latter enables the development of personality and an advancement of culture. In certain cases, however, such behavior may result in the destruction of existing individual and social structures.The model rejects the Freudian thesis that the human being is a homeostatic and hedonistic system. These types of motivation do operate, but only alongside mechanisms of heterostatic and nonhedonistic motivation. Though human behavior is motivated in a variety of ways (the term “polymotivation” of behavior would be in order), the key factor is hubristic motivation. The “hubristic motivation-transgression” hypothesis is as fundamental to our model as is the “need of self-realization” hypothesis is humanistic psychology.The model reveals the complex cognitive mechanisms of transgressive behavior, particularly with respect to processes such as the anticipation, valuation, and weighting of action outcomes. It further stresses the great diversity of the rules guiding transgressive choice and running the programs of action. Attention is paid to the role of surprise in human behavior. The notion of incremental mechanisms is introduced to account for the use of psychological palliatives (e.g. idealization). Obviously, purposive behavior is of a more complex nature than implied by the TOTE unit of Miller et al. (1960)The transgressive model proposes an alternative view of the human being as a telic system that exceeds the boundaries of past achivements, that practices expansion, and develops ever new structures. This is how personality and culture are being developed. This is why life can be an adventure.     

The relation of phoneme discrimination, lexical access, and short-term memory: A case study and interactive activation account

A brain-damaged patient (AP) is reported who had a strong tendency to identify nonwords as words on auditory lexical decision and to lexicalize nonwords in repetition, yet who showed a normal ability to perceive individual phonemes. It was initially hypothesized that these findings could be accounted for in terms of disrupted lexical phonological representations. This hypothesis was rejected on the basis of an interactive activation model of word recognition which revealed that modifications at the lexical level did not mimic the patient's pattern of results. Instead, it was found that increasing the rate of decay of activation at the phoneme level produced output that was consistent with the phoneme discrimination, lexical decision, and repetition results. This hypothesis of increased phoneme level decay led to the prediction that speech discrimination would decline with increased interstimulus interval and that short-term memory performance would be impaired. Both predictions were confirmed. The results of this study provide support for an interactive activation model of word recognition with feedback from the lexical to the phonemic level and for a close connection between the processes involved in word recognition and short-term memory.     

On the links between self-discrepancies, rumination, metacognitions, and symptoms of depression in undergraduates

The present study aimed to test the central components of Papageorgiou and Wells' (2003) non-clinical metacognitive model of rumination and depression that is grounded on the Self-Regulatory Executive Function (S-REF) model of emotional disorders [Wells, A., & Matthews, G. (1994). Attention and emotion: A clinical perspective. Hove, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum.]. A second aim of this study was to extend the non-clinical model with the concept of self-discrepancy in line with the S-REF model. Data of the current study were collected in a large sample of non-clinical Dutch undergraduates (N=196), who completed a battery of questionnaires including measures of rumination, positive and negative metacognitions, depressive symptoms, and self-discrepancy (i.e., actual-ideal, actual-ought, and actual-feared discrepancies). Hypothesized relationships among these variables were tested by means of structural equation modelling. Following some theoretically consistent modifications, the model was an adequate fit to the data. With respect to the second aim of the study, self-discrepancies were directly linked to symptoms of depression as well as indirectly via the cognitive processes involved in the metacognitive model of rumination and depression. Evidence was found for positive beliefs about rumination to partially mediate the relation between self-discrepancy and rumination. Clinical implications of the findings, including implementation of a metacognitive-focused cognitive therapy of depression, and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Two Languages, One Vocabulary

Two cultures (scientific and clinical) speaking different theoretical languages reside in psychology. The categorical structure of scientific language is based on sensorially, linearly, and analytically formatted cognitive processes (common sense). The categorical structure of the clinical language is formatted for cognitive processes accommodating nonsensory, nonlinear information about purposive personality processes. Clinically and scientifically oriented psychologists have difficulty communicating with one another because of underlying paradigmatic differences in their languages. Unfortunately, both cultures use the same sensory-system–based vocabulary, which leads to the unwitting and confusing assumption that they are speaking the same language.     

Strong Vocational Interest Blank basic interest clusters and occupational satisfaction

A Q-factor analytic technique applied to the Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB) basic interest scales of 156 males yielded three bipolar factors described as conceptual (applied vs theoretical thinking); interpersonal (people vs things); and volitional (autonomy vs structure). From these results the investigators constructed a model for categorizing occupations into corresponding vocational areas: managerial vs academic, social vs physical sciences, and professional vs technical. Each individual's primary interest area and occupational status relative to the six corresponding areas was then determined. The degree of fit between interests and job categorization related significantly to ratings of job satisfaction (p < .001). Those findings are complementary to Holland's notion that interests are expressions of psychological needs and to Lofquist and Dawis' perception of interests and jobs as needs and need reinforcers.     

Child abuse and neglect reporting laws: Understanding interests,understanding policy

This article focuses on the interests of the persons involved in the child abuse and neglect reporting process—(1) the child, the accused, and the family members of the child and of the accused; (2) physicians, psychologists, therapists, private agency and hospital social workers, educators, and other professionals; (3) law enforcement officers, state social service workers, lawyers, and judges; and (4) legislators. With this focus, the article illuminates the rationales and explicit and implicit policy choices reflected in the legislation's reporting requirements and processes. Such insight is necessary to a critical review of existing legislation and future improvements in the practical operation of reporting law legislation. This article demonstrates that the interaction of these interests is complex and often creates competing concerns and goals. This article concludes that efforts should be made to better harmonize these interests in future legislation.     

Integrating vocational interests, competencies, and interpersonal dispositions in middle school children

Vocational interests and interpersonal dispositions have been well researched in adults from the perspectives of Holland's RIASEC (1997) model of interests and the Interpersonal Circumplex (IPC), respectively. Few studies have applied either model to children and no studies have examined their overlap in children. A vector fitting procedure was applied to data from adults to demonstrate the intersection of vocational interests and interpersonal dispositions from the perspective of the IPC. The same procedure was then applied to interests and competencies and interpersonal dispositions in a sample of sixth grade children. Plotting the vocational variables within interpersonal space defined by the IPC showed the specific interpersonal aspects of vocational interests in young adults and interests and competencies in late childhood. Half of the interests had associations with the IPC that were consistent across adults and children, while the remaining interests had associations that were unique to children.     

Trait perfectionism, self-determination, and self-presentation processes in relation to exercise behavior

Objectives

Motivational and self-presentational processes pervade all aspects of our lives including exercise behaviors. Furthermore, trait perfectionism has been shown to heighten self-presentational tendencies and energize achievement striving ( [Flett and Hewitt, 2002] and [Hewitt et?al., 2003]). How maladaptive and adaptive perfectionism traits relate to these cognitive and behavioral processes specific to the exercise context remains to be determined. This study employed structural equation modeling to examine the associations between maladaptive and adaptive perfectionism, self-determination of exercise behavior, self-presentation in exercise, and exercise behavior.

Method

Two hundred and fifty-four undergraduate students completed items assessing frequency, intensity, and duration of aerobic exercise behavior, along with measures of Multidimensional Perfectionism (Cox, Enns, & Clara, 2002), Self-Presentation in Exercise ( [Conroy et?al., 2000] and [Gammage et?al., 2004]), and self-determination of exercise behavior utilizing the Behavioral Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire (BREQ-2; Markland & Tobin, 2004).

Results

Results supported a structural model in which the associations between perfectionism dimensions and aerobic exercise behavior were mediated by opposing relationships with relative autonomy (RAI; Markland & Tobin, 2004) and self-presentation processes. Distinctively, maladaptive perfectionism demonstrated an inverse direct effect on the RAI and positive direct effects on self-presentation processes. In contrast, adaptive perfectionism exerted a positive direct effect on the RAI and inverse direct effects on self-presentation processes.

Conclusions

These findings highlight the importance of both maladaptive and adaptive dimensions of perfectionism in the study of exercise outcomes and within the broader social context linking perfectionism and motivation.     

Stop that! Inhibition,sensitization, and their neurovisceral concomitants

There is increasing evidence that the behavior of living systems can be conceptualized as a self-organizing dynamical system. Moreover, evidence suggests that inhibitory processes give these systems the flexibility that is necessary for efficient functioning in the face of changing environmental demands. The process of sensitization can be conceived as a breakdown of inhibitory neural processes that can lead to maladaptive, perseverative behavior. In this paper we describe a model of inhibition and sensitization from a dynamical systems perspective. We show that inhibition is important for adaptive behavior across a number of levels of system functioning. Using our work on attention, emotion, and anxiety disorders we show the importance of both central - for example gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-ergic - and peripheral - for example heart rate variability (HRV) - inhibitory processes and how they may be linked by a network of neural structures that guide the organism from one state of relative stability to another.     

Team negotiation: social, epistemic, economic, and psychological consequences of subgroup conflict

Large collectives (e.g., organizations, political parties, nations) are seldom unitary players. Rather, they consist of different subgroups that often have conflicting interests. Nonetheless, negotiation research consistently regards negotiating teams, who represent these collectives, as monolithic parties with uniform interests. This article integrates concepts from social psychology, management, political science, and behavioral game theory to explore the effects of subgroup conflict on team negotiation. Specifically, the present research introduced a conflict of interests within negotiating teams and investigated how this internal conflict affects the outcome of the negotiation between teams. An experiment with 80 four-person teams found that conflict between subgroups had a detrimental effect on the performance of negotiating teams. This research also employed a recent model of motivated information processing in groups to investigate possible processes underlying the effect of subgroup conflict on team negotiation.     

Disbelief,lies, and manipulations in a transactional discourse model

Disbelief, lies, and manipulations have been objects of scholarly consideration from widely different perspectives: historical, sociological, philosophical, ethical, logical, and pragmatic. In this paper, these notions are re-examined in the framework of a Transactional Discourse Model which operates in terms of the location and relocation of various knowledge items within two sets of knowledge, A and B, representing two interlocators A and B, and two of their subsets C_a and C_b, which constitute the sets of the matters of A's and B's current concern. This approach reveals certain formal features shared by lies, disbelief, and manipulations that indicate that these three types of discourse behavior constitute a deviation from successful interpersonal communication as defined in the proposed model. The model, moreover, enables us to explicitly capture both the similarities and the differences of lies and manipulations with other pragmatic phenomena, such as jokes, impersonating, role-acting, memory failure, politeness expressions, and tact; the comparison suggests that certain modifications of Gricean conversational maxims may be in order.     

Social Context in HCl: A New Framework for Mental Models,Cooperation, and Communication

This article considers current research in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), computer-mediated communication (CMC), and distributed artificial intelligence (DAl). These areas need an articulated model of social contexts to bridge the persisting gap between social and technological dimensions in computer system design and use. A conceptual model of context is presented to account for both cooperation-conflict and communication-negotiation processes. The model conceives of contexts as including not only physical objects and other people but also social norms which influence both individuals and organizations. It assumes that computer system use occurs in social scenarios in which the features cannot be reduced to any type of input or data in the world that designers and users can process along with other information coming from the current task. The model is built on three levels: from social contexts as normative order (Level 1), to specific and intrinsically complex situations (Level 2), to person-computer interactions for the performance of particular tasks (Level 3). The model has three main implications. First, Human-Computer Interaction (HCl) studies—especially scenario-based design—may profit from a fresh topdown approach to designers' and users' mental models taking into account normative social processes which have been neglected in previous research. Second, CSCW may realize how deeply discrepant perspectives affect multi-agent environments and why in real working life negotiation is intertwined with cooperation. Designers may use this insight to design systems allowing more place for negotiation among actors. Third, we should dismiss the view that CMC lacks adequate social cues and fosters impulsive behavior. Cognitive processes such as categorization, stereotype construction, and social identification can make electronic environments even more strongly sensible to social norms than face-to-face communication. Context, according to our model, is not restricted to the physical copresence of other people but consists mainly of processes providing situations with socially recognizable meaning.     

Analyzing individual differences in vocational, leisure, and family interests: A multitrait-multimethod approach

This study investigates the latent structure of individual differences in vocational, leisure, and family interests. The participants consisted of 302 French adults who rated their like or dislike for activities based on Holland’s RIASEC typology and presented in three life domains: work, family and leisure. The multitrait-multimethod model proposed by Eid [Eid, M. (2000). A multitrait-multimethod model with minimal assumptions. Psychometrika 65, 241-261.] was used with the vocational interests as standard comparison, and was applied separately on each of the 6 RIASEC types. Results indicated that interests strongly intercorrelated whatever their vocational vs. leisure or family contextualization. However, since these correlations were controlled for measurement error, the results also suggested that the effects of these contextualizations of the activities could not be ignored because they accounted for a non negligible part of the variance for several activities. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed and directions for future research are presented.     

Type a behavior pattern in mothers of infants: An exploration of associations with attachment,sensitive caregiving,and life-events

Abstract

In the present study. 83 lower- to upper-middle class mothers of first-born, 12-month-old infants were interviewed with the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, and Main, 1985), and completed the Groninger Intelligence Test (Luteijn and Van der Ploeg, 1982). Eighteen months after the beginning of the study, 67 mothers (81% of the original sample) were interviewed with the Structured Interview (Rosenman, 1978), and were observed during a brief, semi-structured play session at home with their child - at that time a 2.5-years-old toddler. They also completed a checklist about major life-events that had occurred during the past 18 months. A large majority of these mothers of young children (81%) showed Type A behavior patterns. The job of parenting, indeed, appears to be stressful. Attachment and Type A behaviors, however, did not seem to be related, probably because the influence of attachment is restricted to the regulation of emotions in intimate relationships. Yet, Type A behavior predicted a more sensitive parenting style than Type B did. All mothers who experienced negative life-events or Serious health problems in the recent past showed Type A behavior patterns. Our findings show that the Structured Interview can be applied in a valid manner to mothers of young children passing trough a demanding phase in their lives. Further research is needed to uncover the causes of the high prevalence of Type A behaviors in young mothers.     

ADHD,strain, and criminal behavior: a test of general strain theory

This study explores the relationship between attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), strain, and criminal behavior. This is an attempt to introduce ADHD, a psychological disorder, into the framework of general strain theory. Using a purposive sample of college students, we tested the hypothesis that individuals with self-reported symptoms of ADHD were more likely to participate in criminal behaviors when experiencing strain. We found that ADHD symptoms conditioned the effect of strain on crime. The results suggest that individuals at risk for ADHD may be less able to legitimately cope with strain compared to the rest of the population.     

Modeling the antecedents of proactive behavior at work

Using a sample of U.K. wire makers (N = 282), the authors tested a model in which personality and work environment antecedents affect proactive work behavior via cognitive-motivational mechanisms. Self-reported proactive work behaviors (proactive idea implementation and proactive problem solving) were validated against rater assessments for a subsample (n = 60) of wire makers. With the exception of supportive supervision, each antecedent was important, albeit through different processes. Proactive personality was significantly associated with proactive work behavior via role breadth self-efficacy and flexible role orientation, job autonomy was also linked to proactive behavior via these processes, as well as directly; and coworker trust was associated with proactive behavior via flexible role orientation. In further support of the model, the cognitive-motivational processes for proactive work behavior differed from those for the more passive outcome of generalized compliance.     

TARGET ARTICLE: On Building a Better Process Model: It's Not Only How Many,but Which Ones and By Which Means?

The Quad Model proposes that four cognitive processes are pervasive across social behavior. I describe the model and compare it to dual- and uniprocess models. Distinguishing among the four processes can provide a more nuanced and accurate depiction of social behavior than can other models. It also allows the model to be applied to a much broader range of domains. A key problem for many dual-process models is that they confound processing style with either type of content (e.g., category vs. individuating information) or type of task (implicit vs. explicit tasks). As a result, these models have trouble assessing the joint influences of multiple processes. In contrast, the Quad Model provides estimates of the independent and simultaneous contributions of 4 key processes to social behavior.