How smart do you need to be to get it wrong? The role of cognitive capacity in the development of heuristic-based judgment

We examined the relationship between cognitive capacity and heuristic responding on four types of reasoning and decision-making tasks. A total of 84 children, between 5 years 2 months and 11 years 7 months of age, participated in the study. There was a marked increase in heuristic responding with age that was related to increases in cognitive capacity. These findings are inconsistent with the predominant dual-process accounts of reasoning and decision making as applied to development. We offer an alternative explanation of the findings, considering them in the context of recent claims concerning the role of working memory in contextualized reasoning.     

Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety in an outpatient specialized care setting: A qualitative study of the patients’ experience of the therapy

Knowledge about user experiences of internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (iCBT) has mostly been drawn from non-clinical groups or with iCBT offered via self-referral. The present study therefore focused on patients who had undergone iCBT with minimal support while actively awaiting outpatient psychological treatment in the form of face-to-face CBT. To seek out barriers to adherence the study also included patients who had withdrawn from the iCBT treatment before completion. The study was performed in an outpatient clinic for anxiety disorders where twelve participants with a primary diagnosis of either social anxiety disorder or panic disorder were recruited from an ongoing randomized control trial for semi-structured interviews. Statements from the interviews showed that the iCBT treatment was unfavorably compared to the usual face-to-face treatment at the clinic. Despite this, a majority of the interview participants still expressed to have experienced various benefits from the treatment. Some participants did however, experience difficulties putting the materials to practical use. Furthermore, a large majority of the participants expressed a need for additional support, with a strong tendency for non-completers specifically expressing a need for face-to-face contact with a clinician. Implications for future research and implementation of iCBT in clinical practice are discussed.     

‘… you kind of frantically go from one thing to the next and there isn’t any time for thinking any more’: a reflection on the impact of organisational change on relatedness in multidisciplinary teams

This paper reflects on the relational impact on Clinical Psychologists of NHS organisational change in the context of cuts and reorganisation. The reflections illustrate one theme drawn from a study of eight Clinical Psychologists working within adult Community Mental Health Multi-Disciplinary Teams. The paper considers the impact of competition and change in healthcare on the ability to engage in reflective practice potentially affecting client care due to reduced joint-working, consistency and creativity. The paper considers how acts of kindness (compassion) within organisational contexts at all levels can facilitate relatedness, reflection and more human care. It concludes by considering how shifting from short-term planning evaluating efficiencies based on perceived financial value, to thinking more widely and long-term about relational value may be of benefit to clinicians, clients and the system as a whole.     

A Christian for the Christians, a Muslim for the Muslims? Reflections on a Protestant View of Pastoral Care for all Religions

Whereas in the first half of the 20th century, proclamationwas the focal point of pastoral care in Germany, the 1970s witnessedan embracing of the American pastoral care movement. From thenon, pastoral care was increasingly understood as accompanyingpatients whilst adopting the spiritual dimension. Nowadays,Christian chaplains are encountering an increasing number ofpatients from different religious communities. Various modelshave been proposed to help Protestant chaplains find an authenticform of pastoral care suitable for all religions. Until a clearposition is assumed with regard to Christianity's demands ofabsolutism, however, none of these approaches can be satisfactory.     

Does neuroscience hold promise for the further development of behavior therapy? The case of emotional change after exposure in anxiety and depression

Over the last few years, the integration of biological and psychological models has become increasingly important in clinical psychology. This paper presents a neurobiological framework for exploring how neuroscience research may be valuable in the context of new developments in behavior therapy. The importance of the cortical-subcortical circuitry of emotion processing for investigating the working mechanisms of exposure therapy is illustrated by current neuroimaging research. The implication is that during exposure therapy the focus of attention must be fully directed towards the emotional content of the threatening situation to facilitate prefrontal control over the amygdala and that new contextual information, of emotional salience, must be added to create inhibitory projections from the hippocampus. In addition, some possible mechanisms of action for different therapeutic approaches to both anxiety and depression and the role of neuroimaging techniques in predicting treatment outcome are discussed.     

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the ugliest of them all? The psychopathology of mirror gazing in body dysmorphic disorder

Patients with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) may spend many hours in front of a mirror but little is known about the psychopathology or the factors that maintain the behaviour. A self-report mirror gazing questionnaire was used to elicit beliefs and behaviours in front of a mirror. Two groups were compared, which consisted of 55 controls and 52 BDD patients. Results: Prior to gazing, BDD patients are driven by the hope that they will look different; the desire to know exactly how they look; a belief that they will feel worse if they resist gazing and the desire to camouflage themselves. They were more likely to focus their attention on an internal impression or feeling (rather than their external reflection in the mirror) and on specific parts of their appearance. They were also more likely to practise showing the best face to pull in public or to use “mental cosmetic surgery” to change their body image than controls. BDD patients invariably felt worse after mirror gazing and were more likely to use ambiguous surfaces such as the backs of CDs or cutlery for a reflection. Conclusion: Mirror gazing in BDD consists of a series of complex safety behaviours. It does not follow a simple model of anxiety reduction that occurs in the compulsive checking of obsessive–compulsive disorder. The implications for treatment are discussed.     

Attracting and retaining immigrants outside the metropolis: is the pie too small for everyone to have a piece? The case of Edmonton, Alberta

The municipal government of the province of Alberta’s capital city, Edmonton, commissioned a study in 2005 to determine how to attract more immigrants. City leaders were perplexed as to why Calgary, a city in the same province, of similar size with the same range of immigrant services, receives double the number of immigrants annually. In this paper, we describe the resulting study and discuss its attraction and retention recommendations. These suggestions are similar to those made by the researchers from other municipalities and regions seeking to increase their population via immigration. We compare Edmonton’s municipal and Alberta’s provincial immigration policies with those from elsewhere and discuss them in light of the national Canadian immigration policies. Given that the current federal government has no plans to increase immigration levels overall, different provinces and cities in Canada will be put in the position of having to compete for a relatively small number of newcomers, employing many of the same strategies. Without changes to federal policies, many communities may continue to struggle to attract immigrants.     

The reminiscence bump in the temporal distribution of the best football players of all time: Pelé, Cruijff or Maradona?

The reminiscence bump is the tendency to recall more autobiographical memories from adolescence and early adulthood than from adjacent lifetime periods. In this online study, the robustness of the reminiscence bump was examined by looking at participants' judgements about the quality of football players. Dutch participants (N = 619) were asked who they thought the five best players of all time were. The participants could select the names from a list or enter the names when their favourite players were not on the list. Johan Cruijff, Pelé, and Diego Maradona were the three most often mentioned players. Participants frequently named football players who reached the midpoint of their career when the participants were adolescents (mode = 17). The results indicate that the reminiscence bump can also be identified outside the autobiographical memory domain.     

When are you dead enough to be a donor? Can any feasible protocol for the determination of death on circulatory criteria respect the dead donor rule?

The basic question concerning the compatibility of donation after circulatory death (DCD) protocols with the dead donor rule is whether such protocols can guarantee that the loss of relevant biological functions is truly irreversible. Which functions are the relevant ones? I argue that the answer to this question can be derived neither from a proper understanding of the meaning of the term “death” nor from a proper understanding of the nature of death as a biological phenomenon. The concept of death can be made fully determinate only by stipulation. I propose to focus on the irreversible loss of the capacity for consciousness and the capacity for spontaneous breathing. Having accepted that proposal, the meaning of “irreversibility” need not be twisted in order to claim that DCD protocols can guarantee that the loss of these functions is irreversible. And this guarantee does not mean that reversing that loss is either conceptually impossible or known to be impossible with absolute certainty.

     

From interactions to mental representations: Psychodynamic parent – infant therapy in a case of severe eating and sleep disorders

This paper describes the process of psychodynamic psychotherapy with an infant and his family, during a developmental phase in which the infant's mental organization was in transition from the level of interactions to representations. The treatment of a 23-month-old boy suffering from a severe sleeping and eating disorder was initiated in a parent?–?child psychotherapeutic setting. The sleep disorder was a consequence of separation anxiety. Additionally, phobic avoidance of new oral experiences led to an eating disorder. These symptoms had developed in the context of dysregulation of the triadic family relationships (mother?–?father?–?children), which tended to split into two-plus-one relationships. After one year, the setting was changed to alternating individual and family sessions. Due to his developing symbolic capacities, the boy was able to express his inner concerns and his internalised affect-laden experiences through play and actions. His internal world could now be addressed by interpretations. New psychodynamic theories and research results on early triadic development were taken as the theoretical background for the psychotherapeutic work. We understood the course of the treatment and the development of the transference/countertransference relationships in terms of processes of triadification (at the level of interpersonal relationships) and triangulation (at the level of intrapsychic representations).     

My owner,right or wrong: the effect of familiarity on the domestic dog’s behavior in a food-choice task

Dogs are strongly influenced by human behavior, and they readily form bonds with specific humans. Yet these lines of inquiry are not often combined. The goal of this study was to investigate whether such bonds would play a role in how dogs behave in response to human signals. Using various types of signals, we compared dogs’ use of information from a familiar human (their owner) versus an unfamiliar human when choosing between two food containers. In some conditions, the owner indicated a container that gave food and a stranger indicated a container that did not; in other conditions, this was reversed. Dogs more often chose the container indicated by or nearest to their owner, even when this container never yielded a food reward. In two conditions, dogs chose at chance: a control condition in which both pointers were strangers and a condition in which the owner and stranger sat reading books and provided no social signal. This is the first study to directly compare owners to strangers in a single food-choice situation. Our results suggest that dogs make decisions by attending preferentially to social signals from humans with whom they have become familiar.     

What’s in a name? Intolerance of uncertainty,other uncertainty-relevant constructs,and their differential relations to worry and generalized anxiety disorder*

A number of studies have examined the association of intolerance of uncertainty (IU) to trait worry and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). However, few studies have examined the extent of overlap between IU and other psychological constructs that bear conceptual resemblance to IU, despite the fact that IU-type constructs have been discussed and examined extensively within psychology and other disciplines. The present study investigated (1) the associations of IU, trait worry, and GAD status to a negative risk orientation, trait curiosity, indecisiveness, perceived constraints, self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism, intolerance of ambiguity, the need for predictability, and the need for order and structure and (2) whether IU is a unique correlate of trait worry and of the presence versus absence of Probable GAD, when overlap with other uncertainty-relevant constructs is accounted for. N = 255 adults completed self-report measures of the aforementioned constructs. Each of the constructs was significantly associated with IU. Only IU, and a subset of the other uncertainty-relevant constructs were correlated with trait worry or distinguished the Probable GAD group from the Non-GAD group. IU was the strongest unique correlate of trait worry and of the presence versus absence of Probable GAD. Indecisiveness, self-oriented perfectionism and the need for predictability were also unique correlates of trait worry or GAD status. Implications of the findings are discussed, in particular as they pertain to the definition, conceptualization, and cognitive-behavioral treatment of IU in GAD.     

Jury simulation studies: To exclude or not to exclude participants based on a lack of comprehension of the case?

Jury simulation research has been the subject of longstanding criticism in regards to ecological validity. One additional factor that has received little attention that may also impact the generalizability of this research relates to excluding participants based on their memory of, or their attention paid to, the case. In order to determine how common this exclusion is, the authors conducted a scoping review of jury simulation studies within the last 10 years across three major legal psychology journals. The review revealed variability in if and how studies excluded on the basis of poor attention or for failing manipulation or general memory checks. In addition, studies that did exclude on this basis varied greatly in the proportion of the sample that was excluded. Recommendations are provided in order to assist jury researchers in future with how best to manage exclusions on the basis of juror memory and attention.     

Exposure to Violence as a Mediator of the CU–Aggression Relationship: on the Importance of Establishing the Causal Direction of Variables in a Path Analysis

The current study sought to determine which of three variables—callous-unemotional (CU) traits, exposure to violence (ETV), and aggressive offending—did the best job of mediating the other two variables. This question was addressed in a sample of 1170 male delinquents from the Pathways to Desistance study using three waves of data and the comparison pathways approach to mediation. Consistent with predictions, ETV successfully mediated the CU–aggression relationship, whereas the two control pathways (ETV?→?CU?→?aggression and CU?→?aggression → ETV) were non-significant. These results suggest that certain variables are better suited to serving as mediators than other variables. Hence, while personality-based constructs like CU traits perform well as independent variables and behavioral measures like aggressive offending make for effective dependent variables, mediation is perhaps best served by social cognitive, affective-motivational, perceptual, and experiential variables, the latter of which is the category into which exposure to violence falls. From a theoretical standpoint, these findings suggest that exposure to violence may trigger or prime aggressive offending in individuals possessing strong CU traits. Exposure to violence may therefore serve as one mechanism with the capacity to link CU traits to later aggressive offending, with implications for both prevention and intervention.     

Time,money, and happiness: How does putting a price on time affect our ability to smell the roses?

In this paper, we investigate how the impatience that results from placing a price on time impairs individuals' ability to derive happiness from pleasurable experiences. Experiment 1 demonstrated that thinking about one's income as an hourly wage reduced the happiness that participants derived from leisure time on the internet. Experiment 2 revealed that a similar manipulation decreased participants' state of happiness after listening to a pleasant song and that this effect was fully mediated by the degree of impatience experienced during the music. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that the deleterious effect on happiness caused by impatience was attenuated by offering participants monetary compensation in exchange for time spent listening to music, suggesting that a sensation of unprofitably wasted time underlay the induced impatience. Together these experiments establish that thinking about time in terms of money can influence how people experience pleasurable events by instigating greater impatience during unpaid time.