Assessing inhibitory control: a revised approach to the stop signal task

The stop signal task (stop task) is designed to assess inhibitory control and is a frequently used research tool in clinical disorders such as ADHD and schizophrenia. Previous methods of setting stop signal delay and of assessing inhibitory control are problematic. The current study reports two modifications that improve the task as a measure of inhibitory control. The first modification was to set stop signal delays proportional to go mean reaction time (go MRT) to better account for inter-subject variability in go MRT. Twenty-eight normal children were tested, and all standard, stop task dependent measures were obtained when delays were set by this method. The second modification was to calculate a novel dependent measure called the area of inhibition (AOI) which provides a more complete measure of inhibitory control than the slope of the relative finishing time z-scores (ZRFT-slope). Implications for the assessment of inhibitory control in clinical populations are discussed.     

Disposition towards hallucination,gender and EPQ scores: a brief report

The Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale (LSHS-A) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) were given to 204 male and female undergraduate students. Female students scored significantly higher than male students on the LSHS-A. No relationship was found between the P, E or L scales of the EPQ and the LSHS-A. However, a significant positive correlation was found between the N scores on the EPQ and scores on the LSHS-A. This correlation could not be accounted for by sex differences on the N scale.     

An approach to the hierarchical model of motivation in a classroom: a reply to Rousseau and Vallerand

Rousseau and Vallerand's comments on our recent article led to the present study of correlations between students' perception of teachers' attitudes, intrinsic-extrinsic motivation, and learning strategy with structural equation modeling. The analysis shows students' perception of teachers' attitudes influences the intrinsic-extrinsic motivation, which as mediator in turn affects students' learning strategies, and the paths were divided into two streams, one with more intrinsic attributes and the other with more extrinsic ones.     

Computers, criminals, an eccentric billionaire, and APA: a brief autobiography

In this invited autobiographical account, I sum up what life has been like for me personally and professionally. For most of the first 50 years of my life, I lived in Alabama. During my years at the University of Alabama, my professional activities included developing a computer-based system to interpret the MMPI (Hathaway & McKinley, 1943), managing a national and international continuing education program for psychologists, involvement in a class action suit that resulted in the deinstitutionalization of Alabama's mental hospitals, organizing a team of professionals to reclassify all of the inmates of Alabama's prison system, and conducting a psychological autopsy on Howard Hughes. I was the American Psychological Association (APA) president in 1988 and served from 1989 to 2003 as APA Chief Executive Officer. Since my time at APA, I have been engaged in work with international psychological organizations.     

Elementary school teachers' strategies to handle externalizing classroom behavior: a study of relations between perceived control, teacher orientation and strategy preferences

Rydell, A.-M. & Henricsson, L. (2004). Elementary school teachers' strategies to handle externalizing classroom behavior: A study of relations between perceived control, teacher orientation and strategy preferences. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 45 , 93–102.
Strategies for dealing with problematic student behavior are an important part of the teacher role. Relations between teachers' perceptions of control over children's classroom behavior, teacher orientation and teachers' strategy preferences when confronted with externalizing child behaviors were investigated. Eighty-six primary school teachers, 91% of all first grade teachers in one municipality in Sweden, completed a questionnaire. Disciplinary strategy preferences were measured through vignettes describing externalizing child behaviors, with response alternatives modeled after the Parental Discipline Interview ( Scarr, Pinkerton & Eisenberg, 1991 ). Perceived control was measured with a subscale applied to teachers from the Parental Locus of Control Scale ( Campis, Lyman & Prentice-Dunn, 1986 ). Newly constructed measures of teacher orientation were used. The results indicated that perceived low control over one's classroom situation and a custodial teacher orientation were associated with preferences for authoritarian strategies (firm verbal reprimands, physical restraint) and perceived high control and a humanistic teacher orientation were associated with non-authoritarian strategies (e.g. reasoning with students). Teachers' strategy preferences and associations between perceived control, teacher orientation and strategy preferences were to some extent validated in relations to observed teacher behavior in a subsample of the classrooms.     

Attachment,social rank,and affect regulation: speculations on an ethological approach to family interaction

The attachment and social rank systems are biological-evolutionary systems that can serve as models for conceptualizing family interaction. By exploring both their unique and interrelated impact on affect regulation, we can differentiate between processes that foster healthy growth and those leading to individual psychopathology. This perspective facilitates the integration of biological and psychological models, and has therapeutic implications. It also integrates well with other family therapy models.     

The problem of confounding social support and depressive symptoms: A brief report on a college sample

The problem of confounding social support and depressive symptoms was addressed by examining the convergent and discriminant validity of interview and questionnaire measures of social support and depression using the multitrait-multimethod matrix approach. Participants were 40 late-adolescent college students with half the sample selected on the basis of mild to moderate scores on self-reported depressive symptoms. Measures of depression displayed excellent convergent and discriminant validity, and measures of objective features of social networks were found to have moderate convergent and discriminant validity. However, the subjective measures of satisfaction with social support used were found to have neither adequate convergent nor discriminant validity. Implications for the conceptualization and assessment of social support are highlighted.     

Attention, awareness of contingencies, and control in spatial localization: a qualitative difference approach

The qualitative difference method for distinguishing between aware and unaware processes was applied here to a spatial priming task. Participants were asked simply to locate a target stimulus that appeared in one of four locations, and this target stimulus was preceded by a prime in one of the same four locations. The prime location predicted the location of the target with high probability (p = .75), but prime and target mismatched on a task-relevant feature (identity, color). Across 5 experiments, we observed repetition costs in the absence of awareness of the contingency, and repetition benefits in the presence of awareness of the contingency. These results were particularly clear-cut in Experiment 4, in which awareness was defined by reference to self-reported strategy use. Finally, Experiment 5 showed that frequency-based implicit learning effects were present in our experiments but that these implicit learning effects were not strong enough to override repetition costs that pushed performance in the opposite direction. The results of these experiments constitute a novel application of the qualitative difference method to the study of awareness, learning of contingencies, and strategic control.     

An alternative to current psychiatric classifications: a psychological landscape hypothesis based on an integrative,dynamical and multidimensional approach

Background

Mental disorders as defined by current classifications are not fully supported by scientific evidence. It is unclear whether main disorders should be broken down into separate categories or disposed along a continuous spectrum. In the near future, new classes of mental disorders could be defined through associations of so-called abnormalities observed at the genetic, molecular and neuronal circuitry levels.

Methods

We propose an alternative hypothesis to these classifications based on an integrative, dynamical and multidimensional approach.

Results

We suggest that observed data collected in the general population can be used to build a psychological landscape. Innovative techniques issued from information processing and system dynamics can prove helpful in this task. Information preserving techniques can reduce the high dimensional data collected and provide an intrinsic map for psychological characteristics or behaviors. Dynamical patterns called attractors, which are linked to each other through continuous pathways, can be identified. Specific attractors can define mental disorders. Their causal structure can be investigated with causal networks.

Conclusions

Powerful and reliable tools are available so that an alternative to current psychiatric classifications can be built based on a genuine biopsychosocial model. The proposed model is ready to be tested on real data.

     

Resident's loved ones support group: an anecdotal report on a place to share

The author offers an informal report on a project that has produced positive results, albeit not with the usual supportive numerical data that might be found in a typical research-oriented format. Stories rather than statistics provide the relevant information.     

Perceived collective efficacy to stop aggression at school: A validation of an Italian and a Swedish version of a scale for adolescents

Collective efficacy to stop peer aggression in the school context refers to adolescents’ beliefs about the capability of students and teachers in their school to work together to counteract aggressive behaviours among peers. This study presents the Italian and Swedish versions of a recently developed scale to measure the construct. Factorial structure and measurement invariance of the scale were assessed in two samples of adolescents aged 10–15 years. The findings support both a two-dimensional and a three-dimensional scale across gender and countries, demonstrating the importance of making distinctions between different forms of aggression when measuring collective efficacy to stop aggression. A one-dimensional scale was only supported in the Swedish sample. The results support the use of the Collective Efficacy to Stop Aggression scale with both Italian and Swedish adolescents.     

Process,habit, and flow: a phenomenological approach to material agency

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - The artefactual environment is not just the passive, inert background against which the drama of human and non-human animal life plays out; but rather,...     

Effects of personal causation and perceived control on responses to an aversive environment: The more control,the better

A laboratory experiment was conducted to investigate the effects on reactions to aversive noise of three types of personal control: control over the initiation of noise, control over its termination, and combined control over both initiation and termination. On an attention-to-detail measure which occurred concurrently with noise stimulation, subjects' error rates decreased linearly as degree of control increased. Likewise, on a post-noise measure of task persistence, subjects' performance rates increased linearly across the three conditions as degree of control increased. Results were discussed in terms of Seligman's theory of learned helplessness and deCharms' theory of personal causation, and the motivational effects of personal control were emphasized.