Box for interaction with objects (BIO): A new device to synchronize the presentation of objects with electrophysiological recordings

Brain event-related potentials are a useful tool for investigating visual processing and action planning. This technique requires extremely accurate synchronization of stimulus delivery with recordings. The precision of the onset time of visual stimulus delivery is a major challenge when attempting to use real, three-dimensional objects as stimuli. Here, we present an innovative device, the “box for interaction with objects” (BIO), that is designed to synchronize the presentation of objects with electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings. To reach the required resolution of stimulus-onset timing, the BIO system features an interface with reflective glass and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). When the LEDs inside the BIO are turned on, the object inside becomes visible, and a synchronizing pulse is sent to the recording systems. The BIO was tested in a motivational study that focused on visual and motor event-related potentials. EEG signals were recorded during the presentation of an emotion-laden object that could be grasped and brought close to the participant’s chest. BIO successfully synchronized the appearance of a three-dimensional object with EEG recordings, which would allow for an analysis of visual and motor event-related potentials in the same experiment. The BIO device, through a high-quality psychophysiological approach, offers a new perspective for the study of the motivational factors that drive actions toward relevant stimuli.     

The (lack of) effect of dynamic visual noise on the concreteness effect in short-term memory

It has been suggested that the concreteness effect in short-term memory (STM) is a consequence of concrete words having more distinctive and richer semantic representations. The generation and storage of visual codes in STM could also play a crucial role on the effect because concrete words are more imaginable than abstract words. If this were the case, the introduction of a visual interference task would be expected to disrupt recall of concrete words. A Dynamic Visual Noise (DVN) display, which has been proven to eliminate the concreteness effect on long-term memory (LTM), was presented along encoding of concrete and abstract words in a STM serial recall task. Results showed a main effect of word type, with more item errors in abstract words, a main effect of DVN, which impaired global performance due to more order errors, but no interaction, suggesting that DVN did not have any impact on the concreteness effect. These findings are discussed in terms of LTM participation through redintegration processes and in terms of the language-based models of verbal STM.     

The Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR): A device for sampling naturalistic daily activities and conversations

A recording device called the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) is described. The EAR tape-records for 30 sec once every 12 min for 2–4 days. It is lightweight and portable, and it can be worn comfortably by participants in their natural environment. The acoustic data samples provide a nonobtrusive record of the language used and settings entered by the participant. Preliminary psychometric findings suggest that the EAR data accurately reflect individuals’ natural social, linguistic, and psychological lives. The data presented in this article were collected with a first-generation EAR system based on analog tape recording technology, but a second generation digital EAR is now available.     

Cognition and aided speech recognition in noise: Specific role for cognitive factors following nine-week experience with adjusted compression settings in hearing aids

The working memory model for Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) proposes that language understanding under taxing conditions is related to explicit cognitive capacity. We refer to this as the mismatch hypothesis, since phonological representations based on the processing of speech under established conditions may not be accessed so readily when input conditions change and a match becomes problematic. Then, cognitive capacity requirements may differ from those used for processing speech hitherto. In the present study, we tested this hypothesis by investigating the relationship between aided speech recognition in noise and cognitive capacity in experienced hearing aid users when there was either a match or mismatch between processed speech input and established phonological representations. The settings in the existing digital hearing aids of the participants were adjusted to one of two different compression settings which processed the speech signal in qualitatively different ways ("fast" or "slow"). Testing took place after a 9-week period of experience with the new setting. Speech recognition was tested under different noise conditions and with match or mismatch (i.e. alternative compression setting) manipulations of the input signal. Individual cognitive capacity was measured using a reading span test and a letter monitoring test. Reading span, a reliable measure of explicit cognitive capacity, predicted speech recognition performance under mismatch conditions when processed input was incongruent with recently established phonological representations, due to the specific hearing aid setting. Cognitive measures were not main predictors of performance under match conditions. These findings are in line with the ELU model.     

White Noise to Decrease Problem Behaviors in the Classroom for a Child With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Continuous white noise played through headphones was used as a classroom intervention to reduce off-task behavior and increase assignment production and accuracy for a child with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). When listening to white noise the student's off-task behavior decreased from 89% during baseline to 62%. Subsequently, he began taking a stimulant medication for his ADHD. Pharmacotherapy alone (65% off task) was approximately equivalent to white noise alone. When medication was combined with white noise his off-task behavior decreased to 45%. Assignment production was also enhanced while listening to white noise, whereas accuracy remained high throughout.     

A method for increasing empirical discriminability and eliminating top‐row preference in photo arrays

It is important to consider the two parameters of signal detection theory, discriminability and response bias, when evaluating eyewitness identification from simultaneous lineups. On the basis of the diagnostic feature‐detection hypothesis, we tested a method for increasing discriminability that encourages eyewitnesses to carefully rank each lineup member based on match to their memory for a perpetrator. This procedure increased empirical discriminability and also eliminated a response bias that is largely overlooked in the literature: Participants were biased to choose from the top row of the six‐pack (2 × 3) lineup commonly used in the United States. We argue that suspect position in the simultaneous lineup is an important variable to consider for researchers and the criminal justice system. We also encourage researchers to test the ranking procedure to determine if such a simple set of instructions could be utilized by police to help eyewitnesses correctly sort innocent versus guilty suspects.     

Frontal brain electrical activity (EEG) and heart rate in response to affective infant-directed (ID) speech in 9-month-old infants

Many studies have shown that infants prefer infant-directed (ID) speech to adult-directed (AD) speech. ID speech functions to aid language learning, obtain and/or maintain an infant's attention, and create emotional communication between the infant and caregiver. We examined psychophysiological responses to ID speech that varied in affective content (i.e., love/comfort, surprise, fear) in a group of typically developing 9-month-old infants. Regional EEG and heart rate were collected continuously during stimulus presentation. We found the pattern of overall frontal EEG power was linearly related to affective intensity of the ID speech, such that EEG power was greatest in response to fear, than surprise than love/comfort; this linear pattern was specific to the frontal region. We also noted that heart rate decelerated to ID speech independent of affective content. As well, infants who were reported by their mothers as temperamentally distressed tended to exhibit greater relative right frontal EEG activity during baseline and in response to affective ID speech, consistent with previous work with visual stimuli and extending it to the auditory modality. Findings are discussed in terms of how increases in frontal EEG power in response to different affective intensity may reflect the cognitive aspects of emotional processing across sensory domains in infancy.     

Interventionist Secularism: A Comparative Analysis of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (1923–1928) and the Indian Constituent Assembly (1946–1949) Debates

The debates in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (1923–1928) and the Indian Constituent Assembly (1946–1949) inscribed the secular infrastructures of these states into law. A close examination of these debates shows that while the separation of religion and state was an important aspect of Turkish and Indian secularisms, both allowed the state to intervene in the religious sphere. In both, state intervention in religion sought to transform the majority religion into a secularized and modernized form that would complement national identity. However, whereas Turkish secularism adopted “restrictive intervention,” which sanctions state interference to construct a monolithic national identity, the Indian nationalist leaders adopted “emancipative intervention,” which seeks to create an overarching national identity while preserving the cultural and religious diversity of society. While the former type of secularist intervention limits religion's public visibility and places it under state control, the latter seeks to eliminate and reform religious practices that hinder social justice and equality. Based on this analysis, I argue that secularism may be seen as a tool state authorities utilize in the service of the political project of creating a modern nation.     

Perceived discrimination amongst young people in socio‐economically disadvantaged communities: Parental support and community identity buffer (some) negative impacts of stigma

There is increasing acceptance that children are not unaware of when they are targets of discrimination. However, discrimination as a consequence of socio‐economic disadvantage remains understudied. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of perceived discrimination on well‐being, perceptions of safety and school integration amongst children growing up within socio‐economically disadvantaged communities in Limerick, Ireland. Mediation analysis was used to explore these relationships and to examine the potential role of parental support and community identity in boys and girls in the 6th to 9th year of compulsory education (N = 199). Results indicate perceived discrimination contributed to negative outcomes in terms of school integration, perceptions of safety and levels of well‐being. Age and gender differences were observed which disadvantaged boys and younger children. All negative outcomes were buffered by parental support. Community identity also protected young people in terms of feelings of school integration and risk but not in terms of psychological well‐being. Findings are discussed in terms of the different role of family and community supports for children negotiating negative social representations of their community.     

Kids and Teens in Court (KTIC): A Model for Preparing Child Witnesses for Court

Each year, numerous children testify in the United States in either criminal, civil, or juvenile court cases. Typically, children who testify are alleged victims of sexual or physical abuse or neglect, witnesses to violent crime, or subjects in custodial hearings in civil court. As more maltreatment cases are prosecuted and child custody is contested, an increasing number of children are being called as witnesses in court. Many of these children have already been traumatized by the experiences that led to their need to testify, and participation in the court process can have additional negative effects. This article describes the development and recent formative evaluation of a court preparation program that provides psychoeducation and utilizes components of evidence-based trauma treatment approaches, such as relaxation and in vivo exposure, to support child witnesses and reduce the risk of retraumatization. Children and adolescents participating in the program attend group sessions conducted by mental health clinicians and complete a court-related anxiety measure before and after each session. Results from 175 participants are reported. Findings indicated significant decreases in court-related anxiety with large program effects. Challenges encountered by the program and future directions are discussed.     

A method for measuring dynamic respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in infants and mothers

The measurement of respiratory sinus arrythmia (RSA) in infants, children and adults is critical to the study of physiological regulation, and more recently, interpersonal physiological covariation, but it has been impeded by methods that limit its resolution to 30 s or longer. Recent analytical developments have suggested methods for studying dynamic RSA in adults, and we have extended this work to the study of infants and mothers. In the current paper, we describe a new analytical strategy for estimating RSA time series for infants and adults. Our new method provides a means for studying physiological synchrony in infant-mother dyads that offers some important advantages relative to existing methods that use inter-beat-intervals (e.g. Feldman, Magori-Cohen, Galili, Singer, & Louzoun, 2011). In the middle sections of this paper, we offer a brief tutorial on calculating RSA continuously with a sliding window and review the empirical evidence for determining the optimal window size. In order to confirm the reliability of our results, we briefly discuss testing synchrony by randomly shuffling the dyads to control for spurious correlations, and also by using a bootstrapping technique for calculating confidence intervals in the cross-correlation function. One important implication that emerges from applying this method is that it is possible to measure both positive and negative physiological synchrony and that these categorical measures are differentially predictive of future outcomes.     

Research for d eterminant factors and features of emotional responses of "kandoh" (the state of being emotionally moved)

Abstract: The feature and determinants of the emotional response kandoh (the state of being emotionally moved) were positively examined (kandoh has rarely been made the object of research in the field of psychology). First, the author reviewed the research done so far and summarized the features of kandoh, and the structural model of the process leading to kandoh was introduced from the results of the above research. Furthermore, experimental examination about the model was performed of different types of stories, and even stories with opposing the emotional frameworks of happiness or sadness, both were shown that they were able to become heart-warming good stories. Moreover, it was shown that the event-related knowledge was important for evocation of kandoh. From the experiment results, consideration was made about new aspects of kandoh.     

A new method for studying problem solving and tool use in stingrays (Potamotrygon castexi)

Testing the cognitive abilities of cartilaginous fishes is important in understanding the evolutionary origins of cognitive functions in higher vertebrates. We used five South American fresh water stingrays (Potamotrygon castexi) in a learning and problem-solving task. A tube test apparatus was developed to provide a simple but sophisticated procedure for testing cognitive abilities of aquatic animals. All five subjects quickly learned to use water as a tool to extract food from the testing apparatus. The experimental protocol, which gave the animals the opportunity of correcting a wrong visual cue decision, resulted in four out of five subjects correcting an error rather than making an initial right choice. One of five subjects reached 100% correct trials in the visual discrimination task. The ability to use water as an agent to extract food from the testing apparatus is a first indication of tool use in batoid fishes. Performance in the instrumental task of retrieving food from a novel testing apparatus and the rapid learning in the subsequent discrimination/error correction task shows that cartilaginous fish can be used to study the origins of cognitive functions in the vertebrate lineage.     

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and Neurological Outcomes: A Review for Practitioners

ABSTRACT

Thirty-eight million women will experience intimate partner violence (IPV) during the course of their lifetime. Many of these women will experience brain injuries as a result of IPV and may not seek medical attention. Several types of practitioners who work with IPV survivors consistently, e.g., first responders, advocates, and clinicians, may be unfamiliar with brain functioning, screening, assessment, and treatment. This article reviews the dual traumas of IPV and TBI, the impact on neurological processes and symptomatology, and short and long-term outcomes. Recommendations for screening, intervention, interprofessional collaboration, and research are outlined.     

A Review of Best Practice Recommendations for Text Analysis in R (and a User-Friendly App)

In recent decades, the amount of text available for organizational science research has grown tremendously. Despite the availability of text and advances in text analysis methods, many of these techniques remain largely segmented by discipline. Moreover, there is an increasing number of open-source tools (R, Python) for text analysis, yet these tools are not easily taken advantage of by social science researchers who likely have limited programming knowledge and exposure to computational methods. In this article, we compare quantitative and qualitative text analysis methods used across social sciences. We describe basic terminology and the overlooked, but critically important, steps in pre-processing raw text (e.g., selection of stop words; stemming). Next, we provide an exploratory analysis of open-ended responses from a prototypical survey dataset using topic modeling with R. We provide a list of best practice recommendations for text analysis focused on (1) hypothesis and question formation, (2) design and data collection, (3) data pre-processing, and (4) topic modeling. We also discuss the creation of scale scores for more traditional correlation and regression analyses. All the data are available in an online repository for the interested reader to practice with, along with a reference list for additional reading, an R markdown file, and an open source interactive topic model tool (topicApp; see https://github.com/wesslen/topicApp, https://github.com/wesslen/text-analysis-org-science, https://dataverse.unc.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.15139/S3/R4W7ZS).     

A Call for an Unbiased Search for Moderators in Disfluency Research: Reply to Oppenheimer and Alter (2014)

In a commentary to our article, Oppenheimer and Alter stressed the importance of searching for moderators in disfluency research. We agree, but we would like to clarify two issues. First, unlike Oppenheimer and Alter, we assume that learner characteristics might indeed moderate the effects of disfluency. Second, conclusions concerning the impact of disfluency in educational settings might be biased because of the file‐drawer problem. To counteract this possibility, we want to encourage other researchers to publish their studies––regardless of whether they found (positive) effects of disfluency or not. Until then, any recommendation concerning the use of disfluency as an educational intervention seems premature.     

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for people with dementia experiencing psychological distress: A hermeneutic single-case efficacy design (HSCED) series

Introduction

People with dementia have a high prevalence of psychological distress but are underserved with evidence-based psychological interventions. To promote choice and improve clinical outcomes, there is a necessity to test different psychological intervention options for this population.

Purpose

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness and acceptability of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) for people with dementia, considering carer-supported, remote delivery and necessary therapy adaptations.

Methods

A hermeneutic single-case efficacy design series was used to analyse the therapy process and change for three clients with dementia and psychological distress. A matrix of quantitative and qualitative data was collated (“rich case records”) and subject to critical analyses by three independent psychotherapy experts (“judges”) who identified change processes and determined the outcome for each client.

Results

Adjudication concluded that one client made positive changes, specifically reliable reductions in psychological distress, which were largely attributable to ACT. Two clients remained unchanged.

Discussion/Conclusion

Where change was achieved, the ACT-specific processes of values, committed action and acceptance, in combination with non-specific therapy factors, including a strong client–carer relationship, existing client interests and individualised therapy adaptations, were facilitative. Hence, ACT may be a feasible and effective vehicle for therapeutic change by helping carers to better meet the needs of their loved ones. Future research to optimise ACT delivery in this population may be beneficial. Furthermore, the assessment of carer factors (e.g., their psychological flexibility and the client–carer relationship) may strengthen the evidence base for systemic ACT use.