Specifying the determinants of the initiation and maintenance of behavior change: an examination of self-efficacy, satisfaction, and smoking cessation.

Using data from smokers (N = 591) who enrolled in an 8-week smoking cessation program and were then followed for 15 months, the authors tested the thesis that self-efficacy guides the decision to initiate smoking cessation but that satisfaction with the outcomes afforded by quitting guides the decision to maintain cessation. Measures of self-efficacy and satisfaction assessed at the end of the program, 2 months, and 9 months were used to predict quit status at 2, 9, and 15 months, respectively. At each point, participants were categorized as either initiators or maintainers on the basis of their pattern of cessation behavior. Across time, self-efficacy predicted future quit status for initiators, whereas satisfaction generally predicted future quit status for maintainers. Implications for models of behavior change and behavioral interventions are discussed.     

Effects of wakeful resting versus social media usage after learning on the retention of new memories

Communication and information sharing via social media platforms is a common and popular activity. The majority of existing studies indicate that social media usage has detrimental effects on learning and memory. However, it is an open question as to whether social media usage affects memory even after learning. To test this, healthy young adults learned and immediately recalled a vocabulary list. Subsequent to recall, participants either wakefully rested for 8 min or used social media for 8 min. A delayed recall test took place after the wakeful resting condition and the social media condition and again after 1 day. Our results showed that social media usage, compared with wakeful resting, had detrimental effects on memory performance over both retention intervals. We assume that social media usage interfered with memory consolidation of learned vocabularies and suggest that learners opt for wakeful resting over social media usage as a learning-break activity.     

Towards a better understanding of the legibility bias in performance assessments: The case of gender‐based inferences

Background. Handwriting legibility systematically biases evaluations in that highly legible handwriting results in more positive evaluations than less legible handwriting. Because performance assessments in educational contexts are not only based on computerized or multiple choice tests but often include the evaluation of handwritten work samples, understanding the causes of this bias is critical. Aims. This research was designed to replicate and extend the legibility bias in two tightly controlled experiments and to explore whether gender‐based inferences contribute to its occurrence. Sample(s). A total of 132 students from a German university participated in one pre‐test and two independent experiments. Method. Participants were asked to read and evaluate several handwritten essays varying in content quality. Each essay was presented to some participants in highly legible handwriting and to other participants in less legible handwriting. In addition, the assignment of legibility to participant group was reversed from essay to essay, resulting in a mixed‐factor design. Results. The legibility bias was replicated in both experiments. Results suggest that gender‐based inferences do not account for its occurrence. Rather it appears that fluency from legibility exerts a biasing impact on evaluations of content and author abilities. Conclusions. The legibility bias was shown to be genuine and strong. By refuting a series of alternative explanations, this research contributes to a better understanding of what underlies the legibility bias. The present research may inform those who grade on what to focus and thus help to better allocate cognitive resources when trying to reduce this important source of error.     

Sex differences during visual scanning of occlusion events in infants

A growing number of sex differences in infancy have been reported. One task on which they have been observed reliably is the event-mapping task. In event mapping, infants view an occlusion event involving 1 or 2 objects, the occluder is removed, and then infants see 1 object. Typically, boys are more likely than girls to detect an inconsistency between a 2-object occlusion event and a 1-object display. The current research investigated underlying reasons for this sex difference. Three eye-tracking experiments were conducted with infants at 9 and 4 months (mean age). Infants saw a ball-box or ball-ball occlusion event followed by a 1-ball display; visual scanning of the occlusion event and the 1-ball display was recorded. Older boys were more likely than older girls to visually track the objects through occlusion and more likely to detect an inconsistency between the ball-box event and the 1-ball display. In addition, tracking objects through occlusion was related to infants' scanning of the 1-ball display. Both younger boys and girls failed to track the objects through occlusion and to detect an inconsistency between the ball-box event and the 1-ball display. These results suggest that infants' capacity to track objects through occlusion facilitates extraction of the structure of the initial event (i.e., the number of distinct objects involved) that infants can map onto the final display and that sex differences in the capacity emerge between 4 and 9 months. Possible explanations for how the structure of an occlusion event is extracted and mapped are considered.     

Rocking to the beat: effects of music and partner's movements on spontaneous interpersonal coordination

People move to music and coordinate their movements with others spontaneously. Does music enhance spontaneous coordination? We compared the influence of visual information (seeing or not seeing another person) and auditory information (hearing movement or music or hearing no sound) on spontaneous coordination. Pairs of participants were seated side by side in rocking chairs, told a cover story, and asked to rock at a comfortable rate. Both seeing and hearing the other person rock elicited spontaneous coordination, and effects of hearing amplified those of seeing. Coupling with the music was weaker than with the partner, and the music competed with the partner's influence, reducing coordination. Music did, however, function as a kind of social glue: participants who synchronized more with the music felt more connected.     

Visuospatial attention in schizophrenia: deficits in broad monitoring

Although selective attention is thought to be impaired in people with schizophrenia (PSZ), prior research has found no deficit in the ability to select one location and withdraw attention from another. PSZ and healthy control subjects (HCS) performed a stimulus detection task in which one, two, or all four peripheral target locations were cued. When one or two locations were cued, both PSZ and HCS responded faster when the target appeared at a cued than uncued location. However, increases in the number of validly cued locations had much more deleterious effects on performance for PSZ than HCS, especially for targets of low contrast whose detection was more dependent on attention. PSZ also responded more slowly in trials with four cued locations relative to trials with one or two invalidly cued locations. Thus, visuospatial attention deficits in schizophrenia arise when broad monitoring is required rather than when attention must be focused narrowly.     

Tactile perceptual processes and their relationship to somatoform disorders

The Somatic Signal Detection Task (SSDT) is a recent paradigm serving to examine perceptual processes likely relevant for somatoform disorders. We tested whether touch illusions are more easily induced in individuals suffering from somatoform disorders (SFD) and whether their perceptual threshold for tactile stimuli is lower compared to healthy controls. Thirty-three participants with SFD and 32 healthy controls reported whether they recognized near-threshold tactile stimuli at their fingertip, which were presented in half of the test trials. With a probability of 0.5, an auxiliary visual stimulus was additionally presented. Tactile detection thresholds, tactile sensitivity, response bias, and the rate of false-positive perceptions of the tactile stimulus were assessed. In both groups, the light stimulus led to an amelioration of tactile sensitivity as well as to a more liberal response style. The SFD group was characterized by a more liberal response bias in the first half of the light-absent condition compared to the healthy controls. Within the SFD group, the report of somatoform (especially pseudoneurological) symptoms correlated positively with illusory tactile perceptions in the SSDT. Tactile thresholds in the SSDT were measured reliably (rtt = .86) and were significantly lower in the SFD group. The notion that general perceptual dispositions influence the formation of symptom perception may thus complement cognitive models of SFD.