Changing eating behaviour vs. losing weight: the role of goal focus for weight loss in overweight women

A 6-week longitudinal study with N?=?126 overweight women participating in a weight-loss programme investigated the hypothesis that focusing on the process (dietary behaviours) rather than on the outcome of dieting (weight loss) is associated with more successful goal pursuit and achievement. As expected, process focus was related positively to subjective daily success in dieting as well as to actual weight loss, and negatively to deviations from the diet. In contrast, outcome focus had a negative impact on successful dieting: focusing on weight loss was marginally negatively related to actual weight loss and was associated with more disinhibition after lapses. Confirming hypotheses, self-regulation failure (i.e. deviations from the diet, disinhibition) was negatively related to daily affective well-being. Contrary to hypotheses, however, goal focus was not directly associated with affective well-being but only indirectly through self-regulation. Focusing on the process rather than on the outcome of dieting, then, might help achieving difficult health-related goals and support self-regulation but does not contribute directly to affective well-being.     

Children's memory distortions following social contact with a co-witness: Disentangling social and cognitive mechanisms

This study examined whether recalling an event with a co-witness influences children's recall. Individual 3-5-year-olds (n = 48) watched a film with a co-witness. Unbeknown to participants, the co-witness was watching an alternative version of the film. Afterwards both the co-witness and the participant answered questions about the film together (public recall), and the degree to which children conformed to the co-witness's alternative version of events was measured. Subsequently participants were questioned again individually (private recall). Children also completed false belief and inhibitory control tasks. By separating errors made in public and private, the results indicated that both social conformity (32% of errors) and memory distortion (68% of errors) played a role in co-witness influence. Inhibitory control predicted the likelihood of retracting errors in private, but only for children who failed (r=.66) rather than passed false belief tasks (r=-.10). The results suggest that children with a theory of mind conform in the company of the co-witness to avoid social embarrassment, while those a poor theory of mind conform on the basis of an inability to inhibit the co-witness's response. The findings contribute to our understanding of the motivations responsible for co-witness conformity across early childhood.     

Emotional Intelligence in Personnel Selection: Applicant reactions,criterion, and incremental validity

In two studies, based on four samples and more than 600 participants, the authors examined applicant reactions, criterion and incremental validity, and differential prediction of emotional intelligence (EI) in personnel selection using the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test. The first study examined applicant reactions in terms of face validity and fairness evaluation of the EI test. The second study examined across three samples (salespeople, front‐desk public employees, and hospital chief executive officers) the criterion validity, incremental validity, and differential prediction of EI. Results suggest that the EI test is perceived as a fair selection tool, and is predictive of performance. The EI test has incremental validity over cognitive abilities and personality (big five) when predicting subjective and objective performance criteria. Based on these results, the authors encourage further research on the use of EI in selection settings.     

Anterior cingulate cortex findings in child disruptive behavior disorders.: A meta-analysis

The brain imaging literature suggests that child disruptive behavior disorders (DBD) are associated with structural and functional abnormalities of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).However, there is a lot of heterogeneity in findings in terms of direction of modifications identified until this point. The present study used a meta-analytic design to aggregate the empirical findings from the literature on functional and structural abnormalities of the ACC in children with DBD. A total of eight structural and functional brain imaging (sMRI and fMRI) studies were included and results obtained from a sample of 266 children show a large effect size (D = ?.98 (95% CI [? 1.18, ? 0.77]) in terms of reduced activation of the ACC in children presenting with DBD. Effects of ACC abnormality were moderated by: 1) the type of imaging used in the study (i.e., functional vs. structural); 2) the presence or absence of co-morbid attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); 3) the mean age of the samples of children presenting with DBD. Overall, findings confirm functional impairments of the ACC in children with DBD and highlight the importance of using such neurological information to design innovative treatments.     

Speech perception and vocal expression of emotion

Two experiments using identical stimuli were run to determine whether the vocal expression of emotion affects the speed with which listeners can identify emotion words. Sentences were spoken in an emotional tone of voice (Happy, Disgusted, or Petrified), or in a Neutral tone of voice. Participants made speeded lexical decisions about the word or pseudoword in sentence-final position. Critical stimuli were emotion words that were either semantically congruent or incongruent with the tone of voice of the sentence. Experiment 1, with randomised presentation of tone of voice, showed no effect of congruence or incongruence. Experiment 2, with blocked presentation of tone of voice, did show such effects: Reaction times for congruent trials were faster than those for baseline trials and incongruent trials. Results are discussed in terms of expectation (e.g., Kitayama, 1990, 1991, 1996) and emotional connotation, and implications for models of word recognition are considered.     

A novel in vivo measure of cyberaggression

Cyberaggression (CA), or the use of information communication technologies to inflict harm on others, is an emerging public health crisis. Unfortunately, our current ability to assess CA in a research context remains limited, curtailing efforts to address this important issue. We sought to fill this gap in the literature by developing an adapted “chat” version of the Taylor aggression paradigm (TAP) that would more closely resemble a social gaming format (hereafter referred to as the TAP-Chat). In the TAP-Chat, participants have a chat function available to communicate with their (fictitious) co-player. Following loss trials in a competitive reaction time task, they receive a “mean chat” from their co-player. Participant messages to their (fictitious) co-player are then coded for aggressive content by a team of trained research assistants, and via automated linguistic analysis software (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count). The current study evaluated the predictive utility of the TAP-Chat task in independent discovery and replication samples (N = 843 and N = 350, respectively). Participants’ publicly available tweets served as an important external criterion variable, along with a handful of self-report questionnaires assessing CA and related constructs. Analyses suggest that, although it can be completed in ∼13 min, the TAP-Chat predicts CA on Twitter and, to a lesser extent, as reported on questionnaires. Although there are still several issues to address, it is our hope that the research community will benefit from this straightforward behavioral assessment of CA.     

An assessment of age differences in theory of mind using the virtual assessment of mentalizing ability

ABSTRACT

Prior research has shown that older adults perform more poorly than young on tasks that assess theory of mind (ToM). However, these studies have used tasks that are performed “offline” (i.e., requiring a second-person perspective) as opposed to “online” (i.e., requiring a first-person perspective). Therefore, the present study was designed to establish whether age-related ToM difficulties are also evident when an “online” measure of ToM is used. Forty younger and 40 older adults completed the Virtual Assessment of Mentalizing Ability (VAMA) along with two conventional ToM tasks. No age differences were evident on the conventional measures, but older adults had lower accuracy on the VAMA relative to their younger counterparts. The overall pattern of errors did not differ between the groups. These data provide no evidence that age effects are reduced when stimuli are used that are more likely to engage the mentalizing processes elicited in real life social interactions.     

Building the perfect curse word: A psycholinguistic investigation of the form and meaning of taboo words

Taboo words represent a potent subset of natural language. It has been hypothesized that “tabooness” reflects an emergent property of negative valence and high physiological arousal of word referents. Many taboo words (e.g., dick, shit) are indeed consistent with this claim. Nevertheless, American English is also rife with negatively valenced, highly arousing words the usage of which is not socially condemned (e.g., cancer, abortion, welfare). We evaluated prediction of tabooness of single words and novel taboo compound words from a combination of phonological, lexical, and semantic variables (e.g., semantic category, word length). For single words, physiological arousal and emotional valence strongly predicted tabooness with additional moderating contributions from form (phonology) and meaning (semantic category). In Experiment 2, raters judged plausibility for combinations of common nouns with taboo words to form novel taboo compounds (e.g., shitgibbon). A mixture of formal (e.g., ratio of stop consonants, length) and semantic variables (e.g., ± receptacle, ± profession) predicted the quality of novel taboo compounding. Together, these studies provide complementary evidence for interactions between word form and meaning and an algorithmic prediction of tabooness in American English. We discuss applications for models of taboo word representation.

     

THE FRAGMENTED CORE OF MULTI‐IMPULSIVE BULIMIA: AN EXTENDED ASSESSMENT

This paper looks at some of the opportunities and challenges inherent in therapeutic work with a multi‐impulsive bulimic patient. Using material from a single case, the psychological aftermath of an unsafe, unprotected infancy and childhood is outlined, noting the role of the bulimic symptoms in blocking intolerable pain. Where unbearable feelings from infancy remain unthinkable, the need for a safe environment in which to explore and make emotional sense of traumatic experiences is emphasized.

The role of the therapist in the reparative, ‘re‐parenting’ function and in fostering the development of an emotional vocabulary is considered. The extent to which it is possible to heal longstanding and profound psychological injury is explored, questioning whether at least partial re‐integration of a fragmented personality can occur and allow a stronger sense of self to emerge.