Case study: Effects of naltrexone and sibis on self-injury

The present case study was an effort to determine the relative effectiveness of two variant treatment modalities, and to provide an exploratory study of the hypothesis that therapy with naltrexone might increase the effectiveness of an aversive stimulus in controlling self-injury. Data are presented for a man who was treated for severe self-injury with the Self-Injurious Behavior Inhibiting System (SIBIS) and naltrexone, conducted under open-trial conditions utilizing fixed doses of 50 mg, 75 mg, and 100 mg per day. The effects of naltrexone on SIB were evaluated alone and paired with SIBIS. When used alone, lower dosages of naltrexone produced moderate decrements in self-injury. However, the rate of SIB increased in a dose-dependent manner when naltrexone was paired with SIBIS. The data also suggested that naltrexone may have caused a generalized blunting of both positive and negative affect.     

Efficacy of Treating Sexual Trauma in a Substance Abuse Residential Program for Women

This is a program evaluation of treating sexual trauma in a residential substance abuse treatment program for women. Residents who were seeking treatment for their substance abuse disorder (SUD), also had a history of both childhood and adult sexual trauma. Given the literature supporting concurrent trauma-SUD treatment, the Warrior Renew (WR) protocol (Katz, Warrior Renew: Healing from military sexual trauma, Springer, New York, 2014) was added to the curriculum of Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step groups, relapse prevention, and substance abuse education classes. The WR manual consists of coping skills to address sleep and anxiety, and cognitive/experiential restructuring to address anger/resentments due to injustice, betrayal, and self-blame. It also addresses interpersonal factors such as relationship patterns and healthy interpersonal skills. This evaluation was conducted as part of routine clinical care in a naturalistic setting. Nineteen residents graduated the program and opted to complete pre-and post-treatment assessments. Findings revealed significant decreases in symptoms of anxiety, depression, posttraumatic negative thinking, and PTSD, and significant increases in positive factors of optimism and self-esteem-- all with large effect sizes. In addition, 95% of the sample had a reliable change at the 95% confidence interval. Resident’s feedback to staff reflected strong positive endorsement of the WR program. Results suggest WR is a promising effective treatment for women who have had sexual trauma in a substance abuse residential treatment program.     

The role of motion and intensity in deaf children’s recognition of real human facial expressions of emotion

There is substantial evidence to suggest that deafness is associated with delays in emotion understanding, which has been attributed to delays in language acquisition and opportunities to converse. However, studies addressing the ability to recognise facial expressions of emotion have produced equivocal findings. The two experiments presented here attempt to clarify emotion recognition in deaf children by considering two aspects: the role of motion and the role of intensity in deaf children’s emotion recognition. In Study 1, 26 deaf children were compared to 26 age-matched hearing controls on a computerised facial emotion recognition task involving static and dynamic expressions of 6 emotions. Eighteen of the deaf and 18 age-matched hearing controls additionally took part in Study 2, involving the presentation of the same 6 emotions at varying intensities. Study 1 showed that deaf children’s emotion recognition was better in the dynamic rather than static condition, whereas the hearing children showed no difference in performance between the two conditions. In Study 2, the deaf children performed no differently from the hearing controls, showing improved recognition rates with increasing rates of intensity. With the exception of disgust, no differences in individual emotions were found. These findings highlight the importance of using ecologically valid stimuli to assess emotion recognition.     

Associations between narrative transportation,risk perception and behaviour intentions following narrative messages about skin cancer

Objective: Narrative messages may be an effective strategy to increase risk perceptions and motivate preventive behaviours related to cancer. The aim of this research was to examine associations between narrative transportation (i.e. psychological absorption into a narrative), risk perceptions, and intentions following narrative messages about skin cancer.

Design: In two studies, women who reported indoor tanning read first-person narrative messages about skin cancer. We examined associations between narrative transportation and the women’s responses to the narratives, including risk perceptions for skin cancer and behaviour intentions to reduce risk. Associations between transportation, knowledge and worry were also examined.

Results: Greater transportation was associated with higher intentions to perform skin self-examination, talk to one’s doctor about skin cancer, and look for more information. Greater transportation was also associated with higher gut feelings of risk and higher worry about skin cancer, but not deliberative risk perceptions or knowledge from the message. Additional analyses showed that after controlling for risk perception and worry, transportation had unique associations with some behaviour intentions.

Conclusion: Findings suggest that narrative transportation may be an important component to the persuasion of cancer narratives. Future research should explore ideas such as the role of the experiential system in narratives’ influence.     

Personality and Integrative Negotiations: A HEXACO Investigation of Actor,Partner, and Actor–Partner Interaction Effects on Objective and Subjective Outcomes

The present study sought to expand the literature on the relations of major dimensions of personality with integrative negotiation outcomes by introducing the HEXACO model, investigating both effects of the negotiators' and their counterparts' personality traits on objective and subjective negotiation outcomes, and investigating two interactions between the negotiators' and counterparts' personalities. One hundred forty‐eight participants completed the HEXACO‐100 measure of personality. Participants then engaged in a dyadic negotiation task that contained a mix of distributive and integrative elements (74 dyads). Measures of subjective experience and objective economic value were obtained, and actor–partner interdependence models were estimated. Personality was generally a better predictor of subjective experience than objective economic value. In particular, partner honesty‐humility, extraversion, and openness predicted more positive negotiation experiences. An actor–partner interaction effect was found for actor‐agreeableness by partner‐honesty‐humility on economic outcomes; agreeable actors achieved worse (better) economic outcomes when negotiating with partners that were low (high) on honesty‐humility. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

When Thinking Rationally Increases Biases: The Role of Rational Thinking Style in Escalation of Commitment

This paper reports three studies examining the relationship between the rational thinking style (RTS, i.e. individual differences in relying on a conscious, analytical, and relatively affect‐free information processing system) and decision quality in an escalation situation. In contrast to conventional wisdom that rational thinking increases decision quality, but consistent with the predictions derived from the cognitive dissonance theory, results of Studies 1 and 2 revealed that high scorers in Pacini and Epstein's (1999 ) rationality inventory were more likely to have escalation bias than were low scorers. The results further showed that only the ability component of rationality, not the engagement component, was positively correlated with escalating commitment. Similar patterns of results were obtained for situations when participants were personally responsible for prior decisions (Study 1) and when they were not (Study 2). Results of Study 3 showed that the underlying process responsible for the effect of RTS on the escalating tendency is that RTS increases beliefs in prior decisions, which in turn increases escalation. Implications for our understanding of escalation of commitment, rationality theory, and managerial practices are discussed. Cet article rend compte de 3 études examinant la relation entre le style de pensée rationnelle (RTS i.e. les différences individuelles reposent sur un système de traitement de l’information consciente, analytique et relativement libre d’affects) et la qualité de la décision dans une situation d’escalade d’engagement. Contrairement à l’opinion communément admise pour laquelle la pensée rationnelle accroît la qualité de la décision, mais consistante avec les prédictions découlant de la théorie de la dissonance cognitive, les résultats des études 1 et 2 indiquent que des personnes obtenant un score élevéà l’Inventaire Rationnel‐Expérientiel de Pacini et Esptein (1999) sont plus enclines à tomber dans le piège de l’escalade d’engagement que celles dont le score est bas. D’autres résultats montrent que la capacitéà la rationalité, non celle à l’engagement, est positivement corrélée avec l’escalade d’engagement. Des résultats semblables sont obtenus lors de situations où les participants sont personnellement responsables de leurs décisions antérieures (Etude 1) ou non (Etude 2). Les résultats de l’étude 3 montrent que le processus responsable de l’effet du RTS sur la tendance à s’engager est le suivant: il accroît les croyances dans les décisions antérieures qui augmentent à leur tour l’engagement. Ces résultats nous permettent de mieux comprendre l’escalade d’engagement, la théorie rationnelle et les pratiques managériales.     

Fostering Taiwanese preschoolers’ understanding of the addition–subtraction inverse principle

The present research involved gauging preschoolers’ learning potential for a key arithmetic concept, the addition–subtraction inverse principle (e.g., 2 + 1 − 1 = 2). Sixty 4- and 5-year-old Taiwanese children from two public preschools serving low- and middle-income families participated in the training experiment. Half were randomly assigned to an experimental group; half, to a control condition. Participants were tested for an understanding of inversion before and after intervention. One-third of the 5 year olds from both groups performed at the marginally or reliably successful levels before the intervention, and three quarters of them did so in the posttest. Only one of the 4 year olds was marginally successful before the intervention and 4 year olds in the experimental group somewhat benefited from the intervention. Significant social class effect were evident.     

Development of cross-linguistic variation in speech and gesture: motion events in English and Turkish

The way adults express manner and path components of a motion event varies across typologically different languages both in speech and cospeech gestures, showing that language specificity in event encoding influences gesture. The authors tracked when and how this multimodal cross-linguistic variation develops in children learning Turkish and English, 2 typologically distinct languages. They found that children learn to speak in language-specific ways from age 3 onward (i.e., English speakers used 1 clause and Turkish speakers used 2 clauses to express manner and path). In contrast, English- and Turkish-speaking children's gestures looked similar at ages 3 and 5 (i.e., separate gestures for manner and path), differing from each other only at age 9 and in adulthood (i.e., English speakers used 1 gesture, but Turkish speakers used separate gestures for manner and path). The authors argue that this pattern of the development of cospeech gestures reflects a gradual shift to language-specific representations during speaking and shows that looking at speech alone may not be sufficient to understand the full process of language acquisition.     

Two ways to be complex and why they matter: implications for attitude strength and lying

Integrative complexity broadly measures the structural complexity of statements. This breadth, although beneficial in multiple ways, can potentially hamper the development of specific theories. In response, the authors developed a model of complex thinking, focusing on 2 different ways that people can be complex within the integrative complexity system and subsequently developed measurements of each of these 2 routes: Dialectical complexity focuses on a dialectical tension between 2 or more competing perspectives, whereas elaborative complexity focuses on complexly elaborating on 1 singular perspective. The authors posit that many variables have different effects on these 2 forms of complexity and subsequently test this idea in 2 different theoretical domains. In Studies 1a, 1b, and 2, the authors demonstrate that variables related to attitude strength (e.g., domain importance, extremism, domain accessibility) decrease dialectical complexity but increase elaborative complexity. In Study 3, the authors show that counterattitudinal lying decreases dialectical complexity but increases elaborative complexity, implicating a strategic (as opposed to a cognitive strain) view of the lying-complexity relationship. The authors argue that this dual demonstration across 2 different theoretical domains helps establish the utility of the new model and measurements as well as offer the potential to reconcile apparent conflicts in the area of cognitive complexity.