Smart Technology and the Moral Life

Smart technology is recording and nudging our intuitive and behavioral reactions in ways that are not fully shaped by our conscious ethical reasoning and so are altering our social and moral worlds. Beyond reasons to worry, there are also reasons to embrace this technology for nudging human behavior toward prosocial activity. This article inquires about four ways that smart technology is shaping the individual moral life: the persuasive effect of promptware, our newly evolving experiences of embodiment, our negotiations with privacy, and our experiences of risk and serendipity.     

Intuiting the Process of Another: Symbolic,Rational Transformations of Experience

In experiential personal construct psychotherapy (Leitner, 1988) the establishment of a ROLE relationship between the therapist and client is of primary importance. This is done through -approaching the process that is the other. In this article the meaning of “approaching the process” is examined in terms of S. K. hanger's concept of nondiscursive, or presentational, symbolism. Patterns of behavior in relationships are seen as symbolic transformations of experience. Observing and experiencing these patterns of behavior are mays therapists can intuit the process of the other and enhance the creation of a ROLE relationship.     

Romantic attachment,sexual activity,and substance use: findings from substance‐using runaway adolescents

Research on adolescent attachment is limited, but is growing. Studies to date have focused primarily on high‐functioning, college student samples with minimal attention given to at‐risk, early adolescents. The current study assessed the relationship between sexual activity, substance use, physical and sexual abuse, and attachment avoidance and anxiety in a sample of substance using, runaway youth. Seventy‐three adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 years were recruited from a local runaway shelter. The main finding was that attachment avoidance was related to a later age at first use of marijuana. Results provide some support for the utility of the attachment framework in understanding problem behaviors among runaway adolescents. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Increasing therapeutic exercise participation by individuals with acquired brain injury using self‐recording and reinforcement

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of self‐recording and contingent reinforcement on exercise participation by four adults with acquired brain injury. The results indicate that self‐recording and contingent reinforcement increased participation in stretching, aerobic, and weight‐lifting activities for each participant. The results also indicate that each participant was able to accurately self‐record his or her exercise participation. Possible operant conceptualizations for the observed behavior change, as well as limitations to the results, are briefly discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Subjective well-being in urban adolescents of color

Relationships among predictors and criteria of subjective well-being were examined in a sample of 151 urban adolescents of color, ages 12-15. The relative strengths of family, peer, and school-related support and esteem in predicting three measures of subjective well-being (life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect) were explored. Results suggested that sense of worth in one's family explained a significant amount of variance in subjective well-being variables, above and beyond the contributions of individual, school, and peer-related variables. Implications for prevention and mental health promotion with urban adolescents of color are discussed based on these findings.     

Evaluation of a mental skills program for serving for an intercollegiate volleyball team

A preseason mental skills program for serving was implemented for the 11 members of an intercollegiate volleyball team (M age = 20.0 yr.; SD = 1.1; years of intercollegiate volleyball experience M = 2.6; SD = 0.9). Key mental skills taught were relaxation, imagery, attentional focus, goal setting, behavioral modeling, and performance routine. A videotaped behavioral model articulated and demonstrated technical performance keys to effective serving. Players utilized a three-phase service routine to increase automaticity of performance and to incorporate key mental skills. End-of-season reported use of imagery was significantly correlated with Good Serve Percentage, as was reported use of a service routine. The mean Good Serve Percentage for the season was 49% (SD=7); the team goal was 50%. Serve-specific self-efficacy significantly increased from the pretraining program to the end of the season. Results indicated that implementing the mental skills training program was associated with enhanced service performance.     

Using a Session Feedback Form in Cognitive Therapy with Children

This article presents a new written form for eliciting session feedback from children. The importance of session feedback is discussed and the specific written form is presented. Clinical applications and advantages of the session feedback form are also reviewed. Additionally, the uses of the session feedback form in supervision are explained. Finally, cautions and limitations are outlined.     

Semantic distance norms computed from an electronic dictionary (WordNet)

WordNet, an electronic dictionary (or lexical database), is a valuable resource for computational and cognitive scientists. Recent work on the computing of semantic distances among nodes (synsets) in WordNet has made it possible to build a large database of semantic distances for use in selecting word pairs for psychological research. The database now contains nearly 50,000 pairs of words that have values for semantic distance, associative strength, and similarity based on co-occurrence. Semantic distance was found to correlate weakly with these other measures but to correlate more strongly with another measure of semantic relatedness, featural similarity. Hierarchical clustering analysis suggested that the knowledge structure underlying semantic distance is similar in gross form to that underlying featural similarity. In experiments in which semantic similarity ratings were used, human participants were able to discriminate semantic distance. Thus, semantic distance as derived from WordNet appears distinct from other measures of word pair relatedness and is psychologically functional. This database may be downloaded fromwww.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists

Early Muslims wrote extensively about human nature and called it Ilm-al Nafsiat or self-knowledge. In many cases, their works seem to be the original ideas for many modern day psychological theories and practices. What is interesting however is that a lot of what the early scholars wrote was blended with Islamic philosophy and religious ideas. This paper covers major contributions of prominent early Muslim scholars to psychology and outlines the challenges faced by today's Muslims in adapting to the Western theories. It also offers a few recommendations on the indigenization of psychology for Muslim societies interested in seeking the Islamic perspective on human behaviors.     

The concreteness effect on judgments of learning: Evaluating the contributions of fluency and beliefs

Researchers have often determined how cues influence judgments of learning (JOLs; e.g., concrete words are assigned higher JOLs than are abstract words), and recently there has been an emphasis in understanding why cues influence JOLs (i.e., the mechanisms that underlie cue effects on JOLs). The analytic-processing (AP) theory posits that JOLs are constructed in accordance with participants’ beliefs of how a cue will influence memory. Even so, some evidence suggests that fluency is also important to cue effects on JOLs. In the present experiments, we investigated the contributions of participants’ beliefs and processing fluency to the concreteness effect on JOLs. To evaluate beliefs, participants estimated memory performance in a hypothetical experiment (Experiment 1), and studied concrete and abstract words and made a pre-study JOL for each (Experiments 2 and 3). Participants’ predictions demonstrated the belief that concrete words are more likely to be remembered than are abstract words, consistent with the AP theory. To evaluate fluency, response latencies were measured during lexical decision (Experiment 4), self-paced study (Experiment 5), and mental imagery (Experiment 7). Number of trials to acquisition was also evaluated (Experiment 6). Fluency did not differ between concrete and abstract words in Experiments 5 and 6, and it did not mediate the concreteness effect on JOLs in Experiments 4 and 7. Taken together, these results demonstrate that beliefs are a primary mechanism driving the concreteness effect on JOLs.