Kea cooperate better with sharing affiliates

Controlled studies that focus on intraspecific cooperation tasks have revealed striking similarities, but also differences, in abilities across taxa as diverse as primates, fish, and birds. Such comparisons may provide insight into the specific socio-ecological selection pressures that led to the evolution of cooperation. Unfortunately, however, compared to primates data on birds remain relatively scarce. We tested a New Zealand psittaciform, the kea, in a dyadic cooperation task using the loose-string design. During trials our subjects were in separate compartments, but obtained a common reward that could be divided multiple ways, allowing the examination of reward division effects. Ten individuals were tested twice in 44 combinations of partners. Dyads with a high affiliation score attempted to cooperate more often and were also more often successful in doing so. Furthermore, dyads that shared rewards more equally seemed to be more likely to attempt cooperation in the next trial. Like other bird and some monkey species, but unlike, for example, chimpanzees, kea did not spontaneously show understanding of either the role of the partner or the mechanism behind the cooperation task. This may point to true disparities between species, but may also be due to differences in task design and/or the amount of exposure to similar tasks and individual skills of the subjects.     

Introduction to the Special Section: Toward Implementing Physiological Measures in Clinical Assessments of Adult Mental Health

This article serves as the introduction to the Special Section called “Toward Implementing Physiological Measures in Clinical Assessments of Adult Mental Health.” As such, it provides an overview of the importance of integrating assessments of physiological and subjective processes in mental health assessments and discusses the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) initiative. In addition, it summarizes the findings from the four empirical studies published in the Special Section. Collectively, these studies sought to illustrate how physiological assessments can be incorporated in mental health assessments conducted in applied research and clinic settings. In all, we hope that this Special Section will inspire the type of interdisciplinary research spanning basic and applied work that will be critical to advancing the RDoC initiative.     

Parents of Special Needs Children Mastering the Job of Parenting

The purpose of this investigation was to learn how parents master the job of parenting children with special needs. Through collaborative interviews using qualitative research methods, this study taps into the stories of five veteran families who reflect on the many challenges they faced from difficult beginnings to years of day-to-day struggles, and how they managed these challenges. Guidelines for family practitioners, based on the results, are discussed.     

Challenging Discourse Themes Reproducing Gender in Heterosexual Dating: An Analog Study

Societal discourses tied to gender play apowerful role in shaping ideas and views about normalsexual experience. This study investigated whether“male sexual drive” discourse themes inheterosexual dating could be reproduced in a laboratorysetting, and whether these themes could be disrupted bymeans of a laboratory intervention. Young, single,heterosexual adults, most of whom were Caucasian and middle class, role played a series of datingscenarios. In half of the 37 dyads, male participantswere instructed to initiate a first date and then latergreater sexual intimacy, to which their female partners were instructed to say they were notready (the condition designed to reproduce dominantdiscourse themes). In the other half, the instructionsfor the male and female partners were reversed (the condition designed to change or disruptdominant discourse themes). Analysis of the role-playeddialogues indicated that dominant discourse themesassociated with the male sexual drive discourse wereprevalent in both experimental conditions. Ways ofbroadening our understanding of how gender processes arereproduced and disrupted are discussed in the context ofheterosexual dating relationships.     

Sex differences in the assignment of responsibility for an accident

Two experiments examined the proposition that females assign less responsibility than males to a perpetrator in a feminine occupation and males assign less responsibility than females to a perpetrator in a masculine occupation. The results from Experiment 1 indicated that females assigned less responsibility than males to a perpetrator in a feminine occupation, whereas males and females assigned equal responsibility to a perpetrator in a masculine occupation. These results did not generalize to measures of causality, foreseeability, intent, or justification. Therefore, they suggest that responsibility may have been assigned on the basis of reliability of the perpetrator's behavior and that a measure of reliability may be more appropriate than a measure of responsibility. The results from Experiment 2 supported the contention. Females judged the behavior of a perpetrator in a feminine occupation to be more reliable than did males, and males judged the behavior of a perpetrator in a masculine occupation to be more reliable than did females.     

The visual influence of ostracism

Reflecting the fundamental human need to establish and maintain positive connections with others, it has been suggested that an Ostracism Detection System is sensitized to targets by which one has been ostracized. Evidence supporting the operation of this system has yet to be provided, however. Accordingly, using binocular rivalry to explore attentional processing, here, we considered the extent to which targets previously associated with ostracism dominate visual awareness. Participants initially performed a virtual ball‐tossing game (i.e., Cyberball) in which they were “ostracized” or “included” by the other players. Afterwards, the faces of these players were presented together with houses in a binocular rivalry task. The results revealed that targets associated with ostracism (vs. inclusion) dominated longest in visual awareness.     

Meta‐Analysis of Anorexia Nervosa Counseling Outcome Studies From 1990 to 2015

This meta‐analysis of 92 anorexia nervosa counseling articles examined the effectiveness of counseling in reducing symptoms of anorexia nervosa at termination and the longest follow‐up assessments. Treatment‐as‐usual studies showed no effect to small effects at both posttest and follow‐up assessments, wait‐list studies showed small effects at posttest and medium effects at follow‐up, and single‐group uncontrolled studies showed medium to large effects at posttest and medium effects at follow‐up. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

The Impact of Breaks on Sustained Attention in a Simulated,Semi‐Automated Train Control Task

Summary: Sustained attention is a factor in many work environments where operators intervene on a regular basis to ensure the safety and security of a system. Different types of activity during break periods may facilitate different levels of performance following extended periods of attention in these environments. The impact of five different breaks from task activity was assessed against the performance of a no‐break control group during a simulated, high signal probability rail control task. A total of 87 university students were assigned to a no‐break control condition, or one of five break activity conditions that occurred between two, 20‐minute periods of simulated rail control. Post‐break, the analysis revealed that, in comparison to the control condition, performance was greater in all of the five break conditions. Any activity that drew operators' attention from the primary rail control task enabled improvements in performance beyond a no‐break control task.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Goldberg's bipolar measure of the Big-Five personality dimensions: reliability and validity

A study was conducted to examine the relations between a recently developed measure of the Big-Five personality dimensions (Goldberg, 1992) and several other instruments: the Eysenck Personality Inventory (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1968), the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (Spence and Helmreich, 1978), and the Masculine Behavior Scale (Snell, 1989). The results indicated that Goldberg's Big Five questionnaire was correlated in predictable ways with these personality instruments. In addition, other results revealed that the Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability scales on Goldberg's questionnaire were associated with a measure of psychological symptoms. The discussion focuses on how these findings provide corroborative evidence for the reliability and validity of Goldberg's bipolar adjective measure of personality traits, thereby supporting this instrument as a reliable and valid measure of the Big-Five personality dimensions.     

Finding the Right Value: Framing Effects on Domain Experts

By defining the essence of a policy problem, an issue frame shapes how individuals think about a political issue. In this research, we investigate framing effects among domain experts, an understudied yet increasingly important set of individuals in the policymaking process. Because domain experts have extensive and highly structured knowledge on a particular topic, they are likely to actively process issue frames to which they are exposed. Consequently, we hypothesize that frames consistent with experts' values will be particularly influential, whereas frames inconsistent with their values will lead to contrast effects. We test our hypotheses on a unique set of domain experts by examining professional farmers' attitudes toward no‐till agriculture. Using an experimental design, we find evidence that environmental values interact with frames to influence farmers' interest in no‐till, especially when farmers are exposed to a novel frame.