A scenario-based dieting self-efficacy scale: the DIET-SE

The article discusses a scenario-based dieting self-efficacy scale, the DIET-SE, developed from dieter's inventory of eating temptations (DIET). The DIET-SE consists of items that describe scenarios of eating temptations for a range of dieting situations, including high-caloric food temptations. Four studies assessed the psychometric properties of the 11-item DIET-SE. Exploratory factor analysis (N = 392) and confirmatory factors analysis (N = 124) revealed three internally consistent and reliable factors representing challenges to adhere to a diet (high-caloric food temptations [HCF], social and internal factors [SIF], negative emotional events [NEE]). Convergent validity is established with other measures of dieting self-efficacy, as well as measures of eating disinhibition, susceptibility to hunger, and weight loss competency. Criterion-related validity is provided through the assessment of goal adherence, and predictive validity is established for dieters' actual food intake (N = 68). The DIET-SE represents a short, reliable, and valid scenario-based measure of dieting self-efficacy.     

Probabilistic assignments of sentence relations on the basis of differentially weighted interpretive cues

Recent treatments of comprehension have emphasized the role of surface structure characteristics. In many circumstances, meanings that are inferred on the basis of such cues will not be deterministic. This study investigated a probabilistic system of sentence comprehension. Hebrew-speaking university studients interpreted utterances that varied and balanced the contradictory and complementary effects of three interpretive cues. Sentence interpretations were systematically affected by the relative weights of cues that supported and opposed different interpretations. Adults therefore seemed to deploy a probabilistic strategy of assigning internal relations to a preferred alternative, a greatest composite of component likelihoods. While the present treatment emphasized a syntactic level of processing, it was suggested that the probabilistic strategy could easily accommodate pragmatic and semantic effects as well. The probabilistic strategy implies that given a conflict between interpretive cues, a decision needs to be made between alternative assignments of internal relations. It was therefore suggested that ambiguous and unambiguous utterances typically may be processed in a similar fashion; for both, more than one meaning may be processed at least in part before a single probabilistic interpretation is finally assigned to the utterance.     

Psychotherapy: Close encounters of the intimate kind

The therapeutic relation is a unique and special kind of human interaction, an intimate relationship which involves the whole of two human beings, but which is confined to a certain place, time and circumstance. The intimacy that develops between therapist and patient within the context of psychotherapy can be compared to other close and intimate human interactions, but it differs from other human encounters in numerous respects, especially in regard to the roles of the participants.The therapist-patient relationship is examined across various therapeutic techniques and theoretical models, with focus on the intimacy that may develop within the context of therapy, and contrasting it with other human intimate contacts. The roles of the therapist and the patient in developing and maintaining this intimacy, as well as its potential for both contributing to personal growth and to termination of the relationship, are reviewed. An issue that may usually be a natural extension of intimacy, sexual involvement between intimate partners, is explored with reference to the special nature of the therapeutic relationship.Based on a paper presented at the 37th annual convention of the Ontario Psychological Association, February 9, 1984; Toronto, Ontario.     

Measuring single-item identification efficiencies for letters and 3-D objects

Identification thresholds and the corresponding efficiencies (ideal/human thresholds) are typically computed by collapsing data across an entire stimulus set within a given task in order to obtain a “multiple-item” summary measure of information use. However, some individual stimuli may be processed more efficiently than others, and such differences are not captured by conventional multiple-item threshold measurements. Here, we develop and present a technique for measuring “single-item” identification efficiencies. The resulting measure describes the ability of the human observer to make use of the information provided by a single stimulus item within the context of the larger set of stimuli. We applied this technique to the identification of 3-D rendered objects (Exp. 1) and Roman alphabet letters (Exp. 2). Our results showed that efficiency can vary markedly across stimuli within a given task, demonstrating that single-item efficiency measures can reveal important information that is lost by conventional multiple-item efficiency measures.     

Cortical integration of audio–visual speech and non-speech stimuli

Using fMRI we investigated the neural basis of audio–visual processing of speech and non-speech stimuli using physically similar auditory stimuli (speech and sinusoidal tones) and visual stimuli (animated circles and ellipses). Relative to uni-modal stimuli, the different multi-modal stimuli showed increased activation in largely non-overlapping areas. Ellipse-Speech, which most resembles naturalistic audio–visual speech, showed higher activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus, fusiform gyri, left posterior superior temporal sulcus, and lateral occipital cortex. Circle-Tone, an arbitrary audio–visual pairing with no speech association, activated middle temporal gyri and lateral occipital cortex. Circle-Speech showed activation in lateral occipital cortex, and Ellipse-Tone did not show increased activation relative to uni-modal stimuli. Further analysis revealed that middle temporal regions, although identified as multi-modal only in the Circle-Tone condition, were more strongly active to Ellipse-Speech or Circle-Speech, but regions that were identified as multi-modal for Ellipse-Speech were always strongest for Ellipse-Speech. Our results suggest that combinations of auditory and visual stimuli may together be processed by different cortical networks, depending on the extent to which multi-modal speech or non-speech percepts are evoked.     

Converging measures of workload capacity

Does processing more than one stimulus concurrently impede or facilitate performance relative to processing just one stimulus? This fundamental question about workload capacity was surprisingly difficult to address empirically until Townsend and Nozawa (1995) developed a set of nonparametric analyses called systems factorial technology. We develop an alternative parametric approach based on the linear ballistic accumulator decision model (Brown &; Heathcote, 2008), which uses the model’s parameter estimates to measure processing capacity. We show that these two methods have complementary strengths, and that, in a data set where participants varied greatly in capacity, the two approaches provide converging evidence.     

Age, culture, and loneliness among czechs and canadians

The present study examined the influence of cultural background on the experience of loneliness. One hundred and ninety-four Canadians and 209 participants from the Czech Republic formed the subject pool. Rather than compare the two populations and disregard the within and between age differences, the cultural groups were divided into age subgroups. These were young adults (18–30 years old), adults (31–59) and seniors (60–89). They answered a 30-item yes/no questionnaire. The questionnaire is composed of five subscales, namely. Emotional Distress, Social Inadequacy and Alienation, Growth and Discovery, Interpersonal Isolation, and Self-Alienation. Results indicated that overall, the cultural groups differed in their experiences of loneliness. Further, when each age group was compared across the two cultures, it was evident that the age groups scored significantly differently from its counterparts in the other culture. Scores of different age groups within cultures were also examined. This study was supported by York University's Grant # 496055