The role of motivation and volition in economic decisions: Evidence from eye movements and pupillometry

Economic decisions usually involve high stakes, real consequences, and some degree of personal risk. This article explores the impact of motivational and volitional states on economic decision processes in an incentivized lottery choice task. We investigated the patterns of decision time, choice, information search, and pupil dilation dependent on an experimental manipulation of motivation and volition, that is, the deliberative and the implemental mindset. The results indicated that choice preferences in economic decisions were robust and remained unaffected by motivational and volitional states, but decision processes were notably impacted. Decision makers in a deliberative state of mind searched for information more extensively and made slower decisions than the baseline. The implemental mindset was associated with more attention paid to the probability attributes of the gambles relative to the deliberative mindset. Furthermore, we observed that gamble outcomes that entailed no win at all (i.e., zero outcomes) played an important role for information search. These outcomes were largely disregarded in terms of predecisional information search but elicited pupillary responses similar to very high outcome lotteries. These results inform the current debate about the zero effect in risky choice. We also discuss the potential of eye-tracking studies of risky choice to dissolve ambiguities concerning the contributions of effort and arousal to modulating pupillary response. Implications for theoretical advances in decision research are discussed.     

Do you understand what I want to tell you? Early sensitivity in bilinguals' iconic gesture perception and production

Previous research has shown differences in monolingual and bilingual communication. We explored whether monolingual and bilingual pre‐schoolers (N = 80) differ in their ability to understand others' iconic gestures (gesture perception) and produce intelligible iconic gestures themselves (gesture production) and how these two abilities are related to differences in parental iconic gesture frequency. In a gesture perception task, the experimenter replaced the last word of every sentence with an iconic gesture. The child was then asked to choose one of four pictures that matched the gesture as well as the sentence. In a gesture production task, children were asked to indicate ‘with their hands’ to a deaf puppet which objects to select. Finally, parental gesture frequency was measured while parents answered three different questions. In the iconic gesture perception task, monolingual and bilingual children did not differ. In contrast, bilinguals produced more intelligible gestures than their monolingual peers. Finally, bilingual children's parents gestured more while they spoke than monolingual children's parents. We suggest that bilinguals' heightened sensitivity to their interaction partner supports their ability to produce intelligible gestures and results in a bilingual advantage in iconic gesture production.     

Parenting a Child with Phenylketonuria (PKU): an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of the Experience of Parents

Phenylketonuria (PKU) is a rare inherited metabolic disorder which can cause neurological damage if left untreated. PKU is identified through newborn screening in developed countries, and treatment begins immediately to prevent these severe consequences. When a child is diagnosed, parents must assume immediate responsibility for the management of PKU and prevention of neurological damage. Quantitative studies have identified significant psychosocial stressors for parents, but little is known about how the parents experience this process. This study aimed to explore the experiences of parents of children with PKU under the age of two. It is the first study to examine these experiences in this way. Seven parents were interviewed about their experiences, and interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyse the data. Three main themes were identified: control, striving for normality and acceptance of PKU as a continuum. Links between the themes and processes underpinning the results were explored with relation to existing literature and theories from a clinical psychology perspective. The role of acceptance of PKU was central to the parent’s experiences. Clinical implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Anxiety in Children and Adolescents Rated by Patients,Parents, and Teachers: Factor Structure and Psychometric Properties of an ICD-10 and DSM-IV-based Rating Scale in a Large Clinical Sample

This study examined the psychometric properties of the German Self-Report and Parent Report Rating Scale for Anxiety Disorders (SRS-AD and PRS-AD), and a shortened teacher version of the PRS-AD (TRS-AD) in a large clinical sample. Data were collected from 585 children, adolescents and young adults with psychiatric disorders (aged 6–21 years), 821 parents and 378 teachers. Factorial validity, reliability and discriminating validity of the scales were examined and the agreement between different informants was assessed. Analyses were performed in the complete sample including a wide range of different psychiatric disorders as well as in a subsample of children, adolescents and young adults with anxiety disorders. Confirmatory factor analyses mostly supported a model with first-order factors according to the subscales and a second-order overall anxiety factor. Only for the SRS-AD analysed in the sample of participants with anxiety disorders, the results did not clearly favour a first-order solution with correlated factors according to the subscales or the second-order solution adopted for the other questionnaires. Internal consistencies for the total scale and subscales were mostly satisfactory. Significant mean differences between anxious and non-anxious participants were found for the mean total scores of the SRS-AD and PRS-AD, but not for the TRS-AD. The informant agreement was low-to-moderate. We concluded that the SRS-AD, PRS-AD and TRS-AD demonstrate satisfactory psychometric properties for use with clinically-referred children and adolescents.     

Unemployment experiences in context: A phenomenological study in two townships in South Africa

This study aimed to explore the unemployment experience of residents of a historically disadvantaged South African neighbourhood. Informants were twelve black community members (females?=?75%; age ranges: 20 to 29?=?58.3%, and 30 to 39?=?33.3%). Individual interviews were conducted with the participants. Thematic analysis of the data revealed that participants valued employment despite their present unemployment. They indicated that being unemployed is a painful experience, but that they also held an optimistic view of a future in which they would have employment. The findings further suggest that diminished social support by the community and public social welfare agencies aggravate negative experiences of unemployment. Employment support programmes are needed to connect the unemployed to job networks; as well as to empower those who are unemployed to fulfil their positive work participation expectations.     

Cities’ Policies: the Work of European Cities to Counter Muslim Radicalisation

Intercultural relations might form the foundation for new developments and can stimulate energy in modern cities, but in some cases, these relations can also become the source of divergence and conflict. In the last decade, several European cities have been confronted with violent incidents related to some form of extremism. Some cities had to cope with violence by Muslim extremists, for instance Amsterdam, which dealt with the murder of Theo van Gogh. Other cities experienced violence from anti-immigrant or extreme-right movements, for instance London, where mosques were attacked. Radicalisation of small groups of immigrants or autochthonous people, who are distressed about intercultural relations, seemed to lie behind these incidents. Pressured by such events, some administrations in Europe developed policies. In this paper, we will discuss a number of examples of such local policies. We will discuss some programmes that we observed in cities that took part in our own fieldwork, the Cities Local Integration Policies (CLIP) project, which took place from 2007 to 2011.. Our results show that both cities that do have de-radicalisation policies and cities that do not actually work on what phase theorists would call the breeding ground for radicalisation and on the final violent stage of terrorist acts. The difference between the two mainly lies in (not) addressing religious conservatism. We conclude the article with some remarks regarding this choice, also reflecting on the impact of the phase model supported at that time.     

Psychometric properties of the German version of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, Version 11 (BIS-11) for adolescents

Impulsiveness is increasingly gaining attention as a potential risk factor for various mental disorders. Until now, there have been German instruments that allowed for assessing adolescents' self-reported impulsiveness multi-dimensionally. The present study examined the German version of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11 (BIS-11) for adolescents. The instrument was completed by 659 adolescents ages 10 to 20 years; 98 were retested after 6 months. Items showed adequate psychometric properties. An exploratory factor analysis identified three factors that showed slightdifferences from the initial questionnaire proposed by Barratt. The factors showed low to moderate intercorrelations, satisfactory internal consistency (dependent on factor), and were stable over time. Convergent validity was ascertained, and the item pool showed sufficient power to discriminate adolescents with symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and those with loss of eating control from healthy adolescents. Findings suggest that the German BIS-11 is appropriate for reliable investigation of impulsiveness in adolescents. Future research should examine sensitivity as a screening tool, as well as sensitivity to change.     

CHRM2, parental monitoring, and adolescent externalizing behavior: evidence for gene-environment interaction

Psychologists, with their long-standing tradition of studying mechanistic processes, can make important contributions to further characterizing the risk associated with genes identified as influencing risk for psychiatric disorders. We report one such effort with respect to CHRM2, which codes for the cholinergic muscarinic 2 receptor and was of interest originally for its association with alcohol dependence. We tested for association between CHRM2 and prospectively measured externalizing behavior in a longitudinal, community-based sample of adolescents, as well as for moderation of this association by parental monitoring. We found evidence for an interaction in which the association between the genotype and externalizing behavior was stronger in environments with lower parental monitoring. There was also suggestion of a crossover effect, in which the genotype associated with the highest levels of externalizing behavior under low parental monitoring had the lowest levels of externalizing behavior at the extreme high end of parental monitoring. The difficulties involved in distinguishing mechanisms of gene-environment interaction are discussed.