Occupational Choices for People with Psychiatric Disabilities: Comparing Attendees and Non-Attendees at Community-Based Day Centers

Research has shown that people with psychiatric disabilities who attend a day center rate their satisfaction with daily occupations equally in comparison with non-attendees. The current study investigates which occupations the target group performs and also differences in occupational choices between attendees and non-attendees. Reported occupations were analyzed with content analysis. Day center attendees reported more productive occupations, while non-attendees reported more recreational occupations and a greater breadth of occupations. This implies that non-attendees might compensate a lack of work-like occupations at a day center with satisfying recreational occupations. The results can guide development of psychiatric occupational-based rehabilitation.     

Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Cheating: The Influence of Direct Knowledge and Attitudes on Academic Dishonesty

What effect does witnessing other students cheat have on one's own cheating behavior? What roles do moral attitudes and neutralizing attitudes (justifications for behavior) play when deciding to cheat? The present research proposes a model of academic dishonesty which takes into account each of these variables. Findings from experimental (vignette) and survey methods determined that seeing others cheat increases cheating behavior by causing students to judge the behavior less morally reprehensible, not by making rationalization easier. Witnessing cheating also has unique effects, controlling for other variables.     

When to Use Broader Internalising and Externalising Subscales Instead of the Hypothesised Five Subscales on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ): Data from British Parents,Teachers and Children

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a widely used child mental health questionnaire with five hypothesised subscales. There is theoretical and preliminary empirical support for combining the SDQ’s hypothesised emotional and peer subscales into an ‘internalizing’ subscale and the hypothesised behavioral and hyperactivity subscales into an ‘externalizing’ subscale (alongside the fifth prosocial subscale). We examine this using parent, teacher and youth SDQ data from a representative sample of 5–16 year olds in Britain (N = 18,222). Factor analyses generally supported second-order internalizing and externalizing factors, and the internalizing and externalizing subscales showed good convergent and discriminant validity across informants and with respect to clinical disorder. By contrast, discriminant validity was poorer between the emotional and peer subscales and between the behavioral, hyperactivity and prosocial subscales. This applied particularly to children with low scores on those subscales. We conclude that there are advantages to using the broader internalizing and externalizing SDQ subscales for analyses in low-risk samples, while retaining all five subscales when screening for disorder.     

Betting Against Compatibilism

Some argue that libertarianism represents the riskier incompatibilist view when it comes to the free will problem. An ethically cautious incompatibilist should bet that we are not free in the sense required for moral responsibility, these theorists claim, as doing so means that we no longer run the risk of holding the morally innocent responsible. In this paper, I show that the same reasoning also advises us to bet against compatibilism. Supposing that we are unsure about whether or not the causal order of the world is compatible with the kind of freedom that is required for moral responsibility, an ethically cautious approach would once again bet that hard incompatibilism is true.     

The whole is more than the sum of its parts – Audiovisual processing of phonemes investigated with ERPs

In the current ERP study, an active oddball task was carried out, testing pure tones and auditory, visual and audiovisual syllables. For pure tones, an MMN, an N2b, and a P3 were found, confirming traditional findings. Auditory syllables evoked an N2 and a P3. We found that the amplitude of the P3 depended on the distance between standard and deviant. A smaller distance required more attention, which was reflected in a larger amplitude. An analysis of audiovisual material, after correction for visual activity, showed that McGurk type stimuli evoked brain responses that differed from both the standard and the congruent deviants. Finally, we found that congruent audiovisual stimuli elicited an N2 with a shorter latency and a P3 with a smaller amplitude than auditory stimuli. The current ERP study, thus, shows that for audiovisual processing the whole is more than the sum of its parts.     

Keeping an eye on the violinist: motor experts show superior timing consistency in a visual perception task

Common coding theory states that perception and action may reciprocally induce each other. Consequently, motor expertise should map onto perceptual consistency in specific tasks such as predicting the exact timing of a musical entry. To test this hypothesis, ten string musicians (motor experts), ten non-string musicians (visual experts), and ten non-musicians were asked to watch progressively occluded video recordings of a first violinist indicating entries to fellow members of a string quartet. Participants synchronised with the perceived timing of the musical entries. Results revealed significant effects of motor expertise on perception. Compared to visual experts and non-musicians, string players not only responded more accurately, but also with less timing variability. These findings provide evidence that motor experts’ consistency in movement execution—a key characteristic of expert motor performance—is mirrored in lower variability in perceptual judgements, indicating close links between action competence and perception.     

Predicting academic success with the Big 5 rated from different points of view: Self‐rated,other rated and faked

Self‐ratings of personality predict academic success above general intelligence. The present study replicated these findings and investigated the increment of other‐ratings or intentionally distorted self‐ratings. Participants (N = 145) had to compile a personality questionnaire twice. First they were given neutral instructions. The second time they were asked to imagine a specific applicant setting. Furthermore, two peers rated each participant. Additionally, verbal, numerical and figural reasoning scores were obtained. Grades on a statistics exam obtained 2 months later served as the criterion. Results replicated prior findings and showed incremental validity for self‐ and other‐rated personality, which was stable after controlling for intelligence. Faking had no impact on the domain‐score level, but results on the facet‐score level were less encouraging. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sensory memory of illusory depth in structure-from-motion

When multistable displays (stimuli consistent with two or more equally plausible perceptual interpretations) are presented intermittently, their perceptions are stabilized by sensory memory. Independent memory traces are generated not only for different types of multistable displays (Maier, Wilke, Logothetis, & Leopold, Current Biology 13:1076–1085, 2003), but also for different ambiguous features of binocular rivalry (Pearson & Clifford, Journal of Vision 4:196–202, 2004). In the present study, we examined whether a similar independence of sensory memories is observed in structure-from-motion (SFM), a multistable display with two ambiguous properties. In SFM, a 2-D planar motion creates a vivid impression of a rotating 3-D volume. Both the illusory rotation and illusory depth (i.e., how close parts of an object appear to the observer) of an SFM object are ambiguous. We dissociated the sensory memories of these two ambiguous properties by using an intermittent presentation in combination with a forced-ambiguous-switch paradigm (Pastukhov, Vonau, & Braun, PLoS ONE 7:e37734, 2012). We demonstrated that the illusory depth of SFM generates a sensory memory trace that is independent from that of illusory rotation. Despite this independence, the specificities levels of the sensory memories were identical for illusory depth and illusory rotation. The history effect was weakened by a change in the volumetric property of a shape (whether it was a hollow band or a filled drum volume), but not by changes in color or size. We discuss how these new results constrain models of sensory memory and SFM processing.     

Depressive Symptoms Following Coping with Peer Aggression: The Moderating Role of Negative Emotionality

The way in which children cope with peer aggression may determine their subsequent adjustment, but different forms of coping may be more or less effective for particular children. This research examined whether the contribution of children’s coping to subsequent depressive symptoms was contingent on children’s temperament (i.e., level of negative emotionality; NE) and gender. Children (N?=?235, 102 boys, 133 girls, M?=?7.94 years, SD?=?0.33) reported on exposure to peer victimization. Parents rated children’s NE and depressive symptoms, and teachers rated children’s coping. For girls with high NE, problem solving protected against depressive symptoms whereas seeking retaliation heightened risk for depressive symptoms. Advice seeking protected children with low NE against depressive symptoms whereas ignoring protected children with high NE against depressive symptoms. Humor predicted fewer depressive symptoms in boys with high NE but more depressive symptoms in boys with low NE. This research helps to elucidate individual differences in the effects of coping on adjustment, and has implications for interventions aimed at reducing risk resulting from exposure to peer aggression.