A Low-Intensity,High-Frequency Intervention to Reduce Procrastination

Studies assessing the efficacy of interventions aimed at reducing procrastination have generally lacked robust longitudinal measurement tools. Recent developments in communication technology and applications of the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) have made observations of such dynamic phenomena possible. We leveraged recent advancements in smartphone technology and ESM to measure delay associated with procrastination, while testing a low-intensity, high-frequency intervention to reducing that delay. First-year university students (N = 107) reported their progress on an assignment twice daily over 14 days prior to the required submission date. Half (n = 51) were randomly allocated to an intervention condition in which they were also asked open-ended questions designed to prompt reflection on four domains proposed to reduce procrastination, namely: expectancy, value, delay sensitivity, and metacognition. Multilevel mixed effect models revealed lower behavioral delay in the intervention condition compared to the control condition. This effect was strongest in those who at baseline scored below the median on trait procrastination. Behavioral delay over the 14-day period was not associated with later assignment submission or lower assignment marks. These findings support a novel method for reducing delay and suggest procrastination can be alleviated in a wide range of contexts using relatively inexpensive and non-intrusive strategies.     

Women's Perceptions of the Prison Environment: When Prison is "the safest place i've ever been"

Incarcerated women's perceptions of the prison environment were explored with respect to relative level of safety from interpersonal abuse in prison as compared to before incarceration. Perceived levels of safety were analyzed based on reported past experiences of interpersonal violence. Participants were 65 women incarcerated in a medium security prison for women with mental and physical health problems. Women's perceptions of safety were evaluated using close–ended quantitative and open–ended qualitative self–report questions. The results suggest that, for some women, prison may be a relatively safe environment and that perceived level of safety may vary with the extent of previous experience of interpersonal violence in childhood and adulthood. Given that the structure of correctional institutions often incorporates abusive dynamics, the directionality of the findings is theoretically and socially important. The patterns apparent in these data are also consistent with other research and theory on the experiences of incarcerated women.     

Sense Generation: A “Quasi-Classical” Approach to Concepts and Concept Combination

This article presents a detailed formal approach to concepts and concept combination. Sense generation is a competence-level theory that attempts to respect constraints from the various cognitive sciences, and postulates “quasi-classical” conceptual structures where attributes receive only one value (but are defeasible and so do not represent necessary and sufficient conditions on category membership) and where classification is binary (but explicitly context-sensitive). It is also argued that any general theory of concepts must account for “privative” combinations (e.g., stone lion, fake gun, apparent friend) as extreme test-cases of representational and classificatory flexibility. The approach presented therefore provides a treatment of these combinations. The approach differentiates between the “lexical concept” (the stable information represented in a mental lexicon) which acts as a base from which the various “senses” (flexible contents associated with words and phrases in context, and used in classification) are “generated.” Generation allows nonmonotonicity, so that in different circumstances, different attributes may be defeated or modified. Classification is treated as relative to the perspective adopted, so that a classification acceptable from one perspective may be unacceptable from another, without contradiction. The result is a view that assumes bottom-up priority in concept combination, where the range of senses generated by bottom-up rules of combination is tempered by pragmatic-communicative constraints on classification. An account of the representational and classification behavior of privative combinations is outlined, and the article concludes with a discussion of some of the implications of the approach.