Personal versus interpersonal contributions to depressive symptoms among Hong Kong adolescents

Cross‐cultural theory proposes that an essential distinction between cultures lies in the extent to which individual members see themselves as either independent agents preferentially valuing agency and efficacy, or as embedded within a social context preferentially valuing interpersonal relationships. A nonreferred sample of 605 boys and 503 girls from Hong Kong provided information regarding: (1) perceptions of their personal self‐efficacy or beliefs regarding their own ability to master challenges they face; (2) the degree of harmony in their interpersonal (peer and family) relationships; and (3) depressive symptoms as an assessment of their mood. Cognitive theories of emotions propose that both the individual's assessment of his/her self‐efficacy and of his/her relationships influence mood. Hypotheses, based on cross‐cultural theory, were that in this collective culture, interpersonal evaluations would predict more of the variance in mood than would personal self‐efficacy. Contrary to Western sex‐differences literature, it was predicted that the effect of interpersonal harmony on mood would be equally pronounced for girls and for boys. Structural equation modelling was used to test causal models. Consistent with findings from the West, evaluations of personal self‐efficacy as well as interpersonal relationship harmony were significantly associated with depressed mood. Consistent with cultural theory, interpersonal relationship harmony was more strongly associated with mood than was personal self‐efficacy for the entire sample of adolescents. In contrast to findings of sex differences in the salience of relationships in the West, the prediction of interpersonal relationships to mood was equal for boys and girls in Hong Kong. This preliminary study extends models of cognitive concomitants of mood disruption to a non‐Western culture, and provides a framework to understand relative contnbutors to mood in adolescence. The findings tentatively suggest that treatment for depressive mood in Chinese populations should prioritize enhancement of the perceived quality of interpersonal relationships over increasing a sense of mastery.     

Response duration is sensitive to both immediate and delayed reinforcement

We investigated the duration of lever pressing by rats when the delivery of appetitive reinforcers was contingent upon response duration. In the first experiment, response durations increased when duration requirements were imposed, and they decreased when duration requirements were removed. This effect occurred whether reinforcers were immediate or delayed by 8 s. In order to maintain the integrity of the delay intervals, reinforcer delivery was dependent upon both lever depression and release. In a second experiment, lever depression only and a response duration of at least 4 s were required for reinforcer delivery. Compared to immediate reinforcement conditions, delayed reinforcers increased both variability and the length of the maximum response durations. In a third experiment, immediate reinforcers were delivered contingent upon lever depression and release under a variety of duration requirements. Median lever‐press durations tracked the contingencies rapidly. Across all three experiments, rats emitted numerous response durations that were too short to satisfy the reinforcer requirements, and bimodal distributions similar to those produced by differential reinforcement of low rate schedules were evident for most rats. In many aspects, response duration responds to reinforcement parameters in a fashion similar to rate of discrete responding, but an examination of this continuous dimension of behavior may provide additional information about environment–behavior relationships.     

The gestural repertoire of the wild bonobo (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pan paniscus</Emphasis>): a mutually understood communication system

In animal communication, signallers and recipients are typically different: each signal is given by one subset of individuals (members of the same age, sex, or social rank) and directed towards another. However, there is scope for signaller–recipient interchangeability in systems where most signals are potentially relevant to all age–sex groups, such as great ape gestural communication. In this study of wild bonobos (Pan paniscus), we aimed to discover whether their gestural communication is indeed a mutually understood communicative repertoire, in which all individuals can act as both signallers and recipients. While past studies have only examined the expressed repertoire, the set of gesture types that a signaller deploys, we also examined the understood repertoire, the set of gestures to which a recipient reacts in a way that satisfies the signaller. We found that most of the gestural repertoire was both expressed and understood by all age and sex groups, with few exceptions, suggesting that during their lifetimes all individuals may use and understand all gesture types. Indeed, as the number of overall gesture instances increased, so did the proportion of individuals estimated to both express and understand a gesture type. We compared the community repertoire of bonobos to that of chimpanzees, finding an 88 % overlap. Observed differences are consistent with sampling effects generated by the species’ different social systems, and it is thus possible that the repertoire of gesture types available to Pan is determined biologically.     

Consumption After a Diet Violation: Disinhibition or Compensation?

ABSTRACT— Previous research, restricted to the laboratory, has found that restrained eaters overeat after they violate their diet. However, there has been no evidence showing that this same process occurs outside the lab. We hypothesized that outside of this artificial setting, restrained eaters would be able to control their eating. In Study 1 , 127 participants reported hourly on their diet violations and eating over 2 days. In Study 2 , 89 participants tracked their intake for 8 days, and 50 of these participants consumed a milk shake (a diet violation) on Day 7, as part of an ostensibly unrelated study. As hypothesized, dieters did not overeat following violations of their diet in either study. These findings are in contrast with those of previous lab studies and dispel the widely held belief that diet violations lead to overeating in everyday life.     

A Working Memory Model of a Common Procedural Error

Systematic errors In performance are an important aspect of human behavior that have not received adequate explanation. One such systematic error is termed postcompletion error; a typical example is leaving one's card In the automatic teller after withdrawing cash. This type of error seems to occur when people have an extra step to perform in a procedure after the main goal has been satisfied. The fact that people frequently make this type of error, but do not make this error every time, may best be explained by considering the working memory load at the time the step is to be performed: The error is made when the load on working memory is high, but will not be made when the load is low. A model of performance In the task was constructed using Just and Carpenter's (1992) CAPS that predicted that high working memory load should be associated with postcompletion errors. Two experiments confirmed that such errors can be produced in a laboratory as well as a naturalistic setting, and that the conditions under which the CAPS model makes the error are consistent with the conditions under which the errors occur in the laboratory.     

The Suppression of Inferences From Counterfactual Conditionals

We examine two competing effects of beliefs on conditional inferences. The suppression effect occurs for conditionals, for example, “if she watered the plants they bloomed,” when beliefs about additional background conditions, for example, “if the sun shone they bloomed” decrease the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens (from “the plants did not bloom” to “therefore she did not water them”). In contrast, the counterfactual elevation effect occurs for counterfactual conditionals, for example, “if she had watered the plants they would have bloomed,” when beliefs about the known or presupposed facts, “she did not water the plants and they did not bloom” increase the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens. We report six experiments that show that beliefs about additional conditions take precedence over beliefs about presupposed facts for counterfactuals. The modus tollens inference is suppressed for counterfactuals that contain additional conditions (Experiments 1a and 1b). The denial of the antecedent inference (from “she did not water the plants” to “therefore they did not bloom”) is suppressed for counterfactuals that contain alternatives (Experiments 2a and 2b). We report a new “switched-suppression” effect for conditionals with negated components, for example, “if she had not watered the plants they would not have bloomed”: modus tollens is suppressed by alternatives and denial of the antecedent by additional conditions, rather than vice versa (Experiments 3a and 3b). We discuss the implications of the results for alternative theories of conditional reasoning.     

Temporal and causal order effects in thinking about what might have been

When people think counterfactually about what might have been different for a sequence of events, they are influenced by the order in which the events occurred. They tend to mentally undo the most recent event in a temporal sequence of two events. But they tend to mentally undo the first event in a causal sequence of four events. We report the results of two experiments that show that the temporal and causal order effects are not dependent on the number of events in the sequence. Our first experiment, with 300 participants, shows that the temporal order effect occurs for sequences with four events as well as for sequences with two events. Our second experiment, with 372 participants, shows that the causal order effect occurs for sequences with two events as well as for sequences with four events. We discuss the results in terms of the mental representations that people construct of temporal and causal sequences.