Conditionals: a theory of meaning,pragmatics, and inference

The authors outline a theory of conditionals of the form If A then C and If A then possibly C. The 2 sorts of conditional have separate core meanings that refer to sets of possibilities. Knowledge, pragmatics, and semantics can modulate these meanings. Modulation can add information about temporal and other relations between antecedent and consequent. It can also prevent the construction of possibilities to yield 10 distinct sets of possibilities to which conditionals can refer. The mental representation of a conditional normally makes explicit only the possibilities in which its antecedent is true, yielding other possibilities implicitly. Reasoners tend to focus on the explicit possibilities. The theory predicts the major phenomena of understanding and reasoning with conditionals.     

ABA-Based Programs for Children Diagnosed With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Parental and Professional Experiences at School and at Home

Having a child diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) poses a range of challenges to families, many of which can be addressed through appropriate intervention. A study of parental (n = 95) and professional (n = 67) experiences was carried out in relation to two settings: (a) schools that provided intensive interventions based on the science of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), and (b) non-intensive ABA-based home programs. Results show that parents whose children attend ABA-based schools were generally more satisfied with their child's educational provision, monitoring procedures, and level of staff training, than parents who were not offered ABA-based education in schools.     

A Test of Competing Cognitive Explanations for the Boomerang Effect in Response to the Deliberate Disruption of Media-Induced Aggression

This study advances research on the boomerang effect in response to anti-aggression media literacy interventions. Previous findings indicate that elementary school children can become more aggressive after exposure to such interventions. We test two competing explanations for the boomerang effect, media priming and psychological reactance, in a 2 × 2 factorial experiment with elementary school children (N = 128). Findings indicate that children may cognitively process antisocial elements of an intervention program in a manner that runs counter to the intended effect of prosocial messages. Specifically, children who were exposed to a media literacy intervention with violent media clips as examples reported an increase in willingness to use aggression, whereas children who were exposed to the same lesson without the clips did not. Therefore, the boomerang effect is best explained by the processing of violent clips (media priming) and is not likely due to resistance to the instructional elements of the lesson (psychological reactance). Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

Construal Level Theory of Mobile Persuasion

This article introduces the construal level theory of mobile persuasion. Concepts associated with both construal level theory and mobile technology are articulated through a literature review and synthesized into a series of assumptions that relate specifically to persuasive communication. Eight theoretical propositions are proposed, introducing three message functions: shifting construal level orientation, bridging construal level perception of choice, and traversing psychological distance to choice. We argue that conceptual relationships between the affordances of mobile technology and construal level theory make mobile devices particularly suited to test and implement these propositions. Message success and message resistance are discussed through this framework. We specify the potential to use construal level theory in effective mobile health interventions and propose a research agenda to further apply construal level theory to the process of communication.     

Measuring Patterns of Change in Personality Assessments: An Annotated Application of Latent Growth Curve Modeling

Latent growth curve (LGC) modeling within the framework of structural equation modeling (SEM) is now highly regarded as one of the most powerful and informative approaches to the analysis of longitudinal data (see, e.g., Curran &; Hussong, 2003 Curran, P. J. and Hussong, A. M. 2003. The use of latent trajectory models in psychopathology research. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 112: 526–544. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Whereas LGC modeling enables researchers to test for differences in developmental trajectories across time, conventional repeated measures analyses do not provide this opportunity. Nonetheless, a review of studies reported in most psychology journals reveals scant application of this methodological approach. One possible explanation for this limited use of LGC modeling is a lack of knowledge related to its application. The intent of this article, then, is to address this deficiency by presenting an annotated application of LGC modeling to health psychology data. Based on a sample of 405 Hong Kong Chinese women who recently underwent breast cancer surgery, we walk the readers through SEM modeling procedures that test for differences in both the initial status and rate of change in Psychological Morbidity and Social Adjustment at 1, 4, and 8 months postsurgery. We interpret findings from both a methodological and a substantive perspective.     

A model point of view

This paper reports a study of planning processes in the five-disc Tower of London (TOL) task in 20 younger and 20 older adult participants. A concurrent direct “think-aloud” method was used to obtain data on planning processes prior to moving discs in the TOL. A check was made of the effects of verbalising by comparing performance data from the experimental groups with data from control groups who did not verbalise during planning or moving. Verbalising slowed down planning and moving but did not appear to distort the participants' approaches to the task. Older and younger participants did not differ in average moves taken to solve the tasks. However, older participants' planning was less complete and more error-prone than that of younger participants. The planning processes were characterised as showing a means-ends “goal selection” strategy. In this strategy participants (1) identify a single active goal disc at the start, (2) select moves and move sequences to enable the placing of the current goal disc in its target position, and (3) continue in this way until all discs are in their target positions. Age differences were found in the planning stage, during which there was no stimulus support and hence a substantial working memory load. During the move phase there was stimulus support and hence little loading of working memory. Age differences in moves required were not found in the move phase. As older participants tend to have depleted working memory capacity the present results suggest that working memory is heavily loaded in TOL planning but less so in the move phase of TOL.     

Evolutionary origins of human handedness: evaluating contrasting hypotheses

Variation in methods and measures, resulting in past dispute over the existence of population handedness in nonhuman great apes, has impeded progress into the origins of human right-handedness and how it relates to the human hallmark of language. Pooling evidence from behavioral studies, neuroimaging and neuroanatomy, we evaluate data on manual and cerebral laterality in humans and other apes engaged in a range of manipulative tasks and in gestural communication. A simplistic human/animal partition is no longer tenable, and we review four (nonexclusive) possible drivers for the origin of population-level right-handedness: skilled manipulative activity, as in tool use; communicative gestures; organizational complexity of action, in particular hierarchical structure; and the role of intentionality in goal-directed action. Fully testing these hypotheses will require developmental and evolutionary evidence as well as modern neuroimaging data.     

The effects of marker-related temporal cues on auditory gap-duration discrimination

In three experiments, we examined the ability of listeners to discriminate the duration of temporal gaps (silent intervals) and the influence of other temporal stimulus properties on their performance. In the first experiment, gap-duration discrimination thresholds were measured either in continuous noise or with noise markers with durations of 3 and 300 ms. Thresholds measured with 300-ms markers differed from those measured in continuous noise or with 3-ms markers. In the second experiment, stimuli consisting of a gap between two discrete markers were generated such that the gap duration, the onset-to-onset duration between markers, and the duration of the first marker were pseudorandomized across trials. Listeners’ responses generally were consistent with the cue that was identified as the target cue from among the three cues in each block of trials, but the data suggested that the onset-to-onset cue was particularly salient in all conditions. Using a modified method-of-adjustment procedure in the third experiment, subjects were instructed to discriminate between the durations of gaps in discrete markers of different durations in two intervals, where the gap duration in one interval was adapted to measure the point of subjective equality. Without feedback, listeners tended to equate the onset-to-onset times of the markers rather than the gap durations. Overall, the results indicated that listeners’ judgments of silent gaps between two discrete markers are strongly influenced by the onset-to-onset time, or rhythm, of the markers.     

Factorial Structure of the Family Values Scale From a Multilevel-Multicultural Perspective

In cross-cultural research, there is a tendency for researchers to draw inferences at the country level based on individual-level data. Such action implicitly and often mistakenly assumes that both the measuring instrument and its underlying construct(s) are operating equivalently across both levels. Based on responses from 5,482 college students sampled from 27 countries, we took a structural equation modeling approach to addressing this issue of level equivalence. Purposes of the study were: (a) to validate the hypothesized two-factor structure of the Family Values Scale (FV Scale; Georgas, 1999) within a multilevel framework that took individual- and country-level information into account; (b) to test equivalence of the FV Scale across individual and country levels; and (c) to evaluate relations between the FV Scale and three possibly important covariates—gender at the individual level, and affluence and religion at the country level. Implications of findings and importance of multilevel equivalence in cross-cultural research are discussed.     

Randomized controlled trial of expressive writing for psychological and physical health: the moderating role of emotional expressivity

The current study assessed main effects and moderators (including emotional expressiveness, emotional processing, and ambivalence over emotional expression) of the effects of expressive writing in a sample of healthy adults. Young adult participants (N=116) were randomly assigned to write for 20 minutes on four occasions about deepest thoughts and feelings regarding their most stressful/traumatic event in the past five years (expressive writing) or about a control topic (control). Dependent variables were indicators of anxiety, depression, and physical symptoms. No significant effects of writing condition were evident on anxiety, depressive symptoms, or physical symptoms. Emotional expressiveness emerged as a significant moderator of anxiety outcomes, however. Within the expressive writing group, participants high in expressiveness evidenced a significant reduction in anxiety at three-month follow-up, and participants low in expressiveness showed a significant increase in anxiety. Expressiveness did not predict change in anxiety in the control group. These findings on anxiety are consistent with the matching hypothesis, which suggests that matching a person's naturally elected coping approach with an assigned intervention is beneficial. These findings also suggest that expressive writing about a stressful event may be contraindicated for individuals who do not typically express emotions.