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.     

Dopamine,depressive symptoms,and decision-making: the relationship between spontaneous eye blink rate and depressive symptoms predicts Iowa Gambling Task performance

Depressive symptomatology has been associated with alterations in decision-making, although conclusions have been mixed, with depressed individuals showing impairments in some contexts but advantages in others. The dopaminergic system may link depressive symptoms with decision-making performance. We assessed the role of striatal dopamine D₂ receptor density, using spontaneous eye blink rates, in moderating the relationship between depressive symptoms and decision-making performance in a large undergraduate sample that had not been screened for mental illness (N?=?104). The regression results revealed that eye blink rate moderated the relationship between depressive symptoms and advantageous decisions on the Iowa Gambling Task, in which individuals with more depressive symptomatology and high blink rates (higher striatal dopamine D₂ receptor density) performed better on the task. Our computational modeling results demonstrated that depressive symptoms alone were associated with enhanced loss-aversive behavior, whereas individuals with high blink rates and elevated depressive symptoms tended to persevere in selecting options that led to net gains (avoiding options with net losses). These findings suggest that variation in striatal dopamine D₂ receptor availability in individuals with depressive symptoms may contribute to differences in decision-making behavior.     

Ostracism Reduces Reliance on Poor Advice from Others during Decision Making

Decision making is rarely context‐free, and often, both social information and non‐social information are weighed into one's decisions. Incorporating information into a decision can be influenced by previous experiences. Ostracism has extensive effects, including taxing cognitive resources and increasing social monitoring. In decision making situations, individuals are often faced with both objective and social information and must choose which information to include or filter out. How will ostracism affect the reliance on objective and social information during decision making? Participants (N = 245) in Experiment 1 were randomly assigned to be included or ostracized in a standardized, group task. They then performed a dynamic decision making task that involved the presentation of either non‐social (i.e. biased reward feedback) or social (i.e., poor advice from a previous participant) misleading information. In Experiment 2, participants (N = 105) completed either the ostracism non‐social condition or social misleading information condition with explicit instructions stating that the advice given was from an individual who did not partake in the group task. Ostracized individuals relied more on non‐social misleading information and performed worse than included individuals. However, ostracized individuals discounted misleading social information and outperformed included individuals. Results of Experiment 2 replicated the findings of Experiment 1. Across two experiments, ostracized individuals were more critical of advice from others, both individuals who may have ostracized them and unrelated individuals. In other words, compared with included individuals, ostracized individuals underweighted advice from another individual but overweighed non‐social information during decision making. We conclude that when deceptive objective information is present, ostracism results in disadvantageous decision making. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Childhood Overweight and Obesity: Maternal and Family Factors

Treatment programs for childhood overweight and obesity have highlighted the importance of the family in treatment. Considering this, it is surprising that few studies have examined the role of family factors in the development of childhood overweight and obesity. The objective of this study was to examine which family and maternal factors predict increases in weight in boys and girls during middle to late childhood. This study used longitudinal data from the childhood growth and development (GAD) Study. The GAD Study involved 286 healthy weight, overweight and obese children, aged 6–13 years at baseline, who completed baseline, 1-year follow-up and 2-year follow-up assessments. Overweight/obese children were recruited from clinical and community settings. A broad range of maternal and family factors were assessed. Linear mixed models were used to identify which factors predicted child Body Mass Index (BMI) z-scores over time. For community-based children, maternal BMI and single-parent family structure were significant longitudinal predictors of child BMI z-scores. For the clinical participants, low family income was the only significant multivariate predictor of child BMI z-scores. The strong association between child BMI, maternal BMI and family structure confirms the need to target prevention and intervention efforts for childhood overweight and obesity towards families with overweight parents, particularly single-parent families.     

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.     

Facial emotion recognition: a cross-cultural comparison of Chinese,Chinese living in Australia,and Anglo-Australians

This study investigated how the cultural match or mismatch between observer and perceiver can affect the accuracy of judgements of facial emotion, and how acculturation can affect cross-cultural recognition accuracy. The sample consisted of 51 Caucasian-Australians, 51 people of Chinese heritage living in Australia (PCHA) and 51 Mainland Chinese. Participants were required to identify the emotions of happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust displayed in photographs of Caucasian and Chinese faces. The PCHA group also responded to an acculturation measure that assessed their adoption of Australian cultural values and adherence to heritage (Chinese) cultural values. Counter to the hypotheses, the Caucasian-Australian and PCHA groups were found to be significantly more accurate at identifying both the Chinese and Caucasian facial expressions than the Mainland Chinese group. Adoption of Australian culture was found to predict greater accuracy in recognising the emotions displayed on Caucasian faces for the PCHA group.     

Goal-setting in diabetes self-management: A systematic review and meta-analysis examining content and effectiveness of goal-setting interventions

Background: Goal-setting is recommended and widely used within diabetes self-management programmes. However, empirical evidence around its effectiveness lacks clarity. This review aims to evaluate the effectiveness of goal-setting interventions on diabetes outcomes and to determine which behaviour change techniques (BCTs) are frequently used within these interventions.

Methods: A systematic search identified 14 studies, describing 12 interventions targeting diabetic-control which incorporated goal-setting as the main intervention strategy. Study characteristics, outcome measures and effect sizes of the included studies were extracted and checked by two authors. The BCT taxonomy v1 was used to identify intervention content. Meta-analyses were conducted to assess intervention effects on the primary outcome of average blood glucose levels (HbA1c) and on body-weight. Psycho-social and behavioural outcomes were summarised in narrative syntheses.

Results: Significant post-intervention improvements in HbA1C were found (?.22, 95% CI, ?.40, ?.04) across studies. No other main effects were identified. The BCT ‘goal-setting (behaviour)’ was most frequently implemented and was identified in 84% of the interventions.

Conclusions: Goal-setting interventions appear to be associated with reduced HbA1C levels. However, the low numbers of studies identified and the risk biases across studies suggest more research is needed to further explore goal-setting BCTs in diabetes self-management.     

Facts and Possibilities: A Model‐Based Theory of Sentential Reasoning

This article presents a fundamental advance in the theory of mental models as an explanation of reasoning about facts, possibilities, and probabilities. It postulates that the meanings of compound assertions, such as conditionals (if) and disjunctions (or), unlike those in logic, refer to conjunctions of epistemic possibilities that hold in default of information to the contrary. Various factors such as general knowledge can modulate these interpretations. New information can always override sentential inferences; that is, reasoning in daily life is defeasible (or nonmonotonic). The theory is a dual process one: It distinguishes between intuitive inferences (based on system 1) and deliberative inferences (based on system 2). The article describes a computer implementation of the theory, including its two systems of reasoning, and it shows how the program simulates crucial predictions that evidence corroborates. It concludes with a discussion of how the theory contrasts with those based on logic or on probabilities.