Mediational effects of sensation seeking on the age and financial risk-taking relationship

The current study examined the potential mediating role of sensation seeking in the well-established negative relationship between age and financial risk-taking. A total of 299 participants, aged 17–90 years, allocated hypothetical money into mutual funds that varied in risk and completed a sensation seeking measure. Hierarchical multiple regressions revealed that the amount of variability age accounted for in risk-taking (4.1%; β = −.22) was significantly reduced when sensation seeking was controlled for (0.8%; β = −.12). A Sobel test revealed that sensation seeking fully mediated the aforementioned relationship. Results suggest sensation seeking’s role as a mediator in more physiologically arousing risk-taking contexts (e.g., surfing). Discussion recommends investigating potential biologically and cognitively-rooted mediators and moderators of the age and risk-taking relationship.     

Information distortion in the evaluation of a single option

Extending previous work on biased predecisional processing, we investigate the distortion of information during the evaluation of a single option. A coherence-based account of the evaluation task suggests that individuals will form an initial assessment of favorability toward the option and then bias their evaluation of subsequent information to cohere with their initial disposition. Three experiments tested this hypothesis. Initial disposition was manipulated (Studies 1 and 3) or measured (Study 2), and attribute ratings were collected as indicators of information distortion. Results from all three experiments indicate that attribute evaluations were biased to favor initial dispositions. These findings provide evidence that information distortion is one cause of primacy effects in judgment and decision-making settings involving a single option.     

Inhibitory control and emotion regulation in preschool children

This research investigated the relation between individual differences in inhibitory control and emotion regulation. Preschool children (N = 53) ages 4–6 (M = 5; 0) were assessed on brief batteries of inhibitory control of prepotent responses and emotion regulation. Individual differences in inhibitory control were significantly correlated with children's ability to regulate their emotions. This relation held up even after controlling for age and verbal ability, and persisted for both Emotion Understanding and “online” control of emotional expressions that were negative (Disappointing Gift) or positive (Secret Keeping). Parent report of children's self-control and emotion regulation corroborated the behavioral results. These findings suggest that executive control of attention, action, and emotion are skills that develop in concert in the preschool period. However, there was also evidence of a quadratic relation in which emotion regulation was optimal at intermediate levels of inhibition, highlighting the interplay of both cognitive control and temperament in socio-emotional functioning.     

Integrating Spirituality into Family Therapy Training: An Exploration of Faculty Members’ Beliefs

The purpose of this study was to explore the beliefs and attitudes of marriage and family therapy (MFT) faculty as they relate to the appropriateness of addressing spirituality in the context of therapy and training of future MFTs. Ninety-three MFT faculty members at masters and doctoral level programs accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Marriage and Family Therapy Education completed the electronic survey for this study. The results indicate that the majority of MFT faculty members believe that spirituality is important in their personal lives, in their clinical work, and in MFT training. The findings of the current study are similar to previous studies of clinical and student members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.     

Marriage and Family Therapists’ Ability to Diagnose Asperger’s Syndrome: A Vignette Study

The purpose of this study was to determine the degree to which AAMFT clinical members can accurately diagnose Asperger’s Syndrome. 171 AAMFT clinical members were surveyed using a vignette methodology. Participants were asked to read the vignette and provide a diagnosis for the child in the vignette. Four out of five participants were unable to correctly diagnose the vignette child with Asperger’s Syndrome. Analyses found that the ability to correctly diagnose Asperger’s Syndrome did not vary based on the participants: gender, years of clinical experience, or specialized clinical population (e.g., individuals, couples, families, children). Thomas Stone Carlson is an associate professor and Christi McGeorge is an assistant professor in the couple and family therapy program at North Dakota State University. Sarah Halvorson is a graduate of the couple and family therapy program at North Dakota State University and is in clinical practice in Illinois.     

P300 amplitude, externalizing psychopathology, and earlier- versus later-onset substance-use disorder

P300 amplitude predicts substance use or disorder by age 21. Earlier- versus later-onset substance disorders may reflect different levels of an externalizing psychopathology dimension. P300 in adolescence may not be as strongly related to later-onset substance problems as it is to earlier-onset ones. In the present study, visual P300 amplitude was measured at age 17 in a community-representative sample of young men. Substance and externalizing disorders were assessed at approximately ages 17, 20, and 24. Earlier-onset (by age 20) substance disorder was associated with higher rates of externalizing disorders than were later-onset problems. P300 amplitude was reduced in subjects with earlier-onset substance disorders, relative to later-onset and disorder-free subjects. Amplitude was also reduced in subjects with an externalizing disorder but no substance disorder. Earlier-onset subjects had reduced P300, even in the absence of an externalizing disorder. The results could not be attributed to a concurrent disorder or to recent substance use at the time of the P300 recording. The findings are consistent with P300 indexing an externalizing spectrum. Earlier-onset substance disorders are more strongly related to P300 and externalizing than are later-onset problems.     

Grounding spatial language in perception: an empirical and computational investigation.

The present paper grounds the linguistic cdategorization of space in aspects of visual perception; specifically, the structure of projective spatial terms such as above are grounded in the process of attention and in vector-sum coding of overall direction. This is formalized in the attentional vector-sum (AVS) model. This computational model accurately predicts linguistic acceptability judgments for spatial terms, under a variety of spatial configurations. In 7 experiments, the predictions of the AVS model are tested against those of 3 competing models. The results support the AVS model and disconfirm its competitors. The authors conclude that the structure of linguistic spatial categories can be partially explained in terms of independently motivated perceptual processes.     

When Do Comprehender Groups Differ? A Moment-by-Moment Analysis of Think-Aloud Protocols of Good and Poor Comprehenders

The purpose of this study was to examine moment-by-moment fluctuations in text comprehension processing and determine how and when poor and good comprehenders differ. To do so, we reanalyzed a dataset of think-aloud protocols from 138 intermediate elementary students. Both good and poor comprehenders used a variety of processing strategies when reading text; however, good comprehenders were more strategic in which processes they used than were poor comprehenders. Patterns of two types of poor comprehenders were also analyzed: paraphrasers and lateral connectors. The results indicate that these different reader types not only vary in aggregate but also moment-by-moment processing.     

Mechanisms of Reference Frame Selection in Spatial Term Use: Computational and Empirical Studies

Previous studies have shown that multiple reference frames are available and compete for selection during the use of spatial terms such as “above.” However, the mechanisms that underlie the selection process are poorly understood. In the current paper we present two experiments and a comparison of three computational models of selection to shed further light on the nature of reference frame selection. The three models are drawn from different areas of human cognition, and we assess whether they may be applied to a reference frame selection by examining their ability to account for both existing and new empirical data comprising acceptance rates, response times, and response time distributions. These three models are the competitive shunting model (Schultheis, 2009 ), the leaky competing accumulator (LCA) model (Usher & McClelland, 2001 ), and a lexical selection model (Howard, Nickels, Coltheart, & Cole‐Virtue, 2006 ). Model simulations show that only the LCA model satisfactorily accounts for the empirical observations. The key properties of this model that seem to drive its success are its bounded linear activation function, its number and type of processing stages, and its use of decay. Uncovering these critical properties has important implications for our understanding not only of spatial term use, in particular, but also of conflict and selection in human cognition more generally.