Implicit coping and enhancement motives predict unique variance in drinking in Asian Americans

Automatic cognitive processes have been shown to be unique predictors of drinking behavior and can be assessed using implicit measures. Drinking motives (e.g., enhancement and coping motives), which are also predictive of alcohol use, have not been studied using implicit measures. Moreover, in the US, implicit measures have been studied in samples largely consisting of Caucasian or White Americans. This study adapted the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to examine automatic analogues of enhancement and coping drinking motives and approach/avoid tendencies in 56 Asian American undergraduates. Enhancement and coping IATs were correlated with self-reported drinking motives and predicted unique variance in drinking frequency and heavy drinking when controlling for self-reported motives. Approach IAT scores were neither associated with self-reported approach/avoid tendencies nor predictive of drinking behaviors. These findings provide initial support for the unique predictive utility of drinking motives in Asian Americans, an understudied population.     

Beliefs About Cognitive Gender Differences: Accurate for Direction, Underestimated for Size

Although stereotype accuracy is a large, and often controversial, area of psychological research, surprisingly little research has examined the beliefs people have about gender differences in cognitive abilities. This study investigates the accuracy of these beliefs in a sample of 106 highly educated U.S. adults. Participants provided estimates of male and female performance for 12 cognitive tasks and games. These estimates were compared with published data on gender differences on the same 12 cognitive tasks and games. Results showed that participants were generally accurate about the direction of gender differences, but underestimated the size of gender differences.     

Does ‘Ought’ Still Imply ‘Can’?

According to ??ought?? implies ??can?? (OIC), your obligation can never be to do what you cannot do. In a recent attack on OIC, Graham has argued that intuitions about justified intervention can help us determine whether the agent whose actions we use force to prevent would have acted permissibly or not. These intuitions, he suggests, cause trouble for the idea that you can be obligated to refrain from doing what you can refrain from doing. I offer a defense of OIC and explain how non-consequentialists can accommodate his intuitions about his cases     

Concurrent validity of an online version of the Timeline Followback assessment

The Timeline Followback (TLFB) interview has been used extensively in the assessment of alcohol and other substance use. While this methodology has been validated in multiple formats for multiple behaviors, to date no systematic comparisons have been conducted between the traditional interview format and online versions. The present research employed a randomized within-subjects design to compare interview versus online-based TLFB assessments of alcohol and marijuana use among 102 college students. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either the online version first or the in-person interview format first. Participants subsequently completed the second format within 3 days. While we expected few overall differences between formats, we hypothesized that differences might emerge to the extent that participants are more comfortable and willing to answer honestly in an online format, which provides a degree of anonymity. Results were consistent with expectations in suggesting relatively few differences between the online version and the in-person version. Participants did report feeling more comfortable in completing the online version. Moreover, greater discomfort during the in-person assessment was associated with reporting more past-month marijuana use on the online assessment, but reported discomfort did not moderate differences between formats in reported alcohol consumption. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Verbal ability, social stress, and anxiety in children with autistic disorder

The aims of this study were to evaluate the physiological stress and anxiety responses in children with autism following completion of a standardized, social-evaluative stressor (Trier Social Stress Test-Child version), document the relationship between verbal ability, stress, and anxiety, and determine the association between stress and anxiety in children with autism and typical development. Results demonstrated the Trier Social Stress Test-Child version to be a benign stressor for children with autism. Lower verbal ability in children with autism did not predict salivary cortisol or anxiety responses. There was a lack of association between stress and anxiety for both groups, highlighting the importance of considering these terms as separate constructs. Clinical implications and the limited utility of the Trier Social Stress Test-Child version in evaluating psychosocial stress in autism are discussed.     

Justification,knowledge, and normality

There is much to like about the idea that justification should be understood in terms of normality or normic support (Smith in Between probability and certainty, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016; Goodman and Salow in Philosophical Studies 175: 183–196, 2018). The view does a nice job explaining why we should think that lottery beliefs differ in justificatory status from mundane perceptual or testimonial beliefs. And it seems to do that in a way that is friendly to a broadly internalist approach to justification. In spite of its attractions, we think that the normic support view faces two serious challenges. The first is that it delivers the wrong result in preface cases. Such cases suggest that the view is either too sceptical or to externalist. The second is that the view struggles with certain kinds of Moorean absurdities. It turns out that these problems can easily be avoided. If we think of normality as a condition on knowledge, we can characterise justification in terms of its connection to knowledge and thereby avoid the difficulties discussed here. The resulting view does an equally good job explaining why we should think that our perceptual and testimonial beliefs are justified when lottery beliefs cannot be. Thus, it seems that little could be lost and much could be gained by revising the proposal and adopting a view on which it is knowledge, not justification that depends directly upon normality.