The role of input–output modality compatibility in task switching

Input–output (I–O) modality compatibility refers to the similarity of stimulus modality and modality of response-related sensory consequences. A previous study found higher switch costs in task switching in I–O modality incompatible tasks (auditory-manual and visual-vocal) than in I–O modality compatible tasks (auditory-vocal and visual-manual). However, these tasks had spatially compatible S–R mappings, which implied dimensional overlap (DO). DO may have led to automatic activation of the corresponding compatible responses in the incorrect response modality, thus increasing interference effects. The present study was aimed to examine the influence of DO on I–O modality compatibility effects. In two experiments, we found that I–O modality compatibility affects task switching even in tasks without DO, which even tended to result in further increased modality influences. This finding suggests that I–O modality mappings affect response selection by affecting between-task cross-talk not on the level of specific response codes but on the level of modality-specific processing pathways.     

Approaching the “Resistant:” Exploring East Asian International Students’ Perceptions of Therapy and Help-Seeking Behavior Before and After They Arrived in the United States

In this study we investigated cultural, familial, and individual beliefs that influenced international students’ perceptions of therapy and help-seeking behaviors. Included were changes in perception or behavior before and after the students came to the US, and factors that influenced help-seeking behaviors. Six international students from East Asian countries where English is a foreign language, including Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, and South Korea, were interviewed. We used semi-structured interviews and participant observations for collecting data. The findings indicated changes after students came to the US. Further discussions focus on encouraging and discouraging factors relative to seeing therapists, and culturally sensitive interventions for family therapy clinicians.     

Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills: Parental Outcomes With an ADHD Sample

The goal of the current study was to examine the effect of the Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS®), a 14-week parent-assisted friendship-building program for adolescents with ADHD, on parental functioning, quality of the parent-adolescent relationship, and family functioning. Participants included 25 parents of adolescents with ADHD. Families completed PEERS®. Measures of parenting stress, parental efficacy, parent-adolescent communication, parent-adolescent involvement, causal attributions for negative social interactions, and family chaos were completed by parents at pre- and post-treatment. Parents demonstrated statistically significant improvements in parenting stress and parent-adolescent communication and marginally statistically significant improvement in parental efficacy. Parents also demonstrated reliable change in parenting stress, parent-adolescent communication, parent-adolescent involvement, and family chaos. Overall, these findings demonstrate the benefit of PEERS® at improving parental functioning, quality of the parent-adolescent relationship, and family functioning for families of adolescents with ADHD.     

Extreme response style as a cultural response to climato‐economic deprivation

We investigated the effects of climato‐economic harshness on extreme response style. Climato‐economic theorising postulates that a more threatening climate in poorer countries, in contrast to countries with a more comforting climate and richer countries with a more challenging climate, triggers intolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty avoidance inherent to conservatism, in‐group favouritism and autocracy. Scores of extreme response style at country level, a proxy of this cluster of cultural characteristics, were extracted from students' responses in the Programme for International Student Assessment to test the hypothesis. In a series of hierarchical regression analysis across 64 countries, cold demands, heat demands and GDP per capita showed a highly significant interaction effect on extreme response style, predicting in total 30.7% of the variance. Extreme response style was highest in poorer countries with higher climatic demands, and lowest in richer countries with lower climate demands. Implications are discussed.     

Development and Initial Psychometric Evaluation of the Semi-Structured Emotion Regulation Interview

Emotion regulation (ER) strategy use has been identified as a transdiagnostic predictor of the development, maintenance, and recovery from several forms of psychopathology. However, the ER strategy use literature relies primarily on self-report measures that have several important limitations. This article describes the development and initial psychometric evaluation of a novel clinician-administered measure of ER strategy use, the Semi-Structured Emotion Regulation Interview (SERI; Lee, Weathers, &; Sloan, 2016 Lee, D. J., Weathers, F. W., &; Sloan, D. M. (2016). The Semi-Structured Emotion Regulation Interview (SERI). Unpublished instrument. [Google Scholar]). The SERI was developed in a construct validation framework with emphasis on a multistage content validity process. The SERI assesses frequency and efficacy (i.e., proximal change in the targeted emotion) of 9 strategies in regulation of a specified emotion type and intensity (e.g., severe anxiety) during the past 30 days. Undergraduates (N = 68) completed a battery of self-report measures and a subsequent interview. Frequency and efficacy of each strategy was assessed separately with respect to regulation of moderate and severe anxiety and anger. Each of the assessed strategies demonstrated excellent discriminant validity. Associations between SERI and self-report measures of ER strategy use varied by target emotion type and intensity for some strategies, but not others. Implications and suggestions for future research are described.     

Outcomes of a Day Treatment Program for Eating Disorders Using Clinical and Statistical Significance

The present study was designed to evaluate the outcomes of a day treatment program for 55 eating disordered (ED) patients using clinical and statistical significance testing. Results indicated a statistically significant reduction on all eating disordered outcomes. With respect to clinical significance testing, analysis of these data indicated that the majority of the individuals in the day treatment program made clinically significant and reliable change by the termination of treatment on all eating disorder measures. However, considerably less patients improved to such a point that they were asymptomatic. The importance of combining clinical significance testing with traditional significance testing is discussed.     

Body satisfaction and pressure to be thin in younger and older Muslim and non-Muslim women: The role of Western and non-Western dress preferences

Younger and older Muslim and non-Muslim women living in the United States completed questionnaires about body satisfaction and their internalization of Western standards of beauty (thin-ideal). Younger Muslim women wearing non-Western clothing and a head veil were significantly less likely to express drive for thinness or pressure to attain a thin-ideal standard of beauty than women wearing Western dress or younger women wearing non-Western dress without a head veil. Older women, while expressing greater discrepancy between their ideal body shape and their current body shape, and less satisfaction with their bodies than younger women, reported less drive for thinness and less pressure to attain the Western thin-ideal standard of beauty than younger women. These results are discussed in terms of how factors such as age and religion may serve as protective factors against a strong or unhealthy drive for thinness or thin-ideal standard.     

Organizational Citizenship Behaviors as a Function of Empathy,Consideration of Future Consequences,and Employee Time Horizon: An Initial Exploration Using an In‐Basket Simulation of OCBs1

We hypothesized that organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) represent a social dilemma. Two studies supported this hypothesis. In Study 1, participants rated OCBs as costly to an employee in the short run, and beneficial to an organization in the long run. In Study 2, likelihood of engaging in OCBs was higher among those high in empathy and concern with future consequences; and less likely among those instructed to imagine they would be leaving the company in 3 months for another job. Empathy showed a stronger relationship with OCBs when respondents imagined they would soon leave an organization and that individuals high in concern with future consequences were less likely to engage in OCBs when faced with a short‐term time horizon.     

Philosophy in the Act: The Socio-Political Relevance of Mamardašvili’s Philosophizing

Although topics in social and political philosophy might not be the first to associate with Mamarda?vili, it is argued in this paper that key concepts in his thought, viz. the concepts of form, thought, and culture come together, in the 1980s in particular, in a notion of civil society that goes deeper than that of many of his contemporaries. The relevance of his philosophy at this point is intensified by the specific nature of Soviet philosophical culture, but, it is argued, extends well beyond that, fully justifying his honorary title of “Georgian Socrates”.