Cognitive defusion and self-relevant negative thoughts: examining the impact of a ninety year old technique

Cognitive defusion techniques are designed to reduce the functions of thoughts by altering the context in which they occur, rather than the attempting to alter the form, frequency, or situational sensitivity of the thoughts themselves. Applied technologies designed to produce cognitive defusion seem to lead to reductions in the believability of negative thoughts, but defusion techniques are generally only parts of complex packages and the role of defusion techniques per se is note yet known. The present study examined the impact of a cognitive defusion technique first described by Titchener nearly 90 years ago: rapidly repeating a single word. In series of eight single-case alternating treatment designs, this defusion technique was compared to a distraction task, and to a thought control task on reductions in the discomfort and believability of self-relevant negative thoughts. The cognitive defusion technique reduced both discomfort and believability more so than the comparison approaches. Control studies showed that the effect was probably not due to demand characteristics.     

ERP study of pre-attentive auditory processing in treatment-refractory schizophrenia

Event-related potential (ERP) studies have demonstrated impaired auditory sensory processing in patients with schizophrenia, as reflected in abnormal mismatch negativity (MMN). We sought to extend this finding by evaluating MMN in 13 treatment-refractory patients with schizophrenia, and 14 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Subjects responded to infrequent visual stimulation while ignoring binaurally presented auditory tones. The amplitude and topographical pattern of the MMN were analyzed. The control group presented the expected reduction in the amplitude of the MMN from frontal to central and parietal locations. In comparison, the MMN amplitude was not reduced in the treatment-refractory patients, and was largest at the central-posterior electrode location. In addition, patients displayed larger negativities at left frontal, and left- and right-temporal electrode locations than the control subjects. These findings are consistent with pre-attentive abnormalities in treatment-refractory patients with schizophrenia.     

Hemispheric asymmetries for selective attention apparent only with increased task demands in healthy participants

This study examined the possibility that lack of behavioral evidence indicating hemispheric specialization for selective attention in healthy individuals is due to the use of tasks that are not sufficiently demanding to require selective attention. In a group of 43 participants (ages 17-23), we compared selective attention on a cued-response time task when the target was presented alone and when a distractor was simultaneously presented. The costs of invalid cueing were minimal when the right hemisphere (RH) processed the target relative to when the left hemisphere (LH) processed the target, but only for the high load condition. These results are interpreted as RH specialization in light of evidence suggesting that the RH can direct attention to a larger portion of the visual field.     

A computerized slot machine simulation to investigate the variables involved in gambling behavior

The present paper describes a computerized slot machine simulation designed to examine many of the potential variables involved in gambling behavior. This program was created in Visual Basic Version 6.0 and is designed to run on any Windows 95 or higher equipped computer. The program allows for experimenter manipulation of probabilities of payoffs, visual display of potential winning symbols, exact sequences of wins and losses, as well as pose run time questions to the subject on prespecified trials. The program records data on a trial-bytrial basis to a text file for easy importation into many data analysis and statistical programs. Conceptual and experimental questions that may be addressed with the described program are also discussed.     

Building a Pink Dinosaur: the Effects of Gendered Construction Toys on Girls’ and Boys’ Play

Play with building toys such as LEGO® sets promotes spatial learning in children. The present study examined the effects of the color of the bricks (either pink or blue) and the femininity/masculinity of the object built on boys’ and girls’ play with LEGO® sets. Children (n = 116, M _age  = 7.27 range = 5–10) were given the opportunity to build with LEGO® brick sets, both instructed and free play tasks. For the instructed task, the type of object (feminine: cat; masculine: dinosaur) and color of the bricks (pink, blue) were counterbalanced across participants. Their play was coded for accuracy of following the instructions and time to complete the task. In the free play task, brick color (pink, blue) was counterbalanced across participants, and structures were coded for femininity/masculinity and the number of bricks used. Overall, children took longer to build a feminine object with blue bricks than with pink bricks. In the free-play task, boys built more masculine objects than girls did, regardless of the color of bricks they were given. Results showed that boys completed the LEGO® tasks faster than did girls, controlling for interest in and experience with LEGO® play. These findings suggest that toy color and type can impact how children interact and play with toys.     

Social influences on smoking in middle-aged and older women

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of 2 types of social influence--general social support and living with a smoker--on smoking behavior among middle-aged and older women in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) Observational Study. Participants were postmenopausal women who reported smoking at some time in their lives (N=37,027), who were an average age of 63.3 years at baseline. Analyses used multiple logistic regression and controlled for age, educational level, and ethnicity. In cross-sectional analyses, social support was associated with a lower likelihood and living with a smoker was associated with a higher likelihood of being a current smoker and, among smokers, of being a heavier smoker. Moreover, in prospective analyses among baseline smokers, social support predicted a higher likelihood and living with a smoker predicted a lower likelihood of smoking cessation 1-year later. Further, in prospective analyses among former smokers who were not smoking at baseline, social support predicted a lower likelihood and living with a smoker predicted a higher likelihood of smoking relapse 1-year later. Overall, the present results indicate that social influences are important correlates of smoking status, smoking level, smoking cessation, and smoking relapse among middle-aged and older women.     

Modeling general and specific variance in multifaceted constructs: a comparison of the bifactor model to other approaches

This article recommends an alternative method for testing multifaceted constructs. Researchers often have to choose between two problematic approaches for analyzing multifaceted constructs: the total score approach and the individual score approach. Both approaches can result in conceptual ambiguity. The proposed bifactor model assesses simultaneously the general construct shared by the facets and the specific facets, over and above the general construct. We illustrate the bifactor model by examining the construct of Extraversion as measured by the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO‐PI‐R; Costa & McCrae, 1992), with two college samples (N = 383 and 378). The analysis reveals that the facets of the NEO‐PI‐R Extraversion correlate with criteria in opposite directions after partialling out the general construct. The direction of gender differences also varies by facets. Bifactor models combine the advantages but avoid the drawbacks of the 2 existing methods and can lead to greater conceptual clarity.