Drop the Small Talk When Establishing Baseline Behaviour in Interviews

The present experiment investigated the behavioural patterns of interviewees when comparing their baseline behaviour, prior to the interview, with their behaviour during the investigative interview. Similar to what has been advised in the police literature, the truthful baseline behaviour was established prior to the interview through non‐threatening questions. The investigative part of the interview then followed in which the interviewee was aware that they would be assessed on whether they were lying. During the investigative part, interviewees either discussed the job that they had (truth tellers, n = 128) or pretended to have (liars, n = 115). Findings revealed that both liars and truth tellers' behavioural patterns differed between the baseline behaviour and the investigative part of the interview. The findings suggest small talk should not be used as a baseline comparison with the investigative part of the interview when determining if the interviewee is being deceitful. An alternative way of using a baseline lie detection method, the comparable truth method, is discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emotional context at learning systematically biases memory for facial information

Emotion influences memory in many ways. For example, when a mood-dependent processing shift is operative, happy moods promote global processing and sad moods direct attention to local features of complex visual stimuli. We hypothesized that an emotional context associated with to-be-learned facial stimuli could preferentially promote global or local processing. At learning, faces with neutral expressions were paired with a narrative providing either a happy or a sad context. At test, faces were presented in an upright or inverted orientation, emphasizing configural or analytical processing, respectively. A recognition advantage was found for upright faces learned in happy contexts relative to those in sad contexts, whereas recognition was better for inverted faces learned in sad contexts than for those in happy contexts. We thus infer that a positive emotional context prompted more effective storage of holistic, configural, or global facial information, whereas a negative emotional context prompted relatively more effective storage of local or feature-based facial information     

Ideology as instrument

Comments on the article by J. T. Jost, which argued that the end-of-ideology claims that emerged in the aftermath of World War II were both incorrect and detrimental to the field of political psychology. M. Glassman and D. Karno make three critical points. First, Jost objectified ideology as a grand strategy implemented at the individual level, rather than as an instrument used for a specific purpose in activity. In doing so, he set ideology up as an "object" that guides human behavior rather than as a rational part of human experience. Second, they take issue with the idea that, because somebody acts in a manner that can be categorized as ideological, there actually is such a thing as ideology separate from that event and/or political experience and that psychologists ought to understand the meaning of ideology in order to understand future human activities as outside observers. Third, Jost seems to see this objective ideology as a unidirectional, causal mechanism for activity, a mechanism that assumes individuals act according to ideology, which eclipses the possibility that immediate ideological positions are the residue of purposeful activity. Glassman and Karno suggest that it may be better to take a pluralistic view of ideology in human action. Where ideology does exist, it is as a purposeful instrument--part of a logically based action to meet some ends-in-view--a mixture of immediate goals tied to secondary belief systems (which have been integrated to serve the material purposes of the purveyors of these ideologies). So if we are to understand ideology, we can only understand it through its use in human activity.     

Children's reasoning about responses to peer aggression: Victim's and witness's expected and prescribed behaviors

This research examined children's reasoning about expected (i.e., what a peer would do) and prescribed (i.e., what a peer should do) responses to unprovoked, intentional aggressive actions in two contexts: as a victim of such a transgression and as a witness to the incident. Physical harm and property damage items were used in a structured interview format. There were 90 subjects drawn from three elementary school grades (2nd, 4th, and 6th). Children differentiated between the expected and prescribed responses of peers and significant developmental differences in children's evaluations were found. Although the majority of the subjects in all grades denounced retaliation on the basis of concerns about others' welfare, older children stated that peers were likely to retaliate against the perpetrator nonetheless. Across different contexts, older children's responses appeared to reveal a greater independence from authority in negotiating peer interactions. In evaluating the witness's responses to aggressive acts, younger children's expected and prescribed responses were less disparate than that of the older children. The utility of including different vantage points of the child in examining children's social reasoning about aggression and the application of the present findings to social information-processing models are discussed. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Differential effects of emotional arousal in short- and long-term memory in healthy adults

Recent studies demonstrated important differences between short- and long-term memory mechanisms. Besides, the emotional component has a crucial role in memory formation. This study was carried out to answer whether there is a differential influence of emotional arousal in short- and long-term memory in healthy adults. Thirty-one healthy volunteers were divided into two major groups. In the first group long-term memory (LTM) was evaluated, with the testing session one week after training. The second group was tested 1h after training, where short-term memory (STM) was evaluated. Each group was divided in to two subgroups. One half of the volunteers was exposed to an emotionally neutral story, and the other half of each group was exposed to a closely matched but more emotionally arousing story. The testing session consisted of a questionary containing 80 questions of multiple choices. The results were evaluated through percentage of correct answers. Results showed that correct answers were increased, in LTM measures, in the subjects that were given the emotional version of the test. In STM measures, no differences were found between the emotional and neutral version. However, the presentation of emotional story caused an emotional reaction in both groups. The lack of effect of emotional arousal in STM suggests that amygdala is not related to STM mechanisms. Further studies using different approaches are needed to elucidate if STM processes are influenced by emotional arousal.     

A randomized trial of individual tutoring for elementary school children with reading and behavior difficulties

Children in Grades K-5, selected for reading and behavior problems, received individual tutoring in a program which aimed to detail a hierarchy of reading skills, locate the point on the hierarchy at which each child should work, and provide enthusiastic social reinforcement for successes. Children were randomly assigned to higher or lower frequency tutoring (one 45-min. session every 1.6 days vs every 8.3 days). The higher frequency group progressed significantly faster in reading than the lower frequency group. Both groups progressed much faster during the time of the intervention than they had before tutoring. Before tutoring, both groups had progressed at about 0.5 grade per year; during tutoring, the higher frequency group progressed at 1.5 grade per year and the lower frequency group at 1.1 grade per year. The subsets of children with verbal ability scores one or two standard deviations below the population mean, as assessed on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, still progressed at average rates of 1.2 grade per year during tutoring. The amount of work students accomplished on a sounding and blending drill predicted reading progress. The intervention cost an average of 1,156 dollars per student per year.     

Risk profiles of adolescent girls who were victims of dating violence

The prevalence of dating violence, as well as its relationship to potential risk factors, was examined among a nationally representative sample of 9th-through 12th-grade U.S. females (N = 7,824) who completed the 1999 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The dependent variable was physical dating violence; the independent variables were violence, suicide, substance use, and sexual risk behavior. Unadjusted odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals were examined, and multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify the most significant risk factors. It was found that nearly one in ten of the adolescent girls reported dating violence. Twelfth-grade girls had the highest prevalence of dating violence. Girls who were victims of dating violence were more likely to be involved in other violent behaviors, to report extreme sadness and suicidal actions, to use illicit substances, and to engage in risky sexual behavior. Multivariate analysis revealed that dating violence was associated with sad/hopeless feelings (OR = 2.13), binge drinking (OR = 1.96), cocaine or inhalant use (OR = 2.90), multiple sex partners (OR = 2.38), nonuse of condoms (OR = 1.53), and ethnicity, specifically being Black (OR = 2.32) or Hispanic (OR = 1.82). These findings provide further evidence that there is a clustering of risk factors among certain adolescents, specifically girls who experience dating violence.     

Increasing false recognition rates with confirmatory feedback: a phenomenological analysis

During a simulated witness interrogation, participants were encouraged to confabulate an account consistent with false information concerning a videotaped event. The interviewer verbally affirmed some false responses. Previous research has shown that, a week later, participants often recognize confabulated events that were affirmed by the experimenter as being from the video. What is unclear is whether confirmatory feedback encouraged a change in the mental representation of the confabulated events to fit the original event or confirmation might have merely encouraged a change in beliefs about the event. To further understand the mechanisms that underlie the confirmatory feedback effect, participants were asked to judge the phenomenological experience associated with false recognition.     

Extending Parent–Child Interaction Therapy for Early Childhood Internalizing Problems: New Advances for an Overlooked Population

Although efficacious psychological treatments for internalizing disorders are now well established for school-aged children, until recently there have regrettably been limited empirical efforts to clarify indicated psychological intervention methods for the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders presenting in early childhood. Young children lack many of the developmental capacities required to effectively participate in established treatments for mood and anxiety problems presenting in older children, making simple downward extensions of these treatments for the management of preschool internalizing problems misguided. In recent years, a number of research groups have successfully adapted and modified parent–child interaction therapy (PCIT), originally developed to treat externalizing problems in young children, to treat various early internalizing problems with a set of neighboring protocols. As in traditional PCIT, these extensions target child symptoms by directly reshaping parent–child interaction patterns associated with the maintenance of symptoms. The present review outlines this emerging set of novel PCIT adaptations and modifications for mood and anxiety problems in young children and reviews preliminary evidence supporting their use. Specifically, we cover (a) PCIT for early separation anxiety disorder; (b) the PCIT-CALM (Coaching Approach behavior and Leading by Modeling) Program for the full range of early anxiety disorders; (c) the group Turtle Program for behavioral inhibition; and (d) the PCIT-ED (Emotional Development) Program for preschool depression. In addition, emerging PCIT-related protocols in need of empirical attention—such as the PCIT-SM (selective mutism) Program for young children with SM—are also considered. Implications of these protocols are discussed with regard to their unique potential to address the clinical needs of young children with internalizing problems. Obstacles to broad dissemination are addressed, and we consider potential solutions, including modular treatment formats and innovative applications of technology.