Between two selves: comparing global and local predictors of speed of switching between self-aspects

Self-concepts are composed of multiple self-aspects that vary in their momentary accessibility. When a particular self-aspect is active, it guides one’s cognition and behavior in a context-specific fashion. The current research quantified the ease with which people switch from one active self-aspect to another using a novel reaction time approach. Specifically, two studies tested how self-aspect switching speed is influenced by global (i.e., self-complexity) and local (i.e., self-aspect importance) features of the self-concept. The findings revealed that people transition between self-aspects more slowly when switching from a more important self-aspect to a less important one. In other words, important self-aspects are privileged within the working self-concept.     

Clinical Consultation as a Family Intervention in Residential Treatment: Exploring What Impacts Outcomes

The Relational Re-enactment Systems Approach to Treatment model is an approach to residential treatment that embraces the need for family involvement through clinical consultation. Clinical consultation is a systems-oriented family intervention that embodies the model’s principles regarding therapeutic alliance and working through ambivalence. Families engage with treatment providers and other collaterals in an ongoing process of developing goals, creating a shared understanding of the youth, and working toward discharge. The current study explored youth characteristics and outcomes. Additionally, the investigation included comparisons between youth with and without the involvement of the Department of Children and Family Services in terms of length of stay, involvement in consultation, and sustained outcomes. Finally, therapists who work with youth and their families discussed their understanding of what differentiated successful and unsuccessful cases.     

Fear of Rejection versus Religious Commitment as Predictors of Adjustment Among Reformed and Evangelical College Students in Canada

The contradictory findings about the (positive or negative) associations between religion and adjustment suggest that different aspects of religion might have different effects. A total of 160 men and 283 women attending two faith-affirming colleges in Canada completed measures of fear of rejection (by God and church members), religiosity, prosocial attitudes, social adjustment (work orientation, school attitudes), and personal adjustment (life satisfaction, self-esteem). Fear of rejection was found to be predictive of lower religious commitment and of poor social and personal adjustment. In contrast, religious commitment was found to be predictive of prosocial attitudes and of good adjustment. Religious commitment had much higher correlations with prosocial values and adjustment among men than among women. Regression analyses indicated that fear of rejection was a strong predictor of poor adjustment among religious persons.     

Kinematic analysis of multiple constraints on a pointing task

The current experiment suggests that the speed/accuracy tradeoff is composed of two classes of constraints, effector and task. We examined the effects of movement distance, target size, orientation of the movement in the workspace, and C-D gain on the kinematics of discrete pointing movements made with computer mouse. It was found that target size influenced the shape of velocity profiles by elongating the duration of the corrective sub-movement phase, while movement distance scaled the entire velocity curve without affecting its shape. C-D gain and orientation of the movement exhibited two kinds of effects: an overall scaling of the velocity curve and a change in its shape. We conclude that target size is a task constraint and movement distance is an effector constraint, while movement orientation exhibited characteristics of both. C-D gain by itself was not a constraint, but interacted with both task and effector constrains. These results highlight the roles of biomechanical and information processing factors in the speed/accuracy tradeoff.     

Investigating effects of selectional restriction violations and plausibility violation severity on eye-movements in reading

This paper presents a study investigating whether and how different kinds of knowledge affect the detection of plausibility and possibility violations. Readers’ eye-movements were monitored while reading sentences describing impossible events cued by selectional restriction violations, extremely implausible events without selectional restriction violations, and plausible events, in order to determine whether the time course of disruption is determined by overall implausibility/unlikelihood, or whether impossibility cued by selectional restriction violations additionally affects disruption. Both early and late fixation measures showed stronger disruption in the impossible/selectional restriction violation condition. However, measures indexing regressive eye-movements showed similar disruption in both extremely implausible conditions. This suggests that the magnitude and latency of disruption to possibility and plausibility violations is not a simple function of the overall implausibility/unlikelihood of the resulting event, but that selectional restriction violations influence the early and late time course of disruption.     

Functional analysis and generalized treatment of disruptive behavior during dental exams

Patient disruption during dental visits can impede treatment and may result in invasive approaches to care. The current study evaluated the efficacy of graduated exposure with and without extinction to decrease disruption during dental treatment for 4 young men with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Modified functional analyses confirmed that disruption was maintained by escape from dental demands for all four young men. Initial treatment consisted of graduated exposure, whereby exam steps were initially removed and then gradually reintroduced as disruption remained low; throughout this phase, disruption resulted in a break from the exam. During the subsequent treatment phase, graduated exposure procedures continued and extinction for disruption was added. Graduated exposure alone did not result in sufficient treatment effects; however, the addition of extinction resulted in greater reductions in disruption and increases in exam completion for all 4 young men, and treatment effects generalized to a dental clinic setting.     

Christian and Political Conservatism Predict Opposition to Sexual and Gender Minority Rights through Support for Christian Hegemony

Although significant strides have been made for sexual and gender minority (SGM) rights in the United States, there continues to be opposition to SGM rights from many conservative Christians and political conservatives. In this study, we investigate this opposition by examining support for Christian hegemony (i.e., the idea that Christianity should be the norm and Christians should be in power in the United States) and unawareness of Christian privilege (i.e., unearned advantages for Christians) as religiopolitical variables that help to explain the association between Christian and political conservatism and opposition to a host of SGM rights (same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, nondiscrimination policies in jobs and housing for SGMs, and bills regarding transgender public bathroom use). Based on structural equation modeling analysis with heterosexual cisgender Christian (n = 688) and Areligious (n = 327) students, we demonstrate that support for Christian hegemony and unawareness of Christian privilege help to explain the association between Christian and political conservatism and opposition to SGM rights. These findings advance our understanding of a new type of religious-based variable focused on religious power and privilege to help understand conservative religious and political opposition to SGM rights. Limitations, implications, and directions for future research also are discussed.