The emergence of new intentions in subjective experience: A social/personal constructionist and relational understanding

As part of the larger project to revision vocational psychology for a new era, a process referred to as the emergence of new intentions in subjective experience is defined and described. It is proposed that this process is central to the ongoing construction and reconstruction of lives in the changing landscape of the times. Following an elaboration of the meaning of emergence of new intentions in subjective experience through comparison to related constructs and theories, a social/personal constructionist and relational understanding of this process is developed. The article concludes by addressing implications for vocational psychology practice.     

The extent of working memory deficits associated with Williams syndrome: exploration of verbal and spatial domains and executively controlled processes

The present study investigated verbal and spatial working memory (WM) functioning in individuals with the neuro-developmental disorder Williams syndrome (WS) using WM component tasks. While there is strong evidence of WM impairments in WS, previous research has focused on short-term memory and has neglected assessment of executive components of WM. There is a particular lack of consensus concerning the profile of verbal WM functioning in WS. Here, WS participants were compared to typically developing participants matched for (1) verbal ability and (2) spatial ability (N = 14 in each of the 3 groups). Individuals with WS were impaired on verbal WM tasks, both those involving short-term maintenance of information and executive manipulation, in comparison to verbal-matched controls. Surprisingly, individuals with WS were not impaired on a spatial task assessing short-term maintenance of information in memory (remembering spatial locations) compared to spatial-matched controls. They were, however, impaired on a spatial executive WM task requiring the manipulation of spatial information in memory. The present study suggests that individuals with WS show WM impairments that extend to both verbal and spatial domains, although spatial deficits are selective to executive aspects of WM function.     

Identifying the task characteristics that predict children's construction task performance

Construction tasks form a major part of children's play and can be linked to achievement in maths and science. However there is a lack of understanding of construction task ability and development. Therefore, there is little foundation for the applied use of construction tasks, such as in teaching or research, as there are no apparent methods for assessing difficulty. This empirical research identifies four construction task characteristics that impact on cognition and predict construction task difficulty in children aged 7–8 and 10–11 years and adults. The results also reveal a developmental trajectory in construction ability. The research provides a method to quantify, predict and control the complexity of construction tasks for future research and to inform applied use. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The closed mind: ‘Experience’ and ‘cognition’ aspects of openness to experience and need for closure as psychological bases for right‐wing attitudes

Openness to Experience and Need for Closure (NFC) are dispositional variables related to social‐cultural right‐wing attitudes. The present study investigated their joint effects. Factor analysis revealed an ‘experiential’ dimension with high loading openness items, and a ‘cognition’ dimension with high loadings for most NFC items and about a quarter of the openness item set. The experiential openness items were weakly related to right‐wing attitudes, demonstrating little predictive value. Conversely, the cognitive openness and NFC items were powerful predictors of right‐wing attitudes, and also played an important role in integrative models, both as a predictor of authoritarianism‐based racism and as a mediator of age related increments in right‐wing attitudes. It is concluded that right‐wing attitudes should be primarily understood in terms of (motivated) cognition, and to a smaller extent in terms of experiential openness. The distinction between ‘experiential’ and ‘cognitive’ openness is critically assessed, and it is asserted that because cognition is a multifaceted construct openness contains more than one cognitive dimension. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Measuring strategic control in artificial grammar learning

In response to concerns with existing procedures for measuring strategic control over implicit knowledge in artificial grammar learning (AGL), we introduce a more stringent measurement procedure. After two separate training blocks which each consisted of letter strings derived from a different grammar, participants either judged the grammaticality of novel letter strings with respect to only one of these two grammars (pure-block condition), or had the target grammar varying randomly from trial to trial (novel mixed-block condition) which required a higher degree of conscious flexible control. Random variation in the colour and font of letters was introduced to disguise the nature of the rule and reduce explicit learning. Strategic control was observed both in the pure-block and mixed-block conditions, and even among participants who did not realise the rule was based on letter identity. This indicated detailed strategic control in the absence of explicit learning.     

Fibroblast growth factor-2 alters the nature of extinction

These experiments examined the effects of the NMDA-receptor (NMDAr) antagonist MK801 on reacquisition and re-extinction of a conditioned fear that had been previously extinguished before injection of fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF2) or vehicle. Recent findings have shown that relearning and re-extinction, unlike initial learning and extinction, do not depend on NMDAr activation. Three experiments demonstrated that FGF2 prevents the switch from NMDAr-dependent to NMDAr-independent reacquisition and re-extinction, suggesting that FGF2 may lead to the partial erasure of the original fear memory. These findings add to a growing body of work suggesting that FGF2 may be a novel pharmacological enhancer of exposure therapy for humans with anxiety disorders.     

Motor inhibition associated with the affordance of briefly displayed objects

Research has demonstrated that left- and right-hand responses are facilitated when they are performed with the hand compatible with the orientation of a viewed object. This suggests that graspable objects automatically activate the motor representations that correspond to their orientation. It has recently been proposed that similar positive stimulus-response compatibility effects (PCE) may turn into negative compatibility effects (NCE) when a prime object is displayed very briefly. These NCEs are suggested to reflect motor inhibition mechanisms--motor activation triggered by briefly viewed objects may be treated by the motor system as unwanted, and thus it is rapidly inhibited. We examined whether the motor activation triggered by the orientation of a task-irrelevant object is similarly inhibited when the object is displayed briefly. In Experiment 1, a NCE was observed between the orientation of an object and the responding hand when the object was displayed for 30 or 70 ms. The effect turned into a PCE when the object was displayed for 370 ms. Experiment 2 confirmed that this motor inhibition effect was produced by the handle affordance of the object rather than some abstract visual properties of the object.     

Skulking around the dinosaur: Eliciting cues to children's deception via strategic disclosure of evidence

Research has shown that cues to deception are more salient as an effect of strategic use of evidence (SUE) during interviews. This study examined the feasibility of the SUE‐technique for eliciting cues to children's deception. Experiment 1 investigated verbal cues to deception as a function of early vs. late disclosure of evidence. Eighty‐four children (12–14 years) either guilty or innocent of a mock crime were interviewed. As predicted, deceptive statements were significantly more inconsistent with the evidence than truthful statements, and this was more pronounced as a function of late compared to early disclosure of evidence. In Experiment 2, adult observers (N = 168) made veracity assessments of the videotaped statements. Observers in the late disclosure condition achieved an accuracy rate higher than chance (63.1%), whereas accuracy rates in the early disclosure condition were at chance level (56%). Accuracy rates were significantly higher for truthful (70.2%), than deceptive statements (48.8%). Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.