Asymmetric response time functions during left-/right-facing discriminations of rotated objects: The short and the long of it

When deciding if a rotated object would face to the left or to the right, if imagined at the upright, mental rotation is typically assumed to be carried out through the shortest angular distance to the upright prior to determining the direction of facing. However, the response time functions for left- and right-facing objects are oppositely asymmetric, which is not consistent with the standard explanation. Using Searle and Hamm’s individual differences adaption of Kung and Hamm’s Mixture Model, the current study compares the predicted response time functions derived when assuming that objects are rotated through the shortest route to the upright with the predicted response time functions derived when assuming that objects are rotated in the direction they face. The latter model provides a better fit to the majority of the individual data. This allows us to conclude that, when deciding if rotated objects would face to the left or to the right if imagined at the upright, mental rotation is carried out in the direction that the objects face and not necessarily in the shortest direction to the upright. By comparing results for mobile and immobile object sets we can also conclude that semantic information regarding the mobility of an object does not appear to influence the speed of mental rotation, but it does appear to influence pre-rotation processes and the likelihood of employing a mental rotation strategy.     

Impaired categorical perception of lexical tones in Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics

The degree to which cognitive resources are shared in the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones remains uncertain. Testing Mandarin amusics on their categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones may provide insight into this issue. In the present study, a group of 15 amusic Mandarin speakers identified and discriminated Mandarin tones presented as continua in separate blocks. The tonal continua employed were from a high-level tone to a mid-rising tone and from a high-level tone to a high-falling tone. The two tonal continua were made in the contexts of natural speech and of nonlinguistic analogues. In contrast to the controls, the participants with amusia showed no improvement for discrimination pairs that crossed the classification boundary for either speech or nonlinguistic analogues, indicating a lack of categorical perception. The lack of categorical perception of Mandarin tones in the amusic group shows that the pitch deficits in amusics may be domain-general, and this suggests that the processing of musical pitch and lexical tones may share certain cognitive resources and/or processes (Patel 2003, 2008, 2012).     

Assisting failure‐prone individuals to navigate achievement transitions using a cognitive motivation treatment (attributional retraining)

Transitions to novel achievement settings are often accompanied by unfamiliar learning conditions and unanticipated failure that undermine how individuals adapt to such situations. For first‐year students, the transition to college is imbued with adverse learning conditions that can result in decreased motivation and academic performance. This study examined the efficacy of a motivation‐enhancing treatment, attributional retraining (AR), to assist students who are at risk because of a high‐failure avoidance orientation (tendency to maintain self‐worth by avoiding failure). For high‐ (but not low) failure avoidance students, AR fostered an adaptive psychological mindset (course grade expectations, judgments of course responsibility) and better academic performance (course grade, grade point average). Findings suggest the utility of AR to offset the negative effects of a high‐failure avoidance self‐worth orientation.     

Discriminating Clinical From Nonclinical Manifestations of Test Anxiety: A Validation Study

Test anxiety, although being a very common, severe, and impairing psychological disorder, is not coded as a separate diagnosis in the DSM or ICD. In the present study we investigated whether the Test Anxiety Inventory can be used to discriminate clinical and subclinical levels of test anxiety by comparing patients who seek treatment for their test anxiety in an outpatient clinic with carefully matched students with normal test anxiety. The data from 47 test-anxious patients as well as 41 healthy university students were examined. Results show that a cutoff score of ≥ 80 in the Test Anxiety Inventory can discriminate the clinical group from the control students. The symptom pattern of test anxiety was very consistent in the clinical group regardless of the principal diagnosis allocated by the treating clinician. Comorbid depression did not affect the severity of test anxiety. The motivation to avoid failure was one of the most important differences between patients who sought help for their test anxiety and students with nonclinical levels of test anxiety.     

Motivation-focused thinking: Buffering against stress-related physical symptoms and depressive symptomology

Developmental transitions are experienced throughout the life course and necessitate adapting to consequential and unpredictable changes that can undermine health. Our six-month study (n = 239) explored whether selective secondary control striving (motivation-focused thinking) protects against the elevated levels of stress and depressive symptoms increasingly common to young adults navigating the challenging school-to-university transition. Path analyses supplemented with tests of moderated mediation revealed that, for young adults who face challenging obstacles to goal attainment, selective secondary control indirectly reduced long-term stress-related physical and depressive symptoms through selective primary control and previously unexamined measures of discrete emotions. Results advance the existing literature by demonstrating that (a) selective secondary control has health benefits for vulnerable young adults and (b) these benefits are largely a consequence of the process variables proposed in Heckhausen et al.’s (2010) theory.     

Attributional Retraining: A Motivation Treatment With Differential Psychosocial and Performance Benefits for Failure Prone Individuals in Competitive Achievement Settings

Our quasi-experimental, longitudinal treatment study examined whether Attributional Retraining (AR) facilitated adjustment among young adults (n = 324) making the challenging school-to-university transition. An AR by performance orientation group 2 × 4 design showed AR primarily benefited high-risk students: Failure-ruminators (high failure preoccupation, low perceived control) receiving AR reported higher intrinsic motivation and more adaptive attribution-related emotions than their no-AR peers. Failure-acceptors (low failure preoccupation, low perceived control) receiving AR had higher intrinsic motivation, higher grade point averages, and fewer course withdrawals than their no-AR counterparts. Thus, AR had differential benefits (emotions, achievement) for vulnerable students who were psychologically distinct.     

A model of rotated mirror/normal letter discriminations

Rotated mirror/normal letter discriminations are thought to require mental rotation in order to determine the direction of facing of the stimulus. The response time (RT) function over orientation tends to be curved, rather than the linear function found for other mental rotation tasks. The present study investigated the possibility that the curved RT function is a result of a mixture of trials requiring and not requiring mental rotation. The results suggested that the frequency of mental rotation is also a linear function of stimulus orientation. Moreover, the relationship between an individual's rate of plane rotation and the mean difference in RT between mirror and normal stimuli was replicated, supporting the suggestion that mirrored stimuli are flipped after they are spun (Hamm, Johnson, & Corballis, 2004). On the basis of the present findings, the entire RT function can be modeled by using only the mean RTs for upright and inverted stimuli.     

Supervision in the Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia: Awareness of and Mutual Reflection upon Fragmentation

Historical and newly emerging models of schizophrenia suggest it is a disorder characterized by the fragmentation of the experience of the self and the world, leading to the interruption of how a unique life is unfolding in the world. It has been proposed that psychotherapy might therefore promote recovery by facilitating the development of a greater ability to integrate information about the self and others. In this paper we explore how the supervision of a metacognitively-oriented psychotherapy can assist therapists to experience and conceptualize fragmentation within sessions, join patients in the gradual process of making sense of their psychiatric problems and life challenges, and ultimately envision and achieve recovery. Common challenges and responses within supervision are described and discussed.