Life review therapy using autobiographical retrieval practice for older adults with depressive symptomatology

The aim of this study was to examine the efficacy of life review based on autobiographical retrieval practice for treating depressed older adults. Forty-three adults aged 65-93 with clinically significant depressive symptomatology and no dementia were randomly assigned to treatment or to no treatment. The results indicated significant differences between experimental and control groups after 4 weeks of autobiographical retrieval practice. At posttest, those in the treatment condition showed fewer depressive symptoms, less hopelessness, improved life satisfaction, and retrieval of more specific events. The findings suggest that practice in autobiographical memory for specific events may be among the components of life review that account for its effectiveness and could be a useful tool in psychotherapy with older adults.     

Self regulation processes measurement through self-report methodology

Nowadays the evaluation of self-regulated learning processes is having a critical time due to the problems concerning the assessment instruments. This paper presents the outcomes of a research study having a main goal: evaluate to what extent student's consciousness of his/her own self-regulated learning and study processes (and the involved strategies and activities) has a significant impact on the quality of his/her answers on self-report type instruments. In order to prove this hypothesis an experimental study was designed and built including a pre and a post-test, having no control group, using a sample of 90 college students from different degree courses. The intervention program lasted 45 hours, divided into 8 work sessions of 5 hours each. The developed work included both theoretical and practical tasks dealing with strategies and activities involved in the self-regulated learning and study processes. The results show that the collected data using a self-report instrument is much more significant and accurate after the intervention program has taken place and that the intervention greatly improves the obtained information using these kind of instruments.     

Success in chess mediated by mental molds

Research has revealed the impact of cognitive-affective strategies (Molds of the Mind) on subjective well-being, interpersonal relationships, or school achievement. However, it seems odd that such strategies could influence the success of chess players, because this game is usually considered to be influenced mainly by technical and cognitive skills. To examine the influence of cognitive-affective molds, 53 chess players, ages from 9 to 16 years old, enrolled in sport competitions, were assigned to two groups, high and low success. They responded to the MOLDES, designed to evaluate individuals' molds. The results show that the "Mental Molds" of the most successful players are more realistic, positive and regulators of the emotions, while the molds of the less successful players are more evasive, magical, defensive and inoperative.     

The Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11 Among a School Sample of Portuguese Male and Female Adolescents

Few personality traits are as socially relevant as impulsivity, but few self-report measures have been specifically developed for adolescents and children. The aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale version 11 (BIS-11) among a mixed-gender sample of 782 Portuguese youth (M = 15.87 years; SD = 1.72), in a school context. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed the expected 6-factor first-order structure, but the 3-factor second-order factorial structure did not present a good fit. Cross-gender measurement invariance was demonstrated only in terms of weak invariance. Nonetheless, the Portuguese adaptation of the BIS-11 demonstrated some generally acceptable psychometric properties of internal consistency, mean inter-item correlation, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and criterion-related validity of statistically significant associations with conduct disorder symptoms, alcohol abuse, drug use, and unprotected sex. The use of the BIS-11 among the male and female youth population is psychometrically justified, and it can be a useful measure to identify impulsive adolescents who are at considerable risk of personal injury and present a potential source of injury to others.     

Social stimuli increase physiological reactivity but not defensive responses

Emotional reactions are crucial in survival because they provide approach and withdrawal behaviors. However, an unsolved question is whether the social content of the affective stimuli has a specific effect on emotional responses. We studied whether the social content of affective pictures influenced the defensive response and response mobilization. For this purpose, we recorded startle blink reflex (a defensive response) and skin conductance responses (a measure of unspecific physiological reactivity or arousal) in 73 participants while they viewed a series of 81 pictures of varying affective valence and social content. Our results revealed that defense response, as indicated by increases in the magnitude of the startle blink reflex, was mainly dependent on threatening or unpleasant cues, but was unrelated to the social content of the pictures. The social content, however, had an influence on pleasant stimuli, provoking an increase in resource mobilization, as reflected by changes in electrodermal activity. Hence, the social content of the affective stimuli may increase the physiological arousal elicited by pleasant stimuli, and it appears to be unrelated to the defense reactivity provoked by unpleasant stimuli.     

Reaction time normative data for the IAPS as a function of display time, gender, and picture content

This study aimed to extend the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2005) norms by obtaining reaction time (RT) normative data for 308 selected photographs. Pictures were presented one at a time for 33, 100, or 250 msec, or under free-time display, to 96 women and 48 men. The participants’ task involved assessing the emotional valence of each picture and responding as quickly as possible as to whether it was unpleasant, neutral, or pleasant. RTs provided an index of processing efficiency. The manipulation of display time served to estimate the time course in the valence identification of each picture. Some categories of depicted scenes (e.g., erotica and mutilations) were classified more consistently and efficiently than were others as pleasant or unpleasant. There were minimal differences between men and women. Overall, the present data provide researchers investigating cognition/emotion relationships with an objective criterion to select pictorial stimuli on the basis of RTs. Data for all pictures may be downloaded from brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Psychometric Properties and Measurement Invariance of the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory - Short Version among Portuguese Youth

This study aimed to examine the psychometric properties of the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory - Short version (YPI-S) among a mixed-gender sample of 782 Portuguese youth (M = 15.87 years; SD = 1.72) collected in a school context. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis offered support for the expected 3-factor structure. Partial cross-gender measurement invariance and cross-sample measurement invariance of the YPI-S using a forensic sample of institutionalized males was established. The Portuguese version of the YPI-S showed adequate psychometric properties in terms of internal consistency, mean inter-item correlation, corrected item-total correlation, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. In support for criterion-related validity, the YPI-S also showed statistically significant associations with self-reported conduct disorder symptoms, alcohol abuse, and drug use. In terms of known-groups validity, males from the school sample scored lower than males from the forensic sample and higher than females from the school sample. The YPI-S seems to be a valuable brief and psychometrically reliable and valid self-report measure, which can be used to assess psychopathic traits in diverse samples of youth.     

Evaluating Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for psychological research on the symbolic control of attention

The use of online crowdsourcing services like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (AMT) as a method of collecting behavioral data online has become increasingly popular in recent years. A growing body of contemporary research has empirically validated the use of AMT as a tool in psychological research by replicating a wide range of well-established effects that have been previously reported in controlled laboratory studies. However, the potential for AMT to be used to conduct spatial cuing experiments has yet to be investigated in depth. Spatial cuing tasks are typically very basic in terms of their stimulus complexity and experimental testing procedures, thus making them ideal for remote testing online that requires minimal task instruction. Studies employing the spatial cuing paradigm are typically aimed at unveiling novel facets of the symbolic control of attention, which occurs whenever observers orient their attention through space in accordance with the meaning of a spatial cue. Ultimately, the present study empirically validated the use of AMT to study the symbolic control of attention by successfully replicating four hallmark effects reported throughout the visual attention literature: the left/right advantage, cue type effect, cued axis effect, and cued endpoint effect. Various recommendations for future endeavors using AMT as a means of remotely collecting behavioral data online are also provided. In sum, the present study provides a crucial first step toward establishing a novel tool for conducting psychological research that can be used to expedite not only our own scientific contributions, but also those of our colleagues.     

Interference between cues requires a causal scenario: Favorable evidence for causal reasoning models in learning processes

In an interference-between-cues design (IbC), the expression of a learned Cue A–Outcome 1 association has been shown to be impaired if another cue, B, is separately paired with the same outcome in a second learning phase. The present study examined whether IbC could be caused by associative mechanisms independent of causal reasoning processes. This was achieved by testing participants in two different learning situations. In the Causal Scenario condition, participants learned in a diagnostic situation in which a common cause (Outcome 1) caused two disjoint effects, namely Cues A and B. In the Non-Causal Scenario condition, the same IbC design and stimulus conditions were used. However, instructions provided no causal frame to make sense of how cues and outcomes were related. IbC was only found in the Causal Scenario condition. This result is consistent with Causal Reasoning Models of causal learning and raises important difficulties for associative explanations of IbC.