The role of urgency and its underlying psychological mechanisms in problematic behaviours

The urgency facet of impulsivity, that is, the tendency to act rashly in response to intense emotional contexts [Cyders, M. A., & Smith, G. T. (2008). Emotion-based dispositions to rash action: positive and negative urgency. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 807-828], has been related to a wide range of maladaptive behaviours. The present study further investigates the role of urgency in problematic behaviours by considering distinct psychological mechanisms that may underlie this component of impulsivity. With this aim, 95 volunteer participants were screened with self-reported questionnaires assessing urgency and three problematic behaviours (compulsive buying, excessive mobile phone use, excessive Internet use). They performed two laboratory tasks: a stop-signal task designed to assess the capacity to inhibit prepotent responses in response to both neutral and emotional stimuli; and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) measuring the ability to take into account the future consequences of an action. A poor ability to inhibit prepotent responses in the emotional condition of the stop-signal task was found to predict more disadvantageous choices in the IGT, which ultimately results in higher urgency and more problematic behaviours. These findings shed new light on the construct of urgency, its related psychological mechanisms, and its role in problematic behaviours.     

Working memory capacity and go/no-go task performance: selective effects of updating, maintenance, and inhibition

The ability to temporarily maintain information in order to successfully perform a task is important in many daily activities. However, the ability to quickly and accurately update existing mental representations in distracting situations is also imperative in many of these same circumstances. In the current studies, individuals varying in working memory capacity (WMC) performed different varieties of go/no-go tasks that have been hypothesized to measure inhibitory ability. The results indicated that low-WMC individuals relative to high-WMC individuals showed worse performance specifically in certain conditions of the conditional go/no-go task. Further analyses showed that increasing the temporal lag/number of intervening items between the previous target and the current lure had a deleterious effect on the performance of the low-WMC group only. The results indicate a relationship between WMC and the ability to selectively update, maintain, and retrieve information, especially in interference-rich conditions.     

Moral black‐ and whitemail

‘Moral Black‐ and Whitemail’ is a study of those modes of action which involve what I propose to call ‘a raising of the moral stakes’. Illustration: A wants B to do X, and B wants to do Y; so A creates a situation in which doing Y would either be morally objectionable or more objectionable than it would have been but for A's intervention. Such modes of action include all the varieties of moral blackmail as well as such practices as those of returning good for evil, putting people on trust, and some kinds of non‐violent resistance. I try to expose the distinguishing marks of moral blackmail, why it is thought so objectionable, and how it is related to these other practices that also involve a raising of the moral stakes. The study as a whole is intended to underline the ambiguous nature of human action.     

The word-frequency paradox for recall/recognition occurs for pictures

A yes-no recognition task and two recall tasks were conducted using pictures of high and low familiarity ratings. Picture familiarity had analogous effects to word frequency, and replicated the word-frequency paradox in recall and recognition. Low-familiarity pictures were more recognizable than high-familiarity pictures, pure lists of high-familiarity pictures were more recallable than pure lists of low-familiarity pictures, and there was no effect of familiarity for mixed lists. These results are consistent with the predictions of the Search of Associative Memory (SAM) model.     

Fragmenting pictures on the apple macintosh computer for experimental and clinical applications

A set of procedures implemented in Microsoft BASIC is described that creates fragmented versions of pictures scanned into the Apple Macintosh, stores them as resource files, and presents them in a computerized perceptual memory test. A total of 150 pictures were selected from the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) set for fragmentation. The perceptual memory test provides for five forms of 30 pictures each, divided into two sets of 15 that serve alternately as the training or old set and the new set. A training set of 15 pictures is presented for identification during the first (training) phase of the test. The second (test) phase presents the training pictures again, randomly mixed with 15 new pictures for identification. The performance of 100 subjects on the memory test is presented, along with results for each form. Overall, subjects showed improvement on the task with practice (skill learning), indexed by a decrease in thresholds from the training set to the new set. Subjects also showed large savings for the repeated pictures (perceptual learning), indexed by a decrease in thresholds from the new to the old set.     

Developmental picture norms: Relationships between name agreement,familiarity, and visual complexity for child and adult ratings of two sets of line drawings

Developmental differences in name agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity in response to line drawings of common objects were obtained from children and adults. Sixty-one pictures were taken from the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised and 259 pictures were taken from the set normed for adults by Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980). Although there were some differences between the two sets of pictures, the present results replicated the relative independence of these three measures, which was reported by Snodgrass and Vanderwart for adults. Children and adults showed substantial agreement on the names of the pictures. Although the children’s ratings were lower on all measures, the differences were trivial for most pictures. We concluded that judgments of familiarity, complexity, and the names of line drawings of common objects are based primarily on information processing accomplished prior to age 7.     

Observing interactions of abusive and nonabusive dyads: Information extracted by accurate and inaccurate judges

This study describes the reported observations of protective services workers who varied in the accuracy with which they could discriminate abusive from nonabusive mother-child interactions. Participants viewed videotapes of two abusive and two nonabusive dyads. They noted behaviors that suggested an abusive history and behaviors that suggested a nonabusive history for each dyad. Comparisons of more and less accurate judges indicated that accurate judges observed more evidence for abuse when the dyad actually was abusive. The informational advantage of experts was not limited to detecting interactional difficulties in abusive dyads; they also reported observations of more favorable behaviors of nonabusive dyads. Highly accurate judges were more likely to observe communication patterns, task oriented behavior, and other-directed behaviors than were less accurate judges. These findings suggest that specific information-processing factors may vary with clinical expertise.We wish to acknowledge the Dade County, Florida, Department of Human Services for assistance in obtaining videotapes of abusive dyads, the Mailman Center for Child Development for referring nonabusive dyads, the Colorado State Department of Social Services, and Protective Services workers from the Arapahoe, Denver, Jefferson, and Adams County departments of Social Services. Data were collected currently with data collected for a master's thesis by the third author.     

Some effects of the Edinburgh Masker on stuttering during oral reading and spontaneous speech

This study assessed the effect of a voice-activated masking unit, known as the Edinburgh Masker, on the speech of four stutterers during oral reading and spontaneous speech. The results show that one stutterer reduced stuttering almost completely whenever the masker was activated. Two subjects showed either marginal or temporary reductions of stuttering during one speaking condition but showed no change in the other condition. The other subject reduced stuttering only during spontaneous speech. No reduction in stuttering was associated with reduced speech rate. A perceptual analysis procedure conducted to assess for altered speech quality during masking conditions found changes in speech quality were evident in two subjects. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Knowledge of one's own responding and the relation of such knowledge to learning: A developmental study

First-, third-, fifth-grade children, and college students (ages 6, 8, 10, and 19 years) acquired a paired-associate list under the study-test procedure to a one error-less trial criterion. In addition, as each pair was presented the individual indicated whether he/she had that pair correct on the immediately preceding trial (postdiction responses). The data were interpreted in terms of a discrimination-utilization hypothesis which postulates that individuals discriminate their own correct and incorrect responses on a given trial and use this information for distributing processing effort on the subsequent trial. Analyses involving the accuracy of postdiction responses, the relation of postdiction accuracy to acquisition, and the consideration of the acquisition data in terms of a two-stage model led to the conclusion that older children and adults may use the discrimination-utilization strategy but younger children tend not to use it, probably because of both mediation and production deficiencies.