Focalism: a source of durability bias in affective forecasting

The durability bias, the tendency to overpredict the duration of affective reactions to future events, may be due in part to focalism, whereby people focus too much on the event in question and not enough on the consequences of other future events. If so, asking people to think about other future activities should reduce the durability bias. In Studies 1-3, college football fans were less likely to overpredict how long the outcome of a football game would influence their happiness if they first thought about how much time they would spend on other future activities. Studies 4 and 5 ruled out alternative explanations and found evidence for a distraction interpretation, that people who think about future events moderate their forecasts because they believe that these events will reduce thinking about the focal event. The authors discuss the implications of focalism for other literatures, such as the planning fallacy.     

Guided and unguided self-help for binge eating

This study compared the relative short- and longer-term efficacy of therapist-guided and unguided use of a cognitive behavioral self-help manual for binge eating [Fairburn, C. G. (1995). Overcome binge eating. New York: The Guilford Press.] Forty women (82.5% with binge eating disorder) were randomized to one of the two treatment levels. Results indicate that both conditions represent viable means of treating binge eating. Overall, patients improved their eating behavior, eliminated any inappropriate compensatory behaviors, reduced their shape concern, weight concern, and other symptoms of eating-related psychopathology, and improved their general psychological functioning. The guided self-help condition was notably superior in reducing the occurrence of binge eating and its associated symptomatology, as well as lowering interpersonal sensitivity. A high degree of general psychopathology was a negative prognostic indicator. The implications for a stepped-care approach to treating binge eating are discussed.     

Cognitive functioning after medial frontal lobe damage including the anterior cingulate cortex: a preliminary investigation

Two patients with medial frontal lobe damage involving the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) performed a range of cognitive tasks, including tests of executive function and anterior attention. Both patients lesions extended beyond the ACC, therefore caution needs to be exerted in ascribing observed deficits to the ACC alone. Patient performance was compared with age and education matched healthy controls. Both patients showed intact intellectual, memory, and language abilities. No clear-cut abnormalities were noted in visuoperceptual functions. Speed of information processing was mildly reduced only in Patient 2 (bilateral ACC lesion). The patients demonstrated weak or impaired performance only on selective executive function tests. Performance on anterior attention tasks was satisfactory. We tentatively suggest that our findings are inconsistent with anterior attention theories of ACC function based on neuroimaging findings. We propose that the data may imply that the ACC does not have a central role in cognition. We speculate that our findings may be compatible with the view that the ACC integrates cognitive processing with autonomic functioning to guide behaviour.