Resiliency,Self-Regulation,and Reemployment After Job Loss

This study investigated self-regulation and resiliency in one's search for reemployment. Although trait-based approaches are central to many resiliency conceptualizations, recent research has found that self-regulation (affective, behavioral, and cognitive) contributes to predicting resiliency-related outcomes. We hypothesized that self-regulation would incrementally predict reemployment process outcomes, specifically the job search outcomes of psychological well-being, job search self-efficacy, and job search clarity. Results indicated that, over and above resiliency traits, behavioral and cognitive self-regulation incrementally predicted well-being and job search clarity, and cognitive self-regulation incrementally predicted job search self-efficacy. Implications for theory and continued research on resiliency in reemployment are discussed.     

Improvements to Suicide Prevention Training for Prison Staff in England and Wales

Suicide prevention training for the prison service in England and Wales has been criticized. STORM is a package emphasizing the practice and review of interactions with suicidal persons and was evaluated in a pilot study for use in prisons. Trainees completed questionnaires immediately before and after training and at 6 to 8 months follow‐up. Training significantly improved attitudes, knowledge, and confidence, and improvements were maintained at follow‐up. Satisfaction with training was very high. STORM was successfully adapted for prison settings, and showed good effects among staff trained. It should be provided to the wider prison estate, with regular refresher training.     

How are pictures registered in memory?

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that pictorial memory is much less dependent on rehearsal than is verbal memory. Experiment I examined incidental learning since this is assumed to reflect learning with little or no rehearsal. Following a classification task, intentional and incidental learning for pictures and for words was compared. The superiority of pictorial memory was especially marked in incidental learning. Experiment II showed that this result was not due to differences in the amount of processing required to classify pictures and words. RTs to classify words and pictures did not differ, and incidental learning was again superior for pictures. In Experiment III rehearsal opportunity was restricted by a concurrent task during presentation of word and picture lists, and the decrement was very much greater for word learning than for picture learning. It was concluded that manipulation of rehearsal opportunity has relatively little effect on pictorial memory.     

Perceptual Load Induces Inattentional Blindness in Drivers

Perceptual load theory states that the level of perceptual load in a task predicts the processing of task‐irrelevant information. High perceptual load has been shown to result in increased inattentional blindness; however, there is little evidence that this extends beyond artificial computer‐based tasks to real‐world behavior. In this study, we adapted a typical load‐blindness paradigm for use in a driving simulator. Forty‐two drivers performed a series of gap perception tasks where they judged if their vehicle could fit between two parked vehicles, with the task imposing either low or high perceptual load. Awareness for an unexpected pedestrian or animal at the side of the road was found to be significantly lower in the high perceptual load condition. This study is the first to demonstrate perceptual load effects on awareness in an applied setting and has important implications for road safety and future applied research on the perceptual load model.Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Testing joint attention, imitation, and play as infancy precursors to language and theory of mind

Various theoretical accounts propose that an important developmental relation exists between joint attention, play, and imitation abilities, and later theory of mind ability. However, very little direct empirical evidence supports these claims for putative “precursor” theory of mind status. A small sample (N=13) of infants, for whom measures of play, joint attention, and imitation had been collected at 20 months of age, was followed-up longitudinally at 44 months and a battery of theory of mind measures was conducted. Language and IQ were measured at both timepoints. Imitation ability at 20 months was longitudinally associated with expressive, but not receptive, language ability at 44 months. In contrast, only the joint attention behaviours of gaze switches between an adult and an active toy and looking to an adult during an ambiguous goal detection task at 20 months were longitudinally associated with theory of mind ability at 44 months. It is argued that joint attention, play, and imitation, and language and theory of mind, might form part of a shared social–communicative representational system in infancy that becomes increasingly specialised and differentiated as development progresses.     

Reduced adaptability,but no fundamental disruption,of norm‐based face coding following early visual deprivation from congenital cataracts

Faces are adaptively coded relative to visual norms that are updated by experience, and this adaptive coding is linked to face recognition ability. Here we investigated whether adaptive coding of faces is disrupted in individuals (adolescents and adults) who experience face recognition difficulties following visual deprivation from congenital cataracts in infancy. We measured adaptive coding using face identity aftereffects, where smaller aftereffects indicate less adaptive updating of face‐coding mechanisms by experience. We also examined whether the aftereffects increase with adaptor identity strength, consistent with norm‐based coding of identity, as in typical populations, or whether they show a different pattern indicating some more fundamental disruption of face‐coding mechanisms. Cataract‐reversal patients showed significantly smaller face identity aftereffects than did controls (Experiments 1 and 2). However, their aftereffects increased significantly with adaptor strength, consistent with norm‐based coding (Experiment 2). Thus we found reduced adaptability but no fundamental disruption of norm‐based face‐coding mechanisms in cataract‐reversal patients. Our results suggest that early visual experience is important for the normal development of adaptive face‐coding mechanisms.