Relationships between autistic-like and schizotypy traits: An analysis using the Autism Spectrum Quotient and Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences

To further investigate claims of a relationship between autism and schizophrenia, the current study examined the associations between specific dimensions of autistic-like and schizotypy traits. These traits were assessed using the Autism Spectrum Quotient and the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences. After using factor analysis to explore the dimensions of autistic-like and schizotypy traits represented in these measures in two separate groups of students (N₁ = 362, N₂ = 639), the relationships between these dimensions were examined. While the results are consistent with suggestions in the literature of an overlap in the interpersonal deficits associated with autism and schizophrenia, they offer little support for Crespi and Badcock’s (2008) claim that autism and positive schizophrenia are diametrically opposed disorders.     

Demonstrating and eliminating the aggregation effect in physical skill tasks

Confidence judgments can be elicited in multiple ways. One of these procedures is to provide confidence judgments regarding each of a number of cases (individual judgments). A second procedure is to provide confidence judgments about a set of items (an aggregate judgment). Much research has demonstrated an aggregation effect—that individual judgments are more confident than aggregate judgments—within the cognitive knowledge domain. However, this effect has not previously been investigated with physical performance skill tasks. In three experiments, participants gave individual and aggregate judgments regarding the number of successful tosses they would make in either a ring toss, ping‐pong toss, or basketball toss task. In keeping with the aggregation effect, individual judgments were more confident than were aggregate judgments of success. Additionally, we eliminated the aggregation effect in Experiments 2 and 3 by employing a case‐specific base rate manipulation. Consistent with previous research with cognitive tasks, these results suggest that individual confidence judgments for physical skill tasks are determined primarily by characteristics associated with the individual case to be judged, whereas aggregate confidence judgments are determined by a more general evaluation of one's ability in the domain. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intraclass correlation associated with therapists: estimates and applications in planning psychotherapy research

It is essential that outcome research permit clear conclusions to be drawn about the efficacy of interventions. The common practice of nesting therapists within conditions can pose important methodological challenges that affect interpretation, particularly if the study is not powered to account for the nested design. An obstacle to the optimal design of these studies is the lack of data about the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), which measures the statistical dependencies introduced by nesting. To begin the development of a public database of ICC estimates, the authors investigated ICCs for a variety outcomes reported in 20 psychotherapy outcome studies. The magnitude of the 495 ICC estimates varied widely across measures and studies. The authors provide recommendations regarding how to select and aggregate ICC estimates for power calculations and show how researchers can use ICC estimates to choose the number of patients and therapists that will optimize power. Attention to these recommendations will strengthen the validity of inferences drawn from psychotherapy studies that nest therapists within conditions.     

Managing and creating an image in the interview: the role of interviewee initial impressions

In employment interviews, individuals use impression management tactics to present themselves as suitable candidates to interviewers. However, not all impression management tactics, or the interviewees who employ them, are effective at positively influencing interview scores. Results of this study indicate that the relationship between impression management tactic usage and interview success is contingent on the type of tactic employed. Specifically, self-promotion was found to have a positive relationship (r = .20) and slight (r = -.11) and extensive (r = -.19) image creation were found to have negative relationships with end-of-interview scores. Further, the relationships between these 3 impression management tactics were moderated by interviewees' initial impressions of the interview (ΔR2 ranged from .04 to .10). Interviewees who perceived they were seen as less suitable during rapport building were more effective when using any of the 3 impression management tactics.     

Use of Gilliam Asperger's disorder scale in differentiating high and low functioning autism and ADHD

Little is known about the validity of Gilliam Asperger's Disorder Scale (GADS), although it is widely used. This study of 199 children with high functioning autism or Asperger's disorder, 195 with low functioning autism, and 83 with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) showed high classification accuracy (autism vs. ADHD) for clinicians' GADS Quotients (92%), and somewhat lower accuracy (77%) for parents' Quotients. Both children with high and low functioning autism had clinicians' Quotients (M=99 and 101, respectively) similar to the Asperger's Disorder mean of 100 for the GADS normative sample. Children with high functioning autism scored significantly higher on the cognitive patterns subscale than children with low functioning autism, and the latter had higher scores on the remaining subscales: social interaction, restricted patterns of behavior, and pragmatic skills. Using the clinicians' Quotient and Cognitive Patterns score, 70% of children were correctly identified as having high or low functioning autism or ADHD.     

Peer-based control in self-managing teams: linking rational and normative influence with individual and group performance

The authors use a multilevel framework to introduce peer-based control as a motivational state that emerges in self-managing teams. The authors specifically describe how peer-based rational control, which is defined as team members perceiving the distribution of economic rewards as dependent on input from teammates, extends and interacts with the more commonly studied normative control force of group cohesion to explain both individual and collective performance in teams. On the basis of data from 587 factory workers in 45 self-managing teams at 3 organizations, peer-based rational control corresponded with higher performance for both individuals and collective teams. Results further demonstrated that the rational and normative mechanism of peer-based control interacted to explain performance at both the individual and team levels. Increased peer-based rational control corresponded with higher individual and collective performance in teams with low cohesion, but the positive effects on performance were attenuated in cohesive teams.     

Managing motivational conflict: How self-esteem and executive resources influence self-regulatory responses to risk

This article explores how self-esteem and executive resources interact to determine responses to motivational conflict. One correlational and 3 experimental studies investigated the hypothesis that high and low self-esteem people undertake different self-regulatory strategies in "risky" situations that afford opportunity to pursue competing goals and that carrying out these strategies requires executive resources. When such resources are available, high self-esteem people respond to risk by prioritizing and pursuing approach goals, whereas low self-esteem people prioritize avoidance goals. However, self-esteem does not influence responses to risk when executive resources are impaired. In these studies, risk was operationalized by exposing participants to a relationship threat (Studies 1 and 2), by using participants' self-reported marital conflict (Study 3), and by threatening academic competence (Study 4). Executive resources were operationalized as cognitive load (Studies 1 and 2), working memory capacity (Study 3), and resource depletion (Study 4). When executive resources were ample, high self-esteem people responded to interpersonal risk by making more positive relationship evaluations (Studies 1, 2, and 3) and making more risky social comparisons following a personal failure (Study 4) than did low self-esteem people. Self-esteem did not predict participants' responses when executive resources were impaired or when risk was absent. The regulatory function of self-esteem may be more resource-dependent than has been previously theorized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

The effects of emotion and encoding strategy on associative memory

Research has demonstrated that when discrete pieces of information are integrated together at encoding-imagining two items together as a single entity, for example-there is a mnemonic benefit for their relationship. A separate body of literature has indicated that the presence of emotional information can have an impact on the binding of associated neutral details, in some cases facilitating associative binding (MacKay et al. Memory and Cognition 32:474-488, 2004; Mather, Perspectives on Psychological Science 2:33-52, 2007), and in other cases impeding the processing of associated details (Easterbrook, Psychological Review 66:183-201, 1959; Kensinger, Emotion Review 1:99-113, 2009). In the present experiments, we investigated how memory for neutral words is affected by the emotionality of the information with which they are presented (whether with an emotional word or a second neutral word) and the encoding context (integrated or nonintegrated strategy). Participants viewed word pairs and were instructed to visualize the items as an integrated unit or to visualize them separately from one another. The results of Experiment 1 showed a disproportionate mnemonic benefit for neutral items that were integrated with other neutral items over those integrated with emotional items. The results of Experiments 2A and 2B showed that this effect interacted with encoding time: When given 2?s to encode, participants showed no effect of integration on memory for neutral-neutral pairs, but showed a significant mnemonic benefit for integrating emotional-neutral pairs. When given 4 or 6?s, the integrative benefit increased significantly for neutral-neutral pairs but decreased for emotional-neutral pairs. These results suggest that creating an integrated mental image of two neutral items requires a more time-consuming process than integrating an emotional and a neutral item, but that extra effort may result in a downstream mnemonic benefit.