The Role of Epistemic Style in Counseling Preference and Orientation

Recent work has suggested that philosophical commitments play a part in directing preferences for different types of counseling, and in this article the authors extend that work with a series of four studies. Study 1 provides partial support for the relationship between epistemic commitments (rational, empirical, or metaphorical) and preferences for particular types of counseling (behavioral, rational emotive, constructivist). Studies 2 and 3 extend these findings by noting differences in how individuals gather, process, and respond to self-relevant feedback as a result of epistemic style. Finally, Study 4 provides tentative support for the possibility that counselor trainees gravitate toward preferring counseling theories that are consistent with their own epistemic orientations. Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.     

Curriculum Making as the Enactment of Dwelling in Places

This article uses an account of dwelling to interrogate the concept of curriculum making. Tim Ingold??s use of dwelling to understand culture is productive here because of his implicit and explicit interest in intergenerational learning. His account of dwelling rests on a foundational ontological claim??that mental construction and representation are not the basis upon which we live in the world??which is very challenging for the kinds of curriculum making with which many educators are now familiar. It undermines assumptions of propositional knowledge and of the use of mental schemas to communicate and share. At the level of critique, then, dwelling destabilizes contemporary ideas of curriculum as textual, pre-specified content for transmission or pre-defined objectives or standardized activity. The positive claims of dwelling are equally challenging, for these are that the world is a domain of relational entanglement in which an organism can be no more than a point of growth for an emergent ??environment??, and meaning only inheres in these relations. The paper articulates how differentiation (of learner, salient meanings, knowledge, skill and place) are possible in such an ontology, and how curriculum making can be understood from this perspective as being the remaking of relationships between these.     

Integrating multiple perspectives on error-related brain activity: The ERN as a neural indicator of trait defensive reactivity

In the past 20 years, research concerning the error-related negativity (ERN), a negative-going deflection in the event-related brain potential (ERP) following an erroneous response, has flourished. Despite a substantial body of research, debate regarding its functional significance persists. In what follows, we selectively review literature on the ERN, and outline several prominent cognitive theories related to the generation and significance of the ERN. Cognitive theories predict that the size of the ERN should relate to variation in behavior, although there is substantial evidence that the ERN and behavioral measures are at least partially dissociable. Moreover, individual difference measures, psychopathology, and motivational factors all appear to impact basic mechanisms that generate the ERN to moderate the magnitude of the ERN, suggesting a need to integrate alternative perspectives into models of ERN amplitude. Insofar as errors prompt the mobilization of defensive responses, we view variation in the ERN in terms of error detection in the service of protecting the organism. Based on data indicating that the ERN is highly stable over time, heritable, and related to broad dimensions of personality, we propose that the ERN is a neural index of a neurobehavioral trait and variation in its amplitude is related in part to individual differences in defensive reactivity. Implications and future directions are considered.     

Conditioned stimulus informativeness governs conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus associability

In a conditioning protocol, the onset of the conditioned stimulus ([CS]) provides information about when to expect reinforcement (unconditioned stimulus [US]). There are two sources of information from the CS in a delay conditioning paradigm in which the CS-US interval is fixed. The first depends on the informativeness, the degree to which CS onset reduces the average expected time to onset of the next US. The second depends only on how precisely a subject can represent a fixed-duration interval (the temporal Weber fraction). In three experiments with mice, we tested the differential impact of these two sources of information on rate of acquisition of conditioned responding (CS-US associability). In Experiment 1, we showed that associability (the inverse of trials to acquisition) increased in proportion to informativeness. In Experiment 2, we showed that fixing the duration of the US-US interval or the CS-US interval or both had no effect on associability. In Experiment 3, we equated the increase in information produced by varying the C/T ratio with the increase produced by fixing the duration of the CS-US interval. Associability increased with increased informativeness, but, as in Experiment 2, fixing the CS-US duration had no effect on associability. These results are consistent with the view that CS-US associability depends on the increased rate of reward signaled by CS onset. The results also provide further evidence that conditioned responding is temporally controlled when it emerges.     

Unconscious priming of task sets: The role of spatial attention

Unconscious stimuli activate task sets, mental programs that orchestrate performance of complex tasks, but the role of attention in such effects has not been addressed. In previous studies, unconscious prime stimuli appeared at attended locations and were explicitly specified in the task instructions; spatial attention to the prime and/or a specific conscious attentional set may thus be required for such unconscious activation to arise. In the present experiments, a learning phase established associations between unconscious prime stimuli and performance of two tasks. These associations influenced task performance in a subsequent test phase, even though the primes were not specified in current task instructions. This is the first demonstration that unconscious stimuli can prime task sets independently of a current attentional set that specifies stimulus-task mappings. Such priming was not influenced by spatial attention cues, in contrast to clear attention influences in comparison trials that mimicked conditions employed by previous studies.     

Candidate characteristics driving initial impressions during rapport building: Implications for employment interview validity

We examine the antecedents impacting interviewers’ initial impressions of candidates formed during the rapport‐building stage of the interview and subsequent evaluations of answers to highly structured interview questions. Ratings for 130 mock interview candidates reveal a strong relationship between interviewers’ initial impression of the candidate and their evaluations of candidate responses to structured questions. These initial impressions correspond with candidate extraversion and verbal skill, controlling for job qualifications. Interviewers’ initial impressions mediate the effect of candidate characteristics, relevant for some jobs more so than others, on later evaluations. Thus, initial impressions formed during rapport building appear to influence subsequent evaluations whether they are clearly job‐relevant or not. These findings have important implications for the validity of structured interviews.     

Implicit learning of conjunctive rule sets: An alternative to artificial grammars

A single experiment is reported that investigated implicit learning using a conjunctive rule set applied to natural words. Participants memorized a training list consisting of words that were either rare-concrete and common-abstract or common-concrete and rare-abstract. At test, they were told of the rule set, but not told what it was. Instead, they were shown all four word types and asked to classify words as rule-consistent words or not. Participants classified the items above chance, but were unable to verbalize the rules, even when shown a list that included the categories that made up the conjunctive rule and asked to select them. Most participants identified familiarity as the reason for classifying the items as they did. An analysis of the materials demonstrated that conscious micro-rules (i.e., chunk knowledge) could not have driven performance. We propose that such materials offer an alternative to artificial grammar for studies of implicit learning.     

Blunted Flanker P300 Demonstrates Specificity to Depressive Symptoms in Females during Adolescence

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Recent research suggests that depressive disorders in adults are characterized by reductions in flanker P300 amplitude, and that a reduced flanker...