An Attributional Model Applied to Health Behaviour Change

Weiner's (1986) attributional model was adapted to a study of health behaviour change among hospital workers (N=102). It was predicted that, following success or failure, attributions would influence affective reactions and efficacy expectation, which in turn would influence intention, which in turn would influence subsequent performance. In year 1 and year 2, subjects rated their current performance, efficacy expectation, and intention to perform each of ten behaviours. In year 2, they indicated whether they had succeeded or failed in relation to each year 1 intention. They selected their greatest success and their greatest failure, and for both of these completed measures of attributions and affective reactions. In regression analyses, attributional dimensions did predict affective reactions, efficacy (in the failure condition), and intention (in the success condition). However, many of the specific associations were not what Weiner's model would hypothesize. The personal controllability dimension was particularly prominent as a predictor. Also of note were the interactive effects of attributional dimensions, always involving the stability dimension.     

Searching for faces in crowd chokepoint videos

Investigations of face identification have typically focussed on matching faces to photographic IDs. Few researchers have considered the task of searching for a face in a crowd. In Experiment 1, we created the Chokepoint Search Test to simulate real-time search for a target. Performance on this test was poor (39% accuracy) and showed moderate associations with tests of face matching and memory. In addition, trial-level confidence predicted accuracy, and for those participants who were previously familiar with one or more targets, higher familiarity was associated with increased accuracy. In Experiment 2, we found improvements in performance on the test when three recent images of the target, but not three social media images, were displayed during searches. Taken together, our results highlight the difficulties inherent in real-time searching for faces, with important implications for those security personnel who carry out this task on a daily basis.     

Spatial and temporal contributions to the structure of spatial memory.

Three experiments investigated the effects of spatial and temporal contiguity in item recognition, location judgment, and distance estimation tasks. Ss learned the locations of object names in spatial arrays, which were divided into 2 regions. The names of locations were presented during map learning so that critical pairs appeared close in space and close in time, close in space but far in time, far in space but close in time, and far in space and far in time. Names primed each other in recognition only when they were neighbors in both space and time. In contrast, the effects of spatial and temporal contiguity in priming in location judgments were additive. Finally, temporal contiguity affected estimates of Euclidean distance when locations were close together, but not when they were far apart.     

Practice with anxiety improves performance,but only when anxious: evidence for the specificity of practice hypothesis

We investigated for the first time whether the principles of specificity could be extended to the psychological construct of anxiety and whether any benefits of practicing with anxiety are dependent on the amount of exposure and timing of that exposure in relation to where in learning the exposure occurs. In Experiment 1, novices practiced a discrete golf-putting task in one of four groups: all practice trials under anxiety (anxiety), non-anxiety (control), or a combination of these two (i.e., the first half of practice under anxiety before changing to non-anxiety conditions, anxiety-control, or the reverse of this, control-anxiety). Following acquisition, all groups were transferred to an anxiety condition. Results revealed a significant acquisition-to-transfer decrement in performance between acquisition and transfer for the control group only. In Experiment 2, novices practiced a complex rock climbing task in one of the four groups detailed above, before being transferred to both a high-anxiety condition and a low-anxiety condition (the ordering of these was counterbalanced across participants). Performance in anxiety transfer was greater following practice with anxiety compared to practice without anxiety. However, these benefits were influenced by the timing of anxiety exposure since performance was greatest when exposure to anxiety occurred in the latter half of acquisition. In the low-anxiety transfer test, performance was lowest for those who had practiced with anxiety only, thus providing support for the specificity of practice hypothesis. Results demonstrate that the specificity of learning principle can be extended to include the psychological construct of anxiety. Furthermore, the specificity advantage appears dependent on its timing in the learning process.     

The effect of state anxiety on the online and offline control of fast target-directed movements

In target-directed aiming, afferent information is used to adjust limb trajectories during movement execution (i.e. online) and to enhance the programming of subsequent trials (i.e. offline). The objective of the present study was to determine the influence of state anxiety on both online and offline afferent information processing for the first time. Participants practiced either a directional aiming task (Experiment 1) or an amplitude aiming task (Experiment 2) without anxiety before being transferred to a high anxiety condition. In both experiments, results revealed that anxiety resulted in a decrement in performance. Furthermore, use of afferent information to adjust movement trajectories online was disrupted when movements were performed with anxiety, whereas there were no differences in the offline processing of afferent information between the low anxiety and high anxiety conditions.     

The coleman roberts griffith address: Three myths about applied consultancy work

Abstract

Three recommendations that are commonly made in the applied sport psychology literature are discussed. These three recommendations are : 1) cognitive anxiety is always detrimental to performance and should therefore be reduced whenever possible; 2) outcome goals and ego orientations have a detrimental effect on a number performance-related variables. so that performers should be encouraged to set performance rather than outcome goals; 3) internal visual imagery is more beneficial to performance than external visual imagery. so performers should always be encouraged to use visual imagery from an internal perspective. For each of these recommendations. empirical and experiential evidence is presented which challenges the recommendation. Alternative refinements to the recommendations are discussed.     

Influence of Perspective of Action Observation Training on Residual Limb Control in Naïve Prosthesis Usage

Prior work in amputees and partial limb immobilization have shown improved neural and behavioral outcomes in using their residual limb with prosthesis when undergoing observation-based training with a prosthesis-using actor compared to an intact limb. It was posited that these improvements are due to an alignment of user with the actor. It may be affected by visual angles that allow emphasis of critical joint actions which may promote behavioral changes. The purpose of this study was to examine how viewing perspective of observation-based training effects prosthesis adaptation in naïve device users. Twenty nonamputated prosthesis users learned how to use an upper extremity prosthetic device while viewing a training video from either a sagittal or coronal perspective. These views were chosen as they place visual emphasis on different aspects of task performance to the device. The authors found that perspective of actions has a significant role in adaptation of the residual limb while using upper limb prostheses. Perspectives that demonstrate elbow adaptations to prosthesis usage may enhance the functional motor outcomes of action observation therapy. This work has potential implications on how prosthetic device operation is conveyed to persons adapting to prostheses through action observation based therapy.     

The Rabkin Test as a Means of Detecting and Analyzing Defective Color Vision

This study investigated the attentional and mental-set conditions which determine the acquisition and use of memory schema cues. Ninety male and female undergraduate Ss listened to and shadowed the Bransford-Johnson “washing clothes” paragraph under a variety of conditions defined by cue placement (before or during shadowing), attentional mental set (told of relation of cue to passage, or not told), and modality of cue (given visually or auditorily). It was found that cue placement and cue modality had no effect on subsequent recall of the passage, but that attentional mental set did. It was argued that the data supported a model of the mind that emphasized conscious intention in both attention and schema activation, a position associated with Wilhelm Wundt.     

Identity, Reasoning, and Emotion: An Empirical Comparison of Three Sources of Moral Motivation

Prior research on moral motivation has primarily emphasized moral reasoning and moral emotion; however, identity may also play an important role. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to examine the relative importance of prosocial identity, prosocial moral reasoning, and empathy in predicting prosocial behavior. The sample included 91 university students, ages 19–35 years (M=21.89; SD=3.01; 80% European American; 65% female). Prosocial identity and empathy, but not prosocial moral reasoning, were positively associated with overall prosocial behavior. Exploratory analyses examined how these three sources of prosocial motivation differentially related to six forms of prosocial behavior. Results suggest the importance of considering the roles of all three sources of moral motivation.     

The effects of autonomy-supportive versus controlling environments on self-talk

Based within a self-determination theory framework (SDT: Deci and Ryan, Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behaviour. Plenum Publishing Co., New York, 1985), the present study examined the effects of manipulating social-contextual conditions on the content of individuals’ self-talk. Seventy student volunteers were randomly assigned to a controlling or autonomy-supportive experimental condition. Participants were instructed to ‘think-aloud’ throughout a 10-min computerized task during which self-verbalizations were recorded. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim, and then analysed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Program (LIWC; Pennebaker et al., LIWC2001; Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (software and manual). Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, 2001). Inductive content analyses were also conducted. Triangulation of the quantitative and qualitative findings revealed that in the autonomy-supportive condition, individuals’ self-talk was more informational and less controlling, with participants using more positive emotional words and assents, and fewer negative emotional words, swear words, and first person references than in the controlling condition. The findings suggest that social-context can affect cognitive factors such as self-talk and further support the promotion of autonomy-supportive environments.