Unique sudden onsets capture attention even when observers are in feature-search mode

Two sources of attentional capture have been proposed: stimulus-driven (exogenous) and goal-oriented (endogenous). A resolution between these modes of capture has not been straightforward. Even such a clearly exogenous event as the sudden onset of a stimulus can be said to capture attention endogenously if observers operate in singleton-detection mode rather than feature-search mode. In four experiments we show that a unique sudden onset captures attention even when observers are in feature-search mode. The displays were rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams of differently coloured letters with the target letter defined by a specific colour. Distractors were four #s, one of the target colour, surrounding one of the non-target letters. Capture was substantially reduced when the onset of the distractor array was not unique because it was preceded by other sets of four grey # arrays in the RSVP stream. This provides unambiguous evidence that attention can be captured both exogenously and endogenously within a single task.     

Resilience in Organ Transplantation: An Application of the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (CD–RISC) With Liver Transplant Candidates

End-stage liver disease (ESLD) is a chronic and debilitating condition associated with substantial psychological stress, morbidity, and mortality. The Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale (CD–RISC; Connor & Davidson, 2003 Connor, K. M., & Davidson, J. R. (2003). Development of a new resilience scale: The Connor– Davidson Resilience Scale (CD–RISC). Depression and Anxiety, 18(2), 76–82. doi:10.1002/da.10113[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is a commonly used resilience measure. This research examined the validity of the CD–RISC among ESLD patients (N = 120) using exploratory factor analysis. Results supported a single-factor solution after removing poorly loading items. The CD–RISC also was correlated with measures of depression, anxiety, quality of life, social support, age, and cognitive ability, thus providing evidence to support its construct validity. Future research should confirm this factor structure and examine its predictive validity prior to widespread use among ESLD patients. This research represents the first step in this process and proposes an alternative version of the CD–RISC for this population.     

Panning for the gold in health research: Incorporating studies’ methodological quality in meta-analysis

Background: Systematic reviews now routinely assess methodological quality to gauge the validity of the included studies and of the synthesis as a whole. Although trends from higher quality studies should be clearer, it is uncertain how often meta-analyses incorporate methodological quality in models of study results either as predictors, or, more interestingly, in interactions with theoretical moderators.

Objective and methods: We survey 200 meta-analyses in three health promotion domains to examine when and how meta-analyses incorporate methodological quality.

Results: Although methodological quality assessments commonly appear in contemporary meta-analyses (usually as scales), they are rarely incorporated in analyses, and still more rarely analysed in interaction with theoretical determinants of the success of health promotions. The few meta-analyses (2.5%) that did include such an interaction analysis showed that moderator results remained significant in higher quality studies or were present only among higher quality studies. We describe how to model quality interactively with theoretically derived moderators and discuss strengths and weaknesses of this approach and in relation to current meta-analytic practice.

Conclusions: In large literatures exhibiting heterogeneous effects, meta-analyses can incorporate methodological quality and generate conclusions that enable greater confidence not only about the substantive phenomenon but also about the role that methodological quality itself plays.     

The development of spatial frequency biases in face recognition

Previous research has suggested that a mid-band of spatial frequencies is critical to face recognition in adults, but few studies have explored the development of this bias in children. We present a paradigm adapted from the adult literature to test spatial frequency biases throughout development. Faces were presented on a screen with particular spatial frequencies blocked out by noise masks. A mid-band bias was found in adults and 9- and 10-year-olds for upright faces but not for inverted faces, suggesting a face-sensitive effect. However, 7- and 8-year-olds did not demonstrate the mid-band bias for upright faces but rather processed upright and inverted faces similarly. This suggests that specialization toward the mid-band for upright face recognition develops gradually during childhood and may relate to an advanced level of face expertise.     

Financial and Ethical Considerations for Professionals in Psychology

The profession of psychology is one of many entities affected by the current economic recession. The question of what to do when clients cannot pay agreed-upon charges will need to be answered. Ethical issues related to setting the fee for psychotherapy, insurance coverage, abandonment, pro bono psychotherapy, and lack of resources are addressed in light of the 2002 American Psychological Association's Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct and other relevant literature. The impact of the Mental Health Parity Act on the financial complexities that professionals in psychology now face is also discussed. Several recommendations are made for psychologists, calling them to be proactive in their communities, to be advocates for their clients, and to critically evaluate their financial practices.     

Eye Defects in Students and Children

Abstract

The Place of The Idea of Death and Its Moral Effects in Education (La Muerte y su Sentido Moral en le Educatión). By Faria de Vasconcellos. 1918 Porcel, Sucre, Bolivia. Translated by Phyllis Blanchard, Clark University.     

A Mixed Methods Study of the Re-Animation Approach Within a Forensic Mental Health Setting

This mixed-methods study investigated the impact of the Re-Animation Approach, a creative occupational therapy, on the well-being and occupational performance of three male patients in a forensic mental health setting. Quantitative data were gathered through goal attainment scaling (GAS) and qualitative data using semi-structured interviews. GAS t-scores demonstrated an over-achievement of expected outcomes in goals related to improving skills, well-being, and time use. Issues emerging from thematic analysis of the interviews are consistent with the GAS results. The Re-Animation Approach had a positive impact on participants’ health and well-being, addressed a range of occupational needs, and can be graded.     

Spearman's law of diminishing returns: A statistical artifact?

Spearman's Law of Diminishing Returns (SLODR) is the idea that the structure of human cognitive ability is more differentiated and g a weaker determinant of cognitive performance at higher levels of ability. In this study, we distinguish between ‘traditional’ methods of testing SLODR and ‘contemporary’ methods of testing SLODR. It is the former set of methods from which the vast majority of the evidence base for SLODR derives. We demonstrated that it is easy to mimic SLODR and reverse SLODR effects in these traditional methods of assessing SLODR by using data with skewed observed variable distributions. The skewness magnitudes did not need to be large to produce these effects and they fell well within the range of values that are usually considered unproblematic for parametric statistic analysis. In simulated datasets, positive subtest skewness resulted in SLODR and negative subtest skewness resulted in reverse SLODR. In contemporary methods of testing SLODR, non-linear g-loadings or a skewed g are assumed to reflect evidence for SLODR. When we applied contemporary methods of testing SLODR to these data, there was evidence of heteroscedastic residuals but no evidence of non-linear g-loadings or skewed g distributions. We broadly replicated the effects of subtest skew from these simulated datasets in real data from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart. Results imply that traditional methods of assessing SLODR cannot distinguish between effects due to subtest characteristics that have nothing to do with differences in ability structure at different levels of g and true SLODR effects. This calls into question the empirical support for SLODR.     

Reduced Reliance on Optimal Facial Information for Identity Recognition in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Previous research into face processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has revealed atypical biases toward particular facial information during identity recognition. Specifically, a focus on features (or high spatial frequencies [HSFs]) has been reported for both face and nonface processing in ASD. The current study investigated the development of spatial frequency biases in face recognition in children and adolescents with and without ASD, using nonverbal mental age to assess changes in biases over developmental time. Using this measure, the control group showed a gradual specialization over time toward middle spatial frequencies (MSFs), which are thought to provide the optimal information for face recognition in adults. By contrast, individuals with ASD did not show a bias to one spatial frequency band at any stage of development. These data suggest that the “midband bias” emerges through increasing face-specific experience and that atypical face recognition performance may be related to reduced specialization toward optimal spatial frequencies in ASD.     

Adolescent and adult authoritarianism reexamined: Its organisation and stability over time

This paper, which draws on follow-up data collected from English subjects first tested as adolescents and then, 1I years later, as young inen of 24–25, falls into three parts. Part I examines the structuring of responses to authoritarian statements. No general authoritarian factor could be isolated in either adolescence or in adult life. Instead, four separate authoritarian response tendencies, each with its own antecedents, significance and predictive value, were obtained. Only the adolescent measures correlated significantly with ability level. This, together with the greater stability across time of the responses of the more able 13–14 year olds, led us to hypothesize that some of the variance in adolescent scores was cognitively, not motivationally, determined. Part II reports a series of experimental studies (using additional data from the follow-up investigation) testing the cognitive and developmental hypothesis, which received support. Part III proposes a general model for the consideration of attitudes, in which any given attitudinal response is located in a three-dimensional space of cognitive complexity, personality needs and social structure.