Teaching with Stories: Ecology,Haraway, and Pedagogical Practice

Studies in Philosophy and Education - Haraway foregrounds many stories that we, in a late capitalist era, tell ourselves in order to justify, or not even notice, actions that are harmful to all...     

A meta‐analysis of the effects of acute alcohol intoxication on witness recall

There is widespread belief in the legal system that alcohol impairs witness testimony. Nevertheless, most laboratory studies examining the effects of alcohol on witness testimony suggest that alcohol may affect the number of correct but not incorrect details recalled. However, it is difficult to draw conclusions because sample sizes, testing paradigms, and recall measures vary between individual studies. We conducted a meta‐analysis to address this issue. We found alcohol intoxication had a significant and moderate sized effect on the number of correct details recalled (g = 0.40). The effect of alcohol on the number of incorrect details recalled was not significant. Further, the effect of alcohol on the recall of correct details was significantly moderated by multiple factors like intoxication level, the retention interval length between encoding and recall, and the types of questions asked (i.e., free recall vs. cued recall). We discuss the applied implications of the results.     

Adolescent non-suicidal self-injurious behavior: The latest epidemic to assess and treat

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) among adolescents is a serious and prevalent problem. This article reviews the epidemiological data as well as the existing treatments for adolescents who engage in NSSI. The authors also present the unique features of dialectical behavior therapy, the gold-standard evidence-based treatment for adults who engage in NSSI, and discuss its promise as an effective treatment for adolescents who engage in NSSI. Finally, the authors present a clinical vignette of an adolescent engaging in NSSI and how DBT works to target this maladaptive behavior.This article reviews first the epidemiological data and then the existing treatments for adolescents engaging in non-suicidal self-injurious behavior (NSSI). Next, the authors present the unique features of one particular therapy, called dialectical behavior therapy, for adolescents who engage in NSSI. Finally, the article concludes with a clinical vignette in which dialectical behavior therapy is applied to an adolescent engaging in NSSI.     

Eye movement correlates of younger and older adults' strategies for complex addition

This study examined performance measures and eye movements associated with complex arithmetic strategies in young and older adults. Participants added pairs of three-digit numbers using two different strategies, under choice and no-choice conditions. Older adults made more errors but were not significantly slower than young adults, and response times and errors showed no interaction between age and the number of carries. Older adults chose strategies less adaptively than young adults. Eye movements were consistent with use of required strategies on no-choice trials and reported strategies on choice trials. Eye movement data also suggested that young adults more successfully distinguished between strategies. Implications of these findings for understanding aging effects in complex arithmetic are discussed.     

Incremental Validity of Coping-oriented Marijuana Use Motives in the Prediction of Affect-based Psychological Vulnerability

The present investigation examined whether coping-oriented motives to use marijuana, as measured by the Marijuana Motives Measure (MMM; Simons et al. in J. Couns. Psychol. 45:265–273, 1998), were uniquely related to affect-based psychological vulnerability factors among marijuana users. Participants were 131 adult current marijuana users (72 women, M _age = 20.14, SD = 3.37 years). As hypothesized, after controlling for gender, cigarettes smoked per day, past 30-day marijuana use, total years of marijuana use, and alcohol consumption, coping motives were significantly and incrementally related to negative affect-based psychological vulnerability factors. No other marijuana use motives demonstrated a similar type of relationship to the dependent variables, providing a high degree of explanatory specificity. These data suggest that coping-oriented motives to use marijuana may be an important explanatory construct in better understanding marijuana and psychological vulnerability relations.     

Directed Thinking and Readiness to Change Self‐Beneficial Behaviors: Are You Ready for Some Studying?

Previous research has suggested that intentions to engage in studying and other self-beneficial activities might be promoted more by thinking about actions one could take than by thinking about reasons for doing so. The present experiments assessed whether the relative efficacy of actions vs. reasons might depend on individuals' readiness to change. Consistent with previous findings on the processes of change most relevant in different stages, the benefits of self-generated actions were more pronounced for participants who were in the later stages of change. This "matching-to-stage" relationship occurred in 2 experiments that differed in stage measurement, how thinking was directed, and which outcomes were measured. The results have both practical and theoretical implications for attempts to change self-beneficial behaviors.     

Neighborhood crime and self-care: risks for aggression and lower academic performance

This longitudinal study evaluated associations among official rates of neighborhood crime, academic performance, and aggression in a sample of 581 children in 1st-3rd grade (6.3-10.6 years old). It was hypothesized that the influence of crime depends on children's unsupervised exposure to the neighborhood context through self-care. Average weekly hours in self-care were trichotomized into low (0-3), moderate (4-9), and high (10-15). Moderate and high amounts of self-care were linked to increased aggression and decreased academic performance for children from high-crime areas (11,230 crimes per 100,000 persons) but not average-crime areas, when the authors controlled for neighborhood, family, and child covariates. In high-crime areas, academic outcomes were more favorable when self-care occurred in combination with after-school program participation.     

Assessment and treatment of problem behavior occasioned by interruption of free-operant behavior

The current study describes the assessment and treatment of the problem behavior of 3 individuals with autism for whom initial functional analysis results were inconclusive. Subsequent analyses revealed that the interruption of free-operant behavior using "do" requests (Study 1) as well as "do" and "don't" requests (Study 2) occasioned problem behavior. Initially, treatment involved differential and noncontingent reinforcement without interruption. To make the intervention more sustainable in the natural environment (where interruptions are unavoidable), a two-component multiple-schedule arrangement was used to progressively increase the period of time in which ongoing activities would be interrupted. During generalization sessions, the intervention was applied across a variety of contexts and therapists.     

The Significance of Employment for Chronic Stress and Psychological Distress among Rural Single Mothers

Considerable research has found elevated levels of stress and psychological distress among single mothers. However, little research has addressed the relevance of employment for stress processes in this population, and few studies have focused on links between employment, stress, and mental health among single mothers living in rural areas. Based on a probability sample of 508 single mothers age 18-39 living in rural Northern New England, this study: (1) documents variations in chronic stress and psychological distress for employed and unemployed single mothers, (2) considers the extent to which different forms of chronic stress mediate or explain the employment-distress relationship, and (3) examines whether employment status modifies associations between chronic stress and psychological distress. Findings indicated that rural single mothers who were employed reported significantly less financial stress, childcare stress, and rural residence stress, relative to mothers who were not employed, independent of variety of other factors. Employed mothers also experienced significantly less psychological distress which was partially mediating by their lower financial stress. However, there was also a statistical interaction between employment status and financial stress such that the harmful effect of financial stress on well-being was greater for employed women. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Somatic responses in behavioral inhibition

In the present study, skin conductance responses (SCRs) were measured postdecision and prefeedback in a go/no-go (GNG) task in which participants used response feedback to learn when to respond or not to respond to numeric stimuli. Like somatic markers in gambling tasks and somatic reactions to error monitoring in choice reaction time tasks, SCR patterns distinguished between correct and incorrect trials over time. These somatic reactions were disrupted by a reversal of GNG contingencies, and they were facilitated by pretraining of the stimulus—response mappings. In all cases, however, the somatic reactions appeared to be a product of competent decision making rather than a contributor to performance. Differential somatic responses to good and bad choices appear to be a robust and fairly general phenomenon, but researchers should be cautious in assuming that the somatic responses contribute to performance.