Applying Retrieval‐Induced Forgetting to Children's Testimony

When a crime has been committed, investigators must obtain as much and as accurate information as possible from witnesses. Initial incomplete interviews may pose a potential cost to unretrieved information. We explored retrieval‐induced forgetting (RIF) in children's autobiographical memory for related episodic events. Children experienced four related play sessions across 4 days, followed by word stem retrieval practice of half of the items, and a cued recall task that took place either 15 minutes or 2 hours later. Categorized details were experienced either within a single day or across multiple days. The emergence of RIF was dependent upon the length of delay between practice and test phases and the temporal distribution of the episodic events. Our observations demonstrate that RIF can be a subtle phenomenon whose occurrence depends upon whether the retrieval context supports an environment of retrieval interference. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are Genetic Counselors and GLBT Patients “on the Same Page”? an Investigation of Attitudes, Practices, and Genetic Counseling Experiences

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) individuals comprise a growing patient population in genetic counseling, yet literature on working with this population is scarce. This study sought to investigate GLBT patient experiences in genetic counseling and genetic counselor attitudes and practices when counseling GLBT patients. Twenty-nine GLB individuals who had previously participated in genetic counseling, and 213 genetic counselors completed online surveys. No individuals identifying as transgender participated. The patient survey assessed disclosure of orientation, discrimination in genetic counseling, and quality of services received. The counselor survey assessed comfort with and attitudes about counseling GLBT patients, disclosure of counselor orientation, and whether they counsel differently with this population. Every patient denied experiencing discrimination during their session, but 17% reported their genetic counselor assumed they were heterosexual, and 45% indicated intake forms were not GLBT-inclusive. A majority of counselors (91%) reported having counseled GLBT patients and indicated they were comfortable doing so (86%), and 72% indicated no differences in their counseling approaches with GLBT patients. Few counselors (17%) received training in GLBT issues, and most (61%) desired such education. Additional findings and practice and research recommendations are presented.     

Civilian Response Corps Force Review: The Application of Multi‐Criteria Decision Analysis to Prioritize Skills Required for Future Diplomatic Missions

Created by the State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, the Civilian Response Corps (CRC) contains a diverse pool of qualified and ready‐to‐deploy civilian professionals that support conflict prevention and response efforts in countries or regions that are at risk of, are currently in, or are transitioning from conflict or civil strife. As such, it is vital to optimize the CRC's skill groupings to maximize adaptability and responsiveness to highly uncertain and trying political conditions and crises across the globe. The nature of the CRC value proposition is such that determining which skill set compositions deliver the greatest benefit requires a multi‐faceted perspective that looks at a number of attributes and factors, both tangible and intangible. To meet these needs, an organizational decision‐making approach utilizing multi‐criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was applied to ensure that skill‐grouping allocations were determined in a logical and robust manner. The MCDA analysis allowed for a wide range of worldviews and perspectives, drawn from select members of academia and partner agencies of the CRC who provided their expert opinions on the expected demand for skill groupings commonly identified as most necessary in a civilian ‘surge’ capacity. These skills were assessed with reference to a values hierarchy of representative country scenarios, missions and sub‐missions identified by the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization. Of particular interest was the use of the MCDA method to prioritize CRC skill groupings and to help inform the Department of State's understanding of the ‘ideal’ proportion and types of civilian skills for inclusion in the CRC. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modifying CBT for Perinatal Depression: What Do Women Want?: A Qualitative Study

The evidence for the efficacy of CBT for depression during the perinatal period is mixed. This was a qualitative study that aimed to understand the perinatal-specific needs of depressed women in an effort to inform treatment modifications that may increase the relevance and acceptability of CBT during this period. Stratified purposeful sampling resulted in 23 participants selected by pregnancy, socioeconomic, and depression status. Participants completed semistructured interviews exploring their experiences of pregnancy and the postpartum period and its relationship to mood, and perspectives on ideal treatment content. Thematic analysis revealed a number of perinatal-specific themes that were relevant to CBT in three key domains: self, motherhood, and interpersonal. Mothers particularly struggled with: internalization of “motherhood myths,” self-sacrifice, and managing social support during this period. Shifts in women's themes across the perinatal period, and between racial and socioeconomic groups are discussed as are implications for modification of CBT to improve relevance for perinatal depression.     

Dating Violence Prevention Programming: Directions for Future Interventions

Dating violence among college students is a widespread and destructive problem. The field of dating violence has seen a substantial rise in research over the past several years, which has improved our understanding of factors that increase risk for perpetration. Unfortunately, there has been less attention paid to dating violence prevention programming, and existing programs have been marred with methodological weaknesses and a lack of demonstrated effectiveness in reducing aggression. In hopes of sparking new research on dating violence prevention programs, the current review examines possible new avenues for dating violence prevention programming among college students. We discuss clinical interventions that have shown to be effective in reducing a number of problematic behaviors, including motivational interventions, dialectical behavior therapy, mindfulness, and bystander interventions, and how they could be applied to dating violence prevention. We also discuss methodological issues to consider when implementing dating violence prevention programs.     

Class matters: 12‐month‐olds’ word–object associations privilege content over function words

A fundamental step in learning words is the development of an association between a sound pattern and an element in the environment. Here we explore the nature of this associative ability in 12‐month‐olds, examining whether it is constrained to privilege particular word forms over others. Forty‐eight infants were presented with sets of novel English content‐like word–object pairings (e.g. fep) or novel English function‐like word–object (e.g. iv) pairings until they habituated. Results indicated that infants associated novel content‐like words, but not the novel function‐like words, with novel objects. These results demonstrate that the mechanism with which basic word–object associations are formed is remarkably sophisticated by the onset of productive language. That is, mere associative pairings are not sufficient to form mappings. Rather the system requires well‐formed noun‐like words to co‐occur with objects in order for the linkages to arise.     

Assuming too much from 'familiar' brain potentials

Familiarity is sometimes associated with midfrontal old/new (FN400) signals, but investigators assume too much by inferring familiarity whenever they identify these signals. We describe how Rosburg and colleagues (2011) made this assumption, yielding potentially faulty conclusions about the recognition heuristic. We provide an alternative interpretation emphasizing implicit processing that can underlie decision-making.     

A Lover’s Shame

Shame is one of the more painful consequences of loving someone; my beloved’s doing something immoral can cause me to be ashamed of her. The guiding thought behind this paper is that explaining this phenomenon can tell us something about what it means to love. The phenomenon of beloved-induced shame has been largely neglected by philosophers working on shame, most of whom conceive of shame as being a reflexive attitude. Bennett Helm has recently suggested that in order to account for beloved-induced shame, we should deny the reflexivity of shame. After arguing that Helm’s account is inadequate, I proceed to develop an account of beloved-induced shame that rightly preserves its reflexivity. A familiar feature of love is that it involves an evaluative dependence; when I love someone, my well-being depends upon her life’s going well. I argue that loving someone also involves a persistent tendency to believe that her life is going well, in the sense that she is a good person, that she is not prone to wickedness. Lovers are inclined, more strongly than they otherwise would be, to give their beloveds the moral benefit of the doubt. These two features of loving—an evaluative dependence and a persistent tendency to believe in the beloved’s moral goodness—provide the conditions for a lover to experience shame when he discovers that his beloved has morally transgressed.     

Cues to personality and health in the facial appearance of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Humans (Homo sapiens) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) can extract socially-relevant information from the static, non-expressive faces of conspecifics. In humans, the face is a valid signal of both personality and health. Recent evidence shows that, like humans, chimpanzee faces also contain personality information, and that humans can accurately judge aspects of chimpanzee personality relating to extraversion from the face alone (Kramer, King, and Ward, 2011). These findings suggest the hypothesis that humans and chimpanzees share a system of personality and facial morphology for signaling socially-relevant traits from the face. We sought to test this hypothesis using a new group of chimpanzees. In two studies, we found that chimpanzee faces contained health information, as well as information of characteristics relating to extraversion, emotional stability, and agreeableness, using average judgments from pairs of individual photographs. In a third study, information relating to extraversion and health was also present in composite images of individual chimpanzees. We therefore replicate and extend previous findings using a new group of chimpanzees and demonstrate two methods for minimizing the variability associated with individual photographs. Our findings support the hypothesis that chimpanzees and humans share a personality signaling system.     

The emergence of untrained mands and tacts in children with autism

Despite Skinner's (1957) assertion that verbal operants are initially functionally independent, recent studies have suggested that in some cases the acquisition of one verbal operant (e.g., mand) gives rise to the other (e.g., tact) without explicit training. The present study aimed to evaluate the functional independence of mands and tacts during instruction with children with autism. Four boys with autism (3 to 6 years old) were taught to construct two 4‐piece structures. Two participants were taught directly to mand, whereas the other 2 were taught to tact the names of the pieces. The effects of training were evaluated in a multiple probe design across verbal operants and tasks. Three of the 4 participants demonstrated an immediate transfer of control from 1 verbal operant to the other. These results were consistent with previous research with typically developing young children.