Does Purchasing Make Consumers Complicit in Global Labour Injustice?

Do consumers’ ordinary actions of purchasing certain goods make them complicit in global labour injustice? To establish that they do, two things much be shown. First, it must be established that they are not more than complicit, for example that they are not the principal perpetrators. Second, it must be established that they meet the conditions for complicity on a plausible account. I argue that Kutz’s account faces an objection that makes Lepora and Goodin’s better suited, and defend the idea that consumers are complicit in at least two of the ways distinguished by the latter. In the final section of the paper, I consider whether consumers’ responsibility for complicity in global labour injustice is likely to be as strong as responsibility from another source, namely benefiting from that injustice.     

Informing Evidence-Based Assessment of ADHD in Veterans and Service Members

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is diagnosed in approximately 2.5% to 5% of the population, and though epidemiological studies of ADHD in veterans and service members are lacking, available evidence suggests that there may be a higher prevalence of ADHD in service members than in the general population. Assessment of ADHD in military populations is complicated by the higher prevalence rates of many other disorders with symptoms that overlap those of ADHD (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder), making differential diagnosis an important aspect of the evaluation of ADHD. Although the diagnostic interview remains the gold standard for the evaluation and diagnosis of ADHD with adults, several different types of psychological measures have been developed and validated that can aid the evaluation. Future epidemiological research focused on prevalence and comorbidity rates in military samples is warranted to better understand the scope and complexity of the diagnosis. In addition, continued study of diagnostic assessment techniques, including validity testing and neurocognitive performance of veterans and service members with ADHD, particularly postdeployed veterans pursuing higher education, is warranted. This article reviews relevant findings and identifies initial recommendations for clinicians and researchers.     

Remediating Reading Comprehension Difficulties: A Cognitive Processing Approach

The efficacy of a cognitive-based remediation program was investigated with 14 English-as-a-second-language (ESL) poor readers in Grade 4 who had significant difficulty in comprehension and 14 normal ESL readers in Grade 4 who received no remediation. Both groups were selected from 2 English-medium schools in India. We examined pretest-to-posttest changes in word reading, comprehension, and planning–attention–simultaneous–successive cognitive processes. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) showed marked improvement in comprehension and some improvement in simultaneous processing for the treated group. The results indicate that the cognitive-based remediation program has potential for substantially improving comprehension and its underlying cognitive process among ESL children.     

Using E-Z Reader to examine the concurrent development of eye-movement control and reading skill

Compared to skilled adult readers, children typically make more fixations that are longer in duration, shorter saccades, and more regressions, thus reading more slowly (Blythe & Joseph, 2011). Recent attempts to understand the reasons for these differences have discovered some similarities (e.g., children and adults target their saccades similarly; Joseph, Liversedge, Blythe, White, & Rayner, 2009) and some differences (e.g., children’s fixation durations are more affected by lexical variables; Blythe, Liversedge, Joseph, White, & Rayner, 2009) that have yet to be explained. In this article, the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control in reading (Reichle, 2011 and Reichle et al., 1998) is used to simulate various eye-movement phenomena in adults vs. children in order to evaluate hypotheses about the concurrent development of reading skill and eye-movement behavior. These simulations suggest that the primary difference between children and adults is their rate of lexical processing, and that different rates of (post-lexical) language processing may also contribute to some phenomena (e.g., children’s slower detection of semantic anomalies; Joseph et al., 2008). The theoretical implications of this hypothesis are discussed, including possible alternative accounts of these developmental changes, how reading skill and eye movements change across the entire lifespan (e.g., college-aged vs. older readers), and individual differences in reading ability.     

Opposing determinants of compliance and interrogative suggestibility

The Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scales (GSS 1 & 2) can illuminate social and cognitive factors which affect forensic interviewees’ vulnerability to pressure from interrogators. Variations of the GSS procedure can highlight detail in the dynamics of interrogative suggestibility (IS). Induced malingering is one such variation. The present study used this method in an attempt to reconcile conflicting findings of two previous malingering studies. An innovation was to pre-test participants on the standard GSS 2 to identify them as showing Low, Medium, or High IS. These groups then undertook the parallel GSS 1 but with the instruction to role-play a suspect who is attempting to appear abnormally suggestible. Results showed marked differences in the direction in which faking scores changed, from those at pre-testing, between the Low and the High groups, with the High group showing a decrease in GSS scores and the Low group an increase: the Medium group scores followed the trend of the Low group scores. It is suggested that these results explain why previous results using induced malingering have been inconsistent. The results are also discussed in terms of how differing expectancies and levels of interpersonal trust may affect interviewees.     

Children's responses to entry failure: attention deployment patterns and self-regulation skills

In this study the authors investigated associations among children's observed responses to failure in an analogue entry situation, their attention deployment patterns, and skills and processes associated with self-regulation. Participants were 54 kindergarten and first-grade students who were either aggressive-rejected or low aggressive-popular based on peer nominations. Inhibitory control predicted the tendency to respond to entry failure by stopping and watching the group's activity. Baseline vagal tone and other-directed attention predicted children's tendency to change entry strategies after failure. Parent-rated attention skills moderated the relation between children's attention deployment patterns during the entry task and their responses to entry failure. Children who engaged in more other-directed attention were less likely to turn to solitary play after entry failure but only if they had high or moderate levels of attentional control. Other-directed attention was related to repeating previous entry bids without modification after entry failure but only when children had high levels of attention problems.     

Identifying Barriers and Catalysts to Fostering Pro-Environmental Behavior: Opportunities and Challenges for Community Psychology

In this paper, we report on an exploratory study of perceived barriers and catalysts to increasing pro-environmental behavior among people associated with the environmental movement. Perceived barriers include time, money, low efficacy and hopelessness. Catalysts focus on changing social norms, especially through education and institutional support. We discuss the tragedy of the commons and free-riding as impediments to change. We use this study as an entryway to hypothesize opportunities and challenges that community psychologists face in motivating and supporting actions to reduce the impact of global climate change. We provide examples of how community psychologists can foster these changes. In short, we argue that community psychology is well positioned to take a leading role in the fight for a carbon neutral future.     

Auditory instructional cues benefit unimanual and bimanual drawing in Parkinson's disease patients

The present study investigated performance of unimanual and bimanual anti-phase and in-phase upper limb line drawing using three different types of cues. Fifteen Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, 15 elderly, and 15 young adults drew lines away from and towards their body on a tabletop every 1000 ms for 30 s under three different cueing conditions: (1) verbal (‘up’, ‘down’); (2) auditory (high tone, low tone); (3) visual (target line switched from top to bottom). PD patients had larger and more variable amplitudes which may be related to the finding that they also produced more curvilinear movements than young and elderly adults. Consistent with previous research, when compared to the elderly and young adult group PD patients produced a mean relative phase which deviated more from the instructed coordination modes and they showed larger variability of relative phase in bimanual coordination, especially in anti-phase conditions. For all groups, auditory and verbal cues resulted in lower coefficient of variance of cycle time, lower variability of amplitude and lower variability of relative phase than visual cues. The benefit of auditory cues may be related to the timing nature of the task or factors related to the auditory cues (e.g., reduced attentional demands, more kinesthetic focus).