Serial attention within working memory

It is proposed that people are limited to attending to just one “object” in working memory (WM) at any one time. Consequently, many cognitive tasks, and much of everyday thought, necessitate switches between WM items. The research to be presented measured the time involved in switching attention between objects in WM and sought to elaborate the processes underlying such switches. Two experiments required subjects to maintain two running counts; the order in which the counts were updated necessitated frequent switches between them. Even after intensive practice, a time cost was incurred when subjects updated the two counts in succession, relative to updating the same count twice. This time cost was interpreted as being due to a distinct switching mechanism that controls an internal focus of attention large enough for just one object (count) at a time. This internal focus of attention is a subset of WM (Cowan, 1988). Alternative visual and conceptual repetition-priming and memory retrieval explanations for the cost involved in switching between items in WM are addressed.     

Identifying barriers to help-seeking: a qualitative analysis of students' preparedness to seek help from tutors

A qualitative study based on the first-hand accounts of students in higher education was conducted Participants were encouraged to explain, in their own terms, their own help-seeking behaviour. The focus for their explanations was 'help-seeking from academic staff'. The aim of the study was to construct a culturally sensitive account of barriers to help-seeking in a student population. The discussion focuses on how studies of this kind might complement and extend what is already known about help-seeking m the extant literature.     

Looking as a Measure of Attraction1

Byrne's reinforcement theory of attraction is almost exclusively based upon studies that use the Interpersonal Judgment Scale (IJS) as their measure of attraction. The present study used Byrne's general experimental procedure but employed an unobtrusive “looking” measure of attraction as well as the more familiar IJS measure. The degree of attitude similarity between women subjects and a female stranger was not significantly related to the IJS measure of attraction but was significantly related to the proportion of looking time measure (p < .01). This was true for both subjects who verbalized and did not verbalize awareness of the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent measures of the study.     

Coping styles in adults with cystic fibrosis: implications for emotional and social quality of life

As life expectancy increases, interest has grown surrounding the factors that may influence quality of life (QOL) for people with cystic fibrosis (CF). The aim of the current study was to examine which specific coping styles were positively or negatively associated with social and emotional QOL in a CF sample. One hundred and twenty-two respondents aged 18 and over were recruited through an online support group. Respondents completed the ‘CF Questionnaire-Revised (CFQ-R)’ and the ‘Brief COPE’. The CFQ-R is a disease-specific instrument designed to measure the impact of CF on nine QOL domains and the Brief COPE is a 28 item questionnaire which assesses 14 coping scales. A multivariate regression model revealed that higher substance abuse and disengagement was associated with lower emotional QOL whereas greater use of religion, instrumental coping and acceptance was positively associated with emotional QOL. Active coping was linked to better social QOL and a negative association was reported between distraction coping with both emotional and social domains. Given the burden of CF, ascertaining which factors enhance or diminish emotion and social well-being is now an integral component of QOL research. The current findings may therefore have value in informing clinical interventions which aim to cater for the psychological needs of individuals with CF.     

Predicting Cognitive and Social Consequences of Emotional Episodes: The Contribution of Emotional Intensity, the Five Factor Model, and Alexithymia

Emotional events are followed by recurrent thoughts (rumination) and talking about the event (social sharing of emotion). Factors that can account for variations in these consequences were examined (emotional intensity, the Five Factor Model, and two factors of alexithymia). In two samples, participants reported the most negative emotional event of recent months and in one sample also reported the most positive one. Results indicated that emotional intensity predicted social sharing and rumination, while neuroticism was positively related to intrusive thoughts about negative events and extraversion to rumination and social sharing about positive events. Difficulty describing feelings was negatively related to social sharing for negative events and reduced fantasy to rumination for positive events.     

An evaluation of multi‐criteria methods in integrated assessment of climate policy

Those who conduct integrated assessments (IAs) are aware of the need to explicitly consider multiple criteria and uncertainties when evaluating policies for preventing global warming. MCDM methods are potentially useful for understanding tradeoffs and evaluating risks associated with climate policy alternatives. A difficulty facing potential MCDM users is the wide range of different techniques that have been proposed, each with distinct advantages. Methods differ in terms of validity, ease of use, and appropriateness to the problem. Alternative methods also can yield strikingly different rankings of alternatives. A workshop was held in which climate change experts and policy makers evaluated the usefulness of MCDM for IA. Participants applied several methods in the context of a hypothetical greenhouse gas policy decision. Methods compared include value and utility functions, goal programming, ELECTRE, fuzzy sets, stochastic dominance, min max regret, and several weight selection methods. Ranges, rather than point estimates, were provided for some questions to incorporate imprecision regarding weights. Additionally, several visualization methods for both deterministic and uncertain cases were used and evaluated. Analysis of method results and participant feedback through questionnaires and discussion provide the basis for conclusions regarding the use of MCDM methods for climate change policy and IA analyses. Hypotheses are examined concerning predictive and convergent validity of methods, existence of splitting bias among experts, perceived ability of methods to aid decision‐making, and whether expressing imprecision can change ranking results. Because participants gained from viewing a problem from several perspectives and results from different methods often significantly differed, it appears worthwhile to apply several MCDM methods to increase user confidence and insight. The participants themselves recommended such multimethod approaches for policymaking. Yet they preferred the freedom of unaided decision‐making most of all, challenging the MCDM community to create transparent methods that permit maximum user control. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alexithymia and its measurement: confirmatory factor analyses of the 20‐item Toronto Alexithymia Scale and the Bermond–Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire

Alexithymia refers to the difficulties an individual has in experiencing and expressing feelings. The 20‐item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS‐20) and the Bermond–Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ) with two parallel versions of 20 items have been constructed to measure it. The present study compared the psychometric properties of these two self‐report questionnaires in English (N=290) and French (N=322) language versions. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the fit between the hypothesized factors and the data. Results revealed a better fit to the data for the second version of the BVAQ (BVAQ‐20B) for both language versions as compared to the TAS‐20, the whole BVAQ, or the first version of the BVAQ (BVAQ‐20A). Additionally, the factor comparison of both language versions indicated that only the factorial structure of the BVAQ‐20B was replicable across languages. Concurrent validity of the questionnaires is discussed. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The profile of abstract rule learning in infancy: Meta‐analytic and experimental evidence

Everyone agrees that infants possess general mechanisms for learning about the world, but the existence and operation of more specialized mechanisms is controversial. One mechanism—rule learning—has been proposed as potentially specific to speech, based on findings that 7‐month‐olds can learn abstract repetition rules from spoken syllables (e.g. ABB patterns: wo‐fe‐fe, ga‐tu‐tu…) but not from closely matched stimuli, such as tones. Subsequent work has shown that learning of abstract patterns is not simply specific to speech. However, we still lack a parsimonious explanation to tie together the diverse, messy, and occasionally contradictory findings in that literature. We took two routes to creating a new profile of rule learning: meta‐analysis of 20 prior reports on infants’ learning of abstract repetition rules (including 1,318 infants in 63 experiments total), and an experiment on learning of such rules from a natural, non‐speech communicative signal. These complementary approaches revealed that infants were most likely to learn abstract patterns from meaningful stimuli. We argue that the ability to detect and generalize simple patterns supports learning across domains in infancy but chiefly when the signal is meaningfully relevant to infants’ experience with sounds, objects, language, and people.