A Social Priming Data Set With Troubling Oddities

A recent paper by Chatterjee, Rose, and Sinha (2013) reported impressively large “money priming” effects: incidental exposure to concepts relating to cash or credit cards made participants much less generous with their time and money (after cash primes) or much more generous (after credit card primes ). Primes also altered participants’ choices in a word-stem completion task. To explore these effects, we carried out re-analyses of the raw data. A number of strange oddities were brought to light, including a dramatic similarity of the filler word-stem completion responses produced by the 20 subjects who contributed most to the priming effects. We suggest that these oddities undermine the credibility of the paper and require further investigation.     

Faking revisited: Exerting strategic control over performance on the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure

Across four studies, we demonstrate that effects obtained from the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure, like those obtained from other indirect procedures, are not impervious to strategic manipulation. In experiment 1, we found that merely informing participants to “fake” their performance without providing a concrete strategy to do so did not eliminate, reverse, or in any way alter the obtained outcomes. However, when those same instructions orientated attention toward the core parameters of the task, participants spontaneously derived a strategy that allowed them to eliminate their effects (experiment 2). When the participants were provided with a viable response strategy, they successfully reversed the direction of their overall Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure effect (experiment 3). By refining the nature of those instructions, we managed to target and alter individual trial‐type effects in isolation with some success (experiment 4).     

Generalization of Supermarket Shopping Skills for Individuals with Mild Intellectual Disabilities Using Stimulus Equivalence Training

The Psychological Record - We developed an intervention to promote generalization in an applied community setting. The intervention was derived primarily from experimental research examining...     

Evaluation of a conflict-resolution and problem-solving programme to enhance adolescents' self-concept

The effectiveness of an intervention programme, initially designed to enhance the self-concept and motivation of gifted underachieving girls, was evaluated for students identified as having a low self-concept and social relationship difficulties. Twenty male and female secondary-school students were randomly assigned to either a treatment or a control group. The programme, called ABLE (Attribution, Behaviour, Life skills Education), incorporates problem-solving, conflict resolution, and a multidimensional framework to investigate adolescents' self-concept formation. The adolescents in the study made significant improvements in the areas of general self-concept, physical appearance self-concept, and total self-concept. Teaching conflict-resolution and problem-solving skills had a beneficial influence on self-concept. The results are discussed in terms of the relevance of the programme and its application to school and counselling interventions.     

Going against the grain: supporting lesbian, gay and bisexual clients as they 'come out'

It has been acknowledged in principle that those who provide counselling or support should respect differences and the diversity inherent within any society or culture. In this article we focus upon sexual orientation as a resource: a means by which it is possible to expand upon skills and understand the experiences of those who have embarked upon alternative trajectories of sexual development. We consider the process of development from the perspective of the 'everyday' and, based upon interviews with 16 lesbians and gay men, explore the process of identity formation and the role of those professionals and volunteers who provide support during this transitional period in a person's life. We suggest that it is important for those providing counselling or support to an individual who is lesbian, gay or bisexual to understand the role of context and social influence in their personal and interpersonal development. We suggest that working with lesbian, gay and bisexual clients can provide the practitioner with insights and opportunities to further expand their supportive skills through an exploration of what it means to grow up as a member of a minority group.     

A diathesis-stress conceptualization of expressed emotion and clinical outcome

A sizeable body of research has demonstrated that expressed emotion (EE) predicts clinical relapse in a number of distinct psychiatric disorders. These findings have provided the impetus for the development of interventions that attempt to reduce patients' relapse rates by modifying aspects of the family environment believed to be associated with high levels of EE. Despite the efficacy of these treatments, however, we know little about how EE develops in relatives of psychiatric patients or about the mechanisms through which high EE leads to relapse. Moreover, there is not a coherent theory that attempts to integrate findings concerning the impact of high EE on relapse in different disorders. The purpose of this article is to elucidate a diathesis-stress conceptualization of EE to explain both the development and manifestation of high EE in relatives of disordered patients and the impact of high EE on the course of patients' disorders. In this context, we use a diathesis-stress perspective to examine why EE predicts symptom relapse and poor clinical outcome in schizophrenia, depressive disorders, and borderline personality disorder. We conclude by discussing treatment implications of the diathesis-stress perspective and by outlining what we believe are fruitful directions for future research.     

DOUBLINGS BETWEEN BEWILDERMENT AND ENLIGHTENMENT: READING FREUD WITH HEINE ON THE TROUBLED IDENTITY OF HIRSCH–HYACINTH

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - The present paper examines Freud’s collapse of Heine’s poignantly observed multi-cultural narratives in discerning the joke’s mechanism of...     

Anxiety Influences the Perceptual-Motor Calibration of Visually Guided Braking to Avoid Collisions

We investigated whether anxiety influences perceptual-motor calibration in a braking to avoid a collision task. Participants performed either a discrete braking task (Experiment 1) or a continuous braking task (Experiment 2), with the goal of stopping before colliding with a stop sign. Half of participants performed the braking task after an anxiety induction. We investigated whether anxiety reduced the frequency of crashing and if it influenced the calibration of perception (visual information) and action (brake pressure) dynamically between-trials in Experiment 1 and within-trials in Experiment 2. In the discrete braking task, anxious participants crashed less often and made larger corrective adjustments trial-to-trial after crashing, suggesting that the influence of anxiety on behavior did not occur uniformly, but rather dynamically with anxiety amplifying the reaction to previous crashes. However, when performing continuous braking, anxious participants crashed more often, and their within-trial adjustments of deceleration were less related to visual information compared to controls. Taken together, these findings suggest that the timescale and nature of the task mediates the influence of anxiety on the performance of goal-directed actions.