Adjusting foraging strategies: a comparison of rural and urban common mynas (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Acridotheres tristis</Emphasis>)

Establishment in urbanized environments is associated with changes in physiology, behaviour, and problem-solving. We compared the speed of learning in urban and rural female common mynas, Acridotheres tristis, using a standard visual discrimination task followed by a reversal learning phase. We also examined how quickly each bird progressed through different stages of learning, including sampling and acquisition within both initial and reversal learning, and persistence following reversal. Based on their reliance on very different food resources, we expected urban mynas to learn and reversal learn more quickly but to sample new contingencies for proportionately longer before learning them. When quantified from first presentation to criterion achievement, urban mynas took more 20-trial blocks to learn the initial discrimination, as well as the reversed contingency, than rural mynas. More detailed analyses at the level of stage revealed that this was because urban mynas explored the novel cue-outcome contingencies for longer, and despite transitioning faster through subsequent acquisition, remained overall slower than rural females. Our findings draw attention to fine adjustments in learning strategies in response to urbanization and caution against interpreting the speed to learn a task as a reflection of cognitive ability.     

Happy Family Kitchen: Behavioral Outcomes of a Brief Community-Based Family Intervention in Hong Kong

Positive psychology interventions commonly involve behavioral exercises to improve psychosocial well-being. Intervention effect on behavior is unclear. The Happy Family Kitchen project, one of the community-based brief intervention projects under The FAMILY: A Jockey Club Initiative for a Harmonious Society, was conducted in Hong Kong to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a positive psychology family intervention. We have previously reported positive intervention effects on family communication, family well-being, and subjective happiness. This paper aims to explore the effectiveness of the intervention on behavioral outcomes and their associations with psychosocial well-being. A total of 23 social service units organized and conducted intervention programs for 1419 individuals from 612 families in Hong Kong. Each intervention was developed with emphasis on one of five positive psychology themes: gratitude, flow, happiness, health, and savoring. Intervention outcomes were assessed at pre-intervention, immediate post-intervention, and 6 weeks and 12 weeks post-intervention. Results showed that family communication time and frequency of meal preparation with family members increased with sustainable small effects up to 12 weeks. Theme-specific behavior change was observed in the gratitude, flow, and happiness interventions, respectively. Family communication time, frequency of eating with family members, and theme-specific behaviors, including gratitude, flow, happiness behavior, health attitude, and health behavior, were positively associated with psychosocial well-being. Qualitative data provided additional evidence of effectiveness with in-depth insights into behavior change. The positive associations between target behaviors and well-being suggest that improvements in well-being as a function of the intervention may be associated with behavior change.     

Weak reasons-responsiveness meets its match: in defense of David Widerker’s attack on PAP

David Widerker, long an opponent of Harry Frankfurt’s attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), has recently come up with his own Frankfurt-style scenario which he claims might well be a counterexample to PAP. Carlos Moya has argued that this new scenario is not a counterexample to PAP, because in it the agent is not really blameworthy, since he lacks weak reasons-responsiveness (WRR), a property that John Fischer has argued is a necessary condition of practical rationality, and hence of moral responsibility. I argue that in Widerker’s scenario the agent is indeed blameworthy, even though he lacks WRR; and that therefore this scenario is a counterexample not only to PAP, but also to Fischer’s claim that WRR is necessary for blameworthiness.     

Did you see the unicycling clown? Inattentional blindness while walking and talking on a cell phone

We investigated the effects of divided attention during walking. Individuals were classified based on whether they were walking while talking on a cell phone, listening to an MP3 player, walking without any electronics or walking in a pair. In the first study, we found that cell phone users walked more slowly, changed directions more frequently, and were less likely to acknowledge other people than individuals in the other conditions. In the second study, we found that cell phone users were less likely to notice an unusual activity along their walking route (a unicycling clown). Cell phone usage may cause inattentional blindness even during a simple activity that should require few cognitive resources. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of the couch in psychoanalysis: proposed research designs and some preliminary data

Ever since Freud, the couch has been viewed as an important--some would argue essential--component of psychoanalysis. Although many theoretical papers and case reports have addressed the use of the couch in psychoanalysis, no empirical study has investigated its effect on psychoanalytic process or outcome. After a review of the literature, a number of research designs are proposed that might be used in such an investigation. Finally, preliminary empirical data are presented from archived audiotapes of two psychoanalyses: one in which the patient switched from lying down to sitting up, and one in which the opposite occurred. The aim is to stimulate research-oriented psychoanalysts to undertake empirical investigations of the theoretical concepts underlying use of the couch and, more generally, to present a specific example of research as a paradigm for a broader research agenda for empirical investigation of the key theoretical ideas underlying psychoanalysis.     

Job apathy and work engagement: Moderating influence of perceived leader integrity and spiritual intelligence in a Nigerian mass transit company

This study explored the direct and interactive roles of job apathy, perceived leader integrity, and spiritual intelligence on work engagement among 206 Nigerian employees of a leading mass transit company (females = 33%; mean age = 35.81years, SD = 5.04; mean organisational tenure = 6.27 years, SD = 2.26). Results following moderated hierarchical multiple regression showed that work engagement was lower with job apathy and higher with perceived leader integrity and employee spiritual intelligence. Moreover, employees with a high perception of leader integrity reported being more work engaged, regardless of feeling apathetic about their job, compared to those with a low perception of leader integrity. Perceived leader integrity and spiritual intelligence are important for work engagement in Nigeria’s transportation sector setting.     

Psychotropic Medication Practices for Youth in Systems of Care

Concerns have been raised about the quality and appropriateness of psychiatric medication treatment for youth treated in the child welfare or juvenile justice systems. Unfortunately there is a lack of empirical research to indicate whether there are indeed widespread problems related to psychopharmacologic treatment for youth served by public sector systems. This exploratory study utilized data from a national survey of social workers to examine differences in reports on medication type, processes, and perceived outcomes for adolescent clients in the juvenile justice and/or child welfare system (n = 90) versus non-systems clients (n = 305). Relevant clinical and demographic factors were controlled in hierarchical binary logistic and linear regression analyses. The results indicated that social workers referring to systems cases were more likely to report the use of highly potent medication (antipsychotics, mood-stabilizers, and poly-pharmacy), less likely to report that clients were receptive to or involved in the decision to utilize medication, and less likely to report beneficial medication outcomes. However, these reported differences, suggesting that medication treatment for systems youth tends to be less participatory and beneficial, were largely accounted for by differences in clients’ level of functional impairment and rate of disruptive behavior disorders. Implications for further research are discussed.     

Cultural considerations using the structured clinical interview for DSM-III for mood and anxiety disorders assessment

This paper focuses on the impact that culture has upon standardized or structured interviews. It briefly reviews how these interviews evolved from a primary research function, what they can teach us about clinical work, and the multiple ways that culture influences these supposedly objective instruments and the diagnoses which follow from their use. Although the use of structured interviews and standardized diagnostic criteria has been a major advance for the field in terms of reliability, care needs to be exercised when evaluating individuals from disparate cultural backgrounds.