Around the world,adolescence is a time of heightened sensation seeking and immature self‐regulation

The dual systems model of adolescent risk‐taking portrays the period as one characterized by a combination of heightened sensation seeking and still‐maturing self‐regulation, but most tests of this model have been conducted in the United States or Western Europe. In the present study, these propositions are tested in an international sample of more than 5000 individuals between ages 10 and 30 years from 11 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, using a multi‐method test battery that includes both self‐report and performance‐based measures of both constructs. Consistent with the dual systems model, sensation seeking increased between preadolescence and late adolescence, peaked at age 19, and declined thereafter, whereas self‐regulation increased steadily from preadolescence into young adulthood, reaching a plateau between ages 23 and 26. Although there were some variations in the magnitude of the observed age trends, the developmental patterns were largely similar across countries.     

The development of cognitive empathy and concern in preschool children: A behavioral neuroscience investigation

This developmental neuroscience study examined the electrophysiological responses (EEG and ERPs) associated with perspective taking and empathic concern in preschool children, as well as their relation to parental empathy dispositions and children's own prosocial behavior. Consistent with a body of previous studies using stimuli depicting somatic pain in both children and adults, larger early (~200 ms) ERPs were identified when perceiving painful versus neutral stimuli. In the slow wave window (~800 ms), a significant interaction of empathy condition and stimulus type was driven by a greater difference between painful and neutral images in the empathic concern condition. Across early development, children exhibited enhanced N2 to pain when engaging in empathic concern. Greater pain‐elicited N2 responses in the cognitive empathy condition also related to parent dispositional empathy. Children's own prosocial behavior was predicted by several individual differences in neural function, including larger early LPP responses during cognitive empathy and greater differentiation in late LPP and slow wave responses to empathic concern versus affective perspective taking. Left frontal activation (greater alpha suppression) while engaging in affective perspective taking was also related to higher levels of parent cognitive empathy. Together, this multilevel analysis demonstrates the important distinction between facets of empathy in children; the value of examining neurobehavioral processes in development. It provides provoking links between children's neural functioning and parental dispositions in early development.     

Crossing Boundaries Online in Romantic Relationships: An Exploratory Study of The Perceptions of Impact on Partners by Cyberstalking Offenders

As technology has become an ever-present facet in the lives of young people, they have become reliant on it to form and maintain relationships. The present study explored the perceptions of cyberstalking offenders on their own romantic relationships of their offending behaviors utilizing General Theory of Crime and Social Learning Theory. Results indicated that low self-control is a significant predictor of perceiving a negative impact by a victim, such as breaking up the relationship or taking revenge on the offender, as offenders with low self-control do not believe their behaviors would have a negative impact.     

Thai Norms for Name,Image, and Category Agreement,Object Familiarity,Visual Complexity,Manipulability, and Age of Acquisition for 480 Color Photographic Objects

Normative databases containing psycholinguistic variables are commonly used to aid stimulus selection for investigations into language and other cognitive processes. Norms exist for many languages, but not for Thai. The aim of the present research, therefore, was to obtain Thai normative data for the BOSS, a set of 480 high resolution color photographic images of real objects (Brodeur et al. in PLoS ONE 5(5), 2010.  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010773). Norms were provided by 584 Thai university students on eight dimensions: name agreement, object familiarity, visual complexity, category agreement, image agreement, two types of manipulability (graspability and mimeability), and age of acquisition. The results revealed comparatively similar levels of name agreement to Brodeur et al. especially when unfamiliar items were factored out. The pattern of intercorrelations among the Thai psycholinguistic norms was comparable to previous studies and our cross-linguistic correlations were robust for the same set of pictures in English and French. Conjointly, the findings extend the relevancy of the BOSS to Thailand, supporting this photographic resource for investigations of language and other cognitive processes in monolingual, multilingual, and brain-impaired populations.     

Would disfluency by any other name still be disfluent? Examining the disfluency effect with cursive handwriting

When exposed to words presented under perceptually disfluent conditions (e.g., words written in Haettenschweiler font), participants have difficulty initially recognizing the words. Those same words, though, may be better remembered later than words presented in standard type font. This counterintuitive finding is referred to as the disfluency effect. Evidence for this disfluency effect, however, has been mixed, suggesting possible moderating factors. Using a recognition memory task, level of disfluency was examined as a moderating factor across three experiments using a novel cursive manipulation that varied on degree of legibility (easy-to-read cursive vs. hard-to-read cursive). In addition, list type and retention interval between study and test were manipulated. Across all three experiments, cursive words engendered better memory than type-print words. This memory effect persisted across varied list designs (blocked vs. mixed) and a longer (24-hour) retention interval. A small-scale meta-analysis across the three experiments suggested that the cursive disfluency effect is moderated by level of disfluency: easy-to-read cursive words tended to be better remembered than hard-to-read cursive words. Taken together, these results challenge extant accounts of the disfluency effect. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Efficacy of Guided iCBT for Depression and Mediation of Change by Cognitive Skill Acquisition

Guided internet CBT (iCBT) is a promising treatment for depression; however, it is less well known through what mechanisms iCBT works. Two possible mediators of change are the acquisition of cognitive skills and increases in behavioral activation. We report results of an 8-week waitlist controlled trial of guided iCBT, and test whether early change in cognitive skills or behavioral activation mediated subsequent change in depression. The sample was 89 individuals randomized to guided iCBT (n = 59) or waitlist (n = 30). Participants were 75% female, 72% Caucasian, and 33 years old on average. The PHQ9 was the primary outcome measure. Mediators were the Competencies of Cognitive Therapy Scale–Self Report and the Behavioral Activation Scale for Depression–Short Form. Treatment was Beating the Blues plus manualized coaching. Outcomes were analyzed using linear mixed models, and mediation with a bootstrap resampling approach. The iCBT group was superior to waitlist, with large effect sizes at posttreatment (Hedges’ g = 1.45). Dropout of iCBT was 29% versus 10% for waitlist. In the mediation analyses, the acquisition of cognitive skills mediated subsequent depression change (indirect effect = -.61, 95% bootstrapped biased corrected CI: -1.47, -0.09), but increases in behavioral activation did not. iCBT is an effective treatment for depression, but dropout rates remain high. Change in iCBT appears to be mediated by improvements in the use of cognitive skills, such as critically evaluating and restructuring negative thoughts.     

Trust within Limits

Abstract

There have two recent challenges to the orthodoxy that ‘X trusts Y to ø’ is the fundamental notion of trust. Domenicucci and Holton maintain that trust, like love and friendship, is fundamentally two-place. Paul Faulkner argues to the more radical conclusion that the one-place ‘X is trusting’ is explanatorily basic. I argue that ‘X trusts Y in domain D’ is the explanatorily basic notion. I make the case that only by thinking of trust as domain-specific can we make sense of the relationships between trust and belief in goodwill, trust and distrust, and trust and trustworthiness. In addition, by modeling trust as essentially domain-specific we can account for the way in which wise trust in others is finely discriminating.     

An Examination of the Effects of Feedback Accuracy on Academic Task Acquisition in Analogue Settings

The Psychological Record - Performance feedback is a common procedure used in a variety of settings to change behavior. Although reviews of the literature have identified a number of...