Exploring the process of progressive disorientation

While an increasing number of behavioral studies examining spatial cognition use experimental paradigms involving disorientation, the process by which one becomes disoriented is not well explored. The current study examined this process using a paradigm in which participants were blindfolded and underwent a succession of 70° or 200° passive, whole body rotations around a fixed vertical axis. After each rotation, participants used a pointer to indicate either their heading at the start of the most recent turn or their heading at the start of the current series of turns. Analyses showed that in both cases, mean pointing errors increased gradually over successive turns. In addition to the gradual loss of orientation indicated by this increase, analysis of the pointing errors also showed evidence of occasional, abrupt loss orientation. Results indicate multiple routes from an oriented to a disoriented state, and shed light on the process of becoming disoriented.     

Group Session Rating Scale: Preliminary psychometrics in substance abuse group interventions

Background: Although ultra‐brief outcome and process measures have been developed for individual therapy, currently there are no ultra‐brief alliance measures for group therapy. Method: The current study examined 105 clients in group therapy for issues related to substance abuse or with issues related to the substance abuse of a significant other. We tested whether a newly developed group therapy alliance measure – the Group Session Rating Scale would be related to other commonly used group process measures (Working Alliance Inventory, Group Cohesion, Group Climate) and early change (change over the first four sessions of group therapy). Results: The findings provided support for reliability based on Cronbach alphas and test‐retest coefficients. Additionally, the GSRS was a one‐factor measure that was related to other group process measures as well as predicted early change. Discussion: Clinical implications for how to utilise ultra‐brief outcome and alliance measures are provided.     

The natural emergence of reasoning about the afterlife as a developmental regularity

Participants were interviewed about the biological and psychological functioning of a dead agent. In Experiment 1, even 4- to 6-year-olds stated that biological processes ceased at death, although this trend was more apparent among 6- to 8-year-olds. In Experiment 2, 4- to 12-year-olds were asked about psychological functioning. The youngest children were equally likely to state that both cognitive and psychobiological states continued at death, whereas the oldest children were more likely to state that cognitive states continued. In Experiment 3, children and adults were asked about an array of psychological states. With the exception of preschoolers, who did not differentiate most of the psychological states, older children and adults were likely to attribute epistemic, emotional, and desire states to dead agents. These findings suggest that developmental mechanisms underlie intuitive accounts of dead agents' minds.     

Sleep quality, sleep propensity and academic performance

We examined associations between measures of sleep propensity on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, sleep quality on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and academic performance by GPA and grades in introductory psychology for 414 students. In the total sample, neither sleep propensity nor sleep quality correlated with GPA or introductory psychology grades. However, among students carrying a full course load, those reporting poor sleep quality performed less well on academic measures than those reporting a better quality of sleep. Further research is needed to assess the moderating influence of overall demands of daytime functioning on the association between sleep quality and academic performance.     

Explanations versus applications: the explanatory power of valuable beliefs

People hold beliefs that vary not only in their perceived truth, but also in their value to the believer--their meaning, relevance, and importance. We argue that a belief's value is determined, at least in part, by its explanatory power. Highly valuable beliefs are those that can uniquely explain and organize a diverse set of observations. Less valuable beliefs, in contrast, are those that can be explained by other observations, or that explain and organize few observations. The results of three experiments are consistent with these hypotheses. These experiments demonstrate that applying either scientific or religious beliefs to explain other observations increases the perceived value of those beliefs, whereas generating explanations for the existence of beliefs decreases their perceived value. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for people's resistance to explaining their own beliefs, for the perceived value of science and religion, and for culture wars between people holding opposing beliefs.     

Presence of administrators differentially impacts eyewitness discriminability for same- and other-race identifications

Best practice guidelines recommend that eyewitness lineup administrators be blind to a suspect's identity, but no research has investigated whether the mere presence of a lineup administrator impacts eyewitness identification decisions. Informed by social facilitation theory, we predicted that the presence of an audience would differentially impact identification accuracy for same- and other-race identifications. Participants (N = 191) viewed same- and other-race lineups either with an audience or alone. Although the presence of an audience did not directly impact identification accuracy, significant indirect effects indicated that the audience provoked evaluation apprehension which hindered other-race identification accuracy and improved same-race identification accuracy. We suggest that using double-blind lineup procedures may not sufficiently protect eyewitness identification accuracy when making other-race lineup decisions in the presence of others.     

The roles of sequencing and verbal working memory in sentence comprehension deficits in Parkinson's disease

Studies of sentence comprehension deficits in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients suggest that language processing involves circuits connecting subcortical and cortical regions. Anatomically segregated neural circuits appear to support different cognitive and motor functions. To investigate which functions are implicated in PD comprehension deficits, we tested comprehension, verbal working memory span, and cognitive set-switching in a non-linguistic task in 41 PD patients; we also obtained speech measurements reflecting motor sequencing processes that may be involved in articulatory rehearsal within working memory. Comprehension of sentences with center-embedded or final relative clauses was impaired when they could not be understood from lexical semantic content alone. Overall comprehension error rates correlated strongly with impaired set-switching and significantly with reduced working memory span and speech motor sequencing deficits. Correlations with comprehension of different sentence structures indicate that these impairments do not represent a single deficit; rather, PD comprehension deficits appear to arise from several independent mechanisms. Deficits in cognitive set-switching or underlying inhibitory processes may compromise the ability to process relative clauses. Deficits in verbal working memory appear to impair comprehension of long-distance dependencies. Speech sequencing correlated with neither set-switching nor verbal working memory span, consistent with their being supported by independent, segregated cortico-subcortical circuits.     

Principles of Religious Prosociality: A Review and Reformulation

Historically, religion and religious belief have often been credited as the source of human morality. But what have been the real effects of religion on prosocial behavior? A review of the psychological literature reveals a complex relation between religious belief and moral action: leading to greater prosocial behavior in some contexts but not in others, and in some cases actually increasing antisocial behavior. In addition, different forms of religious belief are associated with different styles of co-operation. This body of evidence paints a somewhat messy picture of religious prosociality; however, recent examinations of the cognitive mechanisms of belief help to resolve apparent inconsistencies. In this article, we review evidence of two separate sources of religious prosociality: a religious principle associated with the protection of the religious group, and a supernatural principle associated with the belief in God, or other supernatural agents. These two principles emphasize different prosocial goals, and so have different effects on prosocial behavior depending on the target and context. A re-examination of the literature illustrates the independent influences of religious and supernatural principles on moral action.