Goal attainment scaling: An idiosyncratic method to assess treatment effectiveness in agoraphobia

Goal attainment scaling (GAS) is an individually tailored way to measure treatment gains, using a highly standardized procedure. An advantage of the method is that it takes into account individual characteristics of the patients, and at the same time the data are suitable for quantitative analysis and comparable across patients. Despite the wide acceptance and use of the method in the evaluation of psychotherapy, data on its psychometric properties are rather scarce. In the current study, GAS was used as one of several outcome measures in a research project on the effectiveness of various treatments for panic disorder with agoraphobia. Guidelines for GAS are presented as well as data on the reliability and validity of the procedure. Results indicate that the procedure is reliable, valid, and sensitive to the improvement of patients during treatment. Comparison of GAS with standardized measures revealed considerable concordance, although the clinical end status of patients diverged somewhat dependent on the measure considered.     

Social value orientation and intelligence: A test of the goal prescribes rationality principle

The present study examines the influence of pre-existing individual differences in social value orentations, or preferences for certain patterns of outcomes to oneself and others (McClintock, 1978), on perceptions of rationality in a social dilemma. In Experiment 1 conducted in Groningen (the Netherlands), it was found that people with pro-social orientations expected more cooperation from another described as intelligent than from another described as unintelligent, whereas individualists and competitors expected relatively more cooperation from another described as unintelligent. The cross-cultural generalizability of this finding was examined and supported in Experiment 2 which was conducted in Santa Barbara (U.S.A.). Results from both studies are consistent with the Goal Prescribes Rationality Principle (Van Lange, Liebrand and Kuhlman, 1990) which assumes that people with pro-social (cooperative) orientations would perceive rationality in social dilemmas primarily from the collective perspective, whereas individualists and competitors would take a strong egocentric perspective on rationality. In addition, we found a strong relationship between expectations of other's cooperation and own cooperative behaviour when the other was described as intelligent. The strength of this relationship was reduced, particularly for individualists and competitors, when the other person was described as unintelligent.     

Accentuation effects and illusory change in exemplar-based category learning

Examined the hypothesis that information enhancing category differences receives greater weight in estimates of category means than information that reduces such differences. In the first experiment, subjects estimated the cumulative means of test scores of two groups of students. The experimental manipulation involved a gradual shift of the true mean of one group either towards or away from the true mean of the other group. As predicted, changes of estimates were larger when the two means became more dissimilar than when they became more similar. The second experiment involved otherwise identical procedures, but the variance in one category was increased while the mean remained stable. Subjects perceived an illusory change of the mean away from the comparison category. It is suggested that accentuation effects of this kind may limit the reduction of social stereotypes.     

Risky decision making and cognitive flexibility among online sports bettors in Nigeria

Online sports betting is a popular recreational activity in Nigeria. Like other forms of gambling, risk of pathological progression exists for gamblers who continue betting despite severe financial and psychosocial consequences. In the present study, we examined whether this population of gamblers shows deficits in decision making and cognitive flexibility that have been documented in Western gambling populations. Thirty-six online sports bettors and 42 non-gambling participants completed a version of the Iowa gambling task (IGT) and an established set-shifting task for the assessment of cognitive flexibility. The two groups did not differ significantly in the selection of disadvantageous decks on the IGT. In contrast, sports bettors committed significantly more errors on the set-shifting task than non-gambling control participants. As this performance deficit was not specific to trials requiring a set shift, it most likely resulted from gambling-related changes in general cognitive or motivational abilities that are required to successfully complete challenging mental tasks. While our results illustrate that findings from Western populations cannot automatically be generalised to other contexts, it should be noted that we focused on only one particular type of gambling and included mostly participants with mild gambling-related problems.     

Other-Sacrificing Options*

I argue that you can be permitted to discount the interests of your adversaries even though doing so would be impartially suboptimal. This means that, in addition to the kinds of moral options that the literature traditionally recognises, there exist what I call other-sacrificing options. I explore the idea that you cannot discount the interests of your adversaries as much as you can favour the interests of your intimates; if this is correct, then there is an asymmetry between negative partiality toward your adversaries and positive partiality toward your intimates.     

Inhibited power motivation and persuasive communication: a lens model analysis

The authors tested the hypothesis that after motive arousal, individuals with an inhibited power motive (IPM) would excel at a persuasive task and explored the behavioral strategies IPM individuals use to that purpose. Sixty-eight participants presented their point of view on a controversial subject to another person. Power motivation and inhibition were both assessed by a picture-story test. Prior to their presentation, half of the participants imaginatively explored the ensuing task. The other half was assigned to a no-imagery control condition. Lens model analysis of videotaped presentations revealed that IPM participants in the imagery condition were judged to be the most persuasive of all participants. This interactive effect of power motivation, inhibition, and imagery condition was accounted for by three behavioral cues: verbal fluency, gesturing, and eyebrow lifts. No comparable effects emerged among no-imagery participants.     

Activation of multiple phoneme associates of graphemes in visual word recognition

One general issue in the domain of visual word recognition is to delineate the nature of readers' knowledge of the print-sound mapping. A more specific question is to determine whether multiple grapheme-phoneme associations are available and activated during the phonological transcoding of a letter string. Evidence for the activation of irregular associations during print-to-sound transcoding, independently from lexical influences, was assessed in a letter detection task by examining performance on target-absent pseudowords. We contrasted two types of pseudowords that could be considered homophone with a real word by application of either grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules or of multiple phonemic activation. Performance on both types of homophones was compared to nonhomophone control pseudowords, strictly equivalent in terms of orthographic similarity to the base words. The finding of a homophony disadvantage for the homophones by multiple activation was interpreted as evidence for multiple phonemic activation in the print-to-sound conversion system.     

Local contextual cuing in visual search

Previous research has indicated that covariations between the global layout of search displays and target locations result in contextual cuing: the global context guides attention to probable target locations. The present experiments extend these findings by showing that local redundancies also facilitate visual search. Participants searched for randomly located targets in invariant homogenous displays, i.e., the global context provided information neither about the location nor about the identity of the target. The only redundancy referred to spatial relations between the targets and certain distractors: Two of the distractors were frequently presented next to the targets. In four of five experiments, targets with frequent flankers were detected faster than targets with rare flankers. The data suggest that this local contextual cuing does not depend on awareness of the redundant local topography but needs the redundantly related stimuli to be attended to.     

Effects of methylphenidate on kinematic aspects of handwriting in hyperactive boys

Poor handwriting in hyperactive children often contributes to academic failure. Beneficial effects of methylphenidate on the quality of handwriting have been shown. Using a digitizing tablet, the handwriting of 21 hyperactive boys was examined both during methylphenidate treatment and following withdrawal of the drug. Half of the hyperactive boys were tested first on methylphenidate and then following withdrawal of the drug and the remaining hyperactive boys were examined in the reverse order. Twenty-one control boys underwent the same examination. Velocity and acceleration of handwriting movements were measured. Furthermore, every writing specimen was independently rated by four examiners regarding the quality of handwriting. Following withdrawal of the drug, the quality of handwriting specimens of hyperactive boys was poorer than during treatment with methylphenidate. Statistical comparison of writing movements of hyperactive boys on and off methylphenidate revealed that the medication resulted in a deterioration in handwriting fluency. The results showed that following withdrawal of medication, hyperactive children did not differ from control boys in handwriting movements. The improvement in hyperactive behavior through methylphenidate was associated with increased legibility and greater accuracy of handwriting. The intention to write neatly may interfere with the fluent writing process.     

Visual analogue scales for mode-independent measurement in self-administered questionnaires

Previous research has shown evidence for mode differences between computer-assisted self-administered interviews (CASI) and paper-and-pencil interviews, especially in the case of sensitive questions. Some of these differences are explained by higher degrees of self-disclosure for CASI than for paper-and-pencil interviews, due to the more private situation with CASIs. This analysis examines the existence of different degrees of self-disclosure for CASI versus paper-and-pencil questionnaires and whether these differences can be reduced by the use of a specific response format. Judgments of items on a self-control scale with discrete 5-point (Likert-type) scales are compared with judgments on continuous visual analogue scales (VAS). Because a categorization effect for Likert-type items is assumed when pressure for social desirability is present, it is hypothesized that VAS compared to Likert-type response formats are less sensitive to mode differences.