How planning facilitates behaviour change: Additive and interactive effects of a randomized controlled trial

Planning interventions have proven effective to change behaviour. However, less is known about their underlying mechanisms. To better understand the processes by which planning interventions unfold their effects, a combined action planning and coping planning intervention was tested in a field setting, with the focus on mediating and moderating effects of theory‐derived social‐cognitive variables. In a randomized controlled trial, 374 employees of a logistics company were asked to participate in either a combined action planning and coping planning intervention or an active control group. Four weeks later, self‐reported changes in fruit and vegetable intake, action planning, coping planning, intentions and self‐efficacy were measured. Single and simultaneous mediating effects on behaviour were tested with intention‐to‐treat analyses, along with interaction effects between planning processes. Action planning and coping planning mediated intervention effects on fruit and vegetable intake not only separately, but also simultaneously (multiple mediation). Action planning and coping planning had main and interactive effects on behaviour change (moderation). Action planning and coping planning may exert both additive and synergistic effects on health behaviour change. Volitional interventions should include both action planning and coping planning components and stimulate the use of planning in everyday life. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reactions and Strategies of German Catholic Priests to Cope with Phases of Spiritual Dryness

Journal of Religion and Health - We investigated strategies of 763 Catholic priests (response rate 36%) to deal with phases of spiritual dryness, specifically their reactions toward these feelings,...     

Separating response‐execution bias from decision bias: Arguments for an additional parameter in Ratcliff's diffusion model

Diffusion model data analysis permits the disentangling of different processes underlying the effects of experimental manipulations. Estimates can be provided for the speed of information accumulation, for the amount of information used to draw conclusions, and for a decision bias. One parameter describes the duration of non‐decisional processes including the duration of motor‐response execution. In the default diffusion model, it is implicitly assumed that both responses are executed with the same speed. In some applications of the diffusion model, this assumption will be violated. This will lead to biased parameter estimates. Consequently, we suggest accounting explicitly for differences in the speed of response execution for both responses. Results from a simulation study illustrate that parameter estimates from the default model are biased if the speed of response execution differs between responses. A second simulation study shows that large trial numbers (N>1,000) are needed to detect whether differences in response‐execution times are based on different execution times.     

Physiological effects of enriched environment exposure and LTP induction in the hippocampus in vivo do not transfer faithfully to in vitro slices

A number of experimental paradigms use in vitro brain slices to test for changes in synaptic transmission and plasticity following a behavioral manipulation. For example, a number of previous studies have reported a variety of effects of environmental enrichment (EE) exposure on field potential responses in hippocampal slices, but in no study was is it known what changes had been elicited in vivo. In the present study, we recorded from the hippocampus in vivo while rats underwent a brief period of EE. There was no detectable EE-induced change in synaptic efficacy in the dentate gyrus in vivo, but there was an increase in cellular excitability. In slices prepared from the same animals, we failed to observe any evidence of the excitability increase. We next tested whether LTP induction in vivo was better preserved in vitro. However, when slices from these rats were examined, there was no observable change in perforant path synaptic strength, although there was a modest increase in excitability that correlated with the increased excitability observed in vivo. These findings suggest that synaptic changes induced in vivo either are not preserved faithfully or are difficult to detect in hippocampal slices, while changes in cellular excitability are better preserved.Exposure to an enriched environment (EE) can improve performance on a variety of hippocampus-dependent memory tasks in both normal (Kempermann et al. 1997; Duffy et al. 2001; Teather et al. 2002; Schrijver et al. 2004; Irvine and Abraham 2005) and disease model (Ohlsson and Johansson 1995; Young et al. 1999; Jankowsky et al. 2005; Lazarov et al. 2005; Nithianantharajah and Hannan 2006; Laviola et al. 2008) animals. Previous studies attempting to understand the physiological changes that mediate these effects have yielded mixed results, which may in part be due to the variability in enrichment paradigms used in different laboratories, but which may also be due to the method used to measure hippocampal physiology.Traditionally, researchers have studied the effects of EE using ex vivo brain slices. Such studies have sometimes reported an increase in synaptic strength following enrichment (Green and Greenough 1986; Foster et al. 1996; Foster and Dumas 2001), but a lack of a change has also been observed (Duffy et al. 2001; Feng et al. 2001; Parsley et al. 2007). The ex vivo approach is predicated on the assumption that EE (or other behavioral) treatment induces changes in neural function that are of sufficient magnitude and extent that they will still be present when the brain is removed and studied in vitro. However, there could be many hidden effects of slice preparation (Kirov et al. 2004) that change or obscure effects occurring in vivo.In a previous study, we were surprised to find few effects of a 3-mo EE treatment on hippocampal synaptic function and plasticity when assessed in vitro (Eckert et al. 2010), despite our having observed with in vivo recordings substantial effects with shorter periods of EE exposure (Irvine and Abraham 2005; Irvine et al. 2006). We therefore considered the possibility that effects measured electrophysiologically in vivo may not be readily detectable in vitro. Testing this hypothesis requires studying the same animals in vivo and in vitro, a control procedure we are not aware of having been reported previously in the literature. In the present study, we examined whether the effects of EE or LTP induction in vivo could be detected in hippocampal slices taken from the same animals. We failed to detect any of the in vivo changes, except for a modest increase in cellular excitability following LTP.     

When do microsaccades follow spatial attention?

Following up on an exchange about the relation between microsaccades and spatial attention (Horowitz, Fencsik, Fine, Yurgenson, & Wolfe, 2007; Horowitz, Fine, Fencsik, Yurgenson, & Wolfe, 2007; Laubrock, Engbert, Rolfs, & Kliegl, 2007), we examine the effects of selection criteria and response modality. We show that for Posner cuing with saccadic responses, microsaccades go with attention in at least 75% of cases (almost 90% if probability matching is assumed) when they are first (or only) microsaccades in the cue—target interval and when they occur between 200 and 400 msec after the cue. The relation between spatial attention and the direction of microsaccades drops to chance level for unselected microsaccades collected during manual-response conditions. Analyses of data from four cross-modal cuing experiments demonstrate an above-chance, intermediate link for visual cues, but no systematic relation for auditory cues. Thus, the link between spatial attention and direction of microsaccades depends on the experimental condition and time of occurrence, but it can be very strong.     

Two types of serial dependence in visual working memory

Stimulus representations in working memory depend on memory traces of past stimuli both from previous trials and from the current trial. However, it is unclear whether the same or different mechanisms underlie this serial dependence across and within trials. We directly contrasted estimates of bias for pairs of immediately successive stimuli across and within trials. In each trial, participants memorized two consecutive motion direction stimuli (S1 and S2) and after a short delay were cued to report one of them. We found serial dependence across trials: The current S1 was attracted towards the preceding S2 when the latter had been cued for report. In contrast, within the same trial S2 was repulsed from S1. In addition, repulsion within a trial occurred for a broader range of motion direction differences between stimuli than attraction across trials. A second experiment in which 25% of trials did not require a response demonstrated that across‐trial attraction did not depend on whether the previous S2 actually had to be reported. Our findings provide evidence for two types of serial dependence operating across and within trials. They support the notion of different mechanisms integrating or segregating current from similar past memory contents depending on their task relevance.     

Daily Behavior Report Cards and Systematic Direct Observation: An Investigation of the Acceptability,Reported Training and Use,and Decision Reliability Among School Psychologists

More than ever, educators require assessment procedures and instrumentation that are technically adequate as well as efficient to guide data-based decision making. Thus, there is a need to understand perceptions of available tools, and the decisions made when using collected data, by the primary users of those data. In this paper, two studies that surveyed members of the National Association of School Psychologists with regard to two procedures useful in formative assessment, (i.e., Daily Behavior Report Cards; Systematic Direct Observation), are presented. Participants reported greater overall levels of training and use of Systematic Direct Observation than Daily Behavior Report Cards, yet both techniques were rated as equally acceptable for use in formative assessment. Furthermore, findings supported that school psychologists tend to make similar intervention decisions when presented with both types of data. Implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.