Assumed race moderates spontaneous racial bias in a computer‐based police simulation

We demonstrated that playing the roles of different outgroup races can elicit extrapersonal racial bias associated with respective racial groups. In a modified version of a computer‐based police simulation, the police officer's race was visually manipulated to be either Black or White. Korean participants made quick decisions whether to shoot targets (Black or White, armed or unarmed) on screen. Comparison of behavioral bias in the task revealed that, as expected, playing the role of a White police officer was associated with a stronger bias against Black targets compared to playing a Black police officer's role. The result suggests that when a social category is activated, one's race‐related behavior can reflect one's beliefs about the biases that members of that category hold.     

Young children produce categorical false recall without activation of the lure items

Individuals who study a list of words that are all related to another word that is not presented (a lure word) sometimes produce a false memory of having studied the lure word. The false memories are observed in lists of words that are in the same category as (category list) or associated with (associative list) a word that was not presented in an attempt to elicit false recall. The present study investigated whether young children create these types of false recall. Following the study of a categorical list, false recall was elicited in young children to the same degree as in adults, but studying an associative list elicited false recall only in adults. Furthermore, categorically related lure words did not have a priming effect in young children. These results suggest that the categorical false recall is produced via a different mechanism from the associative false recall.     

The Influence of Biomedical Information and Childhood History on Sentencing

A recent trend in court is for defense attorneys to introduce brain scans and other forms of biomedical information (BI) into criminal trials as mitigating evidence. The present study investigates how BI, when considered in combination with a defendant's childhood information (CI), can influence the length of a defendant's sentence. We hypothesized that certain combinations of BI and CI result in shorter sentences because they suggest that the defendant poses less of a threat to society. Participants were asked to read accounts of the trial of a murder suspect and, based on the information therein, recommend a sentence as if they were the judge. The defendant was diagnosed with psychopathy, but biomedical information regarding that diagnosis was included or excluded depending on the BI condition. The defendant was further described as growing up in either a loving or abusive family. The results showed that, if BI was present in the trial account, the defendant from an abusive family was perceived as less of a threat to society and received a shorter recommended sentence than if the defendant had been from a loving family. If BI was absent from the account, the pattern was reversed: the defendant from a loving family was perceived as less of a threat to society and received a shorter recommended sentence than if he had been from an abusive family. Implications for the use of BI and CI in court trials are discussed, as well as their relationship to free will and the function of punishment as retribution and utility. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Communication Styles,Cultural Values,and Counseling Effectiveness With Asian Americans

This study examined counseling intervention designed for Asian Americans. Participants (N = 158) rated session effectiveness after viewing a videotape of a counselor using a culturally congruent or incongruent communication style. Analyses of variance showed that the incongruent style was viewed as more satisfying and credible than the congruent style. Factor analysis showed that participants perceived “being direct” and “maintaining harmony” styles, and multiple regression analyses revealed that these perceptions had a positive relationship with effectiveness.     

Specifying Ability Growth Models Using a Multidimensional Item Response Model for Repeated Measures Categorical Ordinal Item Response Data

When categorical ordinal item response data are collected over multiple timepoints from a repeated measures design, an item response theory (IRT) modeling approach whose unit of analysis is an item response is suitable. This study proposes a few longitudinal IRT models and illustrates how a popular compensatory multidimensional IRT model can be utilized to formulate such longitudinal IRT models, which permits an investigation of ability growth at both individual and population levels. The equivalence of an existing multidimensional IRT model and those longitudinal IRT models is also elaborated so that one can make use of an existing multidimensional IRT model to implement the longitudinal IRT models.     

Psychometric Properties of a Spanish Translation of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Parent Version

The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale – Parent Version (RCADS-P) is a parent-report questionnaire that assesses dimensions of DSM anxiety and depressive disorders in youths. Previous studies have found that the RCADS-P possesses clinical utility and strong psychometric properties in both clinic- and school-based populations. To increase applicability of the measure to a greater proportion of the individuals accessing mental health services, the present study sought to develop and examine the psychometric properties of a Spanish version of the RCADS-P. As completed by parents of 85 publicly referred children and adolescents, the RCADS-P demonstrated good internal consistency and convergent, discriminant, and divergent validity. Confirmatory factor analysis also supported a six-factor model consistent with the measure’s six subscales: separation anxiety disorder, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and major depressive disorder. A secondary aim of this study was to evaluate the validity and reliability of a shortened, 25-item version of the Spanish translation of the RCADS-P, which also evidenced favorable psychometric properties. Findings provide support for the Spanish version of the RCADS-P as an efficient and informative parent-report measure of youths' internalizing behaviors.     

Differences in memory functioning between children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and/or focal epilepsy

Prior research has shown that attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and epilepsy are frequently comorbid and that both disorders are associated with various attention and memory problems. Nonetheless, limited research has been conducted comparing the two disorders in one sample to determine unique versus shared deficits. Hence, we investigated differences in working memory (WM) and short-term and delayed recall between children with ADHD, focal epilepsy of mixed foci, comorbid ADHD/epilepsy and controls. Participants were compared on the Core subtests and the Picture Locations subtest of the Children’s Memory Scale (CMS). Results indicated that children with ADHD displayed intact verbal WM and long-term memory (LTM), as well as intact performance on most aspects of short-term memory (STM). They performed worse than controls on Numbers Forward and Picture Locations, suggesting problems with focused attention and simple span for visual-spatial material. Conversely, children with epilepsy displayed poor focused attention and STM regardless of the modality assessed, which affected encoding into LTM. The only loss over time was found for passages (Stories). WM was intact. Children with comorbid ADHD/epilepsy displayed focused attention and STM/LTM problems consistent with both disorders, having the lowest scores across the four groups. Hence, focused attention and visual-spatial span appear to be affected in both disorders, whereas additional STM/encoding problems are specific to epilepsy. Children with comorbid ADHD/epilepsy have deficits consistent with both disorders, with slight additive effects. This study suggests that attention and memory testing should be a regular part of the evaluation of children with epilepsy and ADHD.     

Against Mathematical Convenientism

Indispensablists argue that when our belief system conflicts with our experiences, we can negate a mathematical belief but we do not because if we do, we would have to make an excessive revision of our belief system. Thus, we retain a mathematical belief not because we have good evidence for it but because it is convenient to do so. I call this view ‘mathematical convenientism.’ I argue that mathematical convenientism commits the consequential fallacy and that it demolishes the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument and Baker’s enhanced indispensability argument.     

Trait Socio-Cognitive Mindfulness is Related to Affective and Cognitive Empathy

Research regarding the relationship between empathy and mindfulness is sparse. Within the social scientific literature, there are two major branches of mindfulness research: meditative mindfulness (Kabat-Zinn in Gen Hosp Psychiatry 4(1):33–47, 1982) and non-meditative, socio-cognitive mindfulness (Langer and Moldoveanu in J Soc Issues 56(1):1–9, 2000). Meditative mindfulness is the awareness that arises through paying attention non-judgmentally to the present moment whereas socio-cognitive mindfulness is the process of drawing novel distinctions leading to greater attention to the present moment and sensitivity to context. We hypothesized that the two types of mindfulness would correlate with each other and with empathy broadly defined but that there would be divergence in these relationships given their conceptual distinctions. Four hundred and eighty-four participants from Mechanical Turk completed tasks of socio-cognitive mindfulness, meditative mindfulness, affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and social desirability. Socio-cognitive mindfulness correlated with both affective and cognitive empathy as well as with meditative mindfulness. Meditative mindfulness correlated with only affective empathy but not with cognitive empathy. These findings suggested that, in contrast to meditative mindfulness, socio-cognitive mindfulness involves cognitive processes (e.g., perspective-taking, flexibility) potentially amenable to experimental manipulation aimed at increasing empathy more generally.