Why don’t well-educated adults understand accumulation? A challenge to researchers,educators, and citizens

Accumulation is a fundamental process in dynamic systems: inventory accumulates production less shipments; the national debt accumulates the federal deficit. Effective decision making in such systems requires an understanding of the relationship between stocks and the flows that alter them. However, highly educated people are often unable to infer the behavior of simple stock–flow systems. In a series of experiments we demonstrate that poor understanding of accumulation, termed stock–flow failure, is a fundamental reasoning error. Persistent poor performance is not attributable to an inability to interpret graphs, lack of contextual knowledge, motivation, or cognitive capacity. Rather, stock–flow failure is a robust phenomenon that appears to be rooted in failure to appreciate the most basic principles of accumulation, leading to the use of inappropriate heuristics. We show that many people, including highly educated individuals with strong technical training, use what we term the “correlation heuristic”, erroneously assuming that the behavior of a stock matches the pattern of its flows. We discuss the origins of stock–flow failure and implications for management and education.     

Apraxia in corticobasal degeneration.

Corticobasal degeneration (CBD) is a degenerative disease that often presents with an asymmetric progressive ideomotor limb apraxia. Some apraxic subjects may fail to perform skilled purposive movements on command because they have lost the memories or representations that specify how these movements should be performed (representational deficit). In contrast, other apraxic subjects may have the movement representations but are unable to utilize the information contained in them to execute skilled purposive movements (production-execution deficit). To learn if the apraxic deficit in CBD is induced by a representational or a production-execution deficit, we tested three nondemented subjects with CBD on tasks requiring production of meaningful or meaningless gestures to command, gesture imitation, gesture discrimination, and novel gesture learning. A fourth subject with incomplete data also is presented. The results suggest that the apraxia associated with CBD is initially induced by a production-execution defect with relative sparing of the movement representations.     

Association of solitary binge drinking and suicidal behavior among emerging adult college students

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 26(3) of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors (see record 2012-13892-001). In the article, there is an error in the introductory paragraph. The number of students who had seriously considered attempting suicide in the Barrios, Everett, Simon, & Brener (2000) study should have been reported as 11.4%, not 1.4%. Additionally, in the Participants section, data for the study were collected from March 2009 to September 2010, not March 2009 to January 2010 as reported.] Emerging adult college students who binge drink in solitary contexts (i.e., while alone) experience greater depression and suicidal ideation than do students who only binge drink in social contexts, suggesting that they may be at greater risk for suicidal behavior. This study examined the association of a previous suicide attempt, one of the best predictors of future suicide attempts and suicide, and severity of recent suicidal ideation with drinking in solitary and social contexts. Participants were binge drinking, emerging adult (18- to 25-year-old) college students (N = 182) drawn from two studies of college drinkers. A logistic regression analysis revealed that both suicide attempt history and severity of suicidal ideation were significantly associated with a greater likelihood of being a solitary binge drinker as opposed to only a social binge drinker. Students with a previous suicide attempt were nearly four times more likely to be solitary binge drinkers. Multiple regression analyses revealed that suicide attempt history was significantly associated with greater frequency and quantity of drinking in solitary, but not social contexts. Suicidal ideation was significantly associated with drinks per solitary drinking day, but not frequency of solitary drinking once suicide attempt history was accounted for. Given the associations found between solitary binge drinking and a history of suicide attempts, as well as greater severity of recent suicidal ideation, it appears that these students are in need of suicide prevention efforts, including treatment efforts aimed at reducing binge drinking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Proportionate responses to life events influence clinicians' judgments of psychological abnormality

Psychological abnormality is a fundamental concept in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) and in all clinical evaluations. How do practicing clinical psychologists use the context of life events to judge the abnormality of a person's current behaviors? The appropriate role of life-event context in assessment has long been the subject of intense debate and scrutiny among clinical theorists, yet relatively little is known about clinicians' own judgments in practice. The authors propose a proportionate-response hypothesis, such that judgments of abnormality are influenced by whether the behaviors are a disproportionate response to past events, rendering them difficult to understand or explain. Licensed, practicing clinical psychologists (N = 77) were presented with vignettes describing hypothetical people's behaviors (disordered, mildly distressed, or unaffected) that had been preceded by either traumatic or mildly distressing events. Experts' judgments of abnormality were strongly and systematically influenced by the degree of mismatch between the past event and current behaviors in strength and valence, such that the greater the mismatch, the more abnormal the person seemed. A separate, additional group of clinical psychologists (N = 20) further confirmed that the greater the degree of mismatch, the greater the perceived difficulty in understanding the patient. These findings held true across clinicians of different theoretical orientations and in disorders for which these patterns of judgments ran contrary to formal recommendations in the DSM-IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). The rationality of these effects and implications for clinical decision science are discussed.     

Testing a longitudinal social cognitive model of intended persistence with engineering students across gender and race/ethnicity

We examined the temporal relations within Lent et al.'s (2013) integrative SCCT model of academic satisfaction and intended persistence in a sample of 551 engineering undergraduates from a Hispanic serving institution. They completed measures of instrumentality, support, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, interests, academic satisfaction, and intended persistence at two time points approximately 12 months apart. Using longitudinal cross-panel design, the findings supported a model where: (a) instrumentality predicted self-efficacy, (b) self-efficacy was a temporal precursor for both interests and academic satisfaction, (c) support was a temporal precursor for outcome expectations, while also predicting academic satisfaction, (d) academic satisfaction and intended persistence had a reciprocal relation with one another, and (e) relations in the model did not differ by gender or race/ethnicity. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Re-examining Religiosity as a Protective Factor: Comparing Alcohol Use by Self-Identified Religious,Spiritual, and Secular College Students

Religiosity has been found to be associated with lower alcohol use by college students. The majority of studies on this topic, however, fail to differentiate religiosity and spirituality. This is potentially problematic due to the changing face of religion in America today. A study was conducted to explore similarities and differences between self-identified religious and spiritual college students. A modified version of the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey was administered online with a sample of 2,312 students. As hypothesized, self-identified religious and spiritual students differed significantly on key variables related to religious practices, alcohol consumption, and postmodern social values.     

A Description–Experience Gap in Social Interactions: Information about Interdependence and Its Effects on Cooperation

In social interactions, decision makers are often unaware of their interdependence with others, precluding the realization of shared long‐term benefits. In an experiment, pairs of participants played an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma under various conditions involving differing levels of interdependence information. Each pair was assigned to one of four conditions: “No‐Info” players saw their own actions and outcomes, but were not told that they interacted with another person; “Min‐Info” players knew they interacted with another person but still without seeing the other's actions or outcomes; “Mid‐Info” players discovered the other's actions and outcomes as they were revealed over time; and “Max‐Info” players were also shown a complete payoff matrix mapping actions to outcomes from the outset and throughout the game. With higher levels of interdependence information, we found increased individual cooperation and mutual cooperation, driven by increased reciprocating cooperation (in response to a counterpart's cooperation). Furthermore, joint performance and satisfaction were higher for pairs with more information. We discuss how awareness of interdependence may encourage cooperative behavior in real‐world interactions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.