Factors influencing self‐report of mobile phone use: the role of response prompt,time reference and mobile phone use in recall

The current study (n = 180) assesses factors affecting the recall of past mobile phone behaviour. It manipulates two factors hypothesised as influencing recall of duration and number of calls made: time reference (24 hours vs. 3 days) and context prompt (temporal, person called, reason for call) and also considers their impact in relation to levels of mobile phone use. A measure of recall error was constructed by matching self‐reported calls to actual calls and weighting for actual usage. The results indicate that most people tend to overestimate duration and underestimate number of phone calls, although these discrepancies are related to actual amount of mobile phone use. The manipulations of time reference and context prompt have some effect on the patterns of recall in relation to number, rather than duration, of calls. The implications of these results for the development of reliable and valid self‐report measures of mobile phone use are discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Preparing for Year 12 examinations: Predictors of psychological distress and sleep

This study examined the influence of protective factors on psychological distress and sleep among Year 12 students 1 month prior to their externally assessed examinations. The sample included 195 Year 12 students who were to sit for at least one examination. Students completed the Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire, a measure of subjective stress, the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales – 21, and measures of sleep. A sizeable minority of students reported high levels of subjective stress, severe symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress, and very inadequate sleep. Freedom from negative cognitions was the factor most strongly associated with protection from psychological distress. None of the factors protected against inadequate sleep. Results showed few gender differences. The findings validate popular concern about the wellbeing of Year 12 students. They also confirm that protective factors do not provide equal protection for all individuals against all adverse outcomes.     

Which training method works best? A randomized controlled trial comparing three methods of training clinicians in dialectical behavior therapy skills

This study evaluated the efficacy of three methods of training community mental health providers (N = 150) in Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills, including a written treatment manual; an interactive, multimedia online training (OLT); and a two-day instructor-led training workshop (ILT). A hybrid design was utilized that incorporated aspects of efficacy and effectiveness trials. Assessments were completed at baseline, post-training, and 30- and 90-days following training. The results indicate that learner satisfaction with the training was highest in OLT and ILT, and both resulted in significantly higher satisfaction ratings than the manual. OLT outperformed ILT and the manual in increasing knowledge of the treatment, whereas ILT and the manual did not differ. All three training methods resulted in comparable increases in clinicians' ability to apply course content in clinical simulations. Overall, the results provide strong support for the efficacy of technology-based OLT methods in disseminating knowledge of empirically supported treatments to community mental health providers, suggesting that OLT may be a high-quality, easily accessible, and affordable addition to traditional training methods.     

Brief experimental analysis of early reading interventions

The purpose of this study was to investigate how brief experimental analyses (BEAs) could be used to identify effective interventions for Kindergartners (2 girls and 2 boys, 5 years and 7-10 months old) with low performance and/or growth slope in letter sound fluency (LSF). Interventions were tested within a multielement design with brief mini-reversals until an intervention yielding at least 20% improvement on a specific subskill measure or a curriculum-based measure of LSF was identified. BEA-identified interventions were implemented one-on-one for 5 to 9 weeks. A multiple-baseline design across participants showed large intervention effects (average adjusted d = 2.4) on general outcome measures, supporting treatment validity of BEAs. Findings extend the BEA literature to younger participants, early reading interventions, and early reading measures.     

A Pilot Study to Assess the Feasibility of a Multicenter Cluster Randomized Trial for the Management of Asymptomatic Persons with a Thrombophilia

There is controversy whether asymptomatic first-degree relatives (FDRs) of patients with venous thromboembolism (VTE) and thrombophilia should be screened, followed, and prescribed prophylaxis during risk periods. We recruited consecutive probands with idiopathic VTE and thrombophilia from our thrombosis clinics. Those FDRs with thrombophilia were randomized in family clusters to receive one-time verbal counseling and no organized follow-up or counseling, educational material, reminder aids and follow-up. Only 203 of 1,129 FDRs were eligible and consented. Dropouts were common; 1 FDR (1.7%) developed VTE. VTE risk, ability to treat and prevent were underestimated by the participants. Patients with VTE and thrombophilia and their FDRs are often not interested in thrombophilia testing. Despite education to inform their knowledge, interest and follow-up were less than ideal. The question of the best educational approach in these patients remains unanswered. The value of testing and following asymptomatic carriers of probands with VTE and thrombophilia remains unknown.     

Do birds of a feather universally flock together? Cultural variation in the similarity‐attraction effect

Three experiments explored the similarity‐attraction effect (SAE) among North American and Japanese samples. In all studies, North Americans showed a significantly more pronounced SAE than the Japanese. The North Americans consistently revealed a strong SAE whereas the Japanese effect was only significant in the methods with the most power. The cultural differences emerged across different methods, and for the domains of personality, activities, attitudes and demographics. The cultural difference was mediated by self‐esteem, indicating that a motivation for positive self‐views is a mechanism underlying the SAE.     

Face processing in humans and new world monkeys: the influence of experiential and ecological factors

This study tests whether the face-processing system of humans and a nonhuman primate species share characteristics that would allow for early and quick processing of socially salient stimuli: a sensitivity toward conspecific faces, a sensitivity toward highly practiced face stimuli, and an ability to generalize changes in the face that do not suggest a new identity, such as a face differently oriented. The look rates by adult tamarins and humans toward conspecific and other primate faces were examined to determine if these characteristics are shared. A visual paired comparison (VPC) task presented subjects with either a human face, chimpanzee face, tamarin face, or an object as a sample, and then a pair containing the previous stimulus and a novel stimulus was presented. The stimuli were either presented all in an upright orientation, or all in an inverted orientation. The novel stimulus in the pair was either an orientation change of the same face/object or a new example of the same type of face/object, and the stimuli were shown either in an upright orientation or in an inverted orientation. Preference to novelty scores revealed that humans attended most to novel individual human faces, and this effect decreased significantly if the stimuli were inverted. Tamarins showed preferential looking toward novel orientations of previously seen tamarin faces in the upright orientation, but not in an inverted orientation. Similarly, their preference to look longer at novel tamarin and human faces within the pair was reduced significantly with inverted stimuli. The results confirmed prior findings in humans that novel human faces generate more attention in the upright than in the inverted orientation. The monkeys also attended more to faces of conspecifics, but showed an inversion effect to orientation change in tamarin faces and to identity changes in tamarin and human faces. The results indicate configural processing restricted to particular kinds of primate faces by a New World monkey species, with configural processing influenced by life experience (human faces and tamarin faces) and specialized to process orientation changes specific to conspecific faces.     

Social learning and innovation are positively correlated in pigeons (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Columba livia</Emphasis>)

When animals show both frequent innovation and fast social learning, new behaviours can spread more rapidly through populations and potentially increase rates of natural selection and speciation, as proposed by A.C. Wilson in his behavioural drive hypothesis. Comparative work on primates suggests that more innovative species also show more social learning. In this study, we look at intra-specific variation in innovation and social learning in captive wild-caught pigeons. Performances on an innovative problem-solving task and a social learning task are positively correlated in 42 individuals. The correlation remains significant when the effects of neophobia on the two abilities are removed. Neither sex nor dominance rank are associated with performance on the two tasks. Free-flying flocks of urban pigeons are able to solve the innovative food-finding problem used on captive birds, demonstrating it is within the range of their natural capacities. Taken together with the comparative literature, the positive correlation between innovation and social learning suggests that the two abilities are not traded-off.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Special Topic:</Emphasis> Confucian and Christian Conceptions of Creativity

In this article the concept of God as creativity (rather than as “the Creator”) is explored. Though creativity is a profound mystery to us humans, it is a plausible concept today because of its interconnectedness with the belief that our cosmos is evolutionary: new orders of reality come into being in the course of time. Three modalities of creativity are explored here: the initial coming into being of the universe (the Big Bang); the creativity manifest in evolutionary processes; the human creation of culture. It is suggested that this creativity itself should be thought of as God: God is creativity. Thus God-talk is given a referent that is specifiable in terms of today’s understandings of the world and the human. God remains a profound mystery here, but one with a significant place in our modern understanding of the world and human life. This article includes text and ideas taken from my book, In the beginning…Creativity (Kaufman 2004).     

Visual search in children and adults: top-down and bottom-up mechanisms

Three experiments investigated visual search for targets that differed from distractors in colour, size, or orientation. In one condition the target was defined by a conjunction of these features, while in the other condition the target was the odd one out. In all experiments, 6-7- and 9-10-year-old children were compared with young adults. Experiment 1 showed that children's search differed from adults' search in two ways. In conjunction searches children searched more slowly and took longer to reject trials when no target was present. In the odd-one-out experiments, 6-7-year-old children were slower to respond to size targets than to orientation targets, and slower for orientation targets than for colour targets. Both the other groups showed no difference in their rate of responding to colour and orientation. Experiments 2 and 3 highlighted that these results were not a function of either differential density across set sizes (Experiment 2) or discriminability of orientation and colour (Experiment 3). Across all three experiments, the results of both conjunction and odd-one-out searches highlighted a development in visual search from middle to late childhood.