Background Sound Impairs Interruption Recovery in Dynamic Task Situations: Procedural Conflict?

Interruptions impair performance even on simple, static, laboratory‐based tasks, but little research has looked at their impact in more complex and realistic settings that involve dynamically evolving circumstances and other environmental stressors. Using a radar operator task with or without background sound, participants were unexpectedly interrupted to complete another task, which masked the radar screen as the scenario continually evolved. Task efficiency was impaired by interruption: decision‐making time was slower immediately following interruption, this cost being greater and persevered longer in the presence of auditory distraction. Resumption time was also increased with distraction. Eye fixation durations were shorter following interruption, reflecting participants' attempts to rapidly re‐encode and update their model of the situation. These results suggest that those processes involved in task resumption are also susceptible to background sound, and indicate a need for theories of task interruption to better specify the role of attention in interruption recovery. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Religion and Assimilation Among Turkish Muslim Immigrants: Comparing Practicing and Non-Practicing Muslims

In the literature on religion and assimilation, Muslims are usually categorized into one group without any reference to their differences in terms of religious practice and ethnicity. This paper sheds light on such differences by illustrating the case of Turkish immigrants in the USA, one of the least studied immigrant groups. Based on interviews with practicing and non-practicing Turkish Muslims in Houston, we address the issue of how practices of religion play its role in the assimilation of Turkish immigrants. Data reveal that while Turks in general are fairly well adapted into American society, there are some major differences between practicing and non-practicing Turkish Muslims, even though practically all Turks identify as Muslim.     

Students' Journey Through a Trauma Studies Educational Program: A Northern Irish Perspective

This article presents the findings of a qualitative research study that explored the experiences of part-time students who completed a BSc(Hons) trauma studies program in Northern Ireland. Data collection involved semistructured interviews with seven students. Findings indicated a journey through the program during which students experienced both challenges and opportunities for development. Such challenges included responses to emotive content and barriers to sharing in classroom-based dialogues. Moreover, participants felt the program enhanced their knowledge as well as the supportive services they provided to those who had experienced a trauma. Findings suggest that participants who had experienced a personal trauma appeared to be drawn to this program.     

Birth—From Metaphor to Reality in Jewish Literature and Psychoanalysis: Discussion of Lewis Aron’s Paper “With you I’m Born Again”

In his innovative paper, Lewis Aron discusses narratives of his own “metaphorical birth” as a psychoanalyst, through the years of working with his first analysand and by way of his encounters with four different supervisors. Aron suggests varied psychoanalytic perspectives and dialogical readings of the essence of birth in mutual relations and of its presence in the analytic dyad.     

Conducting Health Disparities Research with Criminal Justice Populations: Examining Research,Ethics, and Participation

This study explored the challenges of informed consent and understanding of the research process among Black and Latino men under community supervision (e.g., parole and/or probation). Between February and October 2012, we conducted cognitive face-to-face interviews using open-ended questions on the significant areas of research participation (i.e., the informed consent process, confidentiality, compensation, what is meant by human subject and clinical trials) among 259 men aged 35 to 67 under community supervision in Bronx, New York. Content analysis of the open-ended questions revealed limited knowledge concerning the understanding of research participation. The study participants appeared to generally understand concepts such as compensation after research participation and confidentiality. Participants demonstrated a lack of understanding of certain aspects of the research process—informed consent, human subject, Institutional Review Board, and clinical trials. These findings are informative to researchers conducting studies with criminal justice populations and Institutional Review Boards reviewing research studies.     

Relationship between social anxiety and perceived trustworthiness

Four different patterns of biased ratings of facial expressions of emotions have been found in socially anxious participants: higher negative ratings of (1) negative, (2) neutral, and (3) positive facial expressions than nonanxious controls. As a fourth pattern, some studies have found no group differences in ratings of facial expressions of emotion. However, these studies usually employed valence and arousal ratings that arguably may be less able to reflect processing of social information. We examined the relationship between social anxiety and face ratings for perceived trustworthiness given that trustworthiness is an inherently socially relevant construct. Improving on earlier analytical strategies, we evaluated the four previously found result patterns using a Bayesian approach. Ninety-eight undergraduates rated 198 face stimuli on perceived trustworthiness. Subsequently, participants completed social anxiety questionnaires to assess the severity of social fears. Bayesian modeling indicated that the probability that social anxiety did not influence judgments of trustworthiness had at least three times more empirical support in our sample than assuming any kind of negative interpretation bias in social anxiety. We concluded that the deviant interpretation of facial trustworthiness is not a relevant aspect in social anxiety.     

Mental Health Problems of Displaced War-Affected Adolescents in Northern Uganda: Patterns of Agreement Between Self and Caregiver Assessment

We evaluate caregiver and adolescent concordance on adolescent mental health severity in war-affected Northern Uganda. Data were collected from 628 caregiver-adolescent dyads in two internally displaced persons’ camps. Internalizing and externalizing-type mental health problems were assessed using locally-developed scales. To evaluate concordance, mean caregiver and adolescent scores on each scale were compared using Pearson’s correlation coefficients and within-pair-differences were compared by subtracting caregiver from adolescent responses and using t tests to assess whether these differed from 0. Mental heath problem type and youth/caregiver gender and age were investigated as potential indicators of group differences. Adolescents consistently rated their problems as more severe for internalizing problems and less severe for externalizing problems compared with caregivers. Mothers’ reports exhibited better concordance for internalizing problems while fathers’ and other caregivers’ exhibited better concordance of externalizing problems. Results suggest researchers and program implementers need to be aware of respondent differences when planning studies and services.     

Conscious awareness of methodological choices: A reply to Milberg and McGlinchey (2010)

Milberg and McGlinchey (2010) claim that the conclusions we reach in "Perceptual Grouping Operates Independently of Attentional Selection: Evidence From Hemispatial Neglect" are unwarranted. Specifically, it is asserted that insufficient methodological control was exerted over the attentional status of the patients and that partial attention to the contralesional field could have resulted in the congruency effects we observe. Although we agree with their methodological cautions in general, we argue that our investigation is, in fact, methodologically sound. In particular, we reiterate and highlight that our investigation is unprecedented in the characterization of a patient sample with multiple clinical, psychophysical, and experimental measures; in our use of a stringent, rigidly controlled paradigm specifically designed for investigating perceptual grouping without awareness; in our modification of the experimental procedure to make it even more stringent; and in our specific methodological choices for comparison/control conditions within this experimental paradigm. We also demonstrate that partial attention to the contralesional left cannot support the robust congruency effects we observe. In light of this, we remain confident of our interpretation of our findings and suggest that perceptual grouping can indeed operate in the absence of attention.     

Scoring methods and the predictive ability of working memory tasks

Measures of working memory (WM) are useful predictors of cognitive skills and educational attainment in children. A number of scoring methods can be used for WM tasks—for example, the sum of all correctly recalled stimuli in perfectly recalled lists (absolute score) or the proportion of items recalled in the correct serial position during the task (proportion correct). The present study explored whether proportion correct scoring had an advantage over absolute scoring of WM tasks for predicting children’s educational attainment. The participants were 81 primary school children aged 7–8 years. Each participant was tested on five measures of WM. Schools supplied national curriculum attainment levels for each child in reading, writing, mathematics, and science. The results revealed that proportion correct scoring resulted in WM tasks’ being better predictors of children’s achievement. The results are discussed in terms of both psychological theory and implications for research methods.