Rehab Retrospect: Former Prostitutes and the (Re)construction of Deviance

In this study, in-depth qualitative interviews with former street prostitutes currently in an outpatient drug rehabilitation program are utilized to examine the transition out of prostitution and from a deviant to a non-deviant identity. Little extant literature explores the relationships between stigma management and desistance as prostitutes attempt to exit the industry. This research finds that while in rehab, the women activated meanings of their previous drug addiction both as a stigma management technique and as a cognitive process that distances them from the prostitute identity. They conceptually bundled their prostitution identity with that of drug addiction, ultimately reinforcing that they completed the transition out of deviance.     

Understanding the Individual Cognitive Potential of Persons with Intellectual Disability in Workshops for Adapted Work

We aimed at using simple judgments of event segmentation to reveal cognitive problems in workers with intellectual disability regarding their assembly performance. We investigated event perception and assembly performance in 32 workers (mean IQ = 64.4). First, we assessed their ability to segment activity into meaningful events. The task involved segmenting four videos in coarse and fine events. We assessed event segmentation performance and compared it to 30 controls (IQ > 100). The workers detected fewer event boundaries than controls. A subgroup of the workers (12 of 32) defined more event boundaries in the coarse than the fine condition, indicating misconception of higher‐ and lower‐level content. The remaining 20 workers showed diminished hierarchical alignment compared to controls. Second, workers executed a Lego task. Better event segmentation performance was associated with enhanced assembly performance. These results suggest that the event segmentation task can serve as a diagnostic assessment for cognitive potential.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Future thinking instructions improve prospective memory performance in adolescents

Studies on prospective memory (PM) development in adolescents point to age-related increases through to adulthood. The goal of the present study was to examine whether instructing adolescents to engage in an episodic prospection of themselves executing future actions (i.e., future thinking) when forming an intention would improve their PM performance and reduce age-related differences. Further, we set out to explore whether future thinking instructions result in stronger memory traces and/or stronger cue–context associations by evaluating retrospective memory for the PM cues after task completion and monitoring costs during PM task processing. Adolescents and young adults were allocated to either the future thinking, repeated-encoding or standard condition. As expected, adolescents had fewer correct PM responses than young adults. Across age groups, PM performance in the standard condition was lower than in the other encoding conditions. Importantly, the results indicate a significant interaction of age by encoding condition. While adolescents benefited most from future thinking instructions, young adults performed best in the repeated-encoding condition. The results also indicate that the beneficial effects of future thinking may result from deeper intention-encoding through the simulation of future task performance.     

Socioanalytic theory and work behavior: Roles of work values and political skill in job performance and promotability assessment

Socioanalytic theory postulates that job performance ratings are predicted by basic social motives moderated by social competency. The two motives are the motive to get along with others and the motive to achieve status and power. The present two-study investigation assessed these motives as work values and collected supervisors' job performance and promotability assessments. Social competency was assessed as political skill at work. The results provided strong and consistent support for the hypotheses, thus providing a more direct test of socioanalytic theory and extending it to demonstrate effects beyond overall job performance ratings on contextual performance and promotability assessments. Contributions and implications of these results, strengths and limitations, directions for future research, and practical implications are discussed.     

Affective and cognitive attitudes, uncertainty avoidance and intention to obtain genetic testing: an extension of the Theory of Planned Behaviour

To ensure successful implementation of genetic screening and counselling according to patients best interests, the attitudes and motives of the public are important to consider. The aim of this study was to apply a theoretical framework in order to investigate which individual and disease characteristics might facilitate the uptake of genetic testing. A questionnaire using an extended version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour was developed to assess the predictive value of affective and cognitive expected outcomes, subjective norms, perceived control and uncertainty avoidance on the intention to undergo genetic testing. In addition to these individual characteristics, the predictive power of two disease characteristics was investigated by systematically varying the diseases fatality and penetrance (i.e. the probability of getting ill in case one is a mutation carrier). This resulted in four versions of the questionnaire which was mailed to a random sample of 2400 Norwegians. Results showed genetic test interest to be quite high, and to vary depending on the characteristics of the disease, with participants preferring tests for highly penetrant diseases. The most important individual predictor was uncertainty avoidance.     

Cluster Analysis of the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS): Symptom Dimensions and Clinical Correlates in an Outpatient Youth Sample

Tic disorders are heterogeneous, with symptoms varying widely both within and across patients. Exploration of symptom clusters may aid in the identification of symptom dimensions of empirical and treatment import. This article presents the results of two studies investigating tic symptom clusters using a sample of 99 youth (M age = 10.7, 81% male, 77% Caucasian) diagnosed with a primary tic disorder (Tourette’s disorder or chronic tic disorder), across two university-based outpatient clinics specializing in tic and related disorders. In Study 1, a cluster analysis of the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS) identified four symptom dimensions: predominantly complex tics; simple head/face tics; simple body tics; and simple vocal/facial tics. In Study 2, these clusters were shown to be differentially associated with demographic and clinical characteristics. Findings lend support to prior research on tic phenomenology, help to organize treatment goals, and suggest symptom dimensions of tic disorders for further evaluation.     

The impact of political skill on career success of employees' representatives

Works councillors are elected representatives of employees in German companies. It is their job to protect and bargain the interests of the employees with the company. We investigated the impact of 558 works councillors' individual political skill on their career success, where career ascendancy is based on success in upward elections and not on appointments by supervisors. The participants were from core German industries mostly working in large companies. We found that the stronger works councillors' political skill the more successful they were in their career still after controlling for sex, age, and union membership. Implications and limitations of the study and consequences for future research are discussed.     

To carry or not to carry — Is this the question? Disentangling the carry effect in multi-digit addition

Recent research has suggested addition performance to be determined by both the need for a carry operation and problem size. Nevertheless, it has remained debatable, how these two factors are interrelated. In the current study, this question was pursued by orthogonally manipulating carry and problem size in two-digit addition verification. As the two factors interacted reliably, our results indicate that the carry effect is moderated by number magnitude processing rather than representing a purely procedural, asemantic sequence of processing steps. Moreover, it was found that the carry effect may not be a purely categorical effect but may be driven by continuous characteristics of the sum of the unit digits as well. Since the correct result of a carry problem can only be derived by integrating and updating the magnitudes of tens and units within the place-value structure of the Arabic number system, the present study provides evidence for the idea that decomposed processing of tens and units also transfers to mental arithmetic.     

A purple giraffe is faster than a purple elephant: Inconsistent phonology affects determiner selection in English

The form of a determiner is dependent on different contextual factors: in some languages grammatical number and grammatical gender determine the choice of a determiner variant. In other languages, the phonological onset of the element immediately following the determiner affects selection, too. Previous work has shown that the activation of opposing determiner forms by a noun’s grammatical properties leads to slower naming latencies in a picture naming task, as does the activation of opposing forms by the interaction between a noun’s gender and the phonological context. The present paper addresses the question of whether phonological context alone is sufficient to evoke competition between determiner forms. Participants produced English phrases in which a noun phrase’s phonology required a determiner that was the same as or differed from the determiner required by the noun itself (e.g., a purple giraffe; an orange giraffe). Naming latencies were slower when the phrase-initial determiner differed from the determiner required by the noun in isolation than when the phrase-initial determiner matched the isolated-noun determiner. This was true both for definite and indefinite determiners. The data show that during the production of a determiner–noun phrase, nouns automatically activate the phonological forms of their determiners, which can compete with the phonological forms that are generated by an assimilation rule.     

Impaired active avoidance learning in infant rats appears to be related to insufficient metabolic recruitment of the lateral septum

The temporal dissociation between early information acquisition and output of complex behaviors is a common principle during development. Thus, although infant rats are not able to generate sufficient avoidance behavior during two-way active avoidance (TWA) training they obviously deposit a certain “memory trace” (Schäble, Poeggel, Braun, & Gruss, 2007). The ontogeny of learning is probably mirrored by the maturing functionality of different basal forebrain regions.Two of the basal forebrain regions involved in TWA learning are the medial septum/diagonal band of Broca (MS/DB), which is essential for the encoding and retrieval of memory and the lateral septum (LS) that plays a role in the generation of behavior.Mapping 2-fluoro-deoxy-glucose utilization in freely behaving animals, the aim of this study was to assess the functional recruitment of the MS/DB and LS in infant (P17–P21) and adolescent (P38–P42) rats during the first (acquisition) and fifth (retrieval) TWA training.Metabolic activity in the MS/DB was similar in both age groups during acquisition and retrieval indicating that this region is already mature in the infant rat. In contrast, metabolic activity in the LS was generally lower in the infant rats suggesting that this region is not yet fully functional during P17 and P21. This insufficient recruitment may be one reason for the poor TWA performance of infant rats.Finally, the LS displayed significantly higher activity during acquisition than during retrieval indicating that the highest amount of energy is consumed during the initial learning phase.