Controlling for causally relevant third variables

In 3 experiments, the authors tested the conditions under which 3rd variables are controlled for in making causal judgments. The authors hypothesized that 3rd variables are controlled for when the 3rd variables are themselves perceived as causal. In Experiment 1, the participants predicted test performance after seeing information about wearing a lucky garment, taking a test-preparation course, and staying up late. The course (perceived as more causally relevant) was controlled for more than was the garment (perceived as less causally relevant) in assessing the effectiveness of staying up late. In Experiments 2 and 3, to obviate the many alternative accounts that arise from the realistic cover story of Experiment 1, participants predicted flowers' blooming after the presentation or nonpresentation of liquids. When one liquid was trained as causal, it was controlled for more in judging another liquid than when it was trained as neutral. Overall, stimuli perceived as causal were controlled for more when judging other stimuli. The authors concluded that the effect of perceived causal relevance on causal conditionalizing is real and normatively reasonable.     

Religion, Spirituality, and Health Service Use by Older Hospitalized Patients

Background: Religious and spiritual beliefs and practices are common among medical inpatients, and may impact length of hospital stay (LOS) and other health services (HSU) during hospitalization. Methods: 812 consecutively admitted patients age 50 or over to Duke University Medical Center were assessed. Measures of religiousness and spirituality included religious TV/radio (RTV), self-rated religiousness (SRR), observer-rated spirituality (ORS), and daily spiritual experiences (DSE). The primary outcome was LOS. Results: RTV and SRR predicted longer LOS, whereas ORS and DSE predicted shorter LOS (p 0.05). Effects of RTV onLOS were stronger among women, but explained by worse health status. The effects of DSE on LOS were stronger among non-whites. Among those reporting high DSE, diagnostic tests and total procedures also tended to be less common. Conclusions: Religious activities, attitudes, and spiritual experiences are weak predictors of LOS and HSU during hospitalization. Whether the prediction is positive or negative depends on the religious or spiritual characteristic.     

Correlates of motives for suicide

Analysis of a large sample of suicide notes from 262 suicides in Australia showed separated/divorced suicides and suicides who abused alcohol were more likely to give love/romance as a precipitant for suicide while those who used gas (natural or car exhaust) were more likely to give depression and guilt as a motive.     

A symbolic-connectionist theory of relational inference and generalization

The authors present a theory of how relational inference and generalization can be accomplished within a cognitive architecture that is psychologically and neurally realistic. Their proposal is a form of symbolic connectionism: a connectionist system based on distributed representations of concept meanings, using temporal synchrony to bind fillers and roles into relational structures. The authors present a specific instantiation of their theory in the form of a computer simulation model, Learning and Inference with Schemas and Analogies (LISA). By using a kind of self-supervised learning, LISA can make specific inferences and form new relational generalizations and can hence acquire new schemas by induction from examples. The authors demonstrate the sufficiency of the model by using it to simulate a body of empirical phenomena concerning analogical inference and relational generalization.     

Continuous Performance Test Performance in a Normative Epidemiological Sample

A 14-min continuous performance test (CPT) requiring a high rate of responding was administered to a probability-weighted random sample of 816 9–17-year-old children drawn from a population of 17,117 children in an ongoing epidemiological and longitudinal study in Western North Carolina. Systematic main effects of improved performance with older age were found in this age range for all variables, including reaction time (RT), RT standard error, errors of omission, errors of commission, and signal detection parameters (d' and ). Significant gender main effects included more impulsive errors, less variability, and faster RT by males, with no interactions between age and gender. There were no main effects of ethnicity or interactions of ethnicity with age and/or gender. Large main effects of interstimulus interval (ISI; 1, 2, or 4-s intervals) and time block were present for most CPT performance measures. The normative data from the CPT should provide a useful framework for interpreting similar data in future studies of child and adolescent psychopathology.     

Reading disappearing text: cognitive control of eye movements

Participants read sentences containing high- or low-frequency target words under normal reading conditions or disappearing-text conditions (in which the word that was fixated disappeared after 60 ms). Even though the fixated word had disappeared after 60 ms, there was still a robust frequency effect wherein readers fixated longer on low-frequency words than on high-frequency words. Thus, the results are consistent with cognitive-control models of eye movement control and inconsistent with visual/oculomotor-control models. Although the uptake of visual information is clearly important for reading, it is the cognitive processes associated with understanding the fixated words that drive the eyes through the text.     

Blame and Responsibility

This paper looks at judgments of guilt in the face of alleged wrong-doing, be it in public or in private discourse. Its concern is not the truth of such judgments, although the complexity and contestability of such claims will be stressed. The topic, instead, is what sort of activities we are engaged in, when we make our judgments on others' conduct. To examine judging as an activity it focuses on a series of problems that can occur when we blame others. On analysis, we see that these problems take the form of performative contradictions, so that the ostensible purposes of assigning guilt to others are undermined.There is clear evidence from social psychology that blame is especially frequently and inappropriately attributed to individuals in modern Western societies. On the other hand, it has often been observed how suspicious we are about the activity of judging – thus a widespread perception that a refusal to judge is somehow virtuous. My suggestion is that the sheer difficulty of attributions of responsibility, in the face of a complex and often arbitrary moral reality, frequently defeats us. This leads to a characteristic set of distortions when we blame, so that it is no surprise that we have become suspicious of all blaming activities.Yet, the paper argues, these problems need not arise when we hold others responsible. This paper therefore investigates what, exactly, can be questionable about attempts to assign guilt, and the structural logic that lies behind these problems – what will be called, adapting a term from social psychology, a belief in a just world. Such a belief takes for granted what needs to be worked for through human activity, and therefore tends to be counter-productive in dealing with misdeeds and adverse outcomes.     

Gender congruence in confirmatory and compensatory drinking.

The relationship between gender-stereotypical traits and drinking behaviors was examined in 422 university students via both positive and negative measures of masculinity and femininity. Two canonical variates summarized the underlying relationships. The 1st canonical variate indicated that both high negative masculinity and low positive femininity predicted alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems. This behavior was labeled confirmatory drinking because it depicts a style of drinking that reinforces gender-stereotypical images about alcohol use; masculine characteristics are typically associated with high levels of alcohol consumption. The 2nd canonical variate indicated that both low positive masculinity and low positive femininity predicted problem drinking. This behavior was labeled compensatory drinking because drinkers often use alcohol to express their masculinity and femininity. The distinction between confirmatory and compensatory drinking has important implications for the development of more effective education and preventative strategies.     

Why are therapists indifferent to research?

In counselling and psychotherapy there is a serious research—practice gap. Why should research on the therapeutic process have such little impact? Five related factors are considered: (i) epistemology—reliance on experiential/personal knowledge; (ii) preciousness—reliance on nonaxiomatic truths; (iii) lack of theoretical rigour—looseness with which constructs are construed; (iv) non-Popperian logic—tendency to work within a theory and defend it; and (v) personalisation of theory—evaluation seen as criticism. The result is a proliferation of therapies rather than a refinement of therapy.     

Perception of the Mccolloch Effect Correlates with Activity in Extrastriate Cortex: A Functional MagneticResonance Imaging Study

The McCollough effect is a striking color aftereffect that is linked to the orientation of the patterns used to induce it. To produce the McCollough effect, two differently oriented grating patterns, such as a red-and-black vertical grating and a green-and-black horizontal grating, are viewed alternately for a few minutes. After such colored gratings are viewed, the white sections of avertical black-and-white test grating appear to be tinged with green, and the white sections of a horizontal grating appear to be tinged with pink. We present evidence from a functional magnetic resonance imaging study that the perception of the McCollough effect correlates with increased activation in the lingual and fusiform gyriùextrastriate visual areas that have been implicated in color perception in humans.