A general factor of personality,social desirability,cognitive ability,and the survey of work styles in an employment selection setting

How a general factor of personality (GFP) correlated with employment screening measures in an applied setting was examined. Participants were 540 adult insurance sales job applicants who completed scales from two personality measures, the five scales from the Survey of Work Styles (SWS), an intelligence measure, and a social desirability scale. A joint factor analysis of the personality questionnaires produced four first order factors. A single GFP was also extracted. Strong correlations were found between some of the personality factors and the SWS scales. Strong significant correlations were found between the GFP and three of the four personality factors with social desirability. Neither the GFP nor the personality factors correlated significantly with cognitive abilities.     

Effect of Modality in Earwitness Identification: Memory for Verbal and Nonverbal Auditory Stimuli Presented in Two Contexts

Psycholegal researchers have largely ignored the relevance of nonverbal auditory information in earwitness memory, nor have they compared its retention with visual or verbal information. Memory of nonverbal auditory stimuli was investigated in two different contexts. In Experiment 1, participants recalled more sounds (i.e., nonverbal auditory stimuli) than the sounds' verbal labels. However, with a more ecologically valid method in Experiment 2, participants recalled more verbal stimuli in conjunction with visual information than they did nonverbal stimuli. Even after a 1-week delay, participants' retention of the verbal-visual combination was highest.     

Don’t wait to incubate: Immediate versus delayed incubation in divergent thinking

Previous evidence for the effectiveness of immediate incubation in divergent creative tasks has been weak, because earlier studies exhibited a range of methodological problems. This issue is theoretically important, as a demonstration of the effects of immediate incubation would strengthen the case for the involvement of unconscious work in incubation effects. For the present experiment, we used a creative divergent-thinking task (alternative uses) in which separate experimental groups had incubation periods that were either delayed or immediate and that consisted of either spatial or verbal tasks. Control groups were tested without incubation periods, and we carried out checks for intermittent conscious work on the target task during the incubation periods. The results showed significant incubation effects that were stronger for immediate than for delayed incubation. Performance was not different between the verbal and spatial incubation conditions, and we found no evidence for intermittent conscious working during the incubation periods. These results support a role for unconscious work in creative divergent thinking, particularly in the case of immediate incubation.     

An integrated approach to delivering exposure-based treatment for symptoms of PTSD and depression in OIF/OEF veterans: preliminary findings

Combat-exposed military personnel from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan report high rates of PTSD and associated psychiatric problems. A formidable body of research supports exposure therapy as a front-line intervention for PTSD; however, relative to studies of civilians, fewer investigations have evaluated the effectiveness of exposure therapy using military samples. Specifically, barriers to care (e.g., stigma associated with receiving mental health services ) may compromise utilization of evidence-based psychotherapy. As such, researchers have argued that veterans with PTSD may require an integrated and innovative approach to the delivery of exposure techniques. This paper presents the rationale for and preliminary data from an ongoing clinical trial that compares the home-based telehealth (HBT) application of a brief, behavioral treatment (Behavioral Activation and Therapeutic Exposure; BA-TE) for veterans with PTSD to the standard, in-person application of the same treatment. Forty OIF/OEF veterans with PTSD and MDD were consented, enrolled, and randomized to condition (BA-TE in-person, or BA-TE HBT) and symptoms of anxiety and depression were assessed at pre- and posttreatment. Participants in both conditions experienced reductions in depression, anxiety, and PTSD symptoms between pre- and posttreatment, suggesting that HBT application of an integrated PTSD treatment may be feasible and effective.     

Dynamic adaptation to history of trial difficulty explains the effect of congruency proportion on masked priming

In reaction time research, there has been an increasing appreciation that response-initiation processes are sensitive to recent experience and, in particular, the difficulty of previous trials. From this perspective, the authors propose an explanation for a perplexing property of masked priming: Although primes are not consciously identified, facilitation of target processing by a related prime is magnified in a block containing a high proportion of related primes and a low proportion of unrelated primes relative to a block containing the opposite mix (Bodner & Masson, 2001). In the present study, this phenomenon is explored with a parity (even/odd) decision task in which a prime (e.g., 2) precedes a target that can be either congruent (e.g., 4) or incongruent (e.g., 3). It is shown that the effect of congruence proportion with masked primes cannot be explained in terms of the blockwise prime-target contingency. Specifically, with masked primes, there is no congruency disadvantage in a block containing a high proportion of incongruent primes, but there is a congruency advantage when the block contains an equal proportion of congruent and incongruent primes. In qualitative contrast, visible primes are sensitive to the blockwise prime-target contingency. The authors explain the relatedness proportion effect found with masked primes in terms of a model according to which response-initiation processes adapt to the statistical structure of the environment, specifically the difficulty of recent trials. This account is supported with an analysis at the level of individual trials using the linear mixed effects model.     

Distinguishing general and specific personality disorder features and implications for substance dependence comorbidity

Clinical and population-based samples show high comorbidity between Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) and Axis II Personality Disorders (PDs). However, Axis II disorders are frequently comorbid with each other, and existing research has generally failed to distinguish the extent to which SUD/PD comorbidity is general or specific with respect to both specific types of PDs and specific types of SUDs. We sought to determine whether ostensibly specific comorbid substance dependence-Axis II diagnoses (e.g., alcohol use dependence and borderline personality disorder) are reflective of more pervasive or general personality pathology or whether the comorbidity is specific to individual PDs. Face-to-face interview data from Wave 1 and Wave 2 of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions were analyzed. Participants included 34,653 adults living in households in the United States. We used hierarchical factor models to statistically partition general and specific personality disorder dimensions while simultaneously testing for specific PD-substance dependence relations. Results indicated that substance dependence-Axis II comorbidity is characterized by general (pervasive) pathology and by Cluster B PD pathology over and above the relationship to the general PD factor. Further, these relations between PD factors and substance dependence diagnoses appeared to largely account for the comorbidity among substance dependence diagnoses in the younger but not older participants. Our findings suggest that a failure to consider the general PD factor, which we interpret as reflecting interpersonal dysfunction, can lead to potential mischaracterizations of the nature of certain PD and SUD comorbidities.     

Perceived racism, discrimination, and acculturation in suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among black young adults

During young adulthood the suicide rate among Blacks rises dramatically and approaches that of the U.S. general population, requiring that prevention efforts include a focus on Black young adults. Although most research on suicidality among Blacks has focused on risk factors observed in the dominant culture, in this study the authors examined associations between perceived discrimination, racism, and acculturation with lifetime suicidal ideation (SI) and suicide attempt (SA) among Black young adults. Two hundred fifty Black or African American individuals aged 18-24 residing in a midsize northeastern city were recruited to participate through advertisements. Participants filled out self-report questionnaires. Logistic regressions were used to examine the association of each predictor with SI and SA. Greater perceived acculturation was associated with SI in univariate and multivariate models. There were no other statistically significant results concerning the predictors of interest. The link between perceived acculturation and SI is consistent with limited available data, indicating the need for further study including the potential mechanism(s) for the association. Limitations include the cross-sectional design and reliance on subjective measures.     

Longitudinal attentional engagement rescues mice from age-related cognitive declines and cognitive inflexibility

Learning, attentional, and perseverative deficits are characteristic of cognitive aging. In this study, genetically diverse CD-1 mice underwent longitudinal training in a task asserted to tax working memory capacity and its dependence on selective attention. Beginning at 3 mo of age, animals were trained for 12 d to perform in a dual radial-arm maze task that required the mice to remember and operate on two sets of overlapping guidance (spatial) cues. As previously reported, this training resulted in an immediate (at 4 mo of age) improvement in the animals' aggregate performance across a battery of five learning tasks. Subsequently, these animals received an additional 3 d of working memory training at 3-wk intervals for 15 mo (totaling 66 training sessions), and at 18 mo of age were assessed on a selective attention task, a second set of learning tasks, and variations of those tasks that required the animals to modify the previously learned response. Both attentional and learning abilities (on passive avoidance, active avoidance, and reinforced alternation tasks) were impaired in aged animals that had not received working memory training. Likewise, these aged animals exhibited consistent deficits when required to modify a previously instantiated learned response (in reinforced alternation, active avoidance, and spatial water maze). In contrast, these attentional, learning, and perseverative deficits were attenuated in aged animals that had undergone lifelong working memory exercise. These results suggest that general impairments of learning, attention, and cognitive flexibility may be mitigated by a cognitive exercise regimen that requires chronic attentional engagement.