Social Construction and its Development: Liping Yang Interviews Kenneth Gergen

Nanjing University psychologist Liping Yang interviews Kenneth Gergen on the development of social constructionist thought and practice. The conversation treats a variety of issues, including the development of constructionism as a new paradigm, qualitative research, education and other practices informed by constructionism, value loaded science, relativism, and the Taos Institute.     

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.     

Genetic and environmental effects on stuttering: a twin study from Finland

The present study explored the prevalence of self-reported stuttering in a Finnish twin population and examined the extent to which the variance in liability to stuttering was attributable to genetic and environmental effects. We analyzed data of 1728 Finnish twins, born between 1961 and 1989. The participants were asked to complete a questionnaire on speech, language, and voice. In two of the questions they were asked to report the occurrence of childhood and present stuttering of their own and that of their sibling. According to the results, 2.3% (52) of the participants were reported to have stuttered as children and 28.8% of them (15) were reported to continue to stutter in adulthood. There was no significant gender difference in the prevalence of stuttering in either childhood or adulthood. For childhood stuttering, the tetrachoric correlation was higher for monozygotic pairs (r=.74) than for dizygotic pairs (r=.27). By means of structural equation modeling it was found that 82% of the variance in liability to childhood stuttering was attributable to additive genetic effects, with the remaining 18% due to non-shared environmental effects. In conclusion, the results of the present study confirm findings from prior studies and support a strong genetic and only a moderate non-shared environmental effect on stuttering. Potential small differences in the prevalence of stuttering in different populations are suggested by our data. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will be able to recognize the contribution of genetic and environmental effects on stuttering.     

The cost of action miscues: hemispheric asymmetries

Adaptive behaviors require preparation and when necessary inhibition or alteration of actions. The right hemisphere has been posited to be dominant for preparatory motor activation. This experiment was designed to learn if there are hemispheric asymmetries in the control of altered plans of actions. Cues, both valid and invalid, which indicate the hand most likely to be called onto respond, as well as the imperative stimuli that indicate the actual response hand, were presented to either the right or left visual fields of 14 normal right handed participants. The delay after a miscue is dependent on the time taken to inhibit the premotor and motor systems of the incorrectly activated hemisphere, as well as to activate the motor systems of the opposite hemisphere, which might have been interhemispherically inhibited by this miscue. Analyses of reaction times revealed that miscues presented in left hemispace (right hemisphere) cost more time than those miscues presented in right hemispace (left hemisphere), suggesting that activation of the preparatory systems controlled by the right hemisphere may take longer to reverse than those controlled by the left hemisphere. This asymmetry may be related to asymmetries in the strength of hemispheric activation with contralateral inhibition.     

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.     

Stress in Clinical Psychology Trainees: Current Research Status and Future Directions

The purpose of this article is to present the current status of the literature related to stress in clinical psychology trainees (CPTs), and to offer research directions for investigating stress in this population and ways to enhance self‐care in these individuals. The following conclusions emerge from the review: (1) CPTs are vulnerable to elevated stress; (2) undue stress can negatively impact CPTs' personal and professional functioning and, in turn, result in less than optimal standards of care for clients; (3) there is a dearth of studies on stress in this population and no published intervention studies; (4) incorporating self‐care strategies into clinical psychology training is recommended; and (5) “third‐wave” cognitive behaviour therapy stress management interventions have been efficacious in comparable populations. In view of the potential costs of elevated stress to trainees themselves and their clients, research on stress and stress management in this population is of a high priority. Broad research agendas are proposed for these two domains. Modifications to clinical training programmes to reduce trainee stress are required and should be evidence‐based and systematically revaluated.     

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.     

Moral judgments of the powerless and powerful in violent intergroup conflicts

The present research examined observers' moral judgments of groups in conflict. Study 1 found support for the prediction that actions are interpreted as more moral in the context of low power. People judged the violent actions of a fictitious group as more moral and justifiable when done by a smaller, less powerful country compared to a larger one. However, a second study found that violence may undermine the moral advantage accorded underdog groups. People reading about Israeli construction of settlements in Palestinian territories judged the Israeli actions to be more moral when Palestinians resisted violently compared to when they used non-violent resistance tactics. Together, these studies demonstrate how moral judgments of the actions of groups in conflict are influenced by contextual factors independent of the actions themselves.     

Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Child Social Preference During the Early School Years: Mediation by Maternal Warmth and Child Emotion Regulation

This longitudinal study examined processes that mediate the association between maternal depressive symptoms and peer social preference during the early school years. Three hundred and fifty six kindergarten children (182 boys) and their mothers participated in the study. During kindergarten, mothers reported their level of depressive symptomatology. In first grade, teachers rated children’s emotion regulation at school and observers rated the affective quality of mother-child interactions. During second grade, children’s social preference was assessed by peer nomination. Results indicated that mothers’ level of depressive symptomatology negatively predicted their child’s social preference 2 years later, controlling for the family SES and teacher-rated social preference during kindergarten. Among European American families, the association between maternal depressive symptoms and social preference was partially mediated by maternal warmth and the child’s emotion regulation. Although the relation between maternal depressive symptoms and children peer preference was stronger among African American families than Europrean American families, its mediation by the maternal warmth and child’s emotion regulation was not found in African American families.