Increasing therapeutic exercise participation by individuals with acquired brain injury using self‐recording and reinforcement

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of self‐recording and contingent reinforcement on exercise participation by four adults with acquired brain injury. The results indicate that self‐recording and contingent reinforcement increased participation in stretching, aerobic, and weight‐lifting activities for each participant. The results also indicate that each participant was able to accurately self‐record his or her exercise participation. Possible operant conceptualizations for the observed behavior change, as well as limitations to the results, are briefly discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Subjective well-being in urban adolescents of color

Relationships among predictors and criteria of subjective well-being were examined in a sample of 151 urban adolescents of color, ages 12-15. The relative strengths of family, peer, and school-related support and esteem in predicting three measures of subjective well-being (life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect) were explored. Results suggested that sense of worth in one's family explained a significant amount of variance in subjective well-being variables, above and beyond the contributions of individual, school, and peer-related variables. Implications for prevention and mental health promotion with urban adolescents of color are discussed based on these findings.     

Being forward not backward: lexical limits to masked priming

This study investigated whether masked priming is mediated by existing memory representations by determining whether nonwords targets would show repetition priming. To avoid the potential confound that nonword repetition priming would be obscured by a familiarity response bias, the standard lexical decision and naming tasks were modified to make targets unfamiliar. Participants were required to read a target string from right to left (i.e., "ECAF" should be read as "FACE") and then make a response. To examine if priming was based on lexical representations, repetition primes consisted of words when read forwards or backwards (e.g., "face", "ecaf") and nonwords (e.g., "pame", "emap"). Forward and backward primes were used to test if task instruction affected prime encoding. The lexical decision and naming tasks showed the same pattern of results: priming only occurred for forward primes with word targets (e.g., "face-ECAF"). Additional experiments to test if response priming affected the LDT indicated that the lexical status of the prime per se did not affect target responses. These results showed that the encoding of masked primes was unaffected by the novel task instruction and support the view that masked priming is due to the automatic triggering of pre-established computational processes based on stored information.     

Behavioral risks during the transition from high school to college

The transition from high school to college is an important developmental milestone that holds the potential for personal growth and behavioral change. A cohort of 2,245 students was recruited during the summer before they matriculated into college and completed Internet-based surveys about their participation in a variety of behavioral risks during the last 3 months of high school and throughout the 1st year of college. Alcohol use, marijuana use, and sex with multiple partners increased during the transition from high school to college, whereas driving after drinking, aggression, and property crimes decreased. Those from rural high schools and those who elected to live in private dormitories in college were at highest risk for heavy drinking and driving after drinking.     

A stage-matched intervention for exercise behavior change based on the transtheoretical model

The effectiveness of a stage-matched intervention for enhancing exercise behavior was investigated with related Transtheoretical Model constructs among young Korean adults. 265 university students (147 men, 118 women; M age=24.1 yr., SD=3.5) enrolled in Seoul National University of Technology voluntarily participated in an 8-wk. intervention study. In order to measure exercise behavior and its related psychological constructs, the Stages of Readiness for Exercise Behavior Scale, Decision Balance Scale for Exercise, Exercise Self-efficacy Scale, Processes of Change Scale, and Leisure Time Exercise Questionnaire were used. Results indicated that the participants' exercise readiness was significantly changed in a positive way after the 8-wk. intervention. There was a significant main effect of testing time and an interaction between testing time and exercise readiness stage at baseline. There were significant interactions between testing times and groups for all Transtheoretical Model measures, implying that the stage-matched intervention can be an effective tool for increasing exercise readiness and related psychological variables. The present study provides a starting point for stage-matched interventions aimed at increasing exercise levels, and a baseline level from which to evaluate interventions.     

17,000 years of depicting the junction of two smooth shapes

Competent realistic drawings preserve viewpoint-invariant shape characteristics of simple parts, such that a contour in the object that is straight or curved, for example, is depicted that way in the drawing. A more subtle invariant--a V-shaped singularity of the occluding boundary, containing a T-junction and a contour termination--is produced at the junction between articulated smooth surfaces, as with the leg joining the body of a horse. 45% of the drawings made in 2007 by individuals with only minimal art education correctly depicted such junctions, a proportion that is not reliably different from the incidence (42%) of correct depictions in a large sample of cave art made 17000 years ago. Whether a person did or did not include the invariant in their drawing, all agreed that it made for a better depiction.     

Presentation procedures in lineups and mug books: a direct comparison

The purpose of this research was to replicate and to extend past findings that the best procedure for presenting lineup pictures is not the best procedure for presenting mug book pictures. Participants witnessed a videotape of a simulated crime that was followed by a lineup task for half the participants or a mug book task for the other half. The task factor was crossed with two other factors: (a) a presentation procedure factor—pictures presented one‐at‐a‐time or grouped 12 per page and (b) a presence of the perpetrator factor—perpetrator present or absent in the viewed pictures. For perpetrator‐absent conditions, the one‐at‐a time lineup procedure produced more correct rejections than the grouped lineup procedure replicating past results; however, for the mug book task the two presentation procedures did not differ. For perpetrator‐present conditions, the grouped presentation procedure produced more correct identifications than the one‐at‐a time procedure in both lineups and mug books. The different pattern of results for lineups and mug books was explained in terms of differences in response criterion. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The relationship between emotion dysregulation and deliberate self-harm among female undergraduate students at an urban commuter university

Despite the theoretical emphasis on the role of emotion dysregulation in deliberate self-harm (DSH), few studies have examined this relationship. The present study sought to examine the role of emotion dysregulation in DSH by extending the findings of Gratz (2006) regarding the environmental (i.e. childhood maltreatment) and individual (i.e. emotional inexpressivity and affect intensity/reactivity) factors associated with DSH among 249 female undergraduates. Specifically, the present study examined whether emotion dysregulation (a) is associated with DSH above and beyond these other risk factors and (b) mediates the relationship between these risk factors and DSH. Findings indicate that overall emotion dysregulation distinguished women with frequent DSH from those without a history of DSH, adding reliably to the prediction of DSH status above and beyond maltreatment, inexpressivity, and affect intensity/reactivity. Moreover, among self-harming women, emotion dysregulation accounted for a significant amount of additional variance in DSH frequency and mediated the relationship between emotional inexpressivity and DSH frequency. Results also suggest the particular relevance of two specific dimensions of emotion dysregulation to DSH: limited access to effective emotion regulation strategies and a lack of emotional clarity, each of which reliably improved the prediction of DSH status and accounted for unique variance in DSH frequency among self-harming women above and beyond the other risk factors in the models. Results suggest the potential utility of teaching self-harming women more adaptive ways of responding to their emotions, including nonavoidant strategies for modulating emotional arousal and the ability to identify, label, and differentiate among emotional states.     

Consumer Decision Making and Image Theory: Understanding Value‐Laden Decisions

Consumers are often confronted with value‐laden decisions that challenge their principles and beliefs. For example, many consumers with strong social responsibility principles consider the effects of general corporate behavior (e.g., political views, environmental disasters) and of the product's manufacture, consumption, or disposal (e.g., animal testing, environmental harm) on society's overall well‐being. Because these product dimensions do not fit easily into traditional decision theories, a new conceptual framework that incorporates and emphasizes the consumer's enduring principles and values is explored in this study. The results indicate that image theory (Beach & Mitchell, 1987) provides a useful structure for describing the decision process in a value‐laden decision context. This study also expands our understanding of image theory by examining all 3 images (values, goals, and strategies) simultaneously in the same decision context for the first time.