Moderating Effect of Marital Status on the Association Between Combat Exposure and Post-Deployment Mental Health in Canadian Military Personnel

For military personnel, there are positive and negative aspects of marriage, which may contribute to mental health during times of high stress. The present study investigated the relationship of marital status with three mental health outcomes (general mental health, posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD], depression) among 14,624 Canadian military personnel recently deployed in support of the mission in Afghanistan. Greater combat exposure was associated with poorer postdeployment mental health, but marital status was, on its own, only slightly associated with PTSD. Marital status significantly moderated the relationship between combat exposure and mental health: For both single and married participants, mental health declined as combat exposure increased, but this association was stronger for married members. This association could be due to the additional familial demands that married personnel may face upon their return from deployment or to the stresses associated with poor marital satisfaction. Overall, results suggest that the relationship between marital status and mental health after deployment is complex and may vary according to other factors.     

Reasons and ideals

This paper contributes to the debate on whether we can have reason to do what we are unable to do. I take as my starting point two papers recently published in Philosophical Studies, by Bart Streumer and Ulrike Heuer, which defend the two dominant opposing positions on this issue. Briefly, whereas Streumer argues that we cannot have reason to do what we are unable to do, Heuer argues that we can have reason to do what we are unable to do when we can get closer to success but cannot have reason to try to do what we are unable to do when we cannot get closer to success. In this paper, I reject both positions as they are presented, on the grounds that neither can accommodate an important category of reasons, which are the reasons to realise and to try to realise dimensions of value that lie at the boundary of what is realisable, specifically, genuinely valuable ideals. I defend a third view that we can have reason to do and to try to do what we are unable to do even when we cannot, in Heuer’s sense, get closer to success. Moreover, I argue that we can have reason to realise and to try to realise genuinely valuable ideals for their own sake and not simply for the sake of achieving mundane, realisable ends.     

Some things you should know about structural equation modeling but never thought to ask

Iacobucci (2009, 2010) covers a number of important issues in the use of structural equation modeling and in so doing provides researchers with many useful insights and sensible suggestions. This commentary focuses on three issues where our views differ somewhat from those expressed in the target articles: SEM and causal inferences, sample size, and model fit. In addressing each of these issues, our perspectives do not so much contradict the views expressed by Iacobucci as they reflect a somewhat different conceptual emphasis.     

Explanation versus accommodation: Reply to Bowers (2010)

Bowers (2010) presented a critique of the account of masked priming presented by Norris and Kinoshita (2008) based on the Bayesian Reader model of visual word recognition (Norris, 2006). In this reply, we point out that: (1) Bowers' criticisms are based on his misunderstanding of both the Bayesian or ideal-observer approach, and the theoretical claims made in Norris and Kinoshita, and (2) Bowers' alternative account of the key data presented in Norris and Kinoshita relies on a series of ad hoc assumptions that are combined in different proportions to postdict any pattern of data.     

Replicating distinctive facial features in lineups: identification performance in young versus older adults

Criminal suspects with distinctive facial features, such as tattoos or bruising, may stand out in a police lineup. To prevent suspects from being unfairly identified on the basis of their distinctive feature, the police often manipulate lineup images to ensure that all of the members appear similar. Recent research shows that replicating a distinctive feature across lineup members enhances eyewitness identification performance, relative to removing that feature on the target. In line with this finding, the present study demonstrated that with young adults (n = 60; mean age = 20), replication resulted in more target identifications than did removal in target-present lineups and that replication did not impair performance, relative to removal, in target-absent lineups. Older adults (n = 90; mean age = 74) performed significantly worse than young adults, identifying fewer targets and more foils; moreover, older adults showed a minimal benefit from replication over removal. This pattern is consistent with the associative deficit hypothesis of aging, such that older adults form weaker links between faces and their distinctive features. Although replication did not produce much benefit over removal for older adults, it was not detrimental to their performance. Therefore, the results suggest that replication may not be as beneficial to older adults as it is to young adults and demonstrate a new practical implication of age-related associative deficits in memory.     

Effects of informative peripheral cues on eye movements: Revisiting William James’ “derived attention”

Two experiments examined effects of peripheral information on the latency of saccadic eye movements. In Experiment 1, simple target stimuli were presented to the left or right visual field. Prior to each target, a pair of cue letters was presented for 40msec bilaterally. The relative location of the letters (W-S or S-W) was related to target location, but participants were not informed of this contingency. After a brief practice period, saccadic latencies were faster for targets at the likely location, as indicated by the letter pair. This derived peripheral cueing effect was related to participants' awareness of the relation between cue type and target location. Experiments 2A and 2B employed monocular viewing in order to compare performance across the nasal and temporal visual fields. The effect observed in Experiment 1 was confined to the nasal visual field. In a reflexive orienting condition, the effect of a unilateral letter cue was larger in the temporal visual field. It is concluded that the neurocognitive processes responsible for derived peripheral cueing are distinct from those involved in either reflexive or voluntary orienting.     

Automated Assessment of Reasons For Joining an Organization

An automated instrument capable of identifying and rank ordering reasons for joining the United States Marine Corps was developed and administered to a sample of 150 men. Testing time ranged from slightly less than 3 min to 5 1/2 min. Because of its ease of administration and effectiveness in identifying motivators, the automated instrument holds significant potential for use in a variety of settings in which personal characteristics (e.g., preferences, choice criteria, values, etc.) must be rapidly identified.     

Individual differences in positivity offset and negativity bias: Gender-specific associations with two serotonin receptor genes

Individual differences in the evaluation of affective stimuli, such as the positivity offset and negativity bias may have a biological basis. We tested whether two SNPs (HTR2A; 102T>C and HTR1A; 1019C>G) related to serotonin receptor function, a biological pathway associated with affective regulation, were differentially related to positivity offset and negativity bias for males and females. Participants were 109 cigarette smokers who rated a series of affective stimuli to assess reactions to positive and negative pictures. Gender × genotype interactions were found for both SNPs. Males with the 102T allele showed a greater positivity offset than males with the 102C allele. For females, in contrast, the 1019C allele was associated with a greater positivity offset than the 1019G allele, whereas the 102T allele was associated with a greater negativity bias than the 102C allele. Identifying how gender differences may moderate the effect of serotonin receptor genes on affective information processing may provide insight into their role in guiding behavior and regulating affect.     

Can contextual cues control consummatory successive negative contrast?

Rats exposed to incentive downshift show behavioral deterioration. This phenomenon, called successive negative contrast (SNC), occurs in instrumental and consummatory responses (iSNC, cSNC). Whereas iSNC is related to the violation of reward expectancies retrieved in anticipation of the goal (cued-recall), cSNC involves reward rejection and may require only recognition memory retrieved at consumption. The three within-subject experiments reported here suggest that cued-recall memory can also operate in cSNC under some conditions. A small but significant cSNC effect was obtained when animals were exposed to the conditioning context during an average 90-s interval before the introduction of the incentive (either 16% or 2% sucrose solutions), rather than being given immediate access to the sucrose upon entry into the context (Experiment 1). Neither simultaneous contrast (Experiment 2) nor simple sequential effects (Experiment 3) contribute to this within-subject version of cSNC. These results suggest that cSNC can be shifted to a cued-recall mode with appropriate training parameters.     

Reflecting on Six Decades of Selective Exposure Research: Progress,Challenges, and Opportunities

For over 60 years, researchers have explored the validity of the selective exposure hypothesis, which states that people will seek out consonant, and avoid dissonant, information. In early cognitive dissonance‐based research, selective exposure received mixed support. More recently, researchers have begun to delineate the factors that regulate the occurrence of selective exposure in a multitude of contexts. In this review, we discuss a number of such moderators as well as the ebb and flow of research over the years. We propose that many of these factors can be conceptualized as influencing capacity and/or motivations to process information, and we discuss how this framework can help categorize past, and suggest future, moderators. Finally, we highlight that other research domains should be considered when exploring selective exposure effects, and that researchers should consider how findings from the selective exposure literature can fruitfully be applied to other domains.