The power of regression to the mean: A social norm study revisited

This research follows up on a study by Schultz et al. ( 2007 ), in which the effect of a social norm intervention on energy consumption was examined. The present studies included control groups to examine whether social norm effects would persist beyond regression to the mean. Both studies had a 2 (baseline consumption: below mean versus above mean) × 2 (message condition: no‐message control versus norm message) design . Based on baseline fruit ( Study 1 ) or unhealthy snack ( Study 2 ) consumption, students were classified as above mean or below mean for consumption. One week later, half of the students in the above‐mean and below‐mean groups received normative feedback; control groups did not. Neither study showed an effect of norm messages on behavior relative to control, providing evidence for regression to the mean as an alternative explanation. Findings highlight the importance of control groups to distinguish social norm intervention effects from mere regression to the mean.     

Caricatures,Myths, and White Lies

Pedagogical situations require white lies: in teaching philosophy we make decisions about what to omit, what to emphasise, and what to distort. This article considers when it is permissible to distort the historical record, arguing for a tempered respect for the historical facts. It focuses on the rationalist/empiricist distinction, which still frames most undergraduate early modern courses despite failing to capture the intellectual history of that period. It draws an analogy with Michael Strevens's view on idealisation in causal explanation to distinguish between myths and caricatures. Myths are distortions of the historical record that undermine students' understanding of the past, despite having other pedagogical benefits (being illuminative of some other period, or helping uptake of philosophical skills and methods). Caricatures are distortions that either increase or are indifferent to understanding of the past. Mythmaking, the article argues, is unjustified.     

Providing worked examples for learning multiple principles

Worked examples support learning. However, if they introduce easy-to-confuse concepts or principles, specific ways of providing worked examples may influence their effectiveness. Multiple worked examples can be introduced blocked (i.e., several for the same principle) or interleaved (i.e., switching between principles), and can be sequentially or simultaneously presented. Crossing these two factors provides four ways of presenting worked examples: blocked/sequential, interleaved/sequential, blocked/simultaneous, and interleaved/simultaneous. In an experiment with university students (N = 174), we investigated how these two factors influence the acquisition of procedural and conceptual knowledge about different, but closely related (thus, easy-to-confuse) stochastic principles. Additionally, we assessed the ability of students to discriminate between principles with verification tasks. Simultaneous presentation benefitted procedural knowledge whereas, interleaved presentation benefitted conceptual knowledge. No significant differences were found for verification tasks. The results suggest that it is worthwhile to adapt the presentation of the worked examples to the learning goals.     

Practicing Possibilities: Parents’ Explanations of Unusual Events and Children’s Possibility Thinking

Young children tend to judge improbable events to be impossible, yet there is variability across age and across individuals. Our study examined parent–child conversations about impossible and improbable events and links between parents’ explanations about those events and children’s possibility judgments in a reasoning task. Regression analyses revealed that parents’ speculation about potential mechanisms for improbable events during a parent–child book-sharing activity predicted children’s possibility judgments for similar events in an individual task and accounted for more of the variance than children’s age. Also, parents’ skepticism regarding mechanisms for impossible events was negatively correlated with children’s judgments about the possibility of improbable events. Additionally, children’s overall causal justifications for their judgments were correlated with parents’ talk about speculative mechanisms. Results suggest the importance of conversation with parents for young children’s developing understanding of the distinction between impossible and improbable.     

Pathways of Risk and Resilience: Impact of a Family Resilience Program on Active‐Duty Military Parents

Over the past decade, studies into the impact of wartime deployment and related adversities on service members and their families have offered empirical support for systemic models of family functioning and a more nuanced understanding of the mechanisms by which stress and trauma reverberate across family and partner relationships. They have also advanced our understanding of the ways in which families may contribute to the resilience of children and parents contending with the stressors of serial deployments and parental physical and psychological injuries. This study is the latest in a series designed to further clarify the systemic functioning of military families and to explicate the role of resilient family processes in reducing symptoms of distress and poor adaptation among family members. Drawing upon the implementation of the Families Overcoming Under Stress (FOCUS) Family Resilience Program at 14 active‐duty military installations across the United States, structural equation modeling was conducted with data from 434 marine and navy active‐duty families who participated in the FOCUS program. The goal was to better understand the ways in which parental distress reverberates across military family systems and, through longitudinal path analytic modeling, determine the pathways of program impact on parental distress. The findings indicated significant cross‐influence of distress between the military and civilian parents within families, families with more distressed military parents were more likely to sustain participation in the program, and reductions in distress among both military and civilian parents were significantly mediated by improvements in resilient family processes. These results are consistent with family systemic and resilient models that support preventive interventions designed to enhance family resilient processes as an important part of comprehensive services for distressed military families.     

Anxiety,Depression, and Procrastination Among Students: Rumination Plays a Larger Mediating Role than Worry

Procrastination is prevalent among students and is associated with negative outcomes, including poor academic performance and psychological distress. Research also suggests that anxiety and depression can exacerbate procrastination; however, the mechanisms associated with the development of procrastination are less understood. The current study aimed to clarify the role of negative repetitive thought (i.e., rumination and worry) in the links between anxiety and procrastination, and depression and procrastination. Ninety-one undergraduate students completed self-report measures of anxiety, depression, worry, brooding rumination, and procrastination, and two multiple mediator models were tested. Procrastination was positively correlated with the study variables, including medium effects for anxiety and depression, a large effect for rumination, and a small effect for worry. Rumination independently mediated the relationships between anxiety and procrastination, and depression and procrastination. Worry did not independently mediate these relationships. The current findings suggest rumination plays a larger role in the links between anxiety, depression, and procrastination than worry. Thus, students with higher levels of anxiety and depression engage in more negative repetitive thought, which may contribute to procrastinatory behavior as a result of a preoccupation with depressing or painful thoughts about the past.     

Modification of Hostile Interpretation Bias in Depression: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Interpretation Bias Modification (IBM) is gaining attention in the literature as an intervention that alters cognitive biases and reduces associated symptoms. Forty, primarily college-aged, non-treatment-seeking adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) were randomly assigned to receive either IBM targeting hostile interpretation bias (IBM-H) or a healthy video control (HVC) condition. Compared to those in HVC, participants in IBM-H reported more benign interpretations and fewer hostile interpretations at posttreatment. No difference in depressive interpretation bias was found between groups at posttreatment. IBM-H led to improved anger control at posttreatment and follow-up compared to HVC, though no effects of condition were found on trait anger or depressive symptoms. The IBM-H group perceived their treatment as less credible than the HVC group. For individuals with high expectancy of treatment success, IBM-H led to lower posttreatment depressive symptoms compared to HVC, while findings trended in the opposite direction for those with low expectancy of success. Overall, these preliminary findings point to boundary conditions for the efficacy of IBM protocols for anger and depression and potential improvements to be made to future IBM protocols.     

Investigating the mechanisms of visually-evoked tactile sensations

When attempting to detect a near-threshold signal, participants often incorrectly report the presence of a signal, particularly when a stimulus in a different modality is presented. Here we investigated the effect of prior experience of bimodal visuotactile stimuli on the rate of falsely reported touches in the presence of a light. In Experiment 1, participants made more false alarms in light-present than light-absent trials, despite having no experience of the experimental visuotactile pairing. This suggests that light-evoked false alarms are a consequence of an existing association, rather than one learned during the experiment. In Experiment 2, we sought to manipulate the strength of the association through prior training, using supra-threshold tactile stimuli that were given a high or low association with the light. Both groups still exhibited an increased number of false alarms during light-present trials, however, the low association group made significantly fewer false alarms across conditions, and there was no corresponding group difference in the number of tactile stimuli correctly identified. Thus, while training did not affect the boosting of the tactile signal by the visual stimulus, the low association training affected perceptual decision-making more generally, leading to a lower number of illusory touch reports, independent of the light.