Training clinical psychologists for rural and northern practice: Transforming challenge into opportunity

Abstract: The Rural and Northern Program (R&NP) of the University of Manitoba's Department of Clinical Health Psychology (DCHP) is a unique training and service delivery platform that was developed in response to the scarcity of psychological services in rural and northern areas of the province of Manitoba, Canada. Since 1996 rural and northern‐based psychologists, in conjunction with the faculty based in Winnipeg (Manitoba's largest city) have offered training to two interns and one postdoctoral resident (resident) yearly. The current article discusses the nature of the program, the regions of Manitoba that the program services, and recruitment and retention data. The authors conclude by offering suggestions for creating sustainable rural/northern psychological practice.     

Kanizsa-type subjective contours do not guide attentional deployment in visual search but line termination contours do

We used visual search to explore whether attention could be guided by Kanizsa-type subjective contours and by subjective contours induced by line ends. Unlike in previous experiments, we compared search performance with subjective contours against performance with real, luminance contours, and we had observers search for orientations or shapes produced by subjective contours, rather than searching for the presence of the contours themselves. Visual search for one orientation or shape among distractors of another orientation or shape was efficient when the items were defined by luminance contours. Search was much less efficient among items defined by Kanizsa-type subjective contours. Search remained efficient when the items were defined by subjective contours induced by line ends. The difference between Kanizsa-type subjective contour and subjective contours induced by line ends is consistent with physiological evidence suggesting that the brain mechanisms underlying the perception of these two kinds of subjective contours may be different.     

In search of the arousal procrastinator: Investigating the relation between procrastination, arousal-based personality traits and beliefs about procrastination motivations

Arousal procrastination was investigated to determine: (a) If the General Procrastination Scale (GP; Lay, 1986) measures procrastination motivated by arousal, and (b) whether sensation seeking (SS), extraversion (E), and the reducer index (R) account for variance in beliefs about the motivation for academic procrastination. Participants were 311 undergraduate students (60.1% female), primarily Caucasian (63.3%), with a mean age of 20.09 (SD = 3.08). An online questionnaire package included measures of procrastination and 3 arousal-based personality inventories. A factor analysis of the GP and the Sensation Seeking Scale-V (SSS-V; Zuckerman, Eysenck, & Eysenck, 1978) produced six factors with the GP and SSS-V items loading on separate factors, indicating no relation. A regression analysis revealed that SS, E, and R together accounted for 5.2% of the variance in participants’ arousal-related beliefs motivating their procrastination. These results challenge the existing literature claiming that the GP is a measure of arousal procrastination, but do indicate that some individuals believe that their procrastination is motivated by a need for heightened arousal.     

Visual search in children and adults: top-down and bottom-up mechanisms

Three experiments investigated visual search for targets that differed from distractors in colour, size, or orientation. In one condition the target was defined by a conjunction of these features, while in the other condition the target was the odd one out. In all experiments, 6-7- and 9-10-year-old children were compared with young adults. Experiment 1 showed that children's search differed from adults' search in two ways. In conjunction searches children searched more slowly and took longer to reject trials when no target was present. In the odd-one-out experiments, 6-7-year-old children were slower to respond to size targets than to orientation targets, and slower for orientation targets than for colour targets. Both the other groups showed no difference in their rate of responding to colour and orientation. Experiments 2 and 3 highlighted that these results were not a function of either differential density across set sizes (Experiment 2) or discriminability of orientation and colour (Experiment 3). Across all three experiments, the results of both conjunction and odd-one-out searches highlighted a development in visual search from middle to late childhood.     

SPATIAL ATTENTION IN VISUAL SEARCH FOR FEATURES AND FEATURE CONJUNCTIONS

Abstract— Spatial attention was measured in visual searches tasks using a spatial probe. Both speed and accuracy measures showed that in a conjunction task, spatial attention was allocated to locations according to the presence of target features. Also, contrary to some predictions, spatial attention was used when a clearly distinguishable feature defined the target. The results raise questions about any account that assumes separate mechanisms for feature and conjunction search The probe method demonstrated here allows a very direct measurement of attentional allocation, and may uncover aspects of selection not revealed by visual search     

Cues-pause-point language training: Structuring trainer statements to provide students with correct answers to questions

This study assessed the applicability of Cues-Pause-Point language training procedures in teaching students to obtain information from the statements of others. Two mentally retarded subjects, one of whom was echolalic, received training on one set of stimuli but not on another. During training the subjects were encouraged to remain quiet before, during, and briefly after the presentation of statements and then verbalize (i.e., answer a question) using the verbal cue(s) that had been presented in the statement. Correct responding reached 100% to the trained stimuli and both subjects' responding improved to the untrained stimuli. Posttests revealed that subjects used the trainer's statements to answer novel questions. The results suggest that Cues-Pause-Point procedures may be useful in teaching severely retarded individuals the functional use of observing and listening to others' verbal behavior.     

Using prequestions to enhance learning from reading passages: the roles of question type and structure building ability

ABSTRACT

Answering questions before learning something (“prequestions”) enhances learning. However, these benefits usually occur for information that was asked in the prequestions (i.e. prequestioned material), and not for non-prequestioned material. We reasoned that this narrow benefit may be due to the fact that studies typically use fairly simple prequestions that have a clear answer within one part of the learning material – isolative prequestions. We explored the effects of integrative prequestions that required participants to make connections across different parts of a reading passage. Experiment 1 showed the usual benefit of isolative prequestions on prequestioned but not on non-prequestioned material, but no benefit of integrative prequestions. However, in Experiment 2 when participants were given instructions to seek the answers while reading, integrative prequestions benefited learning of both prequestioned and non-prequestioned material. Individual differences in structure building positively predicted performance, but did not interact with the effects of prequestions.