The psychophsiology of aggressive drivers: comparison to non-aggressive drivers and pre- to post-treatment change following a cognitive-behavioural treatment

Twenty drivers were remanded to our treatment program by the courts following arrests related to serious aggressive driving behaviors. Ten additional drivers entered our program in response to our advertisements thus identifying themselves as aggressive drivers. Psychophysiological assessments were conducted on all 30 drivers and heart rate (HR), systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP), and skin resistance level (SRL) were measured in response to exposure to a mental arithmetic neutral stressor, two idiosyncratic, audio-taped, aggressive driving vignettes (audio 1 and audio 2), and one non-driving related fearful vignette. Fourteen non-aggressive driving controls also completed the assessment. The results indicated that the aggressive drivers (ADs) showed significantly more SBP responsivity during audio 1 and audio 2 and significantly less SBP reactivity during the mental arithmetic stressor than the controls. The aggressive drivers then completed a four-week, group intervention which included relaxation techniques specifically targeting aggressive driving behaviors. The same psychophysiological assessment was conducted at post-treatment. The results showed significant pre- to post-treatment decreases in HR, p<0.003, SBP, p<0.01, and DBP, p<0.02 during audio 1. Similarly, decreases were evident in audio 2 in SBP, p<0.03 only. No decreases in reactivity occurred during the neutral stressor or fearful situation.     

Comparative assessment of handedness for a coordinated bimanual task in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus)

Hand preferences for a coordinated bimanual task were assessed in a sample of 31 captive gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) and 19 captive orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) and were compared with chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) hand preferences in subjects that were matched on the basis of age, sex, and rearing history. The task required that the apes remove food from the inside edges of a symmetrical polyvinyl chloride pipe presented to them in their home cages. The results indicate significant species differences with chimpanzees showing population-level right-handedness and orangutans showing population-level left-handedness. The gorillas showed a nonsignificant trend toward right-handedness. The results are discussed in terms of possible ecological or biomechanical factors that may influence hand preferences in different ape species.     

How informed is online informed consent?

We examined participants' reading and recall of informed consent documents presented via paper or computer. Within each presentation medium, we presented the document as a continuous or paginated document to simulate common computer and paper presentation formats. Participants took slightly longer to read paginated and computer informed consent documents and recalled slightly more information from the paginated documents. We concluded that obtaining informed consent online is not substantially different than obtaining it via paper presentation. We also provide suggestions for improving informed consent--in both face-to-face and online experiments.     

The effectiveness of a brief psychological intervention on court-referred and self-referred aggressive drivers

This study tested the efficacy of a cognitive-behavioral psychological intervention (CBT) targeting aggressive driving behaviors within both a court-referred (N=20) and a self-referred community (N=8) sample as compared to a symptom monitoring (SM) only control condition. Treatment outcome was assessed through the use of daily driving diaries, standard psychological tests, and a global rating of change scale. The CBT treatment condition improved more than the SM condition as assessed through the daily driving diaries. Although the court-referred and self-referred samples showed equivalent improvement on the driving diaries, the self-referred group improved more on measures of general anger. Standardized measures of driving anger, state anxiety and measures of general anger indicated significant change in the expected direction. Aggressive drivers who met criteria for Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) showed a trend to improve less than non-IED aggressive drivers. Treatment gains were maintained at the 2-month follow-up point.     

Young Children's Knowledge of the Representational Function of Pictorial Symbols: Development Across the Preschool Years in Three Cultures

Three- to 5-year-old children's knowledge that pictures have a representational function for others was investigated using a pictorial false-belief task. In Study 1, children passed the task at around 4 years old, and performance was correlated with standard false-belief and pictorial symbol tasks. In Study 2, the performance of children from two cultural settings who had very little exposure to pictures during the first 3 years (Peru, India) was contrasted with that of children from Canada. Performance was better in the Canadian than Peruvian and Indian samples on the picture false-belief task and drawing tasks but not on the standard false-belief measure. In all settings, children passed drawing and standard false-belief tasks either concurrently with, or prior to, passing the picture false-belief task. The findings suggest that children's explicit knowledge of the representational function of pictorial symbols matures in the late preschool years and develops more rapidly in cultures that strongly promote the symbolic use of pictures early in life.     

Confidence Intervals for the Probability of Superiority Effect Size Measure and the Area Under a Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve

It is good scientific practice to the report an appropriate estimate of effect size and a confidence interval (CI) to indicate the precision with which a population effect was estimated. For comparisons of 2 independent groups, a probability-based effect size estimator (A) that is equal to the area under a receiver operating characteristic curve and closely related to the popular Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney nonparametric statistical tests has many appealing properties (e.g., easy to understand, robust to violations of parametric assumptions, insensitive to outliers). We performed a simulation study to compare 9 analytic and 3 empirical (bootstrap) methods for constructing a CI for A that can yield very different CIs for the same data. The experimental design crossed 6 factors to yield a total of 324 cells representing challenging but realistic data conditions. Results were examined using several criteria, with emphasis placed on the extent to which observed CI coverage probabilities approximated nominal levels. Based on the simulation study results, the bias-corrected and accelerated bootstrap method is recommended for constructing a CI for the A statistic; bootstrap methods also provided the least biased and most accurate standard error of A. An empirical illustration examining score differences on a citation-based index of scholarly impact across faculty at low-ranked versus high-ranked research universities underscores the importance of choosing an appropriate CI method.