Moments That Matter? On the Complexity of Using Triggers Based on Skin Conductance to Sample Arousing Events Within an Experience Sampling Framework

To sample situations that are psychologically arousing in daily life, we implemented an experience sampling strategy in which 82 Dutch young adults (M_age = 20.73) were triggered based on random time intervals and based on physiological skin conductance scores across a period of 5 days. When triggered, participants had to fill in short surveys on affect, situational characteristics and event characteristics on their smartphone. We found theoretically expected relationships between the skin conductance signal on the one hand and self-reported arousal and positive energy (e.g. energetic and enthusiastic) on the other hand, although effect sizes were small. Unexpectedly, none of the negative affective scales (i.e. irritation, anxiety, and negative valence) were predicted by skin conductance levels. Despite the (partial) validity of the signal, a simple algorithm that triggered the survey based on relative increases of skin conductance levels produced counterintuitive results due to a dependence between level and slope. Additional exploratory analyses highlighted other skin conductance signal characteristics (i.e. autocorrelation, number of peaks, and change points) that might be worth examining when designing future algorithms to sample arousing moments. Overall, our experiences highlight not only the promise but also the complexity of real-time measurement of physiological processes in daily life. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology     

Do people turn to visible reminders of group identity under stress?

How do people cope with stress? Research suggests that people have a number of strategies, including turning to the groups to which they belong, increasing feelings of identification and affiliation. We examine a novel extension of this strategy: adopting visible reminders of one's group identity. In two experiments (Ns = 103 and 194), we explore whether students are more likely to use an artifact that displays their university identity in situations of high, compared to low, evaluative stress. In Experiment 1, students were more likely to choose a university‐branded pen (vs. an identical unbranded pen) to complete exam questions when their performance would be evaluated versus not. In Experiment 2, we found the tendency to use a university‐branded pen in the face of evaluative stress emerged only among people who found the evaluation personally relevant. In addition, we present converging results from two observational studies suggesting that students are more likely to wear clothing that signals their university identity on exam days compared to control days. These findings suggest that people may turn to visible reminders of group membership when facing evaluative stress. Although we found no consistent evidence for a psychological mechanism underlying this effect, we speculate about theoretically relevant possibilities.     

Identity and counsellor preference†

This study investigated the relationship of identity development, measured by the Self-Identity Inventory (SII), universal-diverse orientation (UDO), measured by the Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale- Short (M-GUDS-S), to counsellor preference in a sample of 365 university students. After controlling for personal identity demographic variables, multiple regression analysis indicated SII and UDO accounted for significant additional variance in counsellor preference with Immersion (SII Scale 3), Relativistic Appreciation (MGUDS-S Subscale 2) and Comfort with Differences (MGUDS-S Subscale 3), identified as significant unique predictors. A canonical correlation analysis performed with 11 individual counsellor preference variables as criterion variables and 9 identity salience variables as predictor variables to explore the relationships between identity salience and counsellor preference yielded three significant canonical functions.     

Interpersonal sensitivity, partner support, patient-physician communication, and sexual functioning in men recovering from prostate carcinoma

Prostate carcinoma (PC) is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men. Treatments for localized PC are associated with side effects including sexual dysfunction, which has been linked to decrements in health-related quality of life and elevated distress levels. In this study, we examined the relationship between 2 personality traits, interpersonal sensitivity and lack of sociability, assessed by the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP; Pilkonis, Kim, Proietti, & Barkham, 1996) and recovery of sexual functioning in 121 men (M age = 60.6 years) recently treated with radical prostatectomy. Interpersonal sensitivity refers to the predisposition to perceive and elicit criticism and rejection from others; lack of sociability refers to chronic difficulties taking the initiative in interpersonal situations. After adjusting for relevant covariates, interpersonal sensitivity, but not sociability, was significantly associated with lower levels of sexual functioning. Patient-physician communication and partner perceived social support were explored as mediators of this relationship. Although interpersonal sensitivity was significantly associated with both poorer patient-physician communication and lower levels of partner support, the results did not support mediation. This study provides preliminary evidence that certain IIP-assessed interpersonal styles may complicate the recovery of sexual functioning after surgical treatment for PC.     

Perinatal loss and maternal attitudes toward the subsequent child

Twenty-five mothers who had experienced a previous perinatal loss and a comparison group of 30 nonloss mothers completed the Maternal Attitude Questionnaire (MAQ) and the Maternal Separation Anxiety Scale (MSAS) when their children were 16 months old. The purposes of the study were to describe and evaluate the development of a new measure (the MAQ) and to examine the hypothesis that mothers who experienced a perinatal loss would express (a) more concern about the subsequent child's health, (b) more investment in the child, and (c) heightened concern about maternal-child differentiation/separation in comparison to nonloss mothers. The results showed that the MAQ had good internal consistency. None of the three factors of the MSAS differentiated between the two groups of mothers while two subscales of the MAQ did: (1) Maternal Concern with Child's Health and (2) Maternal Concern with Differentiation. Mothers who had experienced a perinatal loss thus expressed more concerns about their children's physical well-being and more concerns about differentiating from their child than mothers who had not had a perinatal loss.     

Psychotherapy Revolution: Translating Symptoms into Gifts

This article proposes four revolutions in psychotherapy. The first revolution invites therapists to focus on building client’s strengths rather than patching up weaknesses. The second revolution proposes a technique of translating symptoms into gifts. The third revolution invites therapists to consider alternative goals of psychotherapy other than returning the client to previous levels of functioning. Finally, the fourth revolution challenges the dictum of psychotherapy training that therapists should only teach their clients how to fish, metaphorically speaking, rather than giving them fish. Case studies are offered focusing particularly on clients diagnosed with Major Depression and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.     

Attenuating memory distrust in a repeated checking task

Repeated checking has been demonstrated to lead to reductions in memory confidence in several previous studies using student and clinical samples. This process of reduced confidence in memory and detail for memory, are thought to arise from the inhibition of perceptual processing that develops during repeated checking. Our research investigated whether reduced memory confidence from repeated checking could be attenuated through the use of novel stimuli during the repeated checking task. Three groups were generated through random assignment of 65 undergraduate students. As seen in previous research, individuals who repeatedly checked a stimulus (a virtual stovetop) showed reduced memory confidence, vividness, and detail, when compared with individuals who repeatedly checked a different stimulus. A third group in which the colour of the repeatedly-checked stovetop changed every five trials showed no significant decline in memory confidence between the pre-test and post-test. Results suggest that increased memory distrust can be ameliorated through the use of stimuli with characteristics that are novel and distinctive. Findings are discussed in the context of the existing model of repeated checking and memory confidence, and implications for treatment methods are presented.     

Cognitive biases and obsessive-compulsive symptoms in children: examining the role of maternal cognitive bias and child age

Objective: Multiple cognitive biases associated with adult obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) were tested in a clinical sample of children (ages 7-11) and adolescents (12-17) and their mothers. This study examined (a) the associations between child cognitive biases and OCD severity, (b) maternal cognitive biases and child OCD severity, and (c) maternal cognitive bias and child cognitive bias. It was hypothesized that age would significantly moderate these relationships, with stronger associations with OCD severity for cognitive bias in adolescents (relative to children), and maternal cognitive bias in younger children (relative to adolescents). Method: Forty-six children and adolescents diagnosed with OCD and their mothers completed questionnaires assessing responsibility bias, thought-action fusion (TAF), thought suppression, and metacognitive beliefs. OCD symptoms were assessed using structured diagnostic interviews and semistructured symptom interviews. Results: As predicted, age significantly moderated associations between (a) child cognitive variables and OCD severity-specifically between child responsibility and child metacognition, which were associated with OCD severity for adolescents only; (b) maternal cognitive biases and child OCD severity-specifically for maternal responsibility and thought suppression, which were significantly and positively associated with child OCD severity but not adolescent OCD severity; and (c) maternal cognitive biases and child cognitive bias-such that significant associations were evident only in the younger child sample, and only between maternal TAF self and metacognition, with child suppression and child TAF moral, respectively. Conclusion: Maternal cognitive biases are more consistently linked to greater OCD severity among younger children, whereas personal cognitive biases are associated with greater OCD symptoms in adolescents. Treatments for pediatric OCD are likely to be improved by age-specific considerations for the role of maternal and child cognitive biases associated with OCD.     

Independent contributions of the central executive, intelligence, and in-class attentive behavior to developmental change in the strategies used to solve addition problems

Children's (N=275) use of retrieval, decomposition (e.g., 7=4+3 and thus 6+7=6+4+3), and counting to solve additional problems was longitudinally assessed from first grade to fourth grade, and intelligence, working memory, and in-class attentive behavior was assessed in one or several grades. The goal was to assess the relation between capacity of the central executive component of working memory, controlling for intelligence and in-class attentive behavior, and grade-related changes in children's use of these strategies. The predictor on intercept effects from multilevel models revealed that children with higher central executive capacity correctly retrieved more facts and used the most sophisticated counting procedure more frequently and accurately than their lower capacity peers at the beginning of first grade, but the predictor on slope effects indicated that this advantage disappeared (retrieval) or declined in importance (counting) from first grade to fourth grade. The predictor on slope effects also revealed that from first grade to fourth grade, children with higher capacity adopted the decomposition strategy more quickly than other children. The results remained robust with controls for children's sex, race, school site, speed of encoding Arabic numerals and articulating number words, and mathematics achievement in kindergarten. The results also revealed that intelligence and in-class attentive behavior independently contributed to children's strategy development.     

Competence with fractions predicts gains in mathematics achievement

Competence with fractions predicts later mathematics achievement, but the codevelopmental pattern between fractions knowledge and mathematics achievement is not well understood. We assessed this codevelopment through examination of the cross-lagged relation between a measure of conceptual knowledge of fractions and mathematics achievement in sixth and seventh grades (N = 212). The cross-lagged effects indicated that performance on the sixth grade fractions concepts measure predicted 1-year gains in mathematics achievement (ß = .14, p < .01), controlling for the central executive component of working memory and intelligence, but sixth grade mathematics achievement did not predict gains on the fractions concepts measure (ß = .03, p > .50). In a follow-up assessment, we demonstrated that measures of fluency with computational fractions significantly predicted seventh grade mathematics achievement above and beyond the influence of fluency in computational whole number arithmetic, performance on number fluency and number line tasks, central executive span, and intelligence. Results provide empirical support for the hypothesis that competence with fractions underlies, in part, subsequent gains in mathematics achievement.