Participant recruitment methods and statistical reasoning performance

Optimal Bayesian reasoning performance has reportedly been elusive, and a variety of explanations have been suggested for this situation. In a series of experiments, it is demonstrated that these difficulties with replication can be accounted for by differences in participant-sampling methodologies. Specifically, the best performances are obtained with students from top-tier, national universities who were paid for their participation. Performance drops significantly as these conditions are altered regarding inducements (e.g., using unpaid participants) or participant source (e.g., using participants from a second-tier, regional university). Honours-programme undergraduates do better than regular undergraduates within the same university, paid participation creates superior performance, and top-tier university students do better than students from lower ranked universities. Pictorial representations (supplementing problem text) usually have a slight facilitative effect across these participant manipulations. These results indicate that studies should take account of these methodological details and focus more on relative levels of performance rather than absolute performance.     

Personality prototypes in eating disorders based on the Big Five model

A three factor model of personality pathology was investigated in a clinical sample of 335 female eating disordered patients. Cluster analysis of the Big Five NEO-FFI scales (Costa & McCrae, 1992) yielded three distinct personality profiles, which were consistent with previous studies: (1) a resilient/high functioning cluster with no clinical elevations on the NEO-FFI scales; (2) an undercontrolled/emotionally dysregulated cluster with elevated scores on the Neuroticism scale and low scores on Conscientiousness and Agreeableness; (3) an overcontrolled/constricted cluster showing high scores on Neuroticism and Conscientiousness and low scores on Openness to Experience. Comparing the three personality prototypes with respect to Axis I and Axis II disorders,resilients reported systematically less clinical and personality problems than both undercontrollers and overcontrollers. Compared to the latter, undercontrollers showed more impulsive personality features and behaviors. Finally, cluster membership was not clearly associated with eating disorder subtypes, suggesting that there is considerable variance in personality features and/or pathology within the various eating disorder categories.     

Age-related differences in episodic feeling-of-knowing arise from differences in memory performance

Previous studies about the effects of ageing on the episodic feeling-of-knowing (FOK) accuracy and its underlying processes have yielded conflicting results. Recent work suggests that using alternative measures to gamma correlations might allow more accurate and informative interpretations of metamemory performance in ageing. We therefore investigated this issue with a large sample of 59 young and 61 older participants using alternative signal-detection theory (SDT) measures. These measures (receiver operating characteristic curves and Brier score) are recommended in the literature and able to reveal the characteristic profile of impairment in ageing. Our results suggest that the FOK accuracy deficit observed in the literature arises from differences in memory performance. This observation provides a convenient explanation to the previous discrepancies and furthermore supports the interest of the use of SDT-derived measures in the frame of metamemory.     

Assessing the Relationship Between Youth Sport Participation Settings and Creativity in Adulthood

This article presents an assessment of the relative influences of time spent participating in organized sports and informal sports during childhood with respect to the development of general creativity. In this study, 99 upper-division undergraduate and graduate students completed a comprehensive childhood leisure activities questionnaire and the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults. According to the results of the joint generalized least-squares regression analysis, hours spent in organized sport settings was negatively related to creativity as an adult; time spent in unstructured sport settings was found to be positively related to adult creativity. The findings also point to the importance of balancing participation across organized and unstructured settings. The most creative individuals in the sample were those who spent roughly half of their sport participation time in each setting, as opposed to individuals with below-average creativity, who spent upwards of 3/4 of their sport participation time in organized settings. Therefore, fostering creative development through sport may not require a dramatic reorientation from current youth sport development models, but only a shift toward a more balanced distribution of time spent playing in both organized and unstructured settings. Future experiments are needed to test this relationship.     

Correlates of Rorschach Reality Adherence in the Assessment of Murderers who Plead Insanity

Reality adherence measured by Mayman's system of Rorschach form level scoring was applied to the protocols of 43 individuals all of whom were pleading insanity to a charge of murder. Reality adherence level correlated significantly with judgment of legal sanity, contributed importantly to a factor analysis dimension of reality functioning, and was extensively related to measures of primary process thought and impulse. Reality adherence further was related to intellectual functioning and areas of past history. These results suggest that Mayman's reality adherence measure has substantial validity and is importantly related to other personality variables.     

Situational Determinants of Personal Validation of General Personality Interpretations

Groups of Ss were matched with respect to their pre-experimental opinions regarding the value of psychological tests used by trained professionals to describe personality. Ss were then given either the Rorschach, TAT, FIRO-B, or Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale and were later given identical general personality interpretations supposedly based on the test results. An analysis of variance of Ss ratings of the accuracy of the personality interpretation indicated that neither the type of test S took nor whether the personality interpretation was presented as being derived “for you specifically” or “for people in general” had differential effects on Ss' acceptance of the interpretation; all groups rated the interpretation as being between “good” and “excellent.”     

Patterns of Daily Time Use of Young Adults With or Without First-Episode Psychosis

This study compared patterns of daily activities and satisfaction with time use of young adults with first-episode psychosis and healthy volunteers. Fifty young adults participated in retrospective structured interviews on time use. Young adults with first-episode psychosis spend more time in sleep, passive leisure, and personal care activities, and less in total productive activities and education. No difference appeared for leisure, paid work, and household work, or satisfaction with daily time use. Reasons underlying dissatisfaction with daily time use differed between the groups. Clinical and research implications are discussed.     

Cognitive biases and alcohol use in adolescence and young adulthood: The moderating role of gender,attentional control and inhibitory control

The present study investigated the cross-sectional associations between cognitive biases (i.e., attentional bias and approach bias) and alcohol use and investigated the moderating role of gender, attentional control and inhibitory control. The sample consisted of 94 adolescents and young adults (52.1% boys) between 15.3 and 20.8 years old (M_age = 18.0, SD = 1.1) who reported drinking alcohol in the past three months. A stronger approach bias was related to higher alcohol use, albeit only among boys. Furthermore, the association between attentional bias and alcohol use was moderated by attentional control; the lowest alcohol use was found in adolescents with low attentional bias and high attentional control, suggesting protective effects of both variables. The present study replicates and extends the results of studies on cognitive biases and addiction in adolescence and young adulthood.     

‘Characters’ in psychoanalytic and interpersonal therapy: A comparison

In this paper the author considers how the therapist might listen to the characters talked about by his or her patients. In psychoanalytic therapy the emphasis is on listening to the patient's characters as though they are located in psychic reality and as representatives of the transference relationship, whereas in interpersonal therapy (IPT) the patient's characters are taken as inhabiting the realm of external reality. It is argued that clinical thinking in IPT would be enhanced by taking more account of psychic reality, which will make clearer the quality of external reality in which the patient's characters are located. It is also argued that both therapies share an interest in enabling the patient to find characters which can serve as holograms of previously unexpressed affective experience.