Daily affective reactivity as a prospective predictor of depressive symptoms

Daily affective reactivity refers to the within-subject relationship between daily stress and daily mood. Most stress researchers have conceptualized daily affective reactivity as a dependent variable to be predicted by individual difference variables such as personality and psychopathology. In contrast, in our recent research, we have conceptualized daily affective reactivity as an independent variable that can predict depressive symptoms. In this article, we summarize three studies that relied on a daily process methodology and multilevel modeling to assess affective reactivity in the context of daily stressful events. Two of the studies (Cohen, Butler, Gunthert, & Beck, 2005; Gunthert, Cohen, Butler, & Beck, 2005) sampled adult outpatients in cognitive therapy and evaluated the predictive role of daily affective reactivity in treatment outcome (depression reduction). A third study (O'Neill, Cohen, Tolpin, & Gunthert, 2004) evaluated the predictive role of college students' daily affective reactivity in the development of depressive symptoms. We consider the strengths and weaknesses of a daily process methodology for research on depression in both clinical and nonclinical samples.     

Epigenetic inheritance and the intergenerational transfer of experience

Currently, behavioral development is thought to result from the interplay among genetic inheritance, congenital characteristics, cultural contexts, and parental practices as they directly impact the individual. Evolutionary ecology points to another contributor, epigenetic inheritance, the transmission to offspring of parental phenotypic responses to environmental challenges-even when the young do not experience the challenges themselves. Genetic inheritance is not altered, gene expression is. Organismic pathways for such transmission exist. Maternal stress during the latter half of a daughter's gestation may affect not only the daughter's but also grand-offspring's physical growth. The author argues that temperamental variation may be influenced in the same way. Implications for theory and research design are presented along with testable predictions.     

Effects of intrastimulus modality change on audiovisual time-to-arrival judgments

In this research, anticipatory perception of an approaching vehicle was examined. By varying the availability of visual and acoustic media, conditions occurred in which the input to the modalities was repetitively interrupted while the presentation of the approach event continued. In these conditions, the audio and the visual signals were presented either in short and concurrent segments at regular intervals or in alternation (interleaved) at regular intervals. It was found that interrupting the signal within a single modality did not affect performance if the approach information was available in the alternate modality. These results are consistent with a modally flexible detection mechanism for the perception of approaching objects. This modal flexibility may provide some evidence that information is detected using a modality-neutral strategy.     

Pauses and durations exhibit a serial position effect

This article reports evidence of two kinds of serial position effects in immediate serial recall: One involves interresponse pauses, and the other response durations. In forward and backward recall, responding was faster at initial and final positions than at center positions, exhibiting a bow-shaped function relative to serial position. These data were obtained in a spoken recall study in which ungrouped lists of four to six words and postcuing of recall direction were used. The pause pattern is consistent with several models of serial memory, including a distinctiveness model (Brown, Neath, & Chater, 2002) and a version of the ACT—R model augmented with a spontaneous grouping strategy (Maybery, Parmentier, & Jones, 2002). The duration pattern suggests that response articulation depends on the processing context, rather than being modular.     

Location cuing and response time distributions in visual attention

The allocation of visual attention was investigated in two experiments. In Experiment 1 (n = 24), a peripheral cue was presented, and in Experiment 2 (n = 24), a central cue was used. In both experiments, cue validity was 90%, and the task was four-choice target identification. Response time distributions were collected for valid trials over five cue-target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), and ex-Gaussian parameters were extracted. In both experiments, only the mean of the Gaussian component decreased as a function of cue-target SOA, which implied a strict time axis translation of the distributions. The results were consistent with sequential sampling models featuring a variable delay in the onset of information uptake.     

Perceptual simulation in property verification

If people represent concepts with perceptual simulations, two predictions follow in the property verification task (e.g., Isface a property of GORILLA?). First, perceptual variables such as property size should predict the performance of neutral subjects, because these variables determine the ease of processing properties in perceptual simulations (i.e., perceptual effort). Second, uninstructed neutral subjects should spontaneously construct simulations to verify properties and therefore perform similarly to imagery subjects asked explicitly to use images (i.e., instructional equivalence). As predicted, neutral subjects exhibited both perceptual effort and instructional equivalence, consistent with the assumption that they construct perceptual simulations spontaneously to verify properties. Notably, however, this pattern occurred only when highly associated false properties prevented the use of a word association strategy. In other conditions that used unassociated false properties, the associative strength between concept and property words became a diagnostic cue for true versus false responses, so that associative strength became a better predictor of verification than simulation. This pattern indicates that conceptual tasks engender mixtures of simulation and word association, and that researchers must deter word association strategies when the goal is to assess conceptual knowledge.     

All our troubles seem so far away: temporal pattern to accessible alternatives and retrospective team appraisals

Three studies tested the hypothesis that thoughts about alternatives become increasingly accessible over time, leading poor outcomes to feel subjectively farther away and less inevitable. This subjective temporal distance bias was obtained even though actual time since poor and good outcomes was identical. In Study 1, participants who recalled distant poor team outcomes thought of alternatives easily and outcomes felt farther away and less inevitable. Thoughts about outcomes were most easily accessible after good outcomes, which felt closer and more inevitable. In Study 2, with measures obtained immediately or at a later time on a negotiation task, changes over time occurred primarily for poor team outcomes. In Study 3, team performance on an investment task indicated it is whether alternatives are thought of easily, not thought content, that produces this effect. Discussion centers on temporal appraisals, other temporal biases, and teams.     

Does legal education have undermining effects on law students? Evaluating changes in motivation,values, and well‐being

We evaluated changes in subjective well-being (SWB), motivation, and values occurring over the law-student career. In study 1, law students began with levels of SWB higher than a comparison sample of undergraduates, but by the end of the first year their SWB had plummeted. These changes were correlated with the sample-wide decreases in intrinsic motivation over the first year, and were also correlated with increases in appearance values and decreases in community service values. Those with the most intrinsic motivations attained the highest grades, but, ironically, high grades in turn predicted shifts in career preferences towards "lucrative" and higher-stress law careers, and away from "service"-oriented and potentially more satisfying law careers. The declines persisted over the second and third years of law school. In study 2, the basic effects were replicated for a different sample of first-year students at a different law school. Implications for legal education and the legal profession are discussed.     

The effects of changes in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases on suicide rates in 71 countries, 1950-1999

The World Health Organization (WHO) provides annual mortality statistics from 1950 onward based on the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). In this paper we evaluate the effects of ICD form revisions on suicide rates for 71 countries. The changes between ICD-6, ICD-7, ICD-8, and ICD-9 did not have an overall effect on reported suicide rates. The transitions to ICD-8 and ICD-9 were, however, associated with country-specific changes in the suicide rate in some countries. The change from ICD-9 to ICD-10 was associated with an overall change of -.73 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants. It is recommended that researchers using the WHO mortality data for longitudinal cross-national studies control for the ICD form used at different time points.