Negativity and positivity effects in person perception and inference: Ability versus morality

The present paper deals with negativity and positivity effects in trait inferences and impression formation. In the first experiment we tested the suggestion of Skowronski and Carlston (1987) that in the domain of morality negative information is more diagnostic, will therefore receive more weight and result in a negativity effect whereas in the domain of abilities, positive information is more diagnostic resulting in positivity effects. Results of our first experiment support these predictions: negative behavioural information leads to more certain inferences concerning morality and positive behavioural information leads to more certain inferences concerning ability. In a second experiment, we investigated the relative weight of positive versus negative ability-and morality-related traits in an impression formation task. We counterposed traits from both morality and ability domains to see which was the most dominant in determining evaluative impressions. Findings of this second experiment showed strong negativity effects but also revealed that information related to morality is more influential in forming an evaluative impression than equally extreme information related to ability. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Simulating episodic memory deficits in semantic dementia with the TraceLink model

Although semantic dementia is primarily characterised by deficits in semantic memory, episodic memory is also impaired. Patients show poor recall of old autobiographical and semantic memories, with better retrieval of recent experiences; they can form new memories, and normal performance on pictorial recognition memory has been demonstrated. As these abnormalities in episodic memory are virtually a mirror image of those seen in the amnesic syndromes, semantic dementia poses a challenge to extant models of remote memory and amnesia. Here, we show that one such model, TraceLink, can reproduce some of the principal findings on episodic memory in semantic dementia. A loss of nodes and connections within the trace system, which can be identified with the temporal neocortical memory storage sites implicated in semantic dementia, simulates without further assumptions the findings reported above.     

The Role of Attention in Word Recognition: Results from OB1-Reader

When reading, orthographic information is extracted not only from the word the reader is looking at, but also from adjacent words in the parafovea. Here we examined, using the recently introduced OB1-reader computational model, how orthographic information can be processed in parallel across multiple words and how orthographic information can be integrated across time and space. Although OB1-reader is a model of text reading, here we used it to simulate single-word recognition experiments in which parallel processing has been shown to play a role by manipulating the surrounding context in flanker and priming paradigms. In flanker paradigms, observers recognize a central word flanked by other letter strings located left and right of the target and separated from the target by a space. The model successfully accounts for the finding that such flankers can aid word recognition when they contain bigrams of the target word, independent of where those flankers are in the visual field. In priming experiments, in which the target word is preceded by a masked prime, the model accounts for the finding that priming occurs independent of whether the prime and target word are in the same location or not. Crucial to these successes is the key role that spatial attention plays within OB1-reader, as it allows the model to receive visual input from multiple locations in parallel, while limiting the kinds of errors that can potentially occur under such spatial pooling of orthographic information.     

Homesickness in social context: An ecological momentary assessment study among 1st-year university students

Homesickness is common among university students and associated with mental health problems. Most previous studies assessed homesickness as a summary of the past weeks. However, there may be significant fluctuations across situations. At the current residence, homesickness may especially be triggered during (phone) interactions with attachment figures. Dutch and international 1st-year students (n = 92) completed the Utrecht Homesickness Scale and subsequently used a smartphone application to record social interactions for 14 days (ecological momentary assessment [EMA]). For each interaction they reported the social context (e.g. location, contact type) and their affective state, including homesickness. Homesickness in the past weeks and momentary homesickness were both higher in international students than in Dutch students. Feeling homesick was highest at participants' current residency, when interacting with parents, or when using video-chat. When participants felt more homesick, they reported less pleasant and more unpleasant affect. In conclusion, EMA provided insight in cross-situational variations in homesickness.     

Adolescents let sufficient evidence accumulate before making a decision when large incentives are at stake

Adolescent decision‐making has been described as impulsive and suboptimal in the presence of incentives. In this study we examined the neural substrates of adolescent decision‐making using a perceptual discrimination task for which small and large rewards were associated with correctly detecting the direction of motion of a cloud of moving dots. Adults showed a reward bias of faster reaction times on trials for which the direction of motion was associated with a large reward. Adolescents, in contrast, were slower to make decisions on trials associated with large rewards. This behavioral pattern in adolescents was paralleled by greater recruitment of fronto‐parietal regions important in representing the accumulation of evidence sufficient for selecting one choice over its alternative and the certainty of that choice. The findings suggest that when large incentives are dependent on performance, adolescents may require more evidence to accumulate prior to responding, to be certain to maximize their gains. Adults, in contrast, appear to be quicker in evaluating the evidence for a decision when primed by rewards. Overall these findings suggest that rather than reacting hastily, adolescents can be incentivized to take more time to make decisions when large rewards are at stake. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://youtu.be/1g4F5vzFDl0     

The Motivating Role of Perceived Right Violation and Efficacy Beliefs in Identification with the Italian Water Movement

Because individuals' fundamental right to water is often taken for granted, little is known about why individuals participate in water activism. We examine how individuals identify with and intend to participate in the Italian Water Movement to defend the “public management” of water supply. Building on the collective‐action literature, we test an explanatory model in which the perceived violation of the right to water and group and participative‐efficacy beliefs increase movement identification, which predicts subsequent activism. Study 1 (N = 153 activists) largely confirmed our hypotheses: right violation and participative efficacy uniquely influenced movement identification, which in turn predicted activism. Study 2 corroborated these findings by employing a broader sample of 132 Italian citizens, with right violation, participative and group‐efficacy beliefs predicting movement identification, which in turn predicted activism. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

Characteristics of patients in routine psycho-oncological care,and changes in outcome variables during and after their treatment

Objective: The primary aim of this study was to determine the characteristics of clients and interventions in routine psycho-oncological care. The secondary aim was to determine the course of symptomatology during and after the psychological interventions.

Design: During a period of nine months, all clients who sought help in one of the seven psycho-oncological care institutes in the Netherlands were approached to participate in the present study (N = 483). Information was gathered with respect to demographic and medical characteristics, and type and duration of the interventions. In addition, depression, anxiety, well-being, quality of life, fatigue and daily function were determined before interventions and three and nine months later.

Results and conclusions: Compared to the Dutch cancer population, patients in psycho-oncological care were more often young and female. Compared to the general Dutch population, they were highly educated and were more likely to have a partner. Clinical levels of depression, anxiety and/or fatigue were found among 83% of the patients. After three months, only 23% had completed their intervention; this figure was 62% after nine months. Symptoms decreased significantly for all outcome variables. An importance difference with randomised controlled trials is the low session frequency and the long intervention time of patients in clinical care.     

Worker Well-Being: What it Is,and how it Should Be Measured

Applied Research in Quality of Life - Worker well-being is a hot topic in organizations, consultancy and academia. However, too often, the buzz about worker well-being, enthusiasm for new programs...     

Lipread-induced phonetic recalibration in dyslexia

Auditory phoneme categories are less well-defined in developmental dyslexic readers than in fluent readers. Here, we examined whether poor recalibration of phonetic boundaries might be associated with this deficit. 22 adult dyslexic readers were compared with 22 fluent readers on a phoneme identification task and a task that measured phonetic recalibration by lipread speech (Bertelson, Vroomen, & De Gelder, 2003). In line with previous reports, we found that dyslexics were less categorical in the labeling of the speech sounds. The size of their phonetic recalibration effect, though, was comparable to that of normal readers. This result indicates that phonetic recalibration is unaffected in dyslexic readers, and that it is unlikely to lie at the foundation of their auditory phoneme categorization impairments. For normal readers however, it appeared that a well-calibrated system is related to auditory precision as the steepness of the auditory identification curve positively correlated with recalibration.     

The effect of guiding questions on students’ performance and attitude towards statistics

Background. In this study, the effect of guidance on students’ performance was investigated. This effect was hypothesized to be manifested through a reduction of cognitive load and enhancement of self‐explanations. Aim. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of guiding questions on students’ understanding of statistics. Sample and Method. In an experimental setting, two randomly selected groups of students (N= 49) answered achievement and transfer questions on statistics as a measure of performance. Students in the intervention condition were given guiding questions to direct their way of reasoning before they answered the achievement questions. The students in the control condition were asked to write down their way of thinking before they answered the same achievement questions. In this way, both groups were stimulated to self‐explain, but only the reasoning processes of the students in the intervention condition were guided. Results and Conclusion. It was found that students in the intervention condition performed significantly better on achievement and transfer questions and that this effect of guidance was mediated by self‐explanations. Attitude towards statistics was positively related to performance.