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The Effects of Accumulated Underaccommodation on Perceptions of Underaccommodative Communication and Speakers

This study examined the effects of repeated instances of underaccommodation (i.e., insufficiently adjusted communication) on people's perceptions and evaluations of communication and speakers. Participants (N = 179) completed a series of three map‐based tasks that required them to follow directions that contained insufficient information. Consistent with hypotheses, as underaccommodation accumulated across tasks, participants inferred less positive motives for the speaker's communication, and inferences about motive for each task contributed directly and indirectly to overall evaluations of both the speaker and their communication. These results indicate that accumulated underaccommodation is consequential, and underscore the theoretical importance of motive attributions to predicting reactions to underaccommodation.     

The Network Structure of Childhood Psychopathology in International Adoptees

International adoptees are at an increased risk of emotional and behavioral problems, especially those who are adopted at an older age. We took a new approach in our study of the network structure and predictability of emotional and behavioral problems in internationally adopted children in Finland. Our sample was from the on-going adoption study and comprised 778 internationally adopted children (387 boys and 391 girls, mean age 10.5 (SD 3.4) years). Networks were estimated using Gaussian graphical models and lasso regularization for all the children, and separately for those who were adopted at different ages. The results showed that anxiety/depressive symptoms, social problems, and aggressiveness were the most central symptom domains. Somatic symptoms were the least central and had the weakest effect on the other domains. Similarly, aggressiveness, social problems, and attention problems were high in terms of predictability (73–65%), whereas internalizing problems were relatively low (28–56%). There were clear but local age-group differences in network structure, symptom centrality, and predictability. According to our findings, network models provide important additional information about the centrality and predictability of specific symptom domains, and thus may facilitate targeted interventions among international adoptees.     

Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying Recovered-Memory Experiences of Childhood Sexual Abuse

ABSTRACT— People sometimes report recovering long-forgotten memories of childhood sexual abuse. The memory mechanisms that lead to such reports are not well understood, and the authenticity of recovered memories has often been challenged. We identified two subgroups of people reporting recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. These subgroups differed dramatically in their cognitive profiles: People who recovered memories of abuse through suggestive therapy exhibited a heightened susceptibility to the construction of false memories, but showed no tendency to underestimate their prior remembering. Conversely, people who recovered memories of abuse spontaneously showed a heightened proneness to forget prior incidences of remembering, but exhibited no increased susceptibility to false memories. This double dissociation points to mechanisms that underlie recovered-memory experiences and indicates that recovered memories may at times be fictitious and may at other times be authentic.     

Impulsivity as a predictor of smoking and alcohol consumption

This prospective study examined the relationships between impulsivity, smoking and alcohol use in a large non-clinical sample of 601 men and 4832 women working in 12 Finnish hospitals. Data on impulsivity, smoking and alcohol consumption were collected by two questionnaires with a two-year interval. At baseline, impulsivity was associated with smoking and alcohol use. After controlling for baseline smoking, impulsivity predicted increased number of cigarettes smoked per day in women (p=0.08), but not in men. After controlling for alcohol use at baseline, impulsivity predicted increased alcohol consumption similarly in both genders (p<0.01). Higher impulsivity was also associated with increased likelihood of taking up smoking or becoming a heavy drinker (p<0.05). This evidence suggests that impulsivity contributes to increasing health risk behaviours.     

Forgetting of prior remembering in persons reporting recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse

Case studies of individuals reporting recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse suggest that some overestimate their prior forgetting of the abuse. People reporting recovered or continuous memories of childhood sexual abuse and control subjects reporting no history of abuse participated in two experiments examining this "forgot it all along" phenomenon. Participants in Experiment 1 were more likely to forget that they had previously recalled a studied item if they were cued to think of it differently on two recall tests than if they were cued to think of it in the same way on the two tests. This effect was stronger for recovered-memory participants than for continuous-memory and control participants. In Experiment 2, participants recalled autobiographical events three times over a period of 4 months. Much as in Experiment 1, they underestimated prior remembering when the events had been recalled in a different emotional frame (positive vs. negative) on the previous occasion. This underestimation was more pronounced for recovered-memory participants than for continuous-memory and control participants.     

More than words: Rethinking sustainability communications through neuroscientific methods

In the era when the overarching problem of climate change, threatening the entire humanity and all life on earth, demands actions and behavioural change from all of the societal agents, including governments, organizations, companies and individuals, the world fails to achieve unity on the matter of existence of the problem, cause of the problem and on the solution of the problem. Since the scientific consensus on climate change is achieved, this article tries to examine why it is so hard to convey the message of needed behavioural change. The neuromarketing study presented in this article focuses on marketing communications that try to convey the message that would lead to the consumers' mental, emotional and behavioural change. Effectiveness of the branded environmental videos was evaluated utilizing the neuroscience approach. Electroencephalogram and an eye-tracking device were used to register the implicit brain reactions of the study participants viewing the branded videos. For comparison reasons, the branded videos selected for the study use two different approaches for conveying the message. The first approach relies on narrative, words and logic, whilst the second one appeals primarily to emotions. The aim of the study was to answer the question whether the words are enough or is there more to it?     

Retrieval inhibition of trauma-related words in women reporting repressed or recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse

Several authors have argued that survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) who report to have repressed their traumatic memories are more skilled in forgetting emotional stimuli than survivors who have always remembered the abuse. The current experiment employed a list-wise directed forgetting task to investigate whether women reporting repressed (n = 16) or recovered (n = 23) memories of CSA are better at forgetting disturbing material, relative to women reporting having always remembered their abuse (n = 55) or reporting no history of abuse (n = 20). We found no support for the hypothesis that women reporting repressed or recovered memories of CSA are especially versed in inhibiting retrieval of trauma-related words. Additional analyses revealed that participants characterized by a repressive coping style did not display a superior retrieval inhibition mechanism for negative material.     

Long term consequences of suppression of intrusive anxious thoughts and repressive coping

The current experiment employed a thought suppression paradigm to investigate whether repressors (N=40) are more skilled in suppressing positive and anxious autobiographical thoughts than low anxious (N=40), high anxious (N=40), and defensive high anxious (N=40) individuals, both immediately and over a longer time period (i.e., 7 days). Regardless of suppression instructions, repressors reported during their lab visit fewer target thoughts for their most anxious events than participants in the other three groups. However, over a 7 days period, repressors showed the highest number of intrusive thoughts about their anxious autobiographical events. Thus, our results demonstrate that repressive coping might be adaptive in the short run, but counterproductive in the long run.