RESURGENCE OF INFANT CAREGIVING RESPONSES

Two experiments were conducted to identify the conditions likely to produce resurgence among adult human participants. The preparation was a simulated caregiving context, wherein a recorded infant cry sounded and was terminated contingent upon targeted caregiving responses. Results of Experiment 1 demonstrated resurgence with human participants in this negative reinforcement preparation. Results of Experiment 2 showed that responses with a longer history of reinforcement showed a stronger resurgence effect relative to responses with a shorter and more recent history of reinforcement. These results show that the resurgence phenomenon occurs across populations and types of reinforcers. Additionally, results indicate that length of reinforcement history is a variable that may affect the magnitude of resurgence.     

Effects of guided immune-imagery: The moderating influence of openness to experience

It is widely believed that personality has an important role in determining the effectiveness of guided imagery (GI) interventions. The primary aim of the current study was to examine whether the effect of GI on several outcome measures was dependent upon openness to experience, a theoretically relevant variable previously unexplored as a potential moderator. Thirty-five healthy participants were randomised to an animated imagery, verbal imagery or no-intervention control group, with imagery groups receiving 10 × 20 min sessions. Pre/post-assessments of cortisol, sleep, stress and creativity were administered along with the openness to experience scale. Regression analysis indicated a significant increase in cortisol and decrease in tiredness following verbal GI, but only for those high in openness. The efficacy of GI interventions may be dependent upon openness to experience and this variable should be accounted for in future studies.     

Solo status and self-construal: being distinctive influences racial self-construal and performance apprehension in African American women

A preliminary study and main experiment tested the hypothesis that racial solo status (being the only member of one's race in a group) increases racial self-construal among African Americans. The preliminary study showed that African American men and women reported greater collectivist (i.e., group-based) over individualist self-construal under solo compared to nonsolo status, whereas Whites did not. The main experiment showed that the increased collectivism among African American solo women appears to be strongly reflected in racial identity becoming a salient aspect of self-construal. African American participants were also more likely than Whites to perceive that their anticipated performance would be generalized to their race, to feel like representatives of their race, and to show greater performance apprehension (indirectly evidenced by increased self-handicapping) when in racial solo status. The implications of solo status for African Americans in evaluative situations (such as academic testing sessions) are discussed.     

Treatment Engagement: Building Therapeutic Alliance in Home-Based Treatment with Adolescents and their Families

Client engagement is an essential yet challenging ingredient in effective therapy. Engaged clients are more likely to bond with therapists and counselors, endorse treatment goals, participate to a greater degree, remain in treatment longer, and report higher levels of satisfaction. This study explored the process of engaging high-risk youth and their parents in a unique home-based family therapy intervention. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 19 families who completed family therapy sessions that included a core component aimed at increasing treatment engagement. Parents’ and youths’ perceptions of engagement suggest the importance of developing therapeutic alliance with therapists, who facilitated building a shared alliance among family members. Implications for improving client engagement are discussed within the context of alliance building with the therapist and among family members.     

Shoemaker on Phenomenal Content

Sydney Shoemaker has given a sophisticated theory of phenomenal content, motivated by the transparency of experience and by the possibility of spectrum inversion without illusion (1994, 2000, 2001, 2002). It centers on the idea that color experiences represent what he calls “appearance properties”. I consider the different sorts of appearance properties that Shoemaker has suggested might enter into phenomenal content – occurrent appearance properties, dispositional appearance properties, and higher-order dispositional appearance properties – and argue that none of them are plausibly represented by color experiences. I argue that Shoemaker's theory faces a dilemma – either it makes misperception too difficult, or it does not truly accommodate veridical spectrum inversion. I then examine some alternative Russellian theories of phenomenal content that might be consistent with Shoemaker's motivations, including a different sort of proposal recently suggested by Shoemaker (forthcoming). I argue that these views are also lacking, for similar reasons as the appearance property view. Finally, I conclude that in order for a representationalist theory to properly accommodate spectrum inversion without illusion, phenomenal content must include an indexical element. Such a view requires the adoption of a broadly Fregean theory of phenomenal content, according to which sameness of phenomenal character does not entail sameness in extension. What phenomenally identical experiences have in common is not what they represent, but how they represent.     

Autobiographical memory: unpleasantness fades faster than pleasantness over time

We examined the effects of retention intervals on the recollection of the emotional content of events. Memory for personal events was tested for three retention intervals: 3 months, 1 year, and 4.5 years. Participants made pleasantness ratings both at the time of recording the event and during testing of the events. Analyses of the data show that judgments of pleasantness or unpleasantness of an event became less extreme as retention interval increased. This effect was larger for unpleasant events than for pleasant events. Subsequent memory ratings of pleasant and unpleasant events showed a modest effect of pleasantness with pleasant events remembered slightly better than unpleasant events. The theoretical implications of these data are discussed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Review of Loss,Trauma and Resilience: Therapeutic Work With Ambiguous Loss

Book reviewed in this article: Pauline Boss (2006). Loss, Trauma, and Resilience: Therapeutic Work With Ambiguous Loss.     

Adaptive memory: survival processing enhances retention

The authors investigated the idea that memory systems might have evolved to help us remember fitness-relevant information--specifically, information relevant to survival. In 4 incidental learning experiments, people were asked to rate common nouns for their survival relevance (e.g., in securing food, water, or protection from predators); in control conditions, the same words were rated for pleasantness, relevance to moving to a foreign land, or personal relevance. In surprise retention tests, participants consistently showed the best memory when words were rated for survival; the survival advantage held across recall, recognition, and for both within-subject and between-subjects designs. These findings suggest that memory systems are "tuned" to remember information that is processed for fitness, perhaps as a result of survival advantages accrued in the past.     

Absolute distance perception to locations off the ground plane

Using vision, humans can accurately judge distances to locations on the ground surface up to distances of at least 20 m. Most theories of depth perception assume that this ability is associated with the fact that we live in a terrestrial world in which locations of interest often appear on the ground and for which feedback about distance is often available from nonvisual sources such as walking. Much less is known about the ability of humans to judge absolute distances to locations other than on or supported by the ground plane beyond a few meters, at which point binocular stereo provides at best limited information about distance scaling. We show that one commonly used action measure for probing absolute distance perception exhibits accurate performance, even for targets located on the ceiling of a large room. We follow this with evidence that distance to ceiling locations is recovered with a mechanism that depends, at least in part, on the angle from the line of sight to the target location and a gravity-based frame of reference.