Clinical Psychology Students’ Experiences of a Pilot Objective Structured Clinical Examination

There is a need to improve methods used to assess students’ clinical skills in postgraduate clinical psychology training, but research into the use of new competency‐based assessments are sparse. The current study examines the potential application of the objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) to clinical psychology training. Commonly used in medical training, the OSCE requires students to demonstrate clinical skills across a number of standardised stations with trained actors playing the part of patients. A pilot OSCE was conducted with nine students from a psychology doctoral program. Participants completed a brief student feedback questionnaire and attended a focus group after the OSCE. They also completed the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory before and after the OSCE. The results showed that students viewed the OSCE as a valid, realistic, and fair assessment method. They reported high levels of anxiety during the OSCE but noted that the OSCE was a positive learning experience. These results suggest that OSCEs should be considered in clinical psychology training programs for the assessment of clinical competence. Further evaluations of the validity and reliability of the clinical psychology OSCE using a larger sample size are required. Other limitations and implications of the study are discussed.     

Understanding the abstract role of speech in communication at 12 months

Adult humans recognize that even unfamiliar speech can communicate information between third parties, demonstrating an ability to separate communicative function from linguistic content. We examined whether 12-month-old infants understand that speech can communicate before they understand the meanings of specific words. Specifically, we test the understanding that speech permits the transfer of information about a Communicator's target object to a Recipient. Initially, the Communicator selectively grasped one of two objects. In test, the Communicator could no longer reach the objects. She then turned to the Recipient and produced speech (a nonsense word) or non-speech (coughing). Infants looked longer when the Recipient selected the non-target than the target object when the Communicator had produced speech but not coughing (Experiment 1). Looking time patterns differed from the speech condition when the Recipient rather than the Communicator produced the speech (Experiment 2), and when the Communicator produced a positive emotional vocalization (Experiment 3), but did not differ when the Recipient had previously received information about the target by watching the Communicator's selective grasping (Experiment 4). Thus infants understand the information-transferring properties of speech and recognize some of the conditions under which others' information states can be updated. These results suggest that infants possess an abstract understanding of the communicative function of speech, providing an important potential mechanism for language and knowledge acquisition.     

Sex differences in how erotic and painful stimuli impair inhibitory control

Witnessing emotional events such as arousal or pain may impair ongoing cognitive processes such as inhibitory control. We found that this may be true only half of the time. Erotic images and painful video clips were shown to men and women shortly before a stop signal task, which measures cognitive inhibitory control. These stimuli impaired inhibitory control only in men and not in women, suggesting that emotional stimuli may be processed with different weights depending on gender.     

The more, the merrier? Numerical strength versus subgroup distinctiveness in minority groups

Evidence attests to the efforts made by minority groups to defend and promote ‘distinctive’ attributes that potentially define the ingroup. However, these attributes are often only available to a prototypical minority within the minority category. In two studies we tested the hypothesis that, under certain conditions, large projected increases in the numerical strength of a ‘distinctive’ attribute (emotional intelligence in Study 1; ingroup language in Study 2) within a minority category can paradoxically evoke less-than-positive reactions from those who already have the attribute. Findings confirmed that while a large projected increase in the numerical strength of a ‘distinctive’ attribute was viewed positively when the comparative context focused on the inter-category relation with a majority outgroup, this increase was viewed less positively, and as undermining their own identity, in a narrower intra-category context. Implications for identity management strategies in minority groups are discussed.     

The shape of action

How do people understand the everyday, yet intricate, behaviors that unfold around them? In the present research, we explored this by presenting viewers with self-paced slideshows of everyday activities and recording looking times, subjective segmentation (breakpoints) into action units, and slide-to-slide physical change. A detailed comparison of the joint time courses of these variables showed that looking time and physical change were locally maximal at breakpoints and greater for higher level action units than for lower level units. Even when slideshows were scrambled, breakpoints were regarded longer and were more physically different from ordinary moments, showing that breakpoints are distinct even out of context. Breakpoints are bridges: from one action to another, from one level to another, and from perception to conception.     

Manipulations of start and food locations affect navigation on a foraging task

Rats were able to search multiple food cups in a foraging task and successfully return to a fixed, but not a variable, start location. Reducing the number of food cups to be searched resulted in an improvement in performance in the variable start condition. Performance was better when only one or two food cups had to be visited but was still impaired if the food was not found in the first cup searched. Variable start locations impaired performance when only one food cup had to be searched, if that cup was moved over the table. These findings suggest that there is an interaction between memory processes and the navigational processes that allows an animal to return to its start location after a foraging trip. It appears that a fixed location for the food or the start point of a foraging trip is a necessary precondition for accurate performance.     

Association between just world beliefs and perceptions of counterproductive workplace behaviors

320 adults rated 48 counterproductive workplace behaviors (CWBs) on a 9-point scale, from petty to serious offense, and also completed the Just World Beliefs scale. Ratings of the seriousness of the CWBs indicated considerable variability in perceptions, with theft and physical violence rated most strongly. A factor analysis yielded five interpretable factors. Older participants were more likely to rate as more serious all counterproductive workplace behaviors.     

System justification and the defense of committed relationship ideology

A consequential ideology in Western society is the uncontested belief that a committed relationship is the most important adult relationship and that almost all people want to marry or seriously couple (DePaulo & Morris, 2005). In the present article, we investigated the extent to which the system justification motive may contribute to the adoption of this ideology. In Studies 1 and 2, we examined whether a heightened motive to maintain the status quo would increase defense of committed relationship values. In Study 3, we examined the reverse association, that is, whether a threat to committed relationship ideology would also affect sociopolitical system endorsement. As past research has found that the justification of political systems depends upon how much these systems are perceived as controlling, in Study 4 we tested whether the defense of the system of committed relationships would also increase when framed as controlling. Results from Studies 1-4 were consistent with our hypotheses, but only for men. In Study 5, using cross-cultural data, we sought to replicate these findings correlationally and probe for a cause of the gender effect. Results from more than 33,000 respondents indicated a relationship (for men) between defense of the sociopolitical system and defense of marriage in countries where the traditional advantages of men over women were most threatened. In Studies 6 and 7, we investigated when this gender difference disappears. Results revealed that when we measured (Study 6) or manipulated (Study 7) personal relationship identity rather than relationship ideology, effects also emerge for women.     

Listening, not watching: situational familiarity and the ability to detect deception

In 4 experiments, the authors investigated the influence of situational familiarity with the judgmental context on the process of lie detection. They predicted that high familiarity with a situation leads to a more pronounced use of content cues when making judgments of veracity. Therefore, they expected higher classification accuracy of truths and lies under high familiarity. Under low situational familiarity, they expected that people achieve lower accuracy rates because they use more nonverbal cues for their veracity judgments. In all 4 experiments, participants with high situational familiarity achieved higher accuracy rates in classifying both truthful and deceptive messages than participants with low situational familiarity. Moreover, mediational analyses demonstrated that higher classification accuracy in the high-familiarity condition was associated with more use of verbal content cues and less use of nonverbal cues.