Active gaze, visual look-ahead, and locomotor control

The authors examined observers steering through a series of obstacles to determine the role of active gaze in shaping locomotor trajectories. Participants sat on a bicycle trainer integrated with a large field-of-view simulator and steered through a series of slalom gates. Steering behavior was determined by examining the passing distance through gates and the smoothness of trajectory. Gaze monitoring revealed which slalom targets were fixated and for how long. Participants tended to track the most immediate gate until it was about 1.5 s away, at which point gaze switched to the next slalom gate. To probe this gaze pattern, the authors then introduced a number of experimental conditions that placed spatial or temporal constraints on where participants could look and when. These manipulations resulted in systematic steering errors when observers were forced to use unnatural looking patterns, but errors were reduced when peripheral monitoring of obstacles was allowed. A steering model based on active gaze sampling is proposed, informed by the experimental conditions and consistent with observations in free-gaze experiments and with recommendations from real-world high-speed steering.     

The Implicit Motives of Terrorist Groups: How the Needs for Affiliation and Power Translate into Death and Destruction

This study explored the dynamics of terrorism through a quantitative content analysis of documents issued by terrorist groups and nonterrorist comparison groups. Thirteen terrorist groups were matched with comparison groups that shared the same ideologies, and their documents were coded for ingroup affiliation, outgroup affiliation, and power motive imagery. As hypothesized, compared with nonterrorist groups, terrorist groups were significantly higher in ingroup affiliation motive imagery and significantly lower in outgroup affiliation motive imagery in the full sample of documents and in an indicator sample that included only terrorist groups' preterrorism documents. Terrorist groups were significantly higher than comparison groups in power motive imagery in the full sample and marginally significantly higher in power motive imagery in the indicator sample. These results highlight the important role that group dynamics play in terrorist groups.     

Children's Emotional Security in the Interparental Relationship

ABSTRACT— In response to the societal premium placed on understanding the difficulties faced by children from high-conflict homes, emotional security theory aims to understand precisely how and why interparental discord is associated with children's psychological problems. One of its main premises is that interparental discord increases children's vulnerability to mental illness by undermining their sense of safety or security in the context of the interparental relationship. In this article, we highlight the main assumptions of a new ethological formulation of emotional security theory and its predictions and findings regarding the organization, precursors, and consequences of individual differences in children's emotional insecurity. We conclude with a synopsis of the value of the new formulation for future work.     

Delayed memory for visual—haptic exploration of familiar objects

Long-term memory of haptic, visual, and cross-modality information was investigated. In Experiment 1, subjects briefly explored 40 commonplace objects visually or haptically and then received a recognition test with categorically similar foils in the same or the alternative modality both immediately and after 1 week. Recognition was best for visual input and test, with haptic memory still apparent after a week's delay. Recognition was poorest in the cross-modality conditions, with performance on the haptic-visual and visual-haptic cross-modal conditions being nearly identical. Visual and haptic information decayed at similar rates across a week delay. In Experiment 2, subjects simultaneously viewed and handled the same objects, and transfer was tested in a successive cue-modality paradigm. Performance with the visual modality again exceeded that with the haptic modality. Furthermore, initial errors on the haptic test were often corrected when followed by the visual presentation, both immediately and after 1 week. However, visual test errors were corrected by haptic cuing on the immediate test only. These results are discussed in terms of shared information between the haptic and visual modalities, and the ease of transfer between these modalities immediately and after a substantial delay.     

Cognitive-behavioural therapy for young children with anxiety disorders: Comparison of a Child + Parent condition versus a Parent Only condition

The present study compared the efficacy of a group-based cognitive-behavioural treatment (GCBT) delivered exclusively to parents of young anxious children (between 4 and 8 years of age) with the same intervention delivered to both children and parents, relative to a Wait-list Control condition. Parents of children in the Parent Only condition (N = 25) received 10 weekly sessions of GCBT whereas children and parents in the Parent + Child condition (N = 24) each received 10 weekly sessions of GCBT. Intent-to-treat analyses indicated that both active treatment conditions were superior to the Wait-list condition (N = 11), with 55.3% of children in the Parent Only condition and 54.8% of children in the Parent + Child condition no longer meeting criteria for their principal diagnosis at post-treatment. These treatment gains were maintained in both treatment conditions at six-month and 12-month follow-up assessments. There were no significant differences between the two active conditions on other outcome measures including parental psychopathology and parenting style. However, an unexpected finding was that parenting satisfaction and to some extent parenting competence reduced significantly from pre- to post-treatment regardless of the active treatment condition. The present results suggest that GCBT delivered exclusively to parents of young anxious children may be a viable treatment alternative for improving accessibility to efficacious treatments for children with anxiety disorders and for reducing costs associated with mental health care delivery.     

Reflective and ruminative processing of positive emotional memories in bipolar disorder and healthy controls

Recent evidence suggests that reflective (i.e., distanced-why), as compared to ruminative (i.e., immersed-why), processing of negative memories is associated with reductions in negative affect. The present study extended this line of work by examining the effect of these two processing conditions on positive memories among persons with bipolar disorder (BD; n = 27) and a healthy control group (CT; n = 27). After a resting baseline period, participants were instructed to recall a happy autobiographical memory. Using a within-subjects design, participants were asked to process the happy memory in two different experimental conditions (reflective, ruminative) while their experiential, behavioral, and autonomic responses were measured. Consistent with hypotheses, reflective processing was associated with lower self-reported positive affect, positive thoughts, and heart rate compared to ruminative processing for all participants. When current symptoms were controlled for, BD participants reported greater positive affect across both conditions relative to CT participants. Prospective studies are needed to test the extent to which processing of positive emotion contributes to the course of symptoms in bipolar disorder.     

Videogame Addiction and its Treatment

For many, the concept of videogame addiction seems far-fetched, particularly if their concepts and definitions of addiction involve the taking of drugs. This paper overviews the small, but growing area of videogame addiction and then examines the treatment options available for those affected by excessive videogame playing. An overview of the available empirical literature appears to indicate that adverse effects are likely to affect only a relatively small subgroup of players and that frequent players are the most at-risk for developing problems. Worldwide, there are relatively few practitioners that specialise in the treatment of videogame addiction and this may be because there are so few players who are genuinely addicted to playing videogames. However, the Internet may be facilitating excessive online game playing as evidenced by the increasing number of specialist addiction treatment clinics for online videogame addiction. This paper overviews the various approaches that have been used as an intervention in treating videogame addicts, including online support groups, 12-step programmes, behavioural and cognitive-behavioural therapies, and motivational interviewing.     

Perceived Organizational Support as a Moderator of Emotional Labor/Outcomes Relationships

The current study investigates the interactive effects of perceptions of organizational support on 2 emotional labor outcomes: job satisfaction and job performance. A sample of 2 retail service firms ( n  = 338) supported the moderating effect of perceived organizational support (POS) on the emotional labor/outcomes relationships. POS attenuated the negative effects of the emotional labor/job satisfaction and emotional labor/performance relationships. Implications of these results, strengths and limitations of the current study, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Elucidating the Relation of Hoarding to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Impulse Control Disorders

Hoarding has historically been conceptualized as a symptom of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD); however, data demonstrate important differences between hoarding and OC symptoms (for discussion, see Grisham et al. Anxiety Disorders, 19, 767‑779. 2005). Hoarding has also been observed in disorders besides OCD, including specific Impulse Control Disorders (ICDs; e.g., kleptomania, trichotillomania, pathological gambling, compulsive buying). Therefore, the current study tested the hypothesis that hoarding would be as strongly related to symptoms of ICDs as it is to OCD and that these relationships would be medium to strong in magnitude. Results from an undergraduate sample showed hoarding behaviors were strongly related to symptoms of OCD, moderately related to symptoms of compulsive buying, and more modestly related to symptoms of pathological gambling, trichotillomania, and kleptomania. Finally, findings suggest indecisiveness may be a particularly important underlying feature in hoarding behaviors. These results support the consideration of hoarding outside the confines of OCD.