Doing the Right Thing: A Qualitative Investigation of Retractions Due to Unintentional Error

Retractions solicited by authors following the discovery of an unintentional error—what we henceforth call a “self-retraction”—are a new phenomenon of growing importance, about which very little is known. Here we present results of a small qualitative study aimed at gaining preliminary insights about circumstances, motivations and beliefs that accompanied the experience of a self-retraction. We identified retraction notes that unambiguously reported an honest error and that had been published between the years 2010 and 2015. We limited our sample to retractions with at least one co-author based in the Netherlands, Belgium, United Kingdom, Germany or a Scandinavian country, and we invited these authors to a semi-structured interview. Fourteen authors accepted our invitation. Contrary to our initial assumptions, most of our interviewees had not originally intended to retract their paper. They had contacted the journal to request a correction and the decision to retract had been made by journal editors. All interviewees reported that having to retract their own publication made them concerned for their scientific reputation and career, often causing considerable stress and anxiety. Interviewees also encountered difficulties in communicating with the journal and recalled other procedural issues that had unnecessarily slowed down the process of self-retraction. Intriguingly, however, all interviewees reported how, contrary to their own expectations, the self-retraction had brought no damage to their reputation and in some cases had actually improved it. We also examined the ethical motivations that interviewees ascribed, retrospectively, to their actions and found that such motivations included a combination of moral and prudential (i.e. pragmatic) considerations. These preliminary results suggest that scientists would welcome innovations to facilitate the process of self-retraction.     

Psychometric Characteristics of the Wish to Be Dead Scale (WDS) in Iranian Psychiatric Outpatients

The Wish to be Dead Scale (WDS) was administered to a convenience sample of 200 Iranian psychiatric outpatients. Using a Principal Component Analysis, two factors were identified, labeled Lack of purpose in life (F1), and Lack of interest in living (F2). The WDS had good reliability and significant positive correlations with scores on the Beck Suicide Ideation Scale and with other measures of mental ill-health. This study provides evidence of the usefulness of the WDS for assessing psychiatric patients.     

A neural model of hippocampal–striatal interactions in associative learning and transfer generalization in various neurological and psychiatric patients

Building on our previous neurocomputational models of basal ganglia and hippocampal region function (and their modulation by dopamine and acetylcholine, respectively), we show here how an integration of these models can inform our understanding of the interaction between the basal ganglia and hippocampal region in associative learning and transfer generalization across various patient populations. As a common test bed for exploring interactions between these brain regions and neuromodulators, we focus on the acquired equivalence task, an associative learning paradigm in which stimuli that have been associated with the same outcome acquire a functional similarity such that subsequent generalization between these stimuli increases. This task has been used to test cognitive dysfunction in various patient populations with damages to the hippocampal region and basal ganglia, including studies of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), schizophrenia, basal forebrain amnesia, and hippocampal atrophy. Simulation results show that damage to the hippocampal region—as in patients with hippocampal atrophy (HA), hypoxia, mild Alzheimer’s (AD), or schizophrenia—leads to intact associative learning but impaired transfer generalization performance. Moreover, the model demonstrates how PD and anterior communicating artery (ACoA) aneurysm—two very different brain disorders that affect different neural mechanisms—can have similar effects on acquired equivalence performance. In particular, the model shows that simulating a loss of dopamine function in the basal ganglia module (as in PD) leads to slow acquisition learning but intact transfer generalization. Similarly, the model shows that simulating the loss of acetylcholine in the hippocampal region (as in ACoA aneurysm) also results in slower acquisition learning. We argue from this that changes in associative learning of stimulus–action pathways (in the basal ganglia) or changes in the learning of stimulus representations (in the hippocampal region) can have similar functional effects.     

What Are the Main Differences Between Behavioral and Systems Therapy with Couples? A Critical Account

This paper describes the main differences between behavioral and systems therapy with couples. To improve clinical decision making for a given case, the theoretical assumptions of the chosen treatment approach need to be clearly understood. Contrasting the two approaches will assist couple therapists in providing clinical services that better reflect the chosen theoretical framework. This paper reviews the common elements that can be found across models. A case example is presented to demonstrate the use of the therapy's theories and techniques.