Mitigating disruptive effects of interruptions through training: what needs to be practiced?

It is generally accepted that, with practice, people improve on most tasks. However, when tasks have multiple parts, it is not always clear what aspects of the tasks practice or training should focus on. This research explores the features that allow training to improve the ability to resume a task after an interruption, specifically focusing on task-specific versus general interruption/resumption-process mechanisms that could account for improved performance. Three experiments using multiple combinations of primary tasks and interruptions were conducted with undergraduate psychology students. The first experiment showed that for one primary and interruption task-pair, people were able to resume the primary task faster when they had previous practice with the interruption. The second experiment replicated this finding for two other sets of primary and interruption task-pairs. Finally, the third experiment showed that people were able to resume a primary task faster only when they had previous practice with that specific primary and interruption task-pair. Experience with other primary and interruption task-pairs, or practice on the primary task alone, did not facilitate resumption. This suggests that a critical component in resuming after an interruption is the relationship between two tasks. These findings are in line with a task-specific mechanism of resumption and incompatible with a general-process mechanism. These findings have practical implications for developing training programs and mitigation strategies to lessen the disruptive effects of interruptions which plague both our personal and professional environments.     

Functional neuroanatomy of spatial working memory in children

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to examine spatial working memory in 8- to 11-year-old children tested under three conditions. In the visual condition, children were asked to examine the location of a dot on a screen. In the motor condition, children were instructed to push a button that corresponded to the location of a dot presented on a screen. In the memory condition, children were asked to remember the location of a dot presented 1 or 2 trials previously. Subtracting the activation of the motor condition from the memory condition revealed activity in the dorsal aspects of the prefrontal cortex and in the posterior parietal and anterior cingulate cortex. These findings were also obtained in the analysis of the memory minus visual conditions except that motor cortex activation was also observed. These findings parallel those reported in comparable studies of adults and suggest that fMRI may be a useful means of examining function-structure relations in developmental populations.     

Sleep deprivation influences some but not all processes of supervisory attention

Does one night of sleep deprivation alter processes of supervisory attention in general or only a specific subset of such processes? Twenty college-aged volunteers, half female, performed a choice reaction time task. A cue indicated that compatible (e.g., right button, right-pointing arrow) or incompatible (e.g., left button, right-pointing arrow) responses were to be given to a stimulus that followed 50 or 500 ms later. The paradigm assessed response inhibition, task-shifting skill, and task strategy-processes inherent in supervisory attention. Performance, along with heart rate, was assessed for 12 hr following normal sleep or a night of complete sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation altered neither preparation for task shifting nor response inhibition. The ability to use preparatory bias to speed performance did decrease with sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation appears to selectively affect this supervisory attention process, which is perceived as an active effort to cope with a challenging task.     

成人日常问题解决的老化研究

日常问题解决能力是近十几年来老年心理学中研究比较活跃的一个领域。本文介绍了有关日常问题解决研究的四种理论,即心理测量的智力内隐理论、形式后思维的辨证思维理论、信息加工理论和社会认知与智慧理论,及其初步的研究成果,并进一步指出在理论上整合和在实践中开展干预的研究方向。     

Romantic relationship quality during the COVID-19 pandemic: The longitudinal associations with relationship loneliness and depression

The COVID-19 pandemic created significant strain on both mental health and romantic relationships. Therefore, we examined longitudinal associations between romantic relationship quality, relationship loneliness, and depressive symptoms over 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We surveyed 122 couples (n = 244 individuals) in approximately May, September, and November 2020. Using a dyadic mediation model, findings indicated that relationship quality at Time 1 was positively associated with depression at Time 3 for men, but not for women. A significant indirect effect of relationship quality on depression via relationship loneliness at Time 2 was found for both men and women. Self-mastery, or feeling in control of one's life circumstances, was an important covariate of women's depressive symptoms. Overall, these findings highlight relationship loneliness as particularly salient for mental health and demonstrate the importance of high-quality relationships for promoting well-being during stressful events, such as global pandemics.     

The representation of category typicality in the frontal cortex and its cross-linguistic variations

When asked to judge the membership of typical (e.g., car) vs. atypical (e.g., train) pictures of a category (e.g., vehicle), native English (N = 18) and native Chinese speakers (N = 18) showed distinctive patterns of brain activity despite showing similar behavioral responses. Moreover, these differences were mainly due to the amount and pervasiveness of category information linguistically embedded in the everyday names of the items in the respective languages, with important differences across languages in how pervasive category labels are embedded in item-level terms. Nonetheless, the left inferior frontal gyrus and the bilateral medial frontal gyrus are the most consistent neural correlates of category typicality that persist across languages and linguistic cues. These data together suggest that both cross- and within-language differences in the explicitness of category information have strong effects on the nature of categorization processes performed by the brain.     

Planned Versus Unplanned Risks: Evidence for Subtypes of Risk Behavior in Adolescence

Risk behavior escalates during adolescence, contributing to substantial morbidity and mortality. This study examined whether individual differences in personality and neurocognitive function previously shown to be associated with overall frequency of risk behavior are differentially related to two proposed subtypes of adolescent risk behavior: planned and unplanned. Adolescents (N = 69, 49% male, M = 15.1 years, SD = 1.0), completed a battery of self-report measures and neurocognitive tasks. Several personality and neurocognitive variables predicted membership in the planned versus unplanned risk group: perceiving the benefits of risk behaviors to outweigh risks, more accurately identifying beneficial choices in a modified Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), and performing more advantageously on the IGT and the Game of Dice Task. This study supports the hypothesis that planned versus unplanned risk behavior comprise distinct subtypes in adolescence. Understanding the mechanisms underlying these subtypes may inform prevention programs targeting specific contributors to adolescent risk behavior.     

The whys and the hows of psychosocial approaches to addiction

The field of addiction psychology attempts to addresses a major social problem. Yet, discourse within the discipline suggests a biological focus, driven by disease‐model of addiction, has caused our understanding to be too narrow. In contrast, psychosocial approaches conceptualize the phenomena from various perspectives. We here bring together papers utilizing a variety of methods in the context of substance use and mis‐use. These explore the effects that alcohol primes have on attentional control, how procrastination may predict hazardous drinking, the typology of “pre‐drinking” motivations and the effects of dyadic membership. It also looks at prevention in terms of public health messaging and also heroin use uptake. We hope showcasing these studies will encourage addiction researchers to widen the scope and method of their enquiries.     

Schizophrenic tendencies and memory deficits in normals

The report tests the hypothesis that normals who exhibit schizophrenic tendencies are likely to show verbal-memory deficits of the types observed in schizophrenics. Thirty-four middle-aged men were tested using the MMPI 2–7–8 schizophrenic-tendency scales, the Sorting Consistency Task and the Physical Anhedonia Scale. The dependent variables were four memory tests selected on the basis of their known discriminating power and their relevance. The results showed the Schizophrenia (8) and Psychasthenia (7) scales of MMPI, and the Sorting Consistency Task effectively detected memory deficits in normals. When partialling out intelligence, as a measure of general current cognitive functioning, it appeared that one of the deficits reflecting encoding difficulty disappeared. This suggests that normal ‘high-risk’ subjects for schizophrenia show a ‘generalized deficit’, which affects memory in addition to a ‘differential deficit’ in retention. Though tentative, the results can be taken as an indication that ‘high-risk’ subjects indeed show memory deficits and that detecting these deficits requires relatively sensitive tools.