Intervening with Military Couples Struggling with Issues of Sexual Infidelity

Both the prevalence and adverse impact of infidelity argue for the importance of disseminating evidence-based interventions for couples struggling with this highly disruptive event. We describe an integrative approach for promoting recovery from infidelity drawing on empirically supported treatments for couple distress as well as empirical literature regarding recovery from interpersonal trauma and recovery from relationship injuries. We then describe a structured 8 session adaptation of this protocol tailored to military couples struggling with issues of infidelity. Reaching these high-risk couples requires extending both the availability and efficacy of services delivered by professionals within the military from diverse disciplines. We present initial findings indicating that US Army chaplains receiving training in this structured protocol not only can learn information regarding the conceptual underpinnings and specific interventions comprising this treatment, but also can apply it appropriately in analog clinical situations. We conclude with suggestions for extending dissemination efforts to reduce acute adverse consequences experienced by service members and their partners experiencing infidelity.     

Enhanced processing fluency leads to biases in source memory

The present experiments were conducted to determine whether processing fluency affects source memory decisions. In the first three experiments, participants decided whether test items appeared in the same sensory modality (Experiments 1A, 1B) or perceptual form (font type, Experiment 2) at study and test. The results were consistent across the three studies and showed that perceptual priming leads to an increase in reports that stimuli were presented in the same sensory or perceptual form during the study and test phase. Experiment 3 showed that conceptual fluency affects source attributions in much the same way as perceptual fluency, and Experiment 4 showed that fluency is associated with a subjective experience of familiarity even when it might serve as a basis for source inference. These results are consistent with recent neuropsychological and neuroimaging evidence that familiarity-based processes contribute to source memory decisions under some circumstances, such as when items and contexts are unitized rather than merely bound together at encoding.     

Direction of association between targets in a RSVP task influences priming at very short but not long SOAs

When two targets are presented using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) and the interval between the targets is 200–500 ms, detection or identification of the second target is impaired. This impairment in second target report is known as the attentional blink (AB). This study sought to examine the impact of the direction of target association on priming during an AB task using very short and long SOAs. Two experiments were conducted using dual-stream RSVP tasks and targets that either shared an associative relationship or were unrelated to one another. The direction of association between the targets was also varied so that associatively related targets were presented in the forward (strongest association from target 1 to target 2) or backward directions of association (strongest association from target 2 to target 1). In Experiment 1 very short SOAs between targets (27–213 ms) were used. Priming was evident at the same SOAs for both targets presented in the backward direction of association. However, for targets presented in the forward direction of association, priming occurred for target 1 and target 2 at different SOAs. Experiment 2 used longer SOAs between targets (107 to 535 ms) and it was determined that while direction of association between the targets did not affect priming, there was a larger priming effect for target 2 than for target 1. The results of the two experiments indicate that direction of association between targets influences priming in RSVP tasks that use very short but not long SOAs. The results are discussed in relation to the two-stage response competition model of Potter et al. (J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 28:1149–1162, 2002).     

A Comparison of Noncontingent Plus Contingent Reinforcement to Contingent Reinforcement Alone on Students’ Academic Performance

Noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) can be described as time-based or response-independent delivery of stimuli with known reinforcing properties. Previous research has shown NCR to reduce problem behavior in individuals with developmental disabilities and to interfere with the acquisition of more desired alternative behavior. To date, however, little research has examined the effects of NCR on children’s academic performance. The present study examined the effects of NCR on the completion of math computation worksheets by 3 students in an elementary school setting. An ABCB reversal design was used to compare an NCR schedule in combination with contingent reinforcement to contingent reinforcement alone. Results showed that digits correct per session decreased to baseline levels for all 3 students during implementation of the NCR plus contingent reinforcement condition. Implications of these results for the reductive effects of NCR are discussed.     

Gender differences in implicit and explicit personality traits

This article investigates gender differences in implicit and explicit measures of the Big Five traits of personality. In a high-powered study (N = 14,348), we replicated previous research showing that women report higher levels of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Neuroticism. For implicit measures, gender differences were much smaller for all, and opposite in sign for Extraversion. Somewhat higher levels of implicit Neuroticism and Agreeableness were observed in women, and somewhat higher levels of implicit Extraversion and Openness were observed in men. There was no gender difference in implicit Conscientiousness. A possible explanation is that explicit self-concepts partly reflect social norms and self-expectations about gender roles, while implicit self-concepts may mostly reflect self-related experiences.     

Environmental Influences on Ethical Decision Making: Climate and Environmental Predictors of Research Integrity

It is commonly held that early career experiences influence ethical behavior. One way early career experiences might operate is to influence the decisions people make when presented with problems that raise ethical concerns. To test this proposition, 102 first-year doctoral students were asked to complete a series of measures examining ethical decision making along with a series of measures examining environmental experiences and climate perceptions. Factoring of the environmental measure yielded five dimensions: professional leadership, poor coping, lack of rewards, limited competitive pressure, and poor career direction. Factoring of the climate inventory yielded four dimensions: equity, interpersonal conflict, occupational engagement, and work commitment. When these dimensions were used to predict performance on the ethical decision-making task, it was found that the environmental dimensions were better predictors than the climate dimensions. The implications of these findings for research on ethical conduct are discussed.