Attributional Retraining: reducing the likelihood of failure

Failing a course is an acutely negative event for first-year university students, and a major contributor to high attrition rates at North American universities. Despite its prevalence, course failure receives relatively little research attention. What can be done to reduce course failure and help first-year students remain in university? This study examined the efficacy of an Attributional Retraining treatment intervention to reduce course failure in an Introductory Psychology course. Attributional Retraining is designed to restructure students’ causal explanations of poor performance by encouraging controllable attributions such as effort and strategy in place of immutable causes such as academic ability or intelligence. Relative to students in the control group, first-year students who received Attributional Retraining were less likely to fail the Introductory Psychology course (14.6% vs. 6.4%). This finding emerged beyond the effects of several well-established predictors of academic outcomes including student background characteristics (i.e., age, gender, and past academic performance) and learning environment variables (student registration status and participation in a first-year orientation program), suggesting the utility of Attributional Retraining for students with varying backgrounds and in different educational contexts. To the extent that Attributional Retraining is effective, inexpensive, and relatively easy to administer it may be a viable option for inclusion in orientation programs designed to reduce course failure and attrition among first-year university students.     

Unpackaging Manager Mistrust in Allowing Telework: Comparing and Integrating Theoretical Perspectives

Purpose

We developed and tested an integrative model centering on the significance of trust as a basis for managers’ decisions about allowing versus prohibiting their employees to telework. We examined the importance of trust in relation to several other factors managers may consider in making telework decisions including coordination and communication, equity, and a desire to accommodate employees.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Study 1 was a policy capturing investigation of 71 respondents intended to document the relative importance and interactions among trust and these other theoretically based factors. Study 2 was a test of the full theoretical model based on the responses of 85 managers who reported on these considerations for the 191 employees about whom they make telework decisions.

Findings

Results from the two studies were largely consistent. Managers’ assessments of employees’ conscientiousness and trustworthiness were paramount in predicting telework allowance, with the other theoretically based considerations generally failing to attenuate the importance of those personal assessments.

Implications

Organizations wishing to increase the use of telework (e.g., by implementing manager telework training) must directly address managers’ mistrust as a factor underlying this resistance. Job-related and technological changes may not dampen the effects of mistrust.

Originality

To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive and theoretically grounded assessment of the various considerations factoring into managers’ telework decisions.

     

Is time-based prospective remembering mediated by self-initiated rehearsals? Role of incidental cues, ongoing activity, age, and motivation

The present research examined self-reported rehearsal processes in naturalistic time-based prospective memory tasks (Study 1 and 2) and compared them with the processes in event-based tasks (Study 3). Participants had to remember to phone the experimenter either at a prearranged time (a time-based task) or after receiving a certain text message (an event-based task) and record the details of occasions when they thought about this intention during a 7-day delay interval. The rehearsal and retrieval of time-based tasks was mediated by more automatic than deliberate self-initiated processes. Moreover, the number of reported rehearsals without any apparent triggers was reliably higher in time- than in event-based tasks. Additional findings concern the effects of age, motivation, and ongoing activities on rehearsal and prospective memory performance.     

On the role of hippocampal protein synthesis in the consolidation and reconsolidation of object recognition memory

Upon retrieval, consolidated memories are again rendered vulnerable to the action of metabolic blockers, notably protein synthesis inhibitors. This has led to the hypothesis that memories are reconsolidated at the time of retrieval, and that this depends on protein synthesis. Ample evidence indicates that the hippocampus plays a key role both in the consolidation and reconsolidation of different memories. Despite this fact, at present there are no studies about the consequences of hippocampal protein synthesis inhibition in the storage and post-retrieval persistence of object recognition memory. Here we report that infusion of the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin in the dorsal CA1 region immediately or 180 min but not 360 min after training impairs consolidation of long-term object recognition memory without affecting short-term memory, exploratory behavior, anxiety state, or hippocampal functionality. When given into CA1 after memory reactivation in the presence of familiar objects, ANI did not affect further retention. However, when administered into CA1 immediately after exposing animals to a novel and a familiar object, ANI impaired memory of both of them. The amnesic effect of ANI was long-lasting, did not happen after exposure to two novel objects, following exploration of the context alone, or in the absence of specific stimuli, suggesting that it was not reversible but was contingent on the reactivation of the consolidated trace in the presence of a salient, behaviorally relevant novel cue. Our results indicate that hippocampal protein synthesis is required during a limited post-training time window for consolidation of object recognition memory and show that the hippocampus is engaged during reconsolidation of this type of memory, maybe accruing new information into the original trace.     

A link between role of two prefrontal areas in immediate memory and in long-term memory consolidation

The dorsolateral and medial prefrontal cortex are critical for immediate memory processing. The possibility has been raised that those two areas may also contribute to long-term memory formation. Here, we studied the role of specific receptors in dorsolateral and medial prefrontal cortex in immediate and in long-term memory formation of one-trial inhibitory avoidance. Four different specific receptor ligands were infused into these two areas: the dopamine D1 receptor antagonist, SCH23390, the GABA(A) receptor agonist, muscimol, the AMPA glutamatergic receptor antagonist, ciano-nitro-quinoxaline-dione (CNQX), and the NMDA glutamatergic receptor antagonist, aminophosphonovaleric acid (AP5). In all cases the doses used had been previously shown to affect immediate or long-term memory. In the experiments on immediate memory the drugs were given 5 min before training and the animals were tested 3s post-training. These animals were then also tested 24h later for long-term memory. The effect of the treatments on long-term memory was studied by their infusion 0, 90, 180 or 270 min post-training, testing the animals 24h after training. Immediate memory was inhibited by SCH23390, muscimol and CNQX, but not by AP5, given into any of the two subregions. Long-term memory formation was inhibited by SCH23390, muscimol and CNQX, but not by AP5, given pre-training or 0, 90 or 180 but not 270 min post-training into the dorsolateral region; or 90 but not 0 or 180 min post-training into the medial region. Thus, there is a time- and receptor-dependent correlation in the two areas between their role in immediate and in long-term memory processing. Both roles require intact glutamate AMPA and dopamine D1 receptors, are inhibited by GABAergic synapses, and are unaffected by AP5. In the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex the link between immediate and long-term memory appears to be direct; in the medial area the link suffers a 90 min delay.     

Getting the Job: Attributional Retraining and the Employment Interview1

This study examined the effectiveness of attributional retraining (AR) in an employment interview setting. Our sample consisted of 50 co‐operative education students completing job interviews who were randomly assigned to a control or writing‐based AR condition. Dependent measures included attributions, expectations, and affect, as well as behavior with respect to an interview skills workshop, and actual employment outcomes. Results showed AR to promote controllable failure attributions, expectations, motivated behavior, and interview success, particularly among participants with maladaptive baseline attributions. Findings further revealed AR effects on emotions mediated by post‐treatment attributions. Implications for attribution theory and research on AR in employment settings are discussed.     

Lay discourses about Brexit and prejudice: “Ideological creativity” and its limits in Brexit debates

Much research on Brexit has studied whether the vote to leave the EU is a marker of growing prejudice. In this article, we study instead how the relationship between support for Brexit and prejudice is constructed, negotiated and contested in lay discourse. Our analysis of focus groups (N = 12) conducted prior to and following the EU referendum shows that support for Brexit was predominantly constructed as based on nationalism and anti-immigration prejudice, especially in Remain-supporting accounts. This prompted identity management strategies and counter-arguments by Leave supporters, such as providing alternative constructions of prejudice and racism; relating Brexit with “progressive” values; and presenting it as rational and economically sound. In our discussion, we draw attention to the “ideological creativity” that underpins these accounts and also reflect on the possibilities and constraints of developing alternative political narratives under conditions of political polarisation.     

Working memory effects in speeded RSVP tasks

The present paper examines the effects of memory contents and memory load in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) speeded tasks, trying to explain previous inconsistent results. We used a one target (Experiment 1) and a two-target (Experiment 2) RSVP task with a concurrent memory load of one or four items, in a dual-task paradigm. A relation between material in working memory and the target in the RSVP impaired the identification of the target. In Experiments 3 and 4, the single task was to determine whether any information in memory matched the target in the RSVP, while varying the memory load. A match was detected faster than a non-match, although only when there was some distance between targets in the RSVP (Experiment 4). The results suggest that memory contents automatically capture attention, slowing processing when the memory contents are irrelevant to the task, and speeding processing when they are relevant.     

A longitudinal examination of couples' coping strategies as predictors of adjustment to breast cancer

This study's goals were to examine coping strategies of women and their male partners as predictors of change in women's adjustment over the year following breast cancer treatment and to test whether partners' coping processes interact to predict adjustment. In a sample of women who had recently completed breast cancer treatment and were taking part in a psychoeducational intervention trial, the patients' and partners' cancer-specific coping strategies were assessed at study entry (average of 10 months after diagnosis). Assessed at study entry and 20 months after diagnosis (n = 139 couples), dependent variables were women's general (i.e., vitality, depressive symptoms, relationship satisfaction) and cancer-specific adjustment (i.e., cancer-specific distress, perceived benefits). Both patients' and partners' coping strategies at study entry predicted change in women's adjustment at 20 months. Women's use of approach-oriented coping strategies predicted improvement in their vitality and depressive symptoms, men's use of avoidant coping predicted declining marital satisfaction for wives, and men's approach-oriented strategies predicted an increase in women's perception of cancer-related benefits. Patients' and partners' coping strategies also interacted to predict adjustment, such that congruent coping strategy use generally predicted better adaptation than did dissimilar coping. Findings highlight the utility of examining patients' and partners' coping strategies simultaneously.