Assessing psychological inflexibility: the psychometric properties of the Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth in two adult samples

The current study examined whether the Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth (AFQ-Y; L. A. Greco, W. Lambert, & R. A. Baer, 2008), a self-report measure of psychological inflexibility for children and adolescents, might be useful for measuring psychological inflexibility for adults. The psychometric properties of the AFQ-Y were examined using data from a college student sample (N = 387) and a clinical sample of patients with anxiety disorders (N = 115). The AFQ-Y, but not the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II; F. W. Bond et al., in press), demonstrated a reading level at or below the recommended 5th or 6th grade reading level. The AFQ-Y also demonstrated adequate reliability (internal consistency), factorial validity, convergent and discriminant validity, and concurrent validity predicting psychological symptoms. Moreover, the AFQ-Y showed incremental validity over the AAQ-II in predicting several psychological symptom domains. Implications for the assessment of psychological inflexibility are discussed.     

Cues to solution, restructuring patterns, and reports of insight in creative problem solving

While the subjective experience of insight during problem solving is a common occurrence, an understanding of the processes leading to solution remains relatively uncertain. The goal of this study was to investigate the restructuring patterns underlying solution of a creative problem, and how providing cues to solution may alter the process. Results show that both providing cues to solution and analyzing problem solving performance on an aggregate level may result in restructuring patterns that appear incremental. Analysis of performance on an individual level provides evidence for insight-like solution patterns. However, no evidence is found for a relationship between an individual's restructuring pattern and their subjective experience of insight during problem solving.     

Defining the Role of Laboratory Genetic Counselor

An increasing number of genetic counselors are moving into non-clinical roles, where their primary duties do not involve direct patient contact. According to the National Society of Genetic Counselors Professional Status Survey in 2010, 23% of counselors working in non-clinical roles identified laboratory or genetic testing as their primary area of work. Using a survey, we identified 43 genetic counselors who work predominately in laboratory settings. The two primary tasks performed by participants, include acting as a customer liaison (95%) and calling out test results (88%). Nineteen participants (44.2%) also reported spending a considerable amount of time signing reports. The most prevalent areas of job satisfaction were support from laboratory directors (76.8%), autonomy (76.7%), interactions with clinicians (69.7%) and interaction with other genetics counselors (67.5%). This is the first study specifically looking at the roles of laboratory genetic counselors, which is an expanding area of genetic counseling.     

Taxometric analysis as a general strategy for distinguishing categorical from dimensional latent structure

Statistical analyses investigating latent structure can be divided into those that estimate structural model parameters and those that detect the structural model type. The most basic distinction among structure types is between categorical (discrete) and dimensional (continuous) models. It is a common, and potentially misleading, practice to apply some method for estimating a latent structural model such as factor analysis without first verifying that the latent structure type assumed by that method applies to the data. The taxometric method was developed specifically to distinguish between dimensional and 2-class models. This study evaluated the taxometric method as a means of identifying categorical structures in general. We assessed the ability of the taxometric method to distinguish between dimensional (1-class) and categorical (2-5 classes) latent structures and to estimate the number of classes in categorical datasets. Based on 50,000 Monte Carlo datasets (10,000 per structure type), and using the comparison curve fit index averaged across 3 taxometric procedures (Mean Above Minus Below A Cut, Maximum Covariance, and Latent Mode Factor Analysis) as the criterion for latent structure, the taxometric method was found superior to finite mixture modeling for distinguishing between dimensional and categorical models. A multistep iterative process of applying taxometric procedures to the data often failed to identify the number of classes in the categorical datasets accurately, however. It is concluded that the taxometric method may be an effective approach to distinguishing between dimensional and categorical structure but that other latent modeling procedures may be more effective for specifying the model.     

A lexical analysis of environmental sound categories

In this article we report on listener categorization of meaningful environmental sounds. A starting point for this study was the phenomenological taxonomy proposed by Gaver (1993b). In the first experimental study, 15 participants classified 60 environmental sounds and indicated the properties shared by the sounds in each class. In a second experimental study, 30 participants classified and described 56 sounds exclusively made by solid objects. The participants were required to concentrate on the actions causing the sounds independent of the sound source. The classifications were analyzed with a specific hierarchical cluster technique that accounted for possible cross-classifications, and the verbalizations were submitted to statistical lexical analyses. The results of the first study highlighted 4 main categories of sounds: solids, liquids, gases, and machines. The results of the second study indicated a distinction between discrete interactions (e.g., impacts) and continuous interactions (e.g., tearing) and suggested that actions and objects were not independent organizational principles. We propose a general structure of environmental sound categorization based on the sounds' temporal patterning, which has practical implications for the automatic classification of environmental sounds.     

Sequential difficulty effects during strategy execution

In two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that strategy performance on a given trial is influenced by the difficulty of the strategy executed on the immediately preceding trial, an effect that we call strategy sequential difficulty effect. Participants' task was to provide approximate sums to two-digit addition problems by using cued rounding strategies. Results showed that performance was poorer after a difficult strategy than after an easy strategy. Our results have important theoretical and empirical implications for computational models of strategy choices and for furthering our understanding of strategic variations in arithmetic as well as in human cognition in general.