The Enhanced Cognitive Interview: Testing Appropriateness Perception,Memory Capacity and Error Estimate Relation with Report Quality

The Enhanced Cognitive Interview (ECI) has been widely studied. However, research has overlooked witnesses' attitudes toward the interview and how error estimate and memory capacity relate to report quality. Participants watched a mock robbery video and were interviewed 48 hours later with either the Portuguese version of the ECI or a Structured Interview (SI). Participants interviewed with the ECI provided more information without compromising accuracy, particularly in free recall. Report accuracy was stable across interview phases and information categories. A higher perception of interview appropriateness (how witnesses evaluate the appropriateness of the interview procedure used) was linked with more detailed reports and more interest in being an interviewee. Participants over‐estimated their error rate, and their memory capacity was not related to witnesses' recall. It is essential to take into account their perception of interview appropriateness and use alternative methods to evaluate report quality. Major implications for real‐life investigations are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of two types of career interventions on students with different career coping styles

Research on the efficacy of career interventions often lacks comparative analysis of the effects of different types of interventions. Additionally, little is known about the effects of interventions on diverse clients. Previous studies showed that students display different career coping styles and that these styles are relatively consistent across samples. The present study analyzes the effect of two types of career interventions (a single career information session and a six-week career intervention) on the career adaptability of students with different career coping styles. The study involved 319 students from grade 9 and grade 12 of three Portuguese public schools. Results show that although the interventions were effective for most of the students, the single informative session improved the career curiosity and confidence of only one group of students, whereas the six week career intervention revealed a more robust effect in students with insecure, pessimistic or superficial career coping styles. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are also discussed.     

Self-Regulation and Other Executive Functions Relationship to Pediatric OCD Severity and Treatment Outcome

The intersection of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and executive functioning (EF) in children and adolescents is an emerging topic in the current literature. Spurred by the consistent association between increased EF deficits and higher adult obsessive-compulsive severity, a few initial studies have replicated this relationship in pediatric OCD samples and also have found preliminary evidence that EF deficits are associated with worse response to first-line psychotherapeutic or psychopharmacological treatments for pediatric OCD. This study aimed to extend the literature by providing the first comprehensive investigation of how multiple EF domains, measured repeatedly over the course of treatment, impact pediatric obsessive-compulsive severity and response to multimodal treatment. Multi-level modeling results found that deficits in shifting, inhibition, emotional control, planning/organizing, monitoring and initiating all predicted higher average obsessive compulsive severity across treatment. Interestingly, out of the eight domains of EF investigated, only emotional control moderated treatment outcome such that those with worse emotional control experienced less of a reduction in obsessive-compulsive severity during treatment. The findings generally align with previous theories for the link between EF and OCD and indicate that emotional control has important implications in the treatment of pediatric OCD. In fact, emotional control may provide one explanation for why factors such as disgust sensitivity, oppositional behavior, and third-wave behavioral treatment techniques have all been linked to pediatric OCD treatment outcome. Future research should investigate augmentation strategies that target emotional control in children and adolescents.     

Life Design Counseling outcome and process: A case study with an adolescent

This article aims to explore the relationship between clients' narrative transformation and the promotion of vocational decidedness and career maturity in a mid-adolescent case of Life Design Counseling (LDC). To assess LDC outcomes the Vocational Certainty Scale and the Career Maturity Inventory — Form C were used before and after the intervention. To intensively analyze the process of LDC change two measures of narrative change were used: the Innovative Moments Coding System (IMCS), as a measure of innovation emergence, and the Return to the Problem Coding System (RPCS), as a measure of ambivalence towards change. The results show that the three LDC sessions produced a significant change in vocational certainty but not in career maturity. Findings confirm that the process of change, according to the IMCS, is similar to the one observed in previous studies with adults. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

The Work of Words: Poetry,Language and the Dawn of Community

Topoi - This essay explores the ontological movement of poetry, its language and words, by establishing a dialogue with the thought of three Japanese thinkers, Ki no Tsurayuki, Motoori Norinaga and...     

Holistic reasoning on the other side of the world: validation of the analysis-holism scale in Mexicans

The universality of cognitive processes has been called into question. Research suggests that individuals from Eastern cultures (e.g., China, Korea) when compared to individuals from Western cultures (e.g., the United States) prefer to reason holistically. This line of research has not been extended to cultural groups far removed from cultures traditionally surveyed in cross-cultural research such as Hispanics. We conducted two studies to understand: 1) the generalizability of the construct of holistic reasoning in Mexicans, and 2) the preferred reasoning style of Mexicans when compared to U.S. Americans. Results support the generalization of the factor structure of holistic reasoning as originally hypothesized by Choi, Koo, and Choi (2007). The results of Study 2 suggest that Mexicans scored higher than U.S. Americans on certain aspects of holistic reasoning.     

Innovative moments and poor outcome in narrative therapy

Aims: To analyse a poor outcome case of narrative therapy with a woman victim of intimate violence. Method: The Innovative Moments Coding System: version 1 was applied to all sessions to track the innovative moments (i‐moments) in the therapeutic process. I–moments are the narrative details that occur in psychotherapeutic conversations that are outside the influence of the problematic narrative. This research aims to describe the processes involved in the stability of meanings in psychotherapy through a dialogical approach to meaning making. Findings: Contrarily to what usually occurs in good outcome cases, re‐conceptualization i‐moments are absent. Moreover, two specific types of i‐moments emerged with higher duration: reflection and protest. Qualitative analysis showed that the potential meanings of these i‐moments were surpassed by a return to the problematic narrative. Conclusion: The therapeutic stability seems to be maintained by a systematic return to the problematic narrative after the emergence of novelties. This process was referred from a dialogical perspective as a mutual in‐feeding of voices, one that emerges in the i‐moment and another one that supports the problematic narrative, which is maintained by an oscillation between these two types of voices during therapy.     

Dysfunctional body investment versus body dissatisfaction: Relations with well-being and controlled motivations for obesity treatment

In this study, we investigated the associations between body image and psychological well-being, exploring the mediating role of controlled regulation for entering obesity treatment. In addition, we analyzed whether investment body image was more strongly associated with controlled regulation (and subsequent well-being) compared to evaluative body image. These analyses were performed controlling for baseline BMI effects. Participants were 139 overweight women (age: 38.0 ± 6.7 year; BMI: 32.0 ± 4.1 kg/m²) entering treatment. Evaluative and investment body image, controlled regulation, and psychological well-being were assessed. Body image investment was positively associated with controlled regulation; evaluative body image was not. Controlled regulation was negatively associated with self-esteem and psychological functioning. Controlled regulation partially mediated the effects of body image investment on self-esteem, but did not mediate its effects on psychological functioning. Results suggest that dysfunctional body image investment might undermine well-being within overweight women, partly by increasing controlled regulation for entering obesity treatment. Discussion focuses on the importance of enhancing body image and autonomy during treatment to improve well-being and weight outcomes.     

The evolution of intergroup bias: perceptions and attitudes in rhesus macaques

Social psychologists have learned a great deal about the nature of intergroup conflict and the attitudinal and cognitive processes that enable it. Less is known about where these processes come from in the first place. In particular, do our strategies for dealing with other groups emerge in the absence of human-specific experiences? One profitable way to answer this question has involved administering tests that are conceptual equivalents of those used with adult humans in other species, thereby exploring the continuity or discontinuity of psychological processes. We examined intergroup preferences in a nonhuman species, the rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta). We found the first evidence that a nonhuman species automatically distinguishes the faces of members of its own social group from those in other groups and displays greater vigilance toward outgroup members (Experiments 1-3). In addition, we observed that macaques spontaneously associate novel objects with specific social groups and display greater vigilance to objects associated with outgroup members (Experiments 4-5). Finally, we developed a looking time procedure-the Looking Time Implicit Association Test, which resembles the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995)-and we discovered that macaques, like humans, automatically evaluate ingroup members positively and outgroup members negatively (Experiments 6-7). These field studies represent the first controlled experiments to examine the presence of intergroup attitudes in a nonhuman species. As such, these studies suggest that the architecture of the mind that enables the formation of these biases may be rooted in phylogenetically ancient mechanisms.     

Basic numerical capacities and prevalence of developmental dyscalculia: the Havana Survey

The association of enumeration and number comparison capacities with arithmetical competence was examined in a large sample of children from 2nd to 9th grades. It was found that efficiency on numerical capacities predicted separately more than 25% of the variance in the individual differences on a timed arithmetical test, and this occurred for both younger and older learners. These capacities were also significant predictors of individual variations in an untimed curriculum-based math achievement test and on the teacher scores of math performance over developmental time. Based on these findings, these numerical capacities were used for estimating the prevalence and gender ratio of basic numerical deficits and developmental dyscalculia (DD) over the grade range defined above (N = 11,652 children). The extent to which DD affects the population with poor ability on calculation was also examined. For this purpose, the prevalence and gender ratio of arithmetical dysfluency (AD) were estimated in the same cohort. The estimated prevalence of DD was 3.4%, and the male:female ratio was 4:1. However, the prevalence of AD was almost 3 times as high (9.35%), and no gender differences were found (male:female ratio = 1.07:1). Basic numerical deficits affect 4.54% of school-age population and affect more boys than girls (2.4:1). The differences between the corresponding estimates were highly significant (α < .01). Based on these contrastive findings, it is concluded that DD, defined as a defective sense of numerosity, could be a distinctive disorder that affects only a portion of children with AD.