What is agentic about the Spatial Agency Bias? How pragmatic relevance contributes to the spatial representations of actions

The mental imagination of (social) actions has been shown to follow a left‐to‐right trajectory, with the thematic agent associated with the left position (Spatial Agency Bias, Suitner & Maass in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 53, 2016, p. 245–301). For example, individuals asked to choose a picture that visualizes the sentence “Tom kicks George” tend to choose an image where the agent, Tom, is positioned on the left‐hand side rather than on the right‐hand side. However, as an alternative to the thematic role of the agent, such findings may reflect a mental representation following pragmatic relevance. Specifically, a pragmatic perspective holds that word order and syntactic functions are strategic devices to communicate that the element is important for the sentence. Thus, positioning in the described picture‐matching task may actually reflect the agent's pragmatic relevance instead of agency per se. As a test, we vary whether sentences are written in the active versus the passive voice. Results from five studies indicate that the passive voice results in the tendency to place the agent on the right‐hand side rather than on the left‐hand side of a picture. Instead, the acted‐upon person is positioned on the left‐hand side of a picture. A sixth experiment reveals that for the passive voice, the agent is still seen as more agentic than the receiver, but is considered less relevant. The findings are congruent with the proposed pragmatic relevance account. Implications for the Spatial Agency Bias as well as for building mental representations in general are discussed.     

Weapons used in prison assault: A profile of four Florida prisons

The purpose of this study was to investigate the incidents of inmate aggression that resulted in violence within four Florida Correctional Institutions. The prisons differ structurally and in classification of inmates — two are medium and two are close custody (high) security prisons. The study investigated the type of weapon used in relation to the propensity for and frequency of noncollective (inmate-to-inmate or inmate-to-staff) violent incidents at the two types of prisons. The result indicated that the scope and nature of assault varied greatly from prison to prison mostly as a result of freedom of movement to make weapons and the security classification of the inmates housed.     

Evidence for a fixed capacity limit in attending multiple locations

A classic question concerns whether humans can attend multiple locations or objects at once. Although it is generally agreed that the answer to this question is “yes,” the limits on this ability are subject to extensive debate. According to one view, attentional resources can be flexibly allocated to a variable number of locations, with an inverse relationship between the number of selected locations and the quality of information processing at each location. Alternatively, these resources might be quantized in a “discrete” fashion that enables concurrent access to a small number of locations. Here, we report a series of experiments comparing these alternatives. In each experiment, we cued participants to attend a variable number of spatial locations and asked them to report the orientation of a single, briefly presented target. In all experiments, participants’ orientation report errors were well-described by a model that assumes a fixed upper limit in the number of locations that can be attended. Conversely, report errors were poorly described by a flexible-resource model that assumes no fixed limit on the number of locations that can be attended. Critically, we showed that these discrete limits were predicted by cue-evoked neural activity elicited before the onset of the target array, suggesting that performance was limited by selection processes that began prior to subsequent encoding and memory storage. Together, these findings constitute novel evidence supporting the hypothesis that human observers can attend only a small number of discrete locations at an instant.     

Peer Victimization and Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors in Depressed Adolescents

Suicide is a leading cause of death among youth worldwide, and depressed adolescents are at a significantly elevated risk to report suicidal ideation, planning, and attempts. Peer victimization is a robust predictor of adolescent suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs), but little research has focused on why bullying leads to suicidal thoughts and behaviors. To address this empirical gap, we recruited 340 (246 female) depressed adolescents ages 13–19 (M = 15.59, SD = 1.41) within 48 h of admission for acute psychiatric treatment. At the initial assessment, participants were administered clinical interviews characterizing psychopathology, nonsuicidal self-injury, and STBs (ideation, plans, and attempts). Further, they completed questionnaires assessing 3 forms of victimization (overt, relational, and reputational), recent risky behavior engagement, and psychiatric symptom severity. Controlling for internalizing symptoms and age, overt and reputational bullying were associated with more frequent past month suicide attempts, but not suicide ideation. Past month risky behavior engagement, but not NSSI, mediated the relation between victimization and attempts. However, sex differences revealed that this effect only held for males whereas bullying was directly associated with suicide attempts among females. In contrast, overt and relational bullying were non-linearly associated with suicide plans, and these relations were not mediated by risky behaviors or NSSI. Results highlight the complex network of factors that lead victimized adolescents to engage in STBs and may inform targeted suicide prevention and intervention programs.     

Sex differences in jealousy: the (lack of) influence of researcher theoretical perspective

The sex difference in jealousy is an effect that has generated significant controversy in the academic literature (resulting in two meta-analyses that reached different conclusions on the presence or absence of the effect). In this study, we had a team of researchers from different theoretical perspectives use identical protocols to test whether the sex difference in jealousy would occur across many different samples (while testing whether mate value would moderate the effect). In our samples, we found the sex difference in jealousy to occur using both forced choice and continuous measures, this effect appeared in several different settings, and, we found that mate value moderated participant responses. The results are discussed in light of the controversy surrounding the presence of the effect.     

Intending to Leave But No Place to Go: An Examination of the Behaviors of Reluctant Stayers

We extend recent conceptual work on withdrawal states and develop a framework to examine behavioral tendencies of reluctant stayers (i.e., employees who desire to leave but cannot). Although principles of self-interest suggest that these employees ought to behave appropriately to maintain employment, reactance theory suggests that the combination of high turnover intentions and low job alternatives may result in lower performance and greater deviance. Contrary to conventional wisdom but consistent with reactance theory, low perceived job alternatives strengthened the positive relationship between turnover intentions and deviance, as well as the negative relation between intentions to quit and task performance. Moderated-mediation analyses revealed that the indirect effect of work frustration (via turnover intentions) was stronger on task performance and deviance when perceived job alternatives were low rather than high.     

Are high school students accurate or clueless in estimating substance use among peers?

The purpose of this study was to assess adolescents' estimations of the prevalence of alcohol and other drug use and to examine the consistency between these estimations and reported use. A survey was administered to 223 students in three northwestern U.S. high schools. Results showed that students in each of the three high schools grossly overestimated the prevalence of substance use when compared to self-reports of use. Still, students were not entirely clueless about the relative normativeness of substance use when comparing estimates and rates of use among the three schools. The school with the highest estimated prevalence of a particular substance use behavior generally also had the highest self-reported use of that same substance. These findings imply the need for high school personnel to provide students with accurate information about the actual prevalence of substance use within each school.     

The practice of forensic psychology. A look toward the future in light of the past

In a 1987 American Psychologist article, Tom Grisso summarized the state of forensic psychological assessment, noted its limitations and potential, and offered suggestions for researchers and practitioners interested in contributing to its future. Since that time, there have been many important developments in the field of forensic psychology, as well as in clinical psychology more generally, some of which were anticipated and recommended by Grisso, and some of which were not. Forensic psychology is now at a crossroads, and the specialty must make an effort to respond to current challenges if it is to aid in the administration of justice by assisting legal decision makers. The need to distinguish between and identify levels of forensic knowledge and practice, establish guidelines for practice, educate legal consumers, and devote more attention to treatment issues in forensic contexts is highlighted.     

Lower region: a new cue for figure-ground assignment

Figure-ground assignment is an important visual process; humans recognize, attend to, and act on figures, not backgrounds. There are many visual cues for figure-ground assignment. A new cue to figure-ground assignment, called lower region, is presented: Regions in the lower portion of a stimulus array appear more figurelike than regions in the upper portion of the display. This phenomenon was explored, and it was demonstrated that the lower-region preference is not influenced by contrast, eye movements, or voluntary spatial attention. It was found that the lower region is defined relative to the stimulus display, linking the lower-region preference to pictorial depth perception cues. The results are discussed in terms of the environmental regularities that this new figure-ground cue may reflect.