Quantitative reanalysis of aggregate data on IQ in sexual offenders

General intelligence has been the most commonly studied neuropsychological characteristic of sexual offenders for over 70 years. Results, however, have been highly inconsistent. To assess whether sexual offenders score lower in IQ than nonsexual offenders and to explore which sexual offense characteristics relate to IQ, the authors reanalyzed all reports providing sufficient information. Data spanned 236 samples, comprising 25,146 sexual offenders and controls. The literature contained sufficient information to permit comparison of adult versus juvenile sexual offenders, offenders targeting children versus adults, offenders targeting their own versus unrelated children, and offenders targeting boys versus girls. Results confirm the association between IQ and sexual offending and suggest that previous discrepancies are attributable to how many pedophilic individuals were in each sample.     

Individual differences in trait rumination and the neural systems supporting cognitive reappraisal

Cognitive reappraisal can alter emotional responses by changing one’s interpretation of a situation’s meaning. Functional neuroimaging has revealed that using cognitive reappraisal to increase or decrease affective responses involves left prefrontal activation and goal-appropriate increases or decreases in amygdala activation (Ochsner, Bunge, Gross, & Gabrieli, 2002; Ochsner, Ray, et al., 2004). The present study was designed to examine whether patterns of brain activation during reappraisal vary in relation to individual differences in trait rumination, which is the tendency to focus on negative aspects of one’s self or negative interpretations of one’s life. Individual differences in rumination correlated with increases in amygdala response when participants were increasing negative affect and with greater decreases in prefrontal regions implicated in self-focused thought when participants were decreasing negative affect. Thus, the propensity to ruminate may reflect altered recruitment of mechanisms that potentiate negative affect. These findings clarify relations between rumination and emotion regulation processes and may have important implications for mood and anxiety disorders.     

A portable,unobtrusive device for videorecording clinical interactions

Recording and analyzing real-time interactions in clinical settings is important for basic and applied research in psychology and other disciplines. Investigators frequently have used simple audiotaping procedures to record these encounters (e.g., Roter, Geller, Bernhardt, Larson, & Doksum, 1999), but videorecording is increasingly viewed as more reliable and valid, because it captures the full range of complex and interdependent verbal and nonverbal behaviors that occur in an interaction. This article describes a system designed to videotape clinical interactions in a manner that can be moved in and out of different clinical rooms to preserve flexibility in its use. Data are presented to demonstrate that the system is unobtrusive during the interaction, yet fully compatible with institutional review board guidelines to protect human participants’ privacy and freedom to control the recording process.     

The role of dark pattern stimuli and personality in online impulse shopping: An application of S-O-R theory

Online impulse shopping is a growing industry. This paper uses the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework to model online impulse purchase behavior using a novel combination of stimuli and organism characteristics. The stimuli: social proof, limited-quantity scarcity, and high-demand, are three commonly used website features known as dark patterns. The organism characteristic personality is measured by the big 5 personality traits and persona generated through latent profile analysis. Using the machine learning algorithm XGBoost, impulse purchasing response was predicted separately for each dark pattern stimuli. Results show personality characteristics are important features when predicting consumer impulse purchasing in response to dark pattern messages. Moreover, the personality traits (and personas) most predictive of impulse shopping behavior varied by type of dark pattern. Findings suggest personality influences susceptibility to different dark patterns, indicating a need for tailored interventions to mitigate individual consumer vulnerabilities to impulse shopping.     

A behavioral systems approach to adaptive computerized instructional design

A computerized multimedia instructional system has been developed that adheres to behavioral systems principles for presenting both adaptive programmed instructional materials and laboratory simulations. This instructional software system, called MediaMatrix, is both an authoring environment and a presentation vehicle that adapts the complexity of presentations in real time to changes in a student’s current rate of progress. It incorporates an automated knowledge-generation system that tracks all interactions between the user and any instructional objects within the system. Such knowledge is used both for a research database and for an artificial-intelligence engine that constructs an estimate ofconcept association networks (Verplanck, 1992a). Such networks reflect a learner’s developing knowledge and skill base, and may be used for tutorial advising during student use.     

Perceptual separability and spatial models

Highly analyzable two-dimensional color stimuli were generated using stimulus cards such that one part of each card varied only on the first dimension and the other part varied only on the second. Subjects were required to make judgments of similarity between pairs of these analyzable stimuli, between pairs of relatively unanalyzable color stimuli, and between pairs of geometric stimuli. The results support previous findings that the Euclidean combining rule is appropriate for judgments of single color patches but indicate that the city block combining rule may be appropriate for simple stimuli that vary on perceptually distinct dimensions.