Sharpen Your Pencils: Preliminary Evidence that Adult Coloring Reduces Depressive Symptoms and Anxiety

Adult coloring books have flooded the market with titles alluding to therapeutic value, yet it is unclear whether they fulfil that promise. Here, we tested whether adult coloring was related to improvements in psychological outcomes. Female university students (n = 104) were randomly assigned to a coloring intervention or a logic-puzzle control group. Participants completed an inventory of psychological measures (depressive symptoms, stress, anxiety, flourishing, resilience, mindfulness) and then participated in a 1-week intervention of either daily coloring or logic-puzzles. Following the intervention, participants again completed the inventory of psychological measures. Coloring participants showed significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms and anxiety after the intervention, but control participants did not. We conclude that daily coloring can improve some negative psychological outcomes and that it may provide an effective, inexpensive, and highly accessible self-help tool for nonclinical samples.     

我国西南少数民族心理研究的基本状况

西南少数民族心理研究是我国民族心理学的重要部分。20世纪80年代以来, 西南少数民族研究主要集中在儿童认知、智力发展、人格、价值观和品格等方面, 并取得了一些具有代表性的成果。目前, 西南少数民族心理研究主要有几个特点：(1)研究取样主要是青少年和学生; (2)研究取向主要是民族心理的发展; (3)民族心理研究大多与教育研究相联系; (4)民族心理研究的研究方法的科学性有待增强; (5)民族心理研究的核心是民族文化, 民族心理研究应该深入民族生活中去考察民族习俗; (6)民族心理研究多将民族和民族文化作为实验中一个变量, 对民族心理本质问题的重视程度不够。     

Principles versus procedures in making health care coverage decisions: addressing inevitable conflicts

It has been suggested that focusing on procedures when setting priorities for health care avoids the conflicts that arise when attempting to agree on principles. A prominent example of this approach is “accountability for reasonableness.” We will argue that the same problem arises with procedural accounts; reasonable people will disagree about central elements in the process. We consider the procedural condition of appeal process and three examples of conflicts over coverage decisions: a patients’ rights law in Norway, health technologies coverage recommendations in the UK, and care withheld by HMOs in the US. In each case a process is at the center of controversy, illustrating the difficulties in establishing procedures that are widely accepted as legitimate. Further work must be done in developing procedural frameworks. The opinions expressed are the authors’ own. They do not reflect any position or policy of the National Institutes of Health, US Public Health Service, or Department of Health and Human Services. This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH Clinical Center.     

On use of student samples for scale construction

This research note responds to the question of whether a convenience sample of undergraduate students may be successfully utilized in concept development and in scale construction, and in what way the results are comparable to the findings of a representative national sample. The results of a Mokken analysis in both samples support the hypothesis that convenience samples have utility in concept development and in developing measures that can also be used in representative samples.     

EFFECTS OF POINT‐LOSS PUNISHERS ON HUMAN SIGNAL‐DETECTION PERFORMANCE

Three experiments using human participants varied the distribution of point‐gain reinforcers or point‐loss punishers in two‐alternative signal‐detection procedures. Experiment 1 varied the distribution of point‐gain reinforcers for correct responses (Group A) and point‐loss punishers for errors (Group B) across conditions. Response bias varied systematically as a function of the relative reinforcer or punisher frequencies. Experiment 2 arranged two conditions — one where an unequal ratio of reinforcement (5:1 or 1:5) was presented without punishment (R‐only), and another where the same reinforcer ratio was presented with an equal distribution of point‐loss punishers (R+P). Response bias was significantly greater in the R‐only condition than the R+P condition, supporting a subtractive model of punishment. Experiment 3 varied the distribution of point‐gain reinforcers for correct responses across four unequal reinforcer ratios (5:1, 2:1, 1:2, 1:5) both without (R‐only) and with (R+P) an equal distribution of point‐loss punishers for errors. Response bias varied systematically with changes in relative reinforcer frequency for both R‐only and R+P conditions, with 5 out of 8 participants showing increases in sensitivity estimates from R‐only to R+P conditions. Overall, the results indicated that punishers have similar but opposite effects to reinforcers in detection procedures and that combined reinforcer and punisher effects might be better modeled by a subtractive punishment model than an additive punishment model, consistent with research using concurrent‐schedule choice procedures.     

OVERT AND COVERT RECOGNITION OF FACES IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS

Abstract— There has been considerable recent interest in covert face-recognition effects. In Experiment 1, we adapted a paradigm, previously shown to produce covert recognition effects, to test 5-year-old children. Classmates' photographs served as the familiar faces. Children showed effects of familiarity on face matching similar to the effect normal adults and prosopagnosics had previously shown for famous faces In Experiment 2, we investigated whether brief familiarization with the photographs used in Experiment 1 would suffice to produce the effects, in children and adults. It did not, even though the exposure did lead to above-chance overt recognition. Taken together with previous studies, the data suggest that covert recognition may be doubly dissociable from overt recognition. Finding a double dissociation would place constraints on models of face recognition.     

The use of interval estimators as a basis for decision-making in medicine

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - Decision analysts sometimes use the results of clinical trials in order to evaluate treatment alternatives. I discuss some problems associated with this, and in...     

PSYCHOPHYSICAL INVARIANTS OF ACHROMATIC COLOURVISION. V

LIE, I. Psychophysical invariants of achromatic colour vision. V. Brightness as a function of inducing field luminance. Scand. J. Psychol. , 1971, 12, 61–64.– Brightness (the dim-bright dimension) of achromatic colour was investigated as a function of surrounding field luminance. It was found that brightness of a test area was relatively independent of luminance level of the surrounding area until the luminance of the latter had passed well beyond that of the test area. With further increase of surrounding luminance, the brightness of the test area increased rapidly.