Null's the word: A comparison of memory quality for intensely negative and positive events

Research comparing memories of traumatic and positive events has produced inconsistent results. Complicating the issue, researchers employ a variety of measures (e.g., narrative or questionnaire) that make comparison across studies difficult. Further, this research has been criticised for lacking adequate statistical controls (Sotgiu & Mormont, 2008). Our study employed both narrative and questionnaire methodologies and compared memories for highly negative and positive events while controlling for retention interval, intensity of the event, and word count in the narrative measures. A total of 108 racially diverse college undergraduates wrote narratives and completed the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire about the most negative and the most positive event they had experienced, and memories were assessed for narrative coherence, language indicative of cognition, insight and sensory experience, subjective ratings of clarity, sensory detail, contextual detail, temporal detail, and the inclusion of thoughts and feelings. Results indicate no differences between memories for highly negative and positive events when retention interval and emotional intensity are controlled.     

Emotions in sport: Perceived effects on attention,concentration, and performance

This study explored attentional patterns associated with positive and negative emotions during sport competition, and athletes' perceptions of the consequences of these attentional changes for concentration and performance. Sixty‐nine athletes completed the Sport Emotion Questionnaire following a national softball competition. They also retrospectively reported their perceptions of how emotions influenced their attention, concentration, and sport performance. Excitement and happiness were more closely associated with concentration than anxiety, dejection, and anger. Although excitement demanded more attention than the negative emotions, the positive emotions were perceived as more likely to lead to a performance‐relevant focus and automatic physical movements, both of which were beneficial for concentration and performance. Emotional intensity increased these effects.     

Increasing positive intergroup contact

We tested an intervention designed to correct negative expectations about inter-racial interactions, increase the positivity of those interactions, and increase inter-racial friendships. In Study 1 (n = 58) White college students watched videotapes depicting an inter-racial friendship and either did or did not write about a similar experience. Participants who wrote about a similar experience expected and actually had a more positive inter-racial interaction. In Study 2 (n = 99) White college students watched videotapes depicting an inter-racial or same-race friendship and either did or did not write about a similar experience. Those who saw the inter-racial video and wrote about a similar experience had a more positive inter-racial interaction and initiated more inter-racial friendships in the following weeks than participants in the other conditions.     

Relations Between Narrative Coherence,Identity, and Psychological Well‐Being in Emerging Adulthood

The hypothesis that the ability to construct a coherent account of personal experience is reflective, or predictive, of psychological adjustment cuts across numerous domains of psychological science. It has been argued that coherent accounts of identity are especially adaptive. We tested these hypotheses by examining relations between narrative coherence of personally significant autobiographical memories and three psychological well‐being components (i.e., purpose and meaning, positive self‐view, positive relationships). We also examined the potential moderation of the relations between coherence and well‐being by assessing the identity content of each narrative. We collected two autobiographical narratives of personally significant events from 103 undergraduate students and coded them for coherence and identity content. Two additional narratives about generic/recurring events were also collected and coded for coherence. We confirmed the prediction that constructing coherent autobiographical narratives is related to psychological well‐being. Further, we found that this relation was moderated by the narratives' relevance to identity and that this moderation held after controlling for narrative ability more generally (i.e., coherence of generic/recurring events). These data lend strong support to the coherent narrative identity hypothesis and the prediction that unique events are a critical feature of identity construction in emerging adulthood.     

The gist of the abnormal: Above-chance medical decision making in the blink of an eye

Very fast extraction of global structural and statistical regularities allows us to access the “gist”—the basic meaning—of real-world images in as little as 20 ms. Gist processing is central to efficient assessment and orienting in complex environments. This ability is probably based on our extensive experience with the regularities of the natural world. If that is so, would experts develop an ability to extract the gist from the artificial stimuli (e.g., medical images) with which they have extensive visual experience? Anecdotally, experts report some ability to categorize images as normal or abnormal before actually finding an abnormality. We tested the reality of this perception in two expert populations: radiologists and cytologists. Observers viewed brief (250- to 2,000-ms) presentations of medical images. The presence of abnormality was randomized across trials. The task was to rate the abnormality of an image on a 0–100 analog scale and then to attempt to localize that abnormality on a subsequent screen showing only the outline of the image. Both groups of experts had above-chance performance for detecting subtle abnormalities at all stimulus durations (cytologists d' ≈ 1.2 and radiologists d' ≈ 1), whereas the nonexpert control groups did not differ from chance (d' ≈ 0.23, d' ≈ 0.25). Furthermore, the experts’ ability to localize these abnormalities was at chance levels, suggesting that categorization was based on a global signal, and not on fortuitous attention to a localized target. It is possible that this global signal could be exploited to improve clinical performance.     

Family Environment as a Moderator of the Association between Conduct Disorder and Suicidality

This study examined whether perceived family support and conflict moderate the relationship between conduct disorder (CD) and suicide attempts (SAs) in a sample of 185 psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents, ages 13 to 18, and their parents. Data were collected using the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School Aged Children (K–SADS–PL), the Survey of Children’s Social Support Scale–Short Version, and the Conflict Behavior Questionnaire. Binary logistic regression and simple slope analyses were conducted to test study hypotheses. Results suggest that perceptions of family support, but not conflict, moderate the association between CD and SAs. Specifically, adolescents diagnosed with CD were found to be at heightened risk for an SA if they reported lower family support. These results suggest that clinicians who treat adolescents with CD should assess for perceptions of family support. Incorporating family work into treatment could help to prevent SAs.     

Theology After Derrida

It has recently been argued that Derrida's work is thoroughly atheistic, which seems to put any dialogue between Derrida and theology out of play. However, such arguments forget that to forbid the impossible outright is as much to be a slave to metaphysics as to presume that one could attain to it in language. Here I revisit the relationship between deconstruction and negative theology, and reconsider utilising Derrida to think God as the impossible. Arguing that thinking God in the absolute future still cannot sustain theology, I suggest how Derrida's work might nevertheless open onto the possibility of revelation.     

JUDGMENTS OF SEXISM: A COMPARISON OF THE SUBTLETY OF SEXISM MEASURES AND SOURCES OF VARIABILITY IN JUDGMENTS OF SEXISM

We compared the subtlety of four measures of sexism and sources of variation in male and female psychology students' judgments that beliefs from these scales and everyday behaviors were sexist. Participants judged traditional gender role and hostile sexist beliefs as more sexist than benevolent and modern sexist beliefs, indicating the latter were more subtle measures of sexism. Participants also judged traditional gender role behaviors as more sexist than unwanted sexual attention, suggesting the latter may less readily be identified as sexist. Variation in judgments of beliefs as sexist was related to differences in likelihood of endorsing such beliefs. This relation fully accounted for the tendency for men to be less likely to judge beliefs as sexist in comparison to women. Endorsement of Modern and Hostile Sexist beliefs was related to judgments of behaviors as sexist. The implications of the results for scale usage and identifying sexist behavior are discussed.     

Using a Session Feedback Form in Cognitive Therapy with Children

This article presents a new written form for eliciting session feedback from children. The importance of session feedback is discussed and the specific written form is presented. Clinical applications and advantages of the session feedback form are also reviewed. Additionally, the uses of the session feedback form in supervision are explained. Finally, cautions and limitations are outlined.