Writer's cramp: A behavioural approach

The history of the treatment of writer's cramp by behaviour therapy is reviewed, and the theoretical assumptions underlying aversive treatment are criticized. The natural history of the disorder is reviewed, including the author's recent research in Student Health Centres. Some special observations are made on the disorder's peculiarities of incidence, both with regard to age of onset and the ethnic or geographical origins of what appears to be a significant minority of patients. Three approaches to studying aetiology are discussed, the neurological, psychopathological and the learning theory of orientations. Some suggestions are offered for further research embracing both experimental psychology and neurological investigation.     

Aggression and self-esteem: a diary study of children's reactivity to negative interpersonal events

The study employs a daily diary design to assess self-esteem reactivity and its association with children's aggressive behavior. We test the hypothesis that the self-esteem of aggressive children will be more reactive to negative interpersonal events than the self-esteem of nonaggressive children. Results provide partial support for the aggression/reactivity hypothesis. Aggressive children's self-esteem was more reactive to negative peer events but less reactive to negative adult events than the self-esteem of less aggressive children. These findings are discussed in relation to the experimental literature relating self-esteem instability and ego-threat to aggression and in relation to the extensive body of research on childhood aggression. Intervention implications are also considered.     

Human cognition and a pile of sand: a discussion on serial correlations and self-organized criticality

Recently, G. C. Van Orden, J. G. Holden, and M. T. Turvey (2003) proposed to abandon the conventional framework of cognitive psychology in favor of the framework of nonlinear dynamical systems theory. Van Orden et al. presented evidence that "purposive behavior originates in self-organized criticality" (p. 333). Here, the authors show that Van Orden et al.'s analyses do not test their hypotheses. Further, the authors argue that a confirmation of Van Orden et al.'s hypotheses would not have constituted firm evidence in support of their framework. Finally, the absence of a specific model for how self-organized criticality produces the observed behavior makes it very difficult to derive testable predictions. The authors conclude that the proposed paradigm shift is presently unwarranted.     

Evaluating the efficiency and community safety goals of the Broward County Mental Health Court

Mental health courts have developed as one response to persons with mental illness who are involved with the criminal justice system. This study investigated the efficiency and safety goals of one such court in Broward County, FL. Mental health court (MHC) clients spent significantly fewer days in jail for the index arrest associated with study enrollment than a comparison group. MHC clients had similar survival time to re-arrest up to one year after study enrollment. MHC clients did not significantly differ from the comparison group in self-reported aggressive acts over an 8 month follow-up period, while they did self-report significantly fewer acts of violence than the comparison group at the 8 month follow-up. These findings suggest that some of the benefits associated with the MHC reported in prior studies were not achieved at the expense of efficiency and safety.     

A neural network model of foraging decisions made under predation risk

This article develops the cognitive—emotional forager (CEF) model, a novel application of a neural network to dynamical processes in foraging behavior. The CEF is based on a neural network known as the gated dipole, introduced by Grossberg, which is capable of representing short-term affective reactions in a manner similar to Solomon and Corbit’s (1974) opponent process theory. The model incorporates a trade-off between approach toward food and avoidance of predation under varying levels of motivation induced by hunger. The results of simulations in a simple patch selection paradigm, using a lifetime fitness criterion for comparison, indicate that the CEF model is capable of nearly optimal foraging and outperforms a run-of-luck rule-of-thumb model. Models such as the one presented here can illuminate the underlying cognitive and motivational components of animal decision making.     

A diffusion model analysis of the effects of aging in the lexical-decision task

The effects of aging on response time (RT) are examined in 2 lexical-decision experiments with young and older subjects (age 60-75). The results show that the older subjects were slower than the young subjects, but more accurate. R. Ratcliff s (1978) diffusion model provided a good account of RTs, their distributions, and response accuracy. The fits show an 80-100-ms slowing of the nondecision components of RT for older subjects relative to young subjects and more conservative decision criterion settings for older subjects than for young subjects. The rates of accumulation of evidence were not significantly different for older compared with young subjects (less than 2% and 5% higher for older subjects relative to young subjects in the 2 experiments).     

Assessing model mimicry using the parametric bootstrap

We present a general sampling procedure to quantify model mimicry, defined as the ability of a model to account for data generated by a competing model. This sampling procedure, called the parametric bootstrap cross-fitting method (PBCM; cf. Williams (J. R. Statist. Soc. B 32 (1970) 350; Biometrics 26 (1970) 23)), generates distributions of differences in goodness-of-fit expected under each of the competing models. In the data informed version of the PBCM, the generating models have specific parameter values obtained by fitting the experimental data under consideration. The data informed difference distributions can be compared to the observed difference in goodness-of-fit to allow a quantification of model adequacy. In the data uninformed version of the PBCM, the generating models have a relatively broad range of parameter values based on prior knowledge. Application of both the data informed and the data uninformed PBCM is illustrated with several examples.     

Priming problem solving with conceptual processing of relevant objects

In the present study, the author explored the effect of processing relevant information on producing solutions to brief insight problems. She hypothesized that the conceptual processing of objects relevant to the target solution would facilitate that solution relative to unrelated objects or the shallow processing of words. The author also explored the effect of knowledge of the relationship between the initial object-processing task and the problem-solving task. The results showed that participants who conceptually processed objects related to the target solution (Experiment 1), but not those who shallowly processed words related to the target solution (Experiment 2), were more likely to produce the solution relative to the control; and knowledge of the relationship between objects and solutions made no difference in the frequency of target solutions produced. The results of Experiment 3 showed that conceptual processing of an object could prime a nondominant solution for an ambiguously worded problem. Taken together, the results of the studies supported the effect of conceptual processing on facilitating insight in problem solving.