Human risky choice in a repeated-gambles procedure: an up-linkage replication of Lakshminarayanan, Chen and Santos (2011)

Lakshminarayanan et al. (J Exp Soc Psychol 47: 689–693, 2011) showed that when choice is between variable (risky) and fixed (safe) food amounts with the same expected values, capuchins prefer the safe alternative if choice is framed as a gain, but the risky alternative if it is framed as a loss. These results seem similar to those seen in human prospect-theory tests in choice between variable and fixed gains or losses. Based on this similarity, they interpreted their results as identifying a between-species commonality in cognitive function. In this report, we repeat their experiment with humans as subjects (an up-linkage replication). Whether choices were rewarded with candy or nickels, choice approximated indifference whether framed as gains or losses. Our data mirror those of others who found that when humans make risky choices within a repeated-trials procedure without verbal instruction about outcome likelihoods, preference biases seen in one-shot, language-guided, prospect-theory tests such as Tversky and Kahneman’s (Science 211:453–458, 1981) reflection effect may not appear. The disparity between our findings and those of Lakshminarayanan et al. suggests their study does not evidence a cognitive process shared by humans and capuchins.     

Psychotropic placebos reduce the misinformation effect by increasing monitoring at test

A psychotropic placebo can help people resist the misinformation effect, an effect thought to be caused by a shift to more stringent source monitoring. When this shift occurs has been unclear. To address this issue we gave some people—but not others—a phoney cognitive-enhancing drug we called R273. Shortly afterwards, everyone took part in a misinformation effect experiment. To gather evidence about source monitoring we surreptitiously recorded time to read the misleading postevent narrative, and response time at test. Our findings suggest that people shifted to more stringent source monitoring at test. Moreover, people with higher working memory capacity (WMC) performed better than people with lower WMC—but only when they were told they had received R273, a finding that fits with research showing that WMC can confer advantages in situations demanding effortful control, but not when automatic heuristics suffice.     

Occurrence of imagery and its link with early memories in agoraphobia

Recent cognitive models suggest that mental imagery can help us understand the maintenance of anxiety disorders (e.g., de Silva, 1986; Hackmann, Surawy, & Clark, 1998). However, imagery is relatively unexplored within agoraphobia. Such images are also thought to be useful in uncovering memories that occurred around the onset of a disorder (Hackmann, Clark, & McManus, 2000). A total of 20 patients with agoraphobia and 20 matched controls took part in this investigation. Participants described any recurrent images they experienced in agoraphobic situations, and also any associated memories. All patients with agoraphobia (but no control participants) reported having distinct recurrent images in “agoraphobic situations”. Most images involved several sensory modalities and in the majority of cases appeared to be linked with unpleasant memories of events experienced many years previously. While these exploratory findings require replication, potential treatment implications are discussed.     

Weathering the storm: Children's long‐term recall of Hurricane Andrew

Children who experienced a highly stressful natural disaster, Hurricane Andrew, were interviewed within a few months of the event, when they were 3–4 years old, and again 6 years later, when they were 9–10 years old. Children were grouped into low, moderate, or high stress groups depending on the severity of the experienced storm. All children were able to recall this event in vivid detail 6 years later. In fact, children reported over twice as many propositions at the second interview as at the first. At the initial interview, children in the high stress group reported less information than children in the moderate stress group, but 6 years later, children in all three stress groups reported similar amounts of information. However children in the high stress group needed more questions and prompts than children in the other stress groups. Yet children in the high stress group also reported more consistent information between the two interviews, especially about the storm, than children in the other stress groups. Implications for children's developing memory of stressful events are discussed.     

Errors in Creative Problem-Solving: Identify,Deliberate, and Remediate

It is often assumed creative performance is error free. Even a cursory inspection of eminent, creative, individuals indicates errors permeate creative efforts. In the present effort, the impact of error management on creative problem-solving is examined. Undergraduates, 136 in all, were asked to work through 10 potential problem solutions where half the solutions evidenced errors and half did not. Participants were asked to identify potential errors, deliberate on these errors, and remediate, or fix, errors prior to providing solutions to a problem calling for creative thought. It was found the number of errors correctly identified, and the quality of error remediation was positively related to the quality, originality, and elegance of problem solutions. More extensive deliberation, however, was found to be especially important for the production of original problem solutions. The implications of these observations for understanding the importance of error management in creative problem-solving are discussed.     

What Happens to Physical Activity Behavior,Motivation, Self-Concept,and Flow After Completing School? A Longitudinal Study

With particular focus on the year following completion of high school, the present study sought to establish the status of young people's physical activity behavior, physical activity motivation, physical activity flow, and physical self-concept. Among a sample of 213 Australian participants assessed in their final year of school and then one year later, findings suggested a significant increase in physical activity behavior and a significant reduction in maladaptive behavioral motivation. On other physical measures, females demonstrated significant improvements in their general physical self-concepts and males demonstrated significant improvements in their health self-concepts. Implications for gender-specific and developmentally targeted interventions are discussed.     

You Can Take a Horse to Water But You Can’t Make it Drink’: Exploring Children’s Engagement and Resistance in Family Therapy

Children’s engagement and disengagement, adherence and non-adherence, compliance and non-compliance in healthcare have important implications for services. In family therapy mere attendance to the appointments is no guarantee of engaging in the treatment process and as children are not the main initiators of attendance engaging them through the process can be a complex activity for professionals. Through a conversation analysis of naturally occurring family therapy sessions we explore the main discursive strategies that children employ in this context to passively and actively disengage from the therapeutic process and investigate how the therapists manage and attend to this. We note that children competently remove themselves from therapy through passive resistance, active disengagement, and by expressing their autonomy. Analysis reveals that siblings of the constructed ‘problem’ child are given greater liberty in involvement. We conclude by demonstrating how therapists manage the delicate endeavour of including all family members in the process and how engagement and re-engagement are essential for meeting goals and discuss broader implications for healthcare and other settings where children may disengage.     

The collaborative assessment and management of suicidality (CAMS) versus enhanced care as usual (E-CAU) with suicidal soldiers: Moderator analyses from a randomized controlled trial

Given historically high rates of suicide among military personnel over the past decade the present study analyzed whether key demographic, military, and research-based variables moderated clinical treatment outcomes of 148 suicidal active duty US Army soldiers. This is a secondary analysis of data from a randomized controlled trial comparing the collaborative assessment and management of suicidality (CAMS) to enhanced care as usual (E-CAU; Jobes et al., 2017). Nine potential moderator variables were derived from the suicidology literature, military-specific considerations, and previous CAMS research; these were sex, age, marital status, race, lifetime suicide attempts, combat deployments, time in service, initial distress, and borderline personality disorder diagnosis. The clinical outcomes included six suicide- and mental health-related variables. Six of the eight significant moderator findings in this study showed CAMS outperforming E-CAU in certain subgroups with medium to large effect sizes ranging from 0.48 to 1.50. Collectively, the results suggest that CAMS was associated with the greatest improvement among lower complexity soldier patients, particularly those with lower initial distress and fewer deployments. Those who were married or older generally responded better to CAMS, although the results were not entirely consistent with respect to age. CAMS’s effectiveness for married soldiers and those with lower initial distress was a particularly robust finding that persisted when adjusting more stringently for multiple testing. This study sheds light on several factors associated with the success of CAMS among suicidal soldiers that can assist in matching the treatment to those that may benefit the most.