Procrastination Revisited: A Commentary

This commentary connects two studies of academic procrastination, Beswick, Rothblum and Mann (1988), which studied the antecedents of academic procrastination, and Steel (2016), which focuses on the personality correlates of academic procrastination. The author identifies reasons for growth in the field of procrastination research, discusses definitions of procrastination, and then comments on the two studies of academic procrastination identified above. In assessing current status and future directions in the field of procrastination research, the author discusses the relationship between and measurement of behavioural and decisional procrastination, the domain specificity or domain generality of procrastination, and the need for the field to move beyond studies of academic procrastination into other domains such as illness and health where procrastination is a major problem, then ends with a comment on cross‐cultural differences in procrastination and a summary conclusion about the field.     

Train the Trainers: A First Step towards a Science‐Based Cognitive Lie Detection Training Workshop Delivered by a Practitioner

A training workshop utilising recent research in cognitive lie detection was designed and evaluated. A unique future of the training was that a practitioner (retired police detective) instead of scientists (e.g. the training developers) introduced the techniques. To evaluate the training, 27 experienced police detectives each interviewed one mock suspect (a truth teller or liar) before training, and another group of 23 experienced police detectives interviewed one mock suspect (a truth teller or liar) after training. The police detectives were free to interview the mock suspect in any way they felt appropriate, but those who had received training were asked to try to incorporate (some of) the taught techniques in their interviews. The detectives made veracity judgements, and the interviews were transcribed and coded for the amount of detail elicited and the questions asked. Training had a modest effect on the ability to distinguish between truths and lies but resulted in a higher percentage of appropriate questions asked. Trainees did not implement the taught techniques to an equal extent, but when they did, the techniques enhanced the elicitation of information. The training study also revealed challenges, particularly difficulty in implementing the taught techniques into practice and asking the right questions to elicit differences in detail between truth tellers and liars. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Telling and detecting lies in a high‐stake situation: the case of a convicted murderer

All deception studies published to date have been laboratory studies. In such studies people lied only for the sake of the experiment, consequently the stakes were usually low. Although research has shown that most spontaneous lies told in real life are trivial, such studies tell us little about lies where the stakes are high (such as police/suspect interviews). In Study 1, we discuss the behaviour of an actual suspect while he was interviewed by the police in a murder case. Although the man initially denied knowing and killing the victim, substantial evidence obtained by the police showed that he was lying. On the basis of this evidence, the man confessed to killing the victim and was later convicted for murder. To our knowledge there has been no other study published that has analysed the behaviour of a liar in such a high‐stake realistic setting. The analysis revealed several cues to deception. In Study 2, we exposed 65 police officers to six fragments (three truthful and three deceptive) of the interview with the murderer and asked them to indicate after each fragment whether the man was lying or not. The findings revealed that the participants were better at detecting truths (70% accuracy) than lies (57% accuracy). We also found individual differences among observers, with those holding popular stereotypical views on deceptive behaviour, such as ‘liars look away’ and ‘liars fidget’ performing least effectively as lie catchers. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Melbourne decision making questionnaire: an instrument for measuring patterns for coping with decisional conflict

A study was conducted to examine the factorial validity of the Flinders Decision Making Questionnaire (Mann, 1982), a 31-item self-report inventory designed to measure tendencies to use three major coping patterns identified in the conflict theory of decision making (Janis and Mann, 1977): vigilance, hypervigilance, and defensive avoidance (procrastination, buck-passing, and rationalization). A sample of 2051 university students, comprising samples from Australia (n=262), New Zealand (n=260), the USA (n=475), Japan (n=359), Hong Kong (n=281) and Taiwan (n=414) was administered the DMQ. Factorial validity of the instrument was tested by confirmatory factor analysis with LISREL. Five different substantive models, representing different structural relationships between the decision-coping patterns had unsatisfactory fit to the data and could not be validated. A shortened instrument, containing 22 items, yielded a revised model comprising four identifiable factors–vigilance, hypervigilance, buck-passing, and procrastination. The revised model had adequate fit with data for each country sample and for the total sample, and was confirmed. It is recommended that the 22-item instrument, named the Melbourne DMQ, replace the Flinders DMQ for measurement of decision-coping patterns. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Amygdala upregulation of NCAM polysialylation induced by auditory fear conditioning is not required for memory formation, but plays a role in fear extinction

There is much interest to understand the mechanisms leading to the establishment, maintenance, and extinction of fear memories. The amygdala has been critically involved in the processing of fear memories and a number of molecular changes have been implicated in this brain region in relation to fear learning. Although neural cell adhesion molecules (NCAMs) have been hypothesized to play a role, information available about their contribution to fear memories is scarce. We investigate here whether polysialylated NCAM (PSA-NCAM) contributes to auditory fear conditioning in the amygdala. First, PSA-NCAM expression was evaluated in different amygdala nuclei after auditory fear conditioning at two different shock intensities. Results showed that PSA-NCAM expression was increased 24 h post-training only in animals subjected to the highest shock intensity (1mA). Second, PSA-NCAM was cleaved in the basolateral amygdaloid complex through micro-infusions of the enzyme endoneuraminidase N, and the consequences of such treatment were investigated on the acquisition, consolidation, remote memory expression, and extinction of conditioned fear memories. Intra-amygdaloid cleavage of PSA-NCAM did not affect acquisition, consolidation or expression of remote fear memories. However, intra-amygdaloid PSA-NCAM cleavage enhanced fear extinction processes. These results suggest that upregulation of PSA-NCAM is a correlate of fear conditioning that is not necessary for the establishment of fear memory in the amygdala, but participates in mechanisms precluding fear extinction. These findings point out PSA-NCAM as a potential target for the treatment of psychopathologies that involve impairment in fear extinction.     

Pre-driving adolescent attitudes: Can they change?

The problem of reducing young drivers’ high accident rates has been approached from many different angles but a primary focus has been to try and find ways of changing the attitudes and behaviours of young people who are already drivers. It is hypothesised that there is a link between pre-driver attitudes, intentions and their future driving behaviour. By changing pre-driver attitudes and/or intentions, individuals may mature into safer drivers. This study approaches this young driver problem by looking at pre-drivers’ attitudes to driving to see how they change over time. The results from two questionnaires indicated significant gender differences and changes in responses (both long-term and short-term) over a 6-month period. It is concluded that adolescent attitudes and intentions towards driving remain fluid such that they may be positively influenced through pre-driver interventions, even if only temporarily. Regular pre-driver interventions could thus reinforce safe driving messages and create safety-conscious driving attitudes in the next generation of drivers.     

Differential negative reinforcement of other behavior to increase compliance with wearing an anti-strip suit

Using a changing-criterion design, we replicated and extended a study (Cook, Rapp, & Schulze, 2015) on differential negative reinforcement of other behavior (DNRO). More specifically, educational assistants implemented DNRO to teach a 12-year-old boy with autism spectrum disorder to comply with wearing an anti-strip suit to prevent inappropriate fecal behavior in a school setting. The duration for which the participant wore the suit systematically increased from 2 s at the start of treatment to the entire duration of the school day at the termination of the study. Moreover, these effects were generalized to a new school with novel staff and persisted for more than a year. These findings replicate prior research on DNRO and further support the use of the intervention to increase compliance with wearing protective items, or medical devices, in practical settings.     

On the evaluation and application of different scales for quantifying pairwise comparisons in fuzzy sets

One of the most critical issues in many applications of fuzzy sets is the successful evaluation of membership values. A method based on pairwise comparisons provides an interesting way of evaluating membership values. That method was proposed by Saaty, almost 20 years ago, and since then has captured the interest of many researchers around the world. However, recent investigations reveal that the original scale may cause severe inconsistencies in many decision-making problems. Furthermore, exponential scales seem to be more natural for humans to use in many decision-making problems. In this paper two evaluative criteria are used to examine a total of 78 scales which can be derived from two widely used scales. The findings in this paper reveal that there is no single scale that can outperform all the other scales. Furthermore, the same findings indicate that a few scales are very efficient under certain conditions. Therefore, for a successful application of a pairwise-comparison-based method the appropriate scale needs to be selected and applied.