The interaction between memorized objects and abrupt onsets in oculomotor capture

Recent evidence has been found for a source of task-irrelevant oculomotor capture (defined as when a salient event draws the eyes away from a primary task) that originates from working memory. An object memorized for a nonsearch task can capture the eyes during search. Here, an experiment was conducted that generated interactions between the presence of a memorized object (a colored disk) with the abrupt onset of a new object during visual search. The goal was to compare memory-driven oculomotor capture to oculomotor capture caused by an abrupt onset. This has implications for saccade programming theories, which have little to say about saccades that are influenced by object working memory. Results showed that memorized objects capture the eyes at nearly the same rate as abrupt onsets. When the abrupt onset and a memorized color coincide in the same object, this combination leads to even greater oculomotor capture. Finally, latencies support the competitive integration model: Shorter saccade latencies were found when the memorized color combined with the onset captured the eyes, as compared to either color or onset only. Longer latencies were also found when the color and onset occurred in the same display but were spatially separated.     

On dispositional masks

Synthese - Dispositions can be masked: some state of affairs might obtain which would prevent an entity from displaying the manifestation characteristic of its disposition. Yet discussions of masks...     

A Reinforcement Account of Altruism

The Psychological Record - The foundation of modern behavior science is the selection of behavior by its consequences. So, behavior that benefits an organism should be maintained (through...     

Lexical and semantic influences on item and order memory in immediate serial recognition: evidence from a novel task

Previous studies have reported that, in contrast to the effect on immediate serial recall, lexical/semantic factors have little effect on immediate serial recognition. This has been taken as evidence that linguistic knowledge contributes to verbal short-term memory in a redintegrative process at recall. Contrary to this view, we found that lexicality, frequency, and imageability all influenced matching span. The standard matching span task, requiring changes in item order to be detected, was less susceptible to lexical/semantic factors than was a novel task involving the detection of phoneme order and hence item identity changes. Therefore, in both immediate recognition and immediate serial recall, lexical/semantic knowledge makes a greater contribution to item identity than to item order memory. Task sensitivity, and not the absence of overt recall, may have underpinned previous failures to show effects of these variables in immediate recognition. We also compared matching span for pure and unpredictable mixed lists of words and nonwords. Lexicality had a larger impact on immediate recognition for pure than for mixed lists, in line with findings for immediate serial recall. List composition affected the detection of phoneme but not item order changes in matching span; similarly, in recall, mixed lists produce more frequent word phoneme migrations but not migrations of entire items. These results point to strong similarities between immediate serial recall and recognition. Lexical/semantic knowledge may contribute to phonological stability in both tasks.     

Nonparametric Estimation of Item and Respondent Locations from Unfolding-type Items

Unlike their monotone counterparts, nonparametric unfolding response models, which assume the item response function is unimodal, have seen little attention in the psychometric literature. This paper studies the nonparametric behavior of unfolding models by building on the work of Post (1992). The paper provides rigorous justification for a class of nonparametric estimators of respondents’ latent attitudes by proving that the estimators consistently rank order the respondents. The paper also suggests an algorithm for the rank ordering of items along the attitudes scale. Finally, the methods are evaluated using simulated data. This research was supported in part by an Educational Testing Service Gulliksen Fellowship, and by the National Science Foundation, Grant DMS-97.05032. The author would like to thank Brian Junker for his help and support on this paper and Paul Holland, Steve Fienberg, and Jay Kadane for their helpful comments.     

Facilitating Communication of Ideas and Evidence to Enhance Mental Health Service Quality: Coding the Treatment Services Literature Using the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths-Mental Health Assessment Scales

The evidence-base services literature is continually growing, providing the field with rich and important sets of information regarding what works for treating different types of youth and families. Given this burgeoning of information, the PracticeWise Evidence-Based Services (PWEBS) Literature Database has been developed to aid in summarizing and delivering aggregated evidence-based treatment information to providers in the field. Meanwhile, the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths-Mental Health (CANS-MH) Scale is a youth mental health assessment tool that was developed by a separate team to assist with treatment planning. In the present study, we developed and tested a system for linking these two related ontological systems so that scientific knowledge can be more widely aggregated and made available to a wider set of audiences for enhanced mental health service delivery. Results revealed the following. First, a construct mapping comparison revealed that the CANS-MH and PWEBS ontologies share a strong core of overlapping content, particularly in the areas of Youth Behavioral/Emotional Needs, Youth Risk Behaviors, and Life Domain Functioning. Second, the CANS-MH areas were able to be used to reliably code the following components of published randomized treatment studies: (a) population sample characteristics (e.g., did the characteristics of the treatment study participant population relate to each CANS-MH area?), and (b) outcome measure targets (e.g., did the treatment study outcome measure target areas relate to each CANS-MH area?). The reliability achieved from this coding process supported the linkage between the CANS-MH areas and the PWEBS Literature Database information. Lastly, high agreement was achieved between an automated translation algorithm and the final ratings from the manual coding of published treatment studies using the CANS-MH scale. The importance of such linkages for the communication of ideas, information, and evidence across differing subfields is discussed, as well as examples of achieving enhanced quality of mental health services by linking system ontologies.     

Determinants of depressive mood states in everyday life: An experience sampling study

This study tests relative contributions and time-course of proposed risk/protective factors (e.g., stress, coping, and lack of social interactions) for influencing depressed mood states in daily life. Seventy-three participants completed baseline measurement of major depressive disorder symptomatology, followed by smartphone app-based monitoring of momentary experiences of depressed mood and risk/protective factors for 7 days. All predictors had deteriorating impacts on mood as lag increased, and the optimal lag appears to be less than 120 min. Linear decay in effect sizes was found for physical activity, social interaction, and tiredness, whereas exponential decline in effect sizes was found for stress and coping ability. Stress, coping, and depressed mood at the prior time-point were the best predictors of subsequent mood. These effects did not differ as a function of trait depressive symptom severity. Findings highlight the influence of spacing of assessments in identification and magnitude of predictors of mood states, and provide insights into key drivers of change in mood and their time-course.     

Failures of cognitive control or attention? The case of stop-signal deficits in schizophrenia

We used Bayesian cognitive modelling to identify the underlying causes of apparent inhibitory deficits in the stop-signal paradigm. The analysis was applied to stop-signal data reported by Badcock et al. (Psychological Medicine 32: 87-297, 2002) and Hughes et al. (Biological Psychology 89: 220-231, 2012), where schizophrenia patients and control participants made rapid choice responses, but on some trials were signalled to stop their ongoing response. Previous research has assumed an inhibitory deficit in schizophrenia, because estimates of the mean time taken to react to the stop signal are longer in patients than controls. We showed that these longer estimates are partly due to failing to react to the stop signal (“trigger failures”) and partly due to a slower initiation of inhibition, implicating a failure of attention rather than a deficit in the inhibitory process itself. Correlations between the probability of trigger failures and event-related potentials reported by Hughes et al. are interpreted as supporting the attentional account of inhibitory deficits. Our results, and those of Matzke et al. (2016), who report that controls also display a substantial although lower trigger-failure rate, indicate that attentional factors need to be taken into account when interpreting results from the stop-signal paradigm.     

Clergy Work-Related Psychological Health: Listening to the Ministers of Word and Sacrament Within the United Reformed Church in England

Drawing on the classic model of balanced affect proposed by Bradburn (The structure of psychological well-being, Aldine, Chicago, IL, 1969), this study conceptualised poor work-related psychological health in terms of high levels of negative affect in the absence of acceptable levels of positive affect. In order to illuminate self-perceptions of work-related psychological health among a well-defined group of clergy, a random sample of 58 ministers of word and sacrament serving within the west midlands synod of the United Reformed Church in England completed an open-ended questionnaire concerned with the following six guiding questions. Do you enjoy your work? How would you define stress? How would you define burnout? What stresses are there in your ministry? What do you do to keep healthy? What can the church do to enhance the work-related psychological health of ministers? Content analysis highlighted the main themes recurring through these open-ended responses. The conclusion is drawn that ministers of word and sacrament within the United Reformed Church in England are exposed to a number of recurrent recognisable sources of stress. Suggestions are advanced regarding the need for future more detailed research and for the development of more effective pastoral strategies.