Structure of outcome beliefs in condom use. The Project RESPECT Study Group.

To study the structure of beliefs about condom use outcomes, the authors derived and tested 4 psychosocial hypothetical models: (a) a 2-factor model of the personal and social outcomes of condom use; (b) a 2-factor model of the pros and cons of the behavior; (c) a 3-factor model (i.e., physical, self-evaluative, and social) of outcome expectancies; and (d) a thematic 4-factor model of the protection, self-concept, pleasure, and interaction implications of the behavior. All 4 models were studied with a confirmatory factor analysis approach in a multisite study of 4,638 participants, and the thematic solution was consistently the most plausible. Self-concept and pleasure were most strongly associated with attitudes toward using condoms, intentions to use condoms, and actual condom use, whereas protection and interaction generally had little influence.     

Family-based physical activity interventions and family functioning: A systematic review

Family physical activity (PA) can confer multiple health benefits, yet whether PA interventions affect general family functioning has not been appraised. The purpose of this review was to evaluate studies that have examined the effect of family PA interventions, where child PA was the focus of the intervention, on constructs of family functioning. Literature searches were concluded on January 11, 2022 using seven common databases. Eligible studies were in English, utilized a family PA intervention, and assessed a measure of family functioning as a study outcome. The initial search yielded 8413 hits, which was reduced to 20 independent PA interventions of mixed quality after screening for eligibility criteria. There was mixed evidence for whether family PA interventions affected overall family functioning; however, analyses of subdomains indicated that family cohesion is improved by PA interventions when children are in the early school years (aged 5–12). High-quality studies also showed an impact of family PA interventions on family organization. Targeted interventions at specific family subsystems (e.g., father–son, mother–daughter), characteristics (low-income, clinical populations, girls), and broad multibehavioral interventions may have the most reliable effects. Overall, the findings show that family PA interventions can promote family cohesion and organization, particularly among families with children in the early school years. Higher quality research, employing randomized trial designs and targeting specific intervention and sample characteristics (e.g., different clinical conditions, specific parent–child dyads), is recommended in order to better ascertain the effectiveness of these approaches.     

What Do Confidence Items Measure in the Physical Activity Domain?1

The study's purpose was to examine the measurement domain of confidence items used in physical activity research. We hypothesized that confidence items, including a phrase to hold motivation constant, would differ from standard confidence items. Participants (N = 248 students) completed confidence items, a thought‐listing procedure, and a 2‐week self‐report of physical activity. Results showed that confidence items with motivation held constant loaded exclusively on one factor, but standard confidence items were factor complex with intention. Correlations with physical activity intention and behavior were larger for confidence items than confidence items with motivation held constant. Finally, the thought‐listing procedure identified that 3 of the 7 reasons for answering confidence items were outside the intended measurement domain of self‐efficacy.     

Developmental Changes in Strategies for Gathering Evidence About Biological Kinds

How do people gather samples of evidence to learn about the world? Adults often prefer to sample evidence from diverse sources—for example, choosing to test a robin and a turkey to find out if something is true of birds in general. Children below age 9, however, often do not consider sample diversity, instead treating non-diverse samples (e.g., two robins) and diverse samples as equivalently informative. The current study (N = 247) found that this discontinuity stems from developmental changes in standards for evaluating evidence—younger children chose to learn from samples that best approximate idealized views of what category members are supposed to be like (e.g., the fastest cheetahs), with a gradual shift across age toward samples that cover more within-category variation (e.g., cheetahs of varying speeds). These findings have implications for the relation between conceptual structure and inductive reasoning, and for the mechanisms underlying inductive reasoning more generally.     

Decomposing the within-person and between-person sources of variation in physical activity-cognition associations for low-active older adults

Abstract

Objectives: To examine within-person and between-person sources of variation in the relationship between physical activity and cognition in older adults participating in a walking program. To explore whether demographic, health and fitness variables, and their interactions with activity, are significant predictors of cognition.

Design: Brief longitudinal burst design.

Participants: 118 participants (91 females, mean age?=?72.81?+ 5.24 years).

Main Outcome Measures: Cognition, self-reported moderate-to-vigorous walking and self-reported moderate-to-vigorous physical activity were assessed at baseline and 6, 9, 12 and 16 weeks follow-up. Attendance at weekly walks was also recorded.

Results: Within-persons, changes in physical activity were related to select measures of executive functioning, with increased activity predictive of better cognition (three of four cognitive functions, p<.05). Between-persons, activity was also associated with cognition (two of four cognitive functions, p<.05). Younger age and higher education were related to better cognition. Interactions of demographic, health, and fitness variables with changes in within-person activity were generally non-significant.

Conclusion: The results highlight the importance of distinguishing within- from between-person effects in longitudinal analyses of the association between physical activity and cognition. This stringent within-person test of association underscores the potential value of simple physical activity interventions for improving cognitive function.     

Predicting memory benefits in the production effect: the use and misuse of self-generated distinctive cues when making judgments of learning

The production effect occurs when reading a word aloud leads to better memory for the item, relative to words that are read silently. In the present study, we assessed the degree to which judgments of learning (JOLs) are sensitive to the production effect, to determine whether people are aware of how distinctive cues can enhance memory. If the act of saying a word aloud is used as a cue for later memorability, then JOLs should be sensitive to production. Experiment 1 demonstrated that this was the case, as participants provided higher JOLs for produced items than for those read silently. This pattern of JOLs was also evident when participants silently mouthed words (Exp. 2). In Experiment 3, participants instead made a nonunique response as the production component (saying “yes” instead of the word itself). JOLs were still higher under production, although memory performance did not differ from that in a silent condition. The results suggest that the presence of both specific and nonspecific self-generated cues is used to make metacognitive judgments, likely due to the high accessibility of this information, but that participants are not precisely aware of how distinctiveness enhances encoding and retrieval. Such findings have implications for how distinctiveness is perceived by learners and for what cues would appropriately be incorporated when predicting future memory performance.     

Monitoring memory errors: The influence of the veracity of retrieved information on the accuracy of judgements of learning

The current study examined the degree to which predictions of memory performance made immediately or at a delay are sensitive to confidently held memory illusions. Participants studied unrelated pairs of words and made judgements of learning (JOLs) for each item, either immediately or after a delay. Half of the unrelated pairs (deceptive items; e.g., nurse–dollar) had a semantically related competitor (e.g., doctor) that was easily accessible when given a test cue (e.g., nurse–do_ _ _r) and half had no semantically related competitor (control items; e.g., subject–dollar). Following the study phase, participants were administered a cued recall test. Results from Experiment 1 showed that memory performance was less accurate for deceptive compared with control items. In addition, delaying judgement improved the relative accuracy of JOLs for control items but not for deceptive items. Subsequent experiments explored the degree to which the relative accuracy of delayed JOLs for deceptive items improved as a result of a warning to ensure that retrieved memories were accurate (Experiment 2) and corrective feedback regarding the veracity of information retrieved prior to making a JOL (Experiment 3). In all, these data suggest that delayed JOLs may be largely insensitive to memory errors unless participants are provided with feedback regarding memory accuracy.     

Developmental Changes in the Consideration of Sample Diversity in Inductive Reasoning

Determining whether a sample provides a good basis for broader generalizations is a basic challenge of inductive reasoning. Adults apply a diversity-based strategy to this challenge, expecting diverse samples to be a better basis for generalization than homogeneous samples. For example, adults expect that a property shared by two diverse mammals (e.g., a lion and a mouse) is more likely to be shared by all mammals than a property that is shared by two more similar mammals (e.g., a lion and a tiger). Across four studies, we document a developmental progression in children's understanding that diverse samples provide a strong basis for generalizations, such that young children (grade 1) consistently failed to consider sample diversity within their inductive reasoning, but older children (grade 5) preferred to create diverse samples on which to base inferences about basic-level categories. These results suggest that recognizing the value of a diverse sample for inductive reasoning emerges slowly across the elementary school years.     

Emptiness,Engulfment, and Life Struggle: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Chronic Depression

This article explores participants’ experience of what it is like to suffer depression, endured for years. Four women and three men, who each reported a minimum of four years’ of depression, were interviewed and themes were generated using interpretative phenomenological analysis. A first complex theme is depths of emptiness, which encompasses decline of will, disconnection from others, empty future, and numbing of the self. A second theme, episodic despairing engulfment, describes agonizing feelings and thoughts, a sense and conviction that one’s world and self are being destroyed, a growing belief that there is no escape, and sometimes ideas of suicide. The third theme, the struggle of unending life problems, describes a perceived timeline of struggle and difficulties, and terrible feelings and emotions. Five of the participants engaged in extreme negative thoughts and narrations about themselves, whereas two focused specifically on loss and threatening present situations. We conclude that chronic depression involves the experience of emptiness, but also a repeated experience of the destruction of self, connection to the world, and deepest hopes. In chronic depression there are negative thoughts and feelings, yet crucially, it also involves alterations in motivation, in particular a process in which aims, cares, and concerns that form important parts of the person’s life are repeatedly thwarted or destroyed. In extreme occurrences, the phenomenological self seems to be passing out of existence.     

Race-contingent aftereffects suggest distinct perceptual norms for different race faces

Faces of one's own race and of other races are thought to be located in different regions of face space (Valentine, 1991 Valentine, T. 1991. A unified account of the effects of distinctiveness, inversion, and race in face recognition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 43A: 161–204. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]). Here we investigated whether faces of different races (Caucasian and Chinese faces) have dissociable neural coding and distinct norms. We used adaptation techniques to alter perceptions of normality (aftereffects) for faces. Caucasian and Chinese participants adapted to distorted faces of one race (e.g., Chinese contracted faces—Experiment 1), or oppositely distorted faces of both races (e.g., Chinese contracted and Caucasian expanded faces—Experiment 2). We then tested for aftereffects in Chinese and Caucasian test faces. In Experiment 1 aftereffects were reduced when a change in race between the adapt faces and test faces occurred. In Experiment 2 aftereffects occurred in opposite directions for the two races. These results demonstrate that dissociable neural populations code faces of different races and suggest the existence of race-specific face norms.