Client attachment and coping resources

Relationships among perceptions of early parental bonding experiences, current adult attachment to significant others, and coping resources were examined in a sample of 100 adult clients seeking services through a university counselling clinic. Results of a canonical analysis indicated that secure adult attachment, higher parental care, and lower parental overprotection were significantly associated with higher coping resources. The significance of these findings for understanding the role of attachment in emotional self-regulation is discussed.     

Using Mental Imagery to Enhance the Effectiveness of Implementation Intentions

Past research shows that forming implementation intentions increases the probability of carrying out goals. The present research proposes that mental imagery can strengthen the effects of implementation intentions on goal achievement. Participants were assigned a mundane goal and were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: implementation intentions only or implementation intentions plus mental imagery. Results support the hypothesis that using mental imagery when forming implementation intentions leads to higher rates of goal achievement.     

Repetition proportion affects masked priming in nonspeeded tasks

Masked repetition priming is often greater when a larger proportion of trials involve repetition primes, suggesting that a context-sensitive unconscious process may be operating. Two recent studies have failed to obtain an effect of prime proportion in the perceptual identification (PI) task, suggesting that the effect may not occur in nonspeeded tasks. Contrary to this possibility, we report proportion effects with masked repetition primes in two nonspeeded tasks: PI and fragment completion (FC). A proportion effect occurred in the accuracy measure only in the FC task, but it occurred in the reaction time measure in both tasks. Prior failures to find proportion effects in the PI task thus may have been due, in part, to the dependent measure used. We interpret our findings in light of several recent accounts of prime proportion effects with brief primes.     

Working memory performance after acute exposure to the cold pressor stress in healthy volunteers

Effects of acute stress exposure on learning and memory have been frequently studied in both animals and humans. However, only a few studies have focused specifically on working memory performance and the available data are equivocal. The present study examined working memory performance during the Sternberg item recognition task after exposure to a predominantly adrenergic stressor. Twenty four healthy subjects were randomly assigned to a stress group or a control group. The stress group was exposed to the cold pressor stress test (CPS; i.e. insertion of the dominant hand into ice water for 60s), while 37 °C warm water was used with the control group. Twenty minutes after the stress exposure, working memory performance was tested with the Sternberg item recognition task with three levels of cognitive load. Sympathetic nervous system and hypothalamic pituitary adrenocortical (HPA) axis activation during CPS, were assessed by measuring heart rate and salivary cortisol before and during (heart rate) or 30 min after (cortisol) the stress procedure. Exposure to the CPS test was associated with a significant increase in heart rate but no increase in salivary cortisol. Participants exposed to the stress procedure showed significantly shorter reaction times during trials with higher cognitive load but tended to show higher false alarm rates than control subjects. The present results indicate that exposure to CPS can be associated with signs of both enhanced and impaired working memory performance. The observed behavioral pattern might represent a form of streamlined information processing advantageous in a threatening situation.     

Embodied infant attention

Does real time coupling between mental and physical activity early in development have functional significance? To address this question, we examined the habituation of visual attention and the subsequent response to change in two groups of 3‐month‐olds with different patterns of movement–attention coupling. In suppressors, the typical decrease in body movement at the onset of looks persists into the looks. In rebounders, the initial decrease is more transient and movement quickly returns above baseline. Suppressors and rebounders did not differ on measures of looking during habituation, but when the stimulus changed rebounders looked more than suppressors. When it did not change, they looked less. In addition, during habituation rebounders spent more time looking away from the stimulus. Rapid motor reactivation soon after gaze locks onto a target, characteristic of rebounders, may influence visual foraging and the response to change by keeping attention near a threshold of engagement.     

Randomized Controlled Pilot Study of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in a Sample of Incarcerated Women With Substance Use Disorder and PTSD

This randomized controlled pilot study compared a cognitive-behavioral therapy (Seeking Safety; SS) plus treatment-as-usual (TAU) to TAU-alone in 49 incarcerated women with substance use disorder (SUD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; full or subthreshold). Seeking Safety consisted of a voluntary group treatment during incarceration and individual treatment after prison release. TAU was required in the prison and comprised 180 to 240 hours of individual and group treatment over 6 to 8 weeks. Assessments occurred at intake, 12 weeks after intake, and 3 and 6 months after release from prison. There were no significant differences between conditions on all key domains (PTSD, SUD, psychopathology, and legal problems); but both conditions showed significant improvements from intake to later time points on all of these outcomes across time. Secondary analyses at follow-up found trends for SS participants improving on clinician-rated PTSD symptoms and TAU participants worsening on self-reported PTSD symptoms. Also, SS demonstrated continued improvement on psychopathology at 3 and 6 months, whereas TAU did not. However, alcohol use improved more for TAU during follow-up. Satisfaction with SS was high, and a greater number of SS sessions was associated with greater improvement on PTSD and drug use. Six months after release from prison, 53% of the women in both conditions reported a remission in PTSD. Study limitations include lack of assessment of SS outcomes at end of group treatment; lack of blind assessment; omission of the SS case management component; and possible contamination between the two conditions. The complex needs of this population are discussed.     

Is a Manipulator's Externality Paradoxical? The Relationship Between Machiavellianism,Economic Opportunism,and Economic Locus of Control

Machiavellianism and economic opportunism are defecting strategies founded on manipulating information in order to maximize gain or power. This study investigated their relationship with economic internality. We hypothesized that individuals inclined to adopt defecting strategies would tend to have external economic locus of control (ELOC). A Greek sample of 175 participants completed the ELOC and Mach IV questionnaires and a scale of economic opportunism. Machiavellianism and opportunism were both positively correlated with the ELOC Chance factor. Opportunism was negatively correlated with the ELOC Internal factor. The findings confirmed the hypothesis and showed that this kind of defector overestimates the role of chance, uncertainty, and hazard as sources of economic reinforcements.     

Perceptions of the organizational context and psychological contract breach: Assessing competing perspectives

This study examines how employees’ perceptions of specific features of the organizational context—organizational politics and procedural justice—are related to their evaluations of psychological contract breach and subsequent attitudes and behaviors. Across three studies, we examined the appropriateness of four models for describing relationships among the focal constructs. Results of these studies support (a) an environmental responsiveness model in which psychological contract breach mediates the effects of politics and justice on employee outcomes, and (b) a general fairness evaluation model where politics, justice, and psychological contract breach serve as indicators of a higher order factor that predicts employee attitudes and behavior. Implications and directions for future research are presented.     

Single-probe serial position recall: evidence of modularity for olfactory, visual, and auditory short-term memory

The present study examined and compared order memory for a list of sequentially presented odours, unfamiliar faces, and pure tones. Employing single-probe serial position recall and following a correction for a response bias, qualitatively different serial position functions were observed across stimuli. Participants demonstrated an ability to perform absolute order memory judgments for odours. Furthermore, odours produced an absence of serial position effects, unfamiliar faces produced both primacy and recency, and pure tones produced recency but not primacy. Such a finding is contrary to the proposal by Ward, Avons, and Melling (2005) that the serial position function is task, rather than modality, dependent. In contrast, the observed functions support a modular conceptualization of short-term memory (e.g., Andrade & Donaldson, 2007; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974), whereby separate modality-specific memorial systems operate. An alternative amodal interpretation is also discussed wherein serial position function disparities are accommodated via differences in the psychological distinctiveness of stimuli (Hay, Smyth, Hitch, & Horton, 2007).     

A Role for the X Chromosome in Sex Differences in Variability in General Intelligence?

ABSTRACT— There is substantial evidence that males are more variable than females in general intelligence. In recent years, researchers have presented this as a reason that, although there is little, if any, mean sex difference in general intelligence, males tend to be overrepresented at both ends of its overall distribution. Part of the explanation could be the presence of genes on the X chromosome related both to syndromal disorders involving mental retardation and to population variation in general intelligence occurring normally. Genes on the X chromosome appear overrepresented among genes with known involvement in mental retardation, which is consistent with a model we developed of the population distribution of general intelligence as a mixture of two normal distributions. Using this model, we explored the expected ratios of males to females at various points in the distribution and estimated the proportion of variance in general intelligence potentially due to genes on the X chromosome. These estimates provide clues to the extent to which biologically based sex differences could be manifested in the environment as sex differences in displayed intellectual abilities. We discuss these observations in the context of sex differences in specific cognitive abilities and evolutionary theories of sexual selection.