The Shattered Microcosm: Imperatives for Improved Family Therapy in Africa in the 21st Century

This paper provides an in-depth socio-political analysis of the basis for the limits of family therapy in Africa in the last 40 years. The goal is to make more visible the economic, social, political, and cultural factors that have combined to complicate and frustrate our macro-environments of practice. The conclusion is that family therapy in Africa cannot achieve any meaningful progress in the present millenium unless the structures of underdevelopment under which we live and work are dismantled and in their place the important preconditions for successful practice of modern family therapy are entrenched. The list of imperatives to be addressed is offered to suggest the direction along which we must move if we are to effect this adaptation.     

Belief bias and figural bias in syllogistic reasoning

Belief bias is the tendency to be influenced by the believability of the conclusion when attempting to solve a syllogistic reasoning problem. Figural bias is the tendency to be influenced by the order in which the information is presented in the premises when attempting to solve a syllogistic reasoning problem. When studied simultaneously they enable an investigation of whether participants' reasoning on the syllogistic reasoning task is guided by the conclusion (backward reasoning) or the premises (forward reasoning). Experiments 1 and 2 found evidence of belief bias but not figural bias on the syllogistic evaluation task paradigm. Experiments 3 and 4 found evidence of figural bias but not belief bias on the syllogistic production task paradigm. The findings highlight that different task characteristics influence performance dependent upon the nature of task presentation. These findings are discussed in the context of current theories of belief bias in syllogistic reasoning.     

Letter string processing and visual short-term memory

The present study investigated whether expertise with letter string processing influences visual short-term memory capacity. Specifically, we examined whether performance in a change-detection task would vary as a function of stimulus type (letters vs. symbols) and type of display (horizontal, vertical, and circular). Participants were asked to detect a one-character change in a briefly presented character array following a delay of 900?ms. Concurrent articulation was used to limit effects of rehearsal. Type of display significantly affected performance with letters, but not with symbols, with a selective increase in change-detection accuracy for horizontally presented letter arrays compared with vertical and circular arrays. These findings confirm the standard limits of storage in visual short-term memory, but critically reveal a selective advantage for letter arrays over symbol arrays when presented horizontally. Such an advantage is probably due to the utilization of a specialized encoding mechanism built up over years of reading experience.     

Do positive illusions predict overconfidence in judgment? A test using interval production and probability evaluation measures of miscalibration

We address the question as to whether judgmental overconfidence, as assessed by probability miscalibration, is related to positive illusions about the self. We first demonstrate that judgmental overconfidence measured with interval production procedures can be considered a trait, due to correlations observed in miscalibration scores in two sets of general‐knowledge questions of varying difficulty administered at different times. In addition, the hard‐easy effect operated in different ways on overprecision and self‐placement of one's performance relative to others: The more difficult the calibration task, the greater the over precision but the greater the under placement of one's performance. Finally, there was no evidence that miscalibration was related to dispositional optimism and self‐efficacy. A second study extended these results by including further measures of disposition to experience positive illusions such as unrealistic optimism, a general tendency to consider oneself “better‐than‐average,” and two indexes of dispositional perception of control. The positive illusion measures showed considerable inter‐correlations, but did not correlate with miscalibration on the interval production task, and correlated negatively with optimism concerning societal risks. A final study replicated this pattern of findings, but showed that disposition to positive illusions did predict miscalibration on the same questions measured with a probability evaluation technique. Our research demonstrates that “overconfidence” is not a unitary construct, but a series of overlapping ones. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Jekyll and Hyde of emotional intelligence: emotion-regulation knowledge facilitates both prosocial and interpersonally deviant behavior

Does emotional intelligence promote behavior that strictly benefits the greater good, or can it also advance interpersonal deviance? In the investigation reported here, we tested the possibility that a core facet of emotional intelligence--emotion-regulation knowledge--can promote both prosocial and interpersonally deviant behavior. Drawing from research on how the effective regulation of emotion promotes goal achievement, we predicted that emotion-regulation knowledge would strengthen the effects of other-oriented and self-oriented personality traits on prosocial behavior and interpersonal deviance, respectively. Two studies supported our predictions. Among individuals with higher emotion-regulation knowledge, moral identity exhibited a stronger positive association with prosocial behavior in a social dilemma (Study 1), and Machiavellianism exhibited a stronger positive association with interpersonal deviance in the workplace (Study 2). Thus, emotion-regulation knowledge has a positive side and a dark side.     

Stigma and social participation in Southern India: differences and commonalities among persons affected by leprosy and persons living with HIV/AIDS

Stigma is a common phenomenon worldwide and infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS and leprosy are often associated with high levels of stigma. Several studies have been conducted concerning the effects of stigma and the impact on social participation, but comparative studies are rare. The objective of this study was to identify differences and similarities between HIV/AIDS and leprosy-related stigma. From April till July 2009, 190 questionnaire-based interviews were conducted to assess the levels of internalized stigma (Internalized Stigma of Mental Illness scale), perceived stigma (Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue stigma scale) and social participation (Participation scale) in a cross-sectional sample of people affected by leprosy (PL) and people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA). Respondents were selected from several hospitals, charity projects and during home visits in Vellore district, Tamil Nadu. Our results showed that both PLHA (n?=?95) and leprosy-affected respondents (n?=?95) faced a substantial burden of internalized and perceived stigma, with the former reporting a significantly higher level of stigma. As a result, PLHA faced more frequent and also more severe participation restrictions than PL. Especially, restrictions in work-related areas were reported by the majority of the respondents. In conclusion, PLHA faced a significantly higher level of stigma and participation restriction than PL. However, the latter also reported a substantial burden of stigma and participation restrictions. The study suggests that it may be possible to develop joint interventions based on the commonalities found. More research is needed to define these more precisely and to test the effectiveness of such joint interventions in reducing stigma and improving social participation.     

Global precedence effect in audition and vision: evidence for similar cognitive styles across modalities

This study aimed to provide evidence for a Global Precedence Effect (GPE) in both vision and audition modalities. In order to parallel Navon's paradigm, a novel auditory task was designed in which hierarchical auditory stimuli were used to involve local and global processing. Participants were asked to process auditory and visual hierarchical patterns at the local or global level. In both modalities, a global-over-local advantage and a global interference on local processing were found. The other compelling result is a significant correlation between these effects across modalities. Evidence that the same participants exhibit similar processing style across modalities strongly supports the idea of a cognitive style to process information and common processing principle in perception.     

Multiple-look effects on temporal discrimination within sound sequences

The multiple-look notion holds that the difference limen (DL) decreases with multiple observations. We investigated this notion for temporal discrimination in isochronous sound sequences. In Experiment 1, we established a multiple-look effect when sequences comprised nine standard time intervals (S) followed by an increasing number of comparison time intervals (C), but no multiple-look effect when one trailing C interval was preceded by an increasing number of S intervals. In Experiment 2, we extended the design. There were four sequential conditions: (a) 9 leading S intervals followed by 1, 2, …, or 9 C-intervals; (b) 9 leading C intervals followed by 1, 2, …, or 9 S intervals; (c) 9 trailing C-intervals preceded by 1, 2, …, or 9 S-intervals; and (d) 9 trailing S-intervals preceded by 1, 2, …, or 9 C-intervals. Both the interval accretions before and after the tempo change caused multiple-look effects, irrespective of the time order of S and C. Complete deconfounding of the number of intervals before and after the tempo change was accomplished in Experiment 3. The multiple-look effect of interval accretion before the tempo change was twice as big as that after the tempo change. The diminishing returns relation between the DL and interval accretion could be described well by a reciprocal function.     

Religion and suicide acceptability: a cross-national analysis

Four perspectives (moral community thesis, religious integration, religious commitment, and social networks) guide the selection of variables in this study. Data are from the combined World Values/European Values Surveys for 2000 (50,547 individuals nested in 56 nations). The results of a multivariate hierarchical linear model support all four perspectives. Persons residing in nations with relatively high levels of religiosity, who are affiliated with one of four major faiths, are religiously committed, and are engaged with a religious network are found to be lower in suicide acceptability. The religious integration perspective, in particular, is empirically supported; affiliation with Islam is associated with low suicide acceptability. The findings provide strong support for an integrated model and demonstrate the usefulness of the moral community thesis in understanding suicide acceptability.     

关于实验心理学中推理的现代心理测量方法(英文)

推理测验与推理实验不同。推理测验用来衡量智商;而推理实验则用来研究推理的心理过程。测验旨在找出能力的个体差异;而实验则意在突出所有个体的一般性心理过程。近年来,心理学中的推理已经发生了变化,我们在理论进化方面简要地总结了如下这些变化:关注点从推理任务中的反应过程变为个体对不同任务做反应时的差异和其中稳定的反应模式,开始考虑不同推理者的组织差异和数量差异(犹如不同游泳运动员的游泳动作和肌肉数量)。然而,这些理论创新必须有精确的建模技术的支持。我们将以条件推理材料为例,展示了现代心理测量方法可以帮我们解决理论创新中产生的三类主要的研究问题。