Memory instructions, vocalization, mock crimes, and concealed information tests with a polygraph

Accuracy rates with polygraphs using concealed information tests (CITs) depend on memory for crime details. Some participants read instructions on murdering a dummy victim that specified exact crime details asked on the subsequent CIT. Others read instructions not stating details, but still requiring interaction with the exact same details for the crime. For example, the murder weapon was under four heavy boxes. Instructions stated either "... remove the 4 boxes ..." or "... remove the boxes ..." Thus, each group removed four boxes, but only one group was primed with the number "4" beforehand. In addition, the victim unexpectedly shouted at some participants during the crime. An innocent group was not exposed to either manipulation. Memory, detection scores, and detection rates were lower for guilty participants not primed with details. Sound affected detection scores but not memory, and there was no interaction between the two factors. Information tests are limited by how crime information is received.     

Self-location is no problem for conditionalization

How do temporal and eternal beliefs interact? I argue that acquiring a temporal belief should have no effect on eternal beliefs for an important range of cases. Thus, I oppose the popular view that new norms of belief change must be introduced for cases where the only change is the passing of time. I defend this position from the purported counter-examples of the Prisoner and Sleeping Beauty. I distinguish two importantly different ways in which temporal beliefs can be acquired and draw some general conclusions about their impact on eternal beliefs.     

Solving for two unknowns: an extension of vector-based models of landmark-based navigation

Vectors are mathematical representations of distance and direction information that take the form of line segments where length represents distance and orientation in space represents direction. Vector-based models have proven beneficial in understanding the spatial behavior of a variety of species in tasks that require landmark-based navigation via vector addition and vector averaging to determine a location. Extant research regarding vector-based representational and computational accounts of landmark-based navigation has involved tasks that required solving for one unknown (i.e., a location). Using a novel landmark-based navigation task, we provide evidence consistent with a form of vector algebra that involves solving two simultaneous equations with two unknowns in order to determine a location in space. Results extend vector-based accounts of landmark-based navigation and provide a novel methodological approach to the testing of mobile organisms.     

ametastudy of journal of employment counseling publication patterns from 1994 through 2009

The authors reviewed article and author patterns for articles published in the Journal of Employment Counseling (JEC) from 1994 through 2009. Author demographic characteristics assessed included sex of lead and all authors, lead author domicile, employment setting of lead and all authors, and individuals and universities contributing most frequently to JEC. Article content was identified and research articles published in JEC were specifically analyzed for trends over time during 4‐year periods, including type of research design, quantitative/qualitative approach, intervention/nonintervention focus, random versus nonrandom sampling/assignment, sample size, participant types, and statistical analyses used.     

Semantic and affective salience: the role of meaning and preference in attentional capture and disengagement

Emotion appears to have a substantial impact on a wide variety of attentional functions. However, stimuli that elicit affective responses also tend to be meaningful. Here we attempted to disentangle the effects of meaning from the effects of affect on attentional capture by irrelevant distractors. Experiment 1 used a previously unfamiliar distractor stimulus, and manipulated the amount of knowledge provided to observers about the distractor. The results suggested that increases in meaning can reduce attentional capture. Experiments 2 and 3 used both familiar and unfamiliar symbols (baseball logos and flags, respectively) as distractors. Critically, of the two familiar symbols, one was rated as affective-positive and the other was rated as affective-negative. As in Experiment 1, the results showed that unfamiliar distractors can capture attention. In addition, the results also suggested that the two affective distractors captured attention (so long as they were sufficiently intense). This finding suggests that while increased knowledge can reduce capture, affect can restore an item's ability to capture attention. Finally, the results of Experiment 4 showed that observers were slower to disengage from a negative item than from a positive item. This evidence emphasizes the differential roles of semantic knowledge versus affect on attentional capture.     

Obsessive beliefs predict cognitive behavior therapy outcome for obsessive compulsive disorder

Cognitive accounts of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) assert that core beliefs are crucial to the development, maintenance, and treatment of the disorder. There are a number of obsessive beliefs that are considered fundamental to OCD, including personal responsibility, threat estimation, perfectionism, need for certainty, importance of thoughts, and thought control. The present study investigated if pretreatment severity of obsessive beliefs, as well as the change in obsessive beliefs following treatment, predicted intensive, residential cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) treatment outcome. A series of hierarchical regression analyses were carried out to investigate the relations between obsessive beliefs and treatment outcome. Results indicated that inflated pretreatment responsibility/threat estimation beliefs were significantly related to less overall obsessive compulsive (OC) symptom reduction at discharge, explaining 2% of the overall variance. Changes in obsessive beliefs broadly, and importance/control of thoughts specifically, were positively related to overall OC symptom reduction at discharge, respectively explaining 18% and 3.6% variance. Results are modestly consistent with a number of theoretical models, which argue that inflated responsibility, threat estimation, and thought control are important to the maintenance and treatment of OCD.     

Component analysis of simple span vs. complex span adaptive working memory exercises: A randomized,controlled trial

There has been growing interest in using adaptive training interventions such as Cogmed-RM to increase the capacity of working memory (WM), but this intervention may not be optimally designed. For instance, Cogmed-RM can target the primary memory (PM) component of WM capacity, but not the secondary memory (SM) component. The present study hypothesized that Cogmed-RM does not target SM capacity because the simple span exercises it uses may not cause a sufficient amount of information to be lost from PM during training. To investigate, we randomly assigned participants to either a standard (simple span; N = 31) or a modified (complex span; N = 30) training condition. The main findings showed that SM capacity did not improve, even in the modified training condition. Hence, the potency of span-based WM interventions cannot be increased simply by converting simple span exercises into complex span exercises.     

A critical eye: Praise directed toward traits increases children’s eye fixations on errors and decreases motivation

Although there is evidence that praise of different types (i.e., generic vs. nongeneric) influences motivation, it is unclear how this occurs. Generic praise (e.g., ??You are smart??) conveys that a child possesses a trait responsible for their performance, whereas nongeneric praise (e.g., ??You worked hard??) conveys that performance is effort-based. Because praise conveys the basis for success, praise may change the interpretation and salience of errors. Specifically, generic praise may highlight the threatening nature of error (i.e., the child does not possess this trait). Because attention is drawn to threats in the environment, we expected generic praise to increase attention to error. We used eyetracking to measure implicit responses to errors (i.e., visual attention: fixation counts and durations) in order to determine the relation between visual attention and verbal reports of motivation (persistence and self-evaluations) in 30 four- to seven-year-old children. Children first saw pictures attributed to them, for which they received either generic or nongeneric praise. The children then saw pictures attributed to them that contained errors??that is, missing features. As a pretest and posttest, the children saw pictures that were ??drawn by other children,?? half of which contained errors. The results indicated that children who received generic praise (??you are a good drawer??) produced more and longer fixations on errors, both their ??own?? and on ??other children??s,?? than did children who received nongeneric praise (??you did a good job drawing??). More fixations on errors were related to lower persistence and lower self-evaluations. These results suggest that generic praise increases attention to errors because error threatens the possession of a positive trait.