Can young preschool children be trained to perform percept deprivation tasks?

Young preschool children aged 2 and 3 years were exposed to a novel paradigm designed to train visual perception skills. The results indicate that children of this age can be trained to perform a percept deprivation task that requires a sophisticated understanding of attention not normally mastered until 3.5-4 years. Results are discussed with reference to engagement, a precursor to an adult-like understanding of perception.     

The relationship between greater mindfulness and less subjective experience of chronic pain: Mediating functions of pain management self‐efficacy and emotional intelligence

Previous research shows a connection between greater mindfulness and less subjective experience of pain. The present study examined whether pain management self‐efficacy and emotional intelligence mediate this relationship in individuals experiencing chronic pain. Two hundred participants experiencing chronic pain completed measures of mindfulness, experience of pain, pain management self‐efficacy, and emotional intelligence. Greater mindfulness was associated with less subjective experience of pain, greater pain management self‐efficacy, and more emotional intelligence. More pain management self‐efficacy and higher emotional intelligence were associated with less subjective experience of pain. Emotional intelligence and pain management self‐efficacy significantly mediated the relationship between mindfulness and pain. The connection between greater mindfulness and less subjective experience of pain may be due to mindfulness providing a foundation for emotional functioning and behavioural regulation that result in reductions in the experience of pain.     

Pilfering Eurasian jays use visual and acoustic information to locate caches

Pilfering corvids use observational spatial memory to accurately locate caches that they have seen another individual make. Accordingly, many corvid cache-protection strategies limit the transfer of visual information to potential thieves. Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius) employ strategies that reduce the amount of visual and auditory information that is available to competitors. Here, we test whether or not the jays recall and use both visual and auditory information when pilfering other birds’ caches. When jays had no visual or acoustic information about cache locations, the proportion of available caches that they found did not differ from the proportion expected if jays were searching at random. By contrast, after observing and listening to a conspecific caching in gravel or sand, jays located a greater proportion of caches, searched more frequently in the correct substrate type and searched in fewer empty locations to find the first cache than expected. After only listening to caching in gravel and sand, jays also found a larger proportion of caches and searched in the substrate type where they had heard caching take place more frequently than expected. These experiments demonstrate that Eurasian jays possess observational spatial memory and indicate that pilfering jays may gain information about cache location merely by listening to caching. This is the first evidence that a corvid may use recalled acoustic information to locate and pilfer caches.     

Wild robins (Petroica longipes) respond to human gaze

Gaze following and awareness of attentional cues are hallmarks of human and non-human social intelligence. Here, we show that the North Island robin (Petroica longipes), a food-hoarding songbird endemic to New Zealand, responds to human eyes. Robins were presented with six different conditions, in which two human experimenters altered the orientation or visibility of their body, head or eyes in relation to mealworm prey. One experimenter had visual access to the prey, and the second experimenter did not. Robins were then given the opportunity to ‘steal’ one of two mealworms presented by each experimenter. Robins responded by preferentially choosing the mealworm in front of the experimenter who could not see, in all conditions but one. Robins failed to discriminate between experimenters who were facing the mealworm and those who had their head turned 90° to the side. This may suggest that robins do not make decisions using the same eye visibility cues that primates and corvids evince, whether for ecological, experiential or evolutionary reasons.     

Memory for between‐list and within‐list information in amnesic patients with temporal lobe and diencephalic lesions

Patients with medial temporal lobe damage and diencephalic damage were compared on two tests of verbal temporal order memory: between‐list discrimination and within‐list discrimination. Both patient groups were impaired relative to a group of healthy control participants. In addition, despite comparable levels of item recognition, the diencephalic group was impaired relative to the medial temporal lobe group on both within‐list and between‐list discrimination. Temporal order memory for between‐list information showed a significant correlation with a composite measure of recognition memory, and the results are discussed in terms of the patients' reliance on familiarity and distance‐based processes to make temporal order judgments.     

The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales: Reference data from a large psychiatric outpatient sample

The published norms for the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) give results for clinical populations that largely fall in the severe to very severe categories. As a result, within this population, the ability to compare the comparative contributions of the underlying emotional components is reduced. The present study presents results from a large general psychiatric outpatient population and provides percentile norms with confidence intervals for both the original DASS and the shorter 21‐item form. It is noted that both forms have high validity but that the correlations between scales are higher than those reported in non‐clinical populations. There was little variation between sexes but some variation of results with age with both younger and older cohorts having lower scores except for the Stress scale where there were higher scores in the older group. There is some evidence of a ceiling effect in the Depression and Stress scales. It was noted that nearly a quarter of patient scores fell within the originally defined normal range suggesting that the DASS would not be a particularly sensitive instrument in its previously reported use as a screening instrument for psychiatric illness.     

On feeling good at work: the role of regulatory mode and passion in psychological adjustment

The major postulate of this work is that regulatory modes influence the type of passion people experience with regard to an activity, which in turn influences their psychological adjustment. Integrating regulatory mode theory and the dualistic model of passion, we hypothesized that locomotion—associated with intrinsic and autonomous motivations—would positively predict harmonious passion, which in turn would enhance workers' psychological adjustment. In contrast, we hypothesized that assessment—associated with extrinsic and non‐autonomous motivations—would positively predict obsessive passion, which in turn would reduce workers' psychological adjustment. Two field studies supported these hypotheses with psychological adjustment measures of stress (Study 1) and burnout (Study 2) in different work contexts.     

Enjoying influence on others: Congruently high implicit and explicit power motives are related to teachers’ well-being

The present study examined the associations of implicit and explicit power motives with the well-being of teachers. Teachers (N = 170) participated in an online assessment, which included measures for implicit motives (assessed by the operant motive test), explicit motives, and well-being. We expected congruently high power motives to be linked with the highest levels of well-being. We tested this assumption using polynomial regressions with response surface analysis. Results were consistent with our hypothesis. Additionally, there was an effect of directional motive incongruence (a combination of a low implicit and a high explicit power motive was associated with higher well-being than a high implicit/low explicit combination), which did not hold when controlling for emotional stability. Results for achievement were comparable, but weaker, and there was no effect for motive incongruence. No significant associations were found for motive (in)congruence in the affiliation domain. Our findings underline the importance of the power motive in understanding individual differences in teachers’ well-being.     

Flow and enjoyment beyond skill-demand balance: The role of game pacing curves and personality

According to flow theory, skill-demand balance is optimal for flow. Experimentally, balance has been tested only against strong overload and strong boredom. We assessed flow and enjoyment as distinct experiences and expected that they (a) are not optimized by constant balance, (b) experimentally dissociate, and (c) are supported by different personality traits. Beyond a constant balance condition (“balance”), we realized two dynamic pacing conditions where demands fluctuated through short breaks: one condition without overload (“dynamic medium”) and another with slight overload (“dynamic high”). Consistent with assumptions, constant balance was not optimal for flow (balance ≤ dynamic medium < dynamic high) and enjoyment (balance ≤ dynamic high < dynamic medium). Action orientation enabled high flow even under the suboptimal condition of balance. Sensation seeking increased enjoyment under the suboptimal but arousing dynamic high condition. We discuss dynamic changes in positive affect (seeking and mastering challenge) as an integral part of flow.     

The relationship between positive psychological characteristics and longer telomeres

Objective: Longer telomeres are associated with better health and longevity. This research investigated the relationship between positive psychological dispositional traits and telomere length. Positive traits examined were typical high positive affect, typical low negative affect, life satisfaction, trait mindfulness, trait emotional intelligence, general self-efficacy and optimism.

Design and Measures: One hundred and twenty women and men, with a mean age of 40.92, completed measures of positive characteristics and provided samples for telomere length analysis.

Results: Together the positive dispositional characteristics explained significant variance in telomere length, R = .40. Among the individual characteristics, greater optimism and higher emotional intelligence were associated with longer telomeres after adjustment for age and gender and the association between optimism and telomere length remained significant after adjusting for age and gender as well as the other positive characteristics, with a partial correlation r of .30.

Conclusion: These results in conjunction with previous research findings provide a platform for further exploration of biological pathways connecting positive characteristics such as optimism to telomere length and investigation of the impact of increasing a characteristic such as optimism on telomere functioning.