EMDR: eye movements superior to beeps in taxing working memory and reducing vividness of recollections

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is effectively treated with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) with patients making eye movements during recall of traumatic memories. Many therapists have replaced eye movements with bilateral beeps, but there are no data on the effects of beeps. Experimental studies suggest that eye movements may be beneficial because they tax working memory, especially the central executive component, but the presence/degree of taxation has not been assessed directly. Using discrimination Reaction Time (RT) tasks, we found that eye movements slow down RTs to auditive cues (experiment I), but binaural beeps do not slow down RTs to visual cues (experiment II). In an arguably more sensitive “Random Interval Repetition” task using tactile stimulation, working memory taxation of beeps and eye movements were directly compared. RTs slowed down during beeps, but the effects were much stronger for eye movements (experiment III). The same pattern was observed in a memory experiment with healthy volunteers (experiment IV): vividness of negative memories was reduced after both beeps and eye movements, but effects were larger for eye movements. Findings support a working memory account of EMDR and suggest that effects of beeps on negative memories are inferior to those of eye movements.     

Deceived and distorted: game outcome retrospectively determines the reported time of action

Previous work suggested the association between intentionality and the reported time of action was exclusive, with intentionality as the primary facilitator to the mental time compression between the reported time of action and its effect (Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002). In three experiments, we examined whether mental time compression could also be observed in an unintended action. Participants performed an externally cued key press task that elicited one of two possible tones. The reported time of action shifted closer to the tone when the tone was used to indicate the winner of a race (Exp.2) compared to when the tone was meaningless and did not indicate winning (Exp.1). This suggests that reported time of an unintended action could shift toward the effect in some contexts. Furthermore, the results from Exp.2 and Exp.3 (tones were substituted with verbal feedback) showed that a presumed winning action was judged to occur earlier whereas a presumed losing action was judged to be later. These findings therefore support the view that the reported time of action is reconstructed from known temporal information rather than determined by intentionality.     

Present and future temporal profiles and their relationship to health intentions and behaviors: A test on a Norwegian general population sample

We investigated the temporal profiles of a Norwegian general population sample and their relation to health behaviors and intentions. The profiles were based on variables from the present and future dimensions of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI), the Consideration of Future Consequences Scale (CFCS), and the combination of both scales. The analysis revealed that there were only two stable clusters that corresponded to the present and the future profiles. Generally, CFCS‐based present and future profiles were more effective at predicting health behaviors and intentions than ZTPI‐based profiles. Profiles based on the CFCS variables were more predictive of eating behaviors. However, the profiles based on the combination of both CFCS and ZTPI were more predictive of smoking, exercising, and health intentions than the profiles based solely on the CFCS. The variation in walking was explained only by the profiles based on a combination of CFCS and ZTPI.     

Beyond physical harm: how preference for consequentialism and primary psychopathy relate to decisions on a monetary trolley dilemma

When is it appropriate to harm a single person to help multiple others? Psychologists have investigated this question through the study of hypothetical “trolley” dilemmas involving extreme physical harm life-or-death situations that contrast outcome-focussed, consequentialist moral reasoning with principle-focussed, deontological moral reasoning. The present studies investigate whether participants’ preference for consequentialism generalises across domains. We administered traditional physical harm dilemmas as well as a trolley-type dilemma involving monetary harm. Across four studies (N?=?809), an internal meta-analysis demonstrated that participants’ responses to the traditional dilemmas predicted their responses to the monetary dilemma. Additionally, previous research has uncovered that primary psychopathy predicts consequentialist responses on physical harm dilemmas. The current work uncovers that this association does not generalise to monetary harm dilemmas, suggesting that the association between primary psychopathy and consequentialist reasoning is not related to consequentialist reasoning per se, but to the idiosyncrasies of traditional harm-centric trolley dilemmas instead.     

Cellular memory in spinal nociceptive circuitry

Besides transmitting and processing, neurons may also store information for prolonged periods of time (e.g. by use-dependent change in synaptic strength). In 1966 long-term potentiation (LTP) of synaptic transmission was discovered in the hippocampus, an area implicated in learning and memory. Recent studies show that similar mechanisms apply to pain pathways, at least in the spinal cord, and may account for some forms of clinical problems like hyperalgesia, allodynia, and deafferentation pain states, such as phantom pain. In this review, we briefly summarize key aspects of synaptic plasticity known from the brain and in the spinal cord. Then we describe and discuss related changes in spinal nociceptive neurons based on results from our own laboratory.     

Memory for a staged criminal event witnessed live and on video

Memory for a staged robbery was tested in two groups of participants witnessing the event either live (n = 62) or on video (n = 64). Immediately after the event participants filled out a questionnaire probing memory with emphasis on the timing of the event and robber characteristics. The results showed that participants who watched a video recording of the event reported more details and with a higher accuracy than participants who were present on the scene, but the pattern of memory errors were similar in the two conditions. It is concluded that laboratory experiments may overestimate the memory of eyewitnesses but are otherwise able to simulate essential aspects of memory performance in naturalistic contexts.     

The Relationship Between Right‐wing Attitudes and Cognitive Style: A Comparison of Self‐report and Behavioural Measures of Rigidity and Intolerance of Ambiguity

Two recent meta‐analytic studies addressing the relationship between cognitive style and right‐wing attitudes yielded some discrepancies. We argue that these discrepancies can be accounted for when one considers the types of cognitive style measures included in those analyses. One of these analyses primarily relied on self‐report measures, whereas the other relied on behavioural measures of cognitive style. Based on a new meta‐analysis of 103 samples (total N = 12 714) focussing on behavioural and self‐report measures of rigidity and intolerance of ambiguity, we confirmed the hypothesis that self‐report scales yield stronger relationships with right‐wing attitudes than behavioural measures. We point out potential conceptual and validity issues with both types of cognitive style measures and call for cautiousness when interpreting the magnitude of their relationships with ideology. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Are Collective Efficacy,Disorder and Social Support Associated with One’s Quality of Life? Evidence from the Multilevel SWING Study in Belgium

The current study assesses the evidence for the association between several neighborhood social processes (collective efficacy and social disorder) and two important individual-level quality of life indicators, which are avoidance behaviour and mental health. In addition to these neighborhood characteristics, the study also assesses the impact of an individual’s social support network on these two outcomes. Hypotheses are derived from a theoretical framework that integrates insights from social capital theory, collective efficacy theory and broken windows theory. Hypotheses about both neighborhood- and individual-level effects are tested by applying multilevel analyses to data from the ‘Social capital and Well-being In Neighborhoods in Ghent’ (SWING) survey of 2011, which consists of face-to-face interviews among the adult population in the second largest municipality of Belgium. Results suggest that individuals living in neighborhoods with lower levels of social trust and higher levels of disorder report more avoidance behaviour. Neighborhood effects on mental health are rather negligible. Individuals who experience more social support report both a better mental health and fewer avoidance behaviour.     

Testing Mean Differences among Groups: Multivariate and Repeated Measures Analysis with Minimal Assumptions

To date, there is a lack of satisfactory inferential techniques for the analysis of multivariate data in factorial designs, when only minimal assumptions on the data can be made. Presently available methods are limited to very particular study designs or assume either multivariate normality or equal covariance matrices across groups, or they do not allow for an assessment of the interaction effects across within-subjects and between-subjects variables. We propose and methodologically validate a parametric bootstrap approach that does not suffer from any of the above limitations, and thus provides a rather general and comprehensive methodological route to inference for multivariate and repeated measures data. As an example application, we consider data from two different Alzheimer’s disease (AD) examination modalities that may be used for precise and early diagnosis, namely, single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and electroencephalogram (EEG). These data violate the assumptions of classical multivariate methods, and indeed classical methods would not have yielded the same conclusions with regards to some of the factors involved.     

The influence of articulation,self‐monitoring ability,and sensitivity to others on creativity

Although it is often recommended to think aloud to solve problems and to become more creative, cognitive and social psychological research suggests thinking aloud may actually produce less creative ideas than thinking in silence. The results of two experiments indeed showed that thinking aloud hinders creativity—although people produced the same amount of new uses for an object, these were judged to be less original in the thinking aloud condition. Experiment 2 further showed that this effect was particularly pronounced for individuals with high sensitivity to what other's think of them and low ability to adapt to these expectations. From this, we conclude that the felt presence of an actual or implied audience when thinking aloud, reduces creative idea generation especially among those having difficulty adapting to others. Implications for creativity research, and for promoting creativity in applied settings such as organizational teams are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.