Reinforcement of compliance with respiratory treatment in a child with cystic fibrosis.

An 8-year-old boy with cystic fibrosis (CF), mental retardation, and autism exhibited noncompliance with respiratory treatments that were essential for the management of his CF. A treatment involving shaping cooperation while still allowing escape for aggression and avoidance behavior resulted in increases compliance with respiratory treatments and decreases in problem behavior. Treatment gains were maintained over 3 months.     

Subtypes of severe psychological distress among US Air Force remote warriors: A latent class analysis

US Air Force remote warrior personnel include a range of military personnel composed of remotely piloted aircraft aircrew, intelligence operators, and cyber warfare operators. Job duties in these professions entail long work hours, rotating shifts, and regular engagement in combat operations. Although research has identified a number of factors correlated with elevated burnout and emotional distress in this population, little is known about the unique needs of discrete subgroups of distressed personnel. In a sample of 7,550 US Air Force remote warriors, results of latent class analysis yielded four distinct classes. Three of the four reported moderately elevated burnout and job dissatisfaction but differed with respect to demographics and development career stage. The fourth group reported significantly higher levels of emotional distress, burnout, job dissatisfaction, and problems in living. This latter group was comparable to the mid-career group with respect to demographics, although this group had much lower levels of responsibility and indicators of career advancement. Results suggest that, among remote warrior personnel, there are several subtypes of elevated emotional distress. Prevention and intervention strategies that are matched to each subtype may yield better occupational and mental health outcomes than universal, “one size fits all” strategies.     

Famous people knowledge and the right and left temporal lobes

It is generally accepted that the anterior temporal lobes support knowledge of famous people. The specific roles of the right and left temporal lobe remain a subject of debate, with some studies suggesting differential roles based on modality (visual versus verbal information) and others category (person knowledge versus general semantics). The present study re-examined performance of semantic dementia patients with predominantly right and predominantly left temporal lobe atrophy on famous face, famous name and general semantic tasks, with the specific aim of testing the hypothesis that the right temporal lobe has a privileged role for person knowledge and the left temporal lobe for general semantic knowledge. Comparisons of performance rankings across tasks showed no evidence to support this hypothesis. By contrast, there was robust evidence from naming, identification and familiarity measures for modality effects: right-sided atrophy being associated with relatively greater impairment for faces and visual tasks and left-sided atrophy for names and verbal tasks. A double dissociation in test scores in two patients reinforced these findings. The data present a challenge for the influential `semantic hub' model, which views the anterior temporal lobes as an area of convergence in which semantic information is represented in amodal form.     

Short horizons and tempting situations: Lack of continuity to our future selves leads to unethical decision making and behavior

People who feel continuity with their future selves are more likely to behave in ethically responsible ways as compared to people who lack continuity with their future selves. We find that individual differences in perceived similarity to one’s future self predicts tolerance of unethical business decisions (Studies 1a and 1b), and that the consideration of future consequences mediates the extent to which people regard inappropriate negotiation strategies as unethical (Study 2). We reveal that low future self-continuity predicts unethical behavior in the form of lies, false promises, and cheating (Studies 3 and 4), and that these relationships hold when controlling for general personality dimensions and trait levels of self-control (Study 4). Finally, we establish a causal relationship between future self-continuity and ethical judgments by showing that when people are prompted to focus on their future self (as opposed to the future), they express more disapproval of unethical behavior (Study 5).     

Understanding all inconsistency compensation as a palliative response to violated expectations

It has been repeatedly shown that, when people have experiences that are inconsistent with their expectations, they engage in a variety of compensatory efforts. Although there have been many superficially different accounts for these behaviors, a potentially unifying inconsistency compensation perspective is currently coalescing. Following from a common prediction error/conflict monitoring mechanism, any given inconsistency is understood as evoking a common syndrome of aversive arousal. In turn, this aversive arousal is understood to motivate palliative efforts, which manifest as the analogous compensation behaviors reported within different psychological literatures. Based on this perspective, compensation efforts following both 'high-level' (e.g., attitudinal dissonance) and 'low-level' (e.g., Stroop task color/word mismatches) inconsistencies can now be understood in terms of a common motivational account.     

Richard Lynn’s contributions to personality and intelligence

An evaluation is presented of Lynn’s work on national differences in personality, race differences in intelligence, national IQs & economic development, correlates of national IQs, the Flynn effect, sex differences, eugenics and dysgenics, race differences in psychopathic personality, and intelligence of the Jews.     

Perceived social status and learning experiences in Social Cognitive Career Theory

The purpose of this study was to test a model based on Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994) that placed perceived social status as an antecedent of career-related learning experiences, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations. Gender was included in the present model and results indicated that gender related as expected to differential exposure to career-related learning experiences in Holland's (1997) RIASEC domains. After controlling for the effects of gender, results demonstrated that perceived social status related positively to learning experiences in the Investigative, Enterprising, and Conventional areas among 380 college students. Further, these enhanced learning experiences mediated the relationships between perceived social status and self-efficacy, and between perceived social status and outcome expectations, for the Investigative, Enterprising, and Conventional areas. These findings highlight the importance of perceived social status as a predictor of exposure to different types of career-related learning experiences that subsequently shape students' self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and (presumably) interests in particular RIASEC areas. Results are discussed in terms of exposure to career-related learning experiences in RIASEC domains with differing levels of prestige and implications of these results for developing interventions to enhance the learning experiences of students who report lower levels of perceived social status are presented.