Providing misleading and reinstatement information a year after it happened: effects on long-term memory

The question addressed here is whether misleading suggestions made to children a year after target events had occurred will alter long-term recall. One group (3-13 years old when injured and treated in a hospital Emergency Room) were given both misleading and accurate reinstating information a year later, and recall of target events assessed both 1 week and another year later (i.e., 2 years post-injury). A control group had recall assessed both 1 and 2 years post-injury. Misleading had little effect on children's recall 1 week later, although a few misled details were reported. However, a year later virtually none of the misleading information was incorporated into long-term recall. Rather, children were more, not less, accurate when recalling details about which they had been misled. Results were attributed to target events having been highly memorable and well rehearsed via previous recalls, and detection of discrepancies between memory and misleading information focusing attention on targeted details.     

Psychopathy and comorbidity in a young offender sample: taking a closer look at psychopathy's potential importance over disruptive behavior disorders

The authors examined the construct of psychopathy as applied to 130 adolescent offenders using 3 psychopathy measures and a broad range of DSM-TV Axis I diagnoses and psychosocial problems. Measures used in the study included the following: (a) Psychopathy Checklist-Youth Version, (b) Antisocial Process Screening Device, (c) a modified version of the Self-Report Psychopathy-II scale, and (d) the Adolescent Psychopathology Scale. Results from this study offer incremental support for the construct validity of psychopathy in youth. Psychopathy evidenced better convergent and discriminant validity results than did the disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs) such as oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD). Despite this finding, psychopathy scales nonetheless correlated with other forms of psychopathology at a higher rate than was expected, suggesting that comorbidity is high even when psychopathy is used as a classification scheme. Also, hierarchical multiple regression was used to determine whether psychopathy offered an improvement in the prediction of previous violent and nonviolent offenses. The results for the current study were mixed, with only the PCL-YV significantly predicting previous violent and nonviolent offenses beyond the DBDs. The findings indicate that psychopathy may offer incremental improvement over DBDs with regard to level of comorbidity and perhaps even prediction. However, simply extending the adult construct of psychopathy to youth without considering the array of psychopathology that may accompany adolescent psychopathy could be misleading.     

Normative data for the selective reminding test: a random digit dialing sample

Healthy control participants (46 women, M age=44.3 yr., SD=7.6; 29 men) were recruited to undergo a comprehensive neuropsychological battery and serve as a comparison group in a study of cognitive functioning in patients with Lyme isease. Participants were selected using Mitofsky-Waksberg random digit dialing. The Buschke 12-word, six-trial Selective Reminding Test was administered as part of the neuropsychological battery and normative data are presented stratified by age and sex. Performance on alternate forms of this measure were examined. Mean education, intelligence quotient, and Wide Range Achievement Test-3 Reading scores are reported.     

The Effects of a Self-Management Program in Reducing Off-Task Behavior

Two adolescents with learning disabilities were taught to use a self-management program to decrease off-task behavior in two general education classes and a study hall class. The self-management program included three components—a checklist, a behavior rating scale, and a self-monitoring form. A multiple baseline design was implemented across settings for each participant. The findings indicated that the self-management program was successful in all three settings in decreasing off-task behaviors. Additionally, the teacher ratings of student behavior were found to increase during self-monitoring, suggesting the overall behavior of the students improved during the self-management program. The results are discussed in terms of the novelty of using teacher ratings of student behavior to demonstrate a relationship between the implementation of the self-management program and teacher reports of changes in other classroom behaviors.     

Understanding the mediating role of toxic emotional experiences in the relationship between negative emotions and adverse outcomes

Research has demonstrated that experiencing negative emotions at work can have adverse consequences for individuals and organizations. However, little research has explored why negative emotions can be associated with detrimental effects. To address this gap, the authors argue that it is critical to consider how emotions are experienced. Across two field studies (N= 876 and N= 136), the authors investigate the mediating role of toxic emotional experiences (TEEs) in the relationship between negative emotions and adverse outcomes. The three TEEs dimensions (i.e., psychologically recurring, disconnecting, and draining) are examined as well as the composite score. Results indicated that the TEEs composite mediated the relationship between negative emotions and psychological health, attitudes towards the organization, performance, and helping behaviours. Mixed results were found for the three TEEs dimensions. A number of theoretical implications are explored including the differential roles of negative emotions versus TEEs, the distinct effects associated with each of the TEEs dimensions, and the importance of exploring how emotions are experienced at work. Practical implications related to effectively managing negative emotions and preventing ‘toxic' experiences are also discussed.     

The bank of standardized stimuli (BOSS): comparison between French and English norms

Throughout the last decades, numerous picture data sets have been developed, such as the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) set, and have been normalized for variables such as name and familiarity; however, due to cultural and linguistic differences, norms can vary from one country to another. The effect due specifically to culture has already been demonstrated by comparing samples from different countries where the same language is spoken. On the other hand, it is still not clear how differences between languages may affect norms. The present study explores this issue by collecting and comparing norms on names and many other features from French Canadian speakers and English Canadian speakers living in Montreal, who thus live in similar cultural environments. Norms were collected for the photos of objects from the Bank of Standardized Stimuli (BOSS) by asking participants to name the objects, to categorize them, and to rate their familiarity, visual complexity, object agreement, viewpoint agreement, and manipulability. Names and ratings from the French speakers are available in Appendix A, available in the supplemental materials. The results show that most of the norms are comparable across linguistic groups and also that the ratings given are correlated across linguistic groups. The only significant group differences were found in viewpoint agreement and visual complexity. Overall, there was good concordance between the norms collected from French and English native speakers living in the same cultural setting.     

Embodied perception of reachable space: how do we manage threatening objects?

This study aimed at determining whether the size of reachable space is affected by the level of danger of some everyday manipulable objects. Two possibilities are examined: Dangerous objects affect the size of reachable space because of long-term semantic knowledge of their potential hurtful value or the on-line relation between objects' dangerous attributes and the body. The experimental paradigm combined the danger value (dangerous/not dangerous) and the orientation of objects (e.g. pointing away from/towards the perceiver). Reachability judgments measured the size of peripersonal space, and perception of objects' danger was estimated through questionnaires. Results revealed that, whatever the estimated level of objects' danger, the extent of peripersonal space was reduced when the threatening part of dangerous objects was oriented towards participants, not when oriented away. This suggests that the characteristics of the here and now body-objects interaction are crucial in affecting the boundary of peripersonal space.     

Egocentric/allocentric and coordinate/categorical haptic encoding in blind people

In this research, the impact of visual experience on the capacity to use egocentric (body-centered) and allocentric (object-centered) representations in combination with categorical (invariant non-metric) and coordinate (variable metric) spatial relations was examined. Participants memorized through haptic (congenitally blind, adventitiously blind, and blindfolded) and haptic + visual (sighted) exploration triads of 3D objects and then they were asked to judge: "which object was closest/farthest to you?" (egocentric-coordinate); "which object was on your left/right?" (egocentric-categorical); "which object was closest/farthest to a target object (e.g., cone)?" (allocentric-coordinate); "which object was on the left/right of the target object (e.g., cone)?" (allocentric-categorical). The results showed a slowdown in processing time when congenitally blind people provided allocentric-coordinate judgments and adventitiously blind people egocentric-categorical judgments. Moreover, in egocentric judgments, adventitiously blind participants were less accurate than sighted participants. However, the overall performance was quite good and this supports the idea that the differences observed are more quantitative than qualitative. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.     

Effects of three types of noncontingent auditory stimulation on vocal stereotypy in children with autism

We evaluated the effects of 3 types of noncontingent auditory stimulation (music, white noise, recordings of vocal stereotypy) on 2 children with autism who engaged in high rates of vocal stereotypy. For both participants, the music condition was the most effective in decreasing vocal stereotypy to near-zero levels, resulted in the highest parent social validity ratings, and was selected as most preferred in treatment preference evaluations.     

Does the Vigilance-Avoidance Gazing Behavior of Children with Separation Anxiety Disorder Change after Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy?

Cognitive biases are of interest in understanding the development of anxiety disorders. They also play a significant role during psychotherapy, where cognitive biases are modified in order to break the vicious cycle responsible for maintaining anxiety disorders. In a previous study, the vigilance-avoidance pattern was shown in children with separation anxiety disorder (In-Albon et al. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 38:225-235, 2010). The exhibited avoidance pattern may be essential for the maintenance of the anxiety disorder. Therefore, in the present study we used eye tracking methodology presenting disorder specific pictures to examine possible changes in the vigilance-avoidance pattern in 18 children with separation anxiety disorder after cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) and 13 healthy controls. Results indicated that following treatment, the vigilance pattern of children with separation anxiety disorder reduced significantly. Thus, the vigilance-avoidance pattern can be modified by CBT.