BRIEF REPORT Gratitude and prosocial behaviour: An experimental test of gratitude

McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, and Larson (2001) posited that gratitude prompts individuals to behave prosocially. However, research supporting the prosocial effect of gratitude has relied on scenario and self-report methodology. To address limitations of previous research, this experiment utilised a laboratory induction of gratitude, a method that is potentially more covert than scenarios and that elicits actual grateful emotion. Prosocial responses to gratitude—operationalised as the distribution of resources to another—were paired with a self-report measure of gratitude to test the prosocial effect of gratitude. To investigate positive mood as an alternative explanation, this experiment compared responses of individuals receiving a favour to responses of individuals receiving a positive outcome by chance. A total of 40 participants were randomly assigned to either a Favour or Chance condition. Participants receiving a favour helped more and reported more gratitude compared to participants in the Chance condition.     

Spatial Reversal as a Measure of Executive Functioning in Children With Autism

The purpose of this experiment was to compare the executive functioning performance of children with autism with chronological- and verbal-matched controls in a spatial-reversal task. Three groups of children participated in this experiment. One group was identified as having autism (7 boys), the 2nd group contained 7 typically developing children (6 boys, 1 girl) who were matched to the 1st group based on their verbal performance, and the 3rd group contained 7 typically functioning children (6 boys, 1 girl) matched to the 1st group based on chronological age. Each group was given a spatial-reversal task containing 2 problems. In the 1st problem, children selected a toy on a particular side in a pair. In the 2nd problem, the contingencies were reversed such that children were to choose the toy on the opposite side. Children with autism generally performed worse than comparison groups as indicated by their overall higher rate of errors. However, these results must be qualified by considering the performance for each problem: Errors for the children with autism were infrequent during the 1st problem but increased in the 2nd, whereas errors for comparison children showed the opposite pattern. When these results from the spatial-reversal task were intérpreted from the perspective of hypothesis-testing theory, the executive functioning deficiency of children with autism was found to involve the selection and testing of stereotypic response sets that were not likely to be revised or changed flexibly according to feedback from the environment or the demands of the task.     

Using Mindfulness- and Acceptance-Based Treatments With Clients From Nondominant Cultural and/or Marginalized Backgrounds: Clinical Considerations,Meta-Analysis Findings,and Introduction to the Special Series: Clinical Considerations in using Acceptance- and Mindfulness-based Treatments With Diverse Populations

A growing body of research suggests that mindfulness- and acceptance-based principles can increase efforts aimed at reducing human suffering and increasing quality of life. A critical step in the development and evaluation of these new approaches to treatment is to determine the acceptability and efficacy of these treatments for clients from nondominant cultural and/or marginalized backgrounds. This special series brings together the wisdom of clinicians and researchers who are currently engaged in clinical practice and treatment research with populations who are historically underrepresented in the treatment literature. As an introduction to the series, this paper presents a theoretical background and research context for the papers in the series, highlights the elements of mindfulness- and acceptance-based treatments that may be congruent with culturally responsive treatment, and briefly outlines the general principles of cultural competence and responsive treatment. Additionally, the results of a meta-analysis of mindfulness- and acceptance-based treatments with clients from nondominant cultural and/or marginalized backgrounds are presented. Our search yielded 32 studies totaling 2,198 clients. Results suggest small (Hedges' g = .38, 95% CI = .11 – .64) to large (Hedges' g = 1.32, 95% CI = .61 – 2.02) effect sizes for mindfulness- and acceptance-based treatments, which varied by study design.     

Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement and the promotion of deviance

ABSTRACT

As a social movement demanding universal suffrage, Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement mobilized thousands of young protesters and fomented radical views stridently subversive of mainland China’s political interference. The social movement continues to promote further forms of deviance in the form of calling for independence. As the city and former British colony lacks the sovereignty of statehood and democracy, the movement’s non-conformity to law needs to be contextualized as a form of deviance. In contributing to the deviancy of social movements, we utilize data obtained from interviews with participants of the movement alongside those who opposed the protest to understand the East Asian cultural setting of the Umbrella Movement’s promotion of deviance.     

CD4 Count and Physical Symptoms Among Urban African American Mothers with HIV: An Examination of the Role of Optimism and Depressive Symptoms

The current study examined the link between immune functioning (CD4 count) and physical symptoms, as well as the moderating role of optimism and depressive symptoms, in a sample of 99 low income, inner city African American women with HIV. Although there was no main effect of CD4 count on physical symptoms, depressive symptoms moderated the association between CD4 count and physical symptoms. More compromised immune functioning (lower CD4 count) was associated with more physical symptoms under conditions of higher levels of depressive symptoms, but not lower levels of depressive symptoms. This finding was observed using both a self-report measure and a clinician-rating of women’s depressive symptoms. There were no main or interactive effects for optimism. Clinical implications and future research directions are presented.     

Emotional content of true and false memories

Many people believe that emotional memories (including those that arise in therapy) are particularly likely to represent true events because of their emotional content. But is emotional content a reliable indicator of memory accuracy? The current research assessed the emotional content of participants' pre-existing (true) and manipulated (false) memories for childhood events. False memories for one of three emotional childhood events were planted using a suggestive manipulation and then compared, along several subjective dimensions, with other participants' true memories. On most emotional dimensions (e.g., how emotional was this event for you?), true and false memories were indistinguishable. On a few measures (e.g., intensity of feelings at the time of the event), true memories were more emotional than false memories in the aggregate, yet true and false memories were equally likely to be rated as uniformly emotional. These results suggest that even substantial emotional content may not reliably indicate memory accuracy.