Preventing weight gain in adults: a pound of prevention

This study evaluated the feasibility and effectiveness of a program for weight gain prevention in normal-weight adults. Two hundred nineteen participants were randomized to either weight gain prevention treatment or no treatment for a period of 12 months. Those in the treatment group received monthly newsletters relating to weight management, participated in a financial incentive system, and were offered an optional four-session education course in the sixth month of the program. Results demonstrated high interest in weight gain prevention among individuals who were not objectively overweight. Participation, as measured by return of postcards sent with each newsletter, was approximately 75%. Results after 1 year showed a net weight loss in the group receiving the program of 1.8 lb compared to those in the control group. Eighty-two percent of program participants maintained or lost weight, compared to 56% of the control group. It is concluded that programs for weight gain prevention are feasible in adults and may be more effective than weight loss treatment programs in addressing the problem of community-wide obesity.     

An elementary student as a behavioral engineer

Four first-grade public school students exhibited non-study behaviors during a period when all children were to study individually. A fifth-grade student modified the maladaptive behaviors of the four first-grade students. Lights on the four students' desks, which were associated with opportunity for reinforcement, rapidly brought study behavior under stimulus control. Differential reinforcement of other behaviors dramatically decreased studying. Reinforcement was reinstituted and studying returned to a high and stable rate. Surreptitious post-experimental observation using closed-circuit TV indicated that the behavioral changes effected during the experimental phases were partially maintained by the regular classroom environment. A replication of the baseline phase with the observer in the classroom produced an increase in the rate of study behavior, indicating that the observer's presence acted as a discriminative stimulus for studying. An additional contingency requiring improved academic behavior was imposed before the fifth grader was given the opportunity to engage in the behavior modification experiment.     

Über einige Bedingungen des Zusammenhanges von Lidschlag und Blickwendung

Zusammenfassung Der Zusammenhang zwischen Blickwendung und Lidschlag wurde experimentell untersucht. Als wirksame Faktoren erwiesen sich die Größe der Blickwendung, die Kopfbewegung, die Art der Wahrnehmungsobjekte (Person — Gegenstand) und bei Personen der Grad der Aufmerksamkeitszuwendung. Über alle Versuchsbedingungen hinweg zeigte sich die relative Häufigkeit des Lidschlages bei der Blickwendung als individuell konstant.

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The relationship between gaze movement and eye blink under various conditions

Summary The relationship between gaze movement and eye blink was investigated. The angle of eye movement, movement of the head, the type of objects perceived (person-object) and (when persons were viewed) the degree of attention were found to be relevant factors. Under all conditions studied, the relative frequency of blinking during gaze movement was shown to be individually constant.

     

Counselling of alcohol-dependents based on a model of change to abstinence

A model of change to abstinence in alcohol-dependents is presented based on the theory of reasoned action of Ajzen & Fishbein. The model includes attitudes, defence mechanisms and norms about aspects of alcohol consumption. An empirical study supports elements of the model. Conclusions pertinent to the counselling process are drawn.     

The short-term storage as a buffer memory between long-term storage and the motor system: A simultaneous-processing model

It is assumed that in a free-recall task the short-term store serves as a memory buffer between the long-term store and a final motor stage of word production. Because of this the retrieval process in long-term store is not hindered by the final motor stage of word production since continued output from the long-term store queues in the buffer for motoric processing. Otherwise a time consuming communication between the two processes would be necessary. A stochastic model of this conceptualization is provided to predict the temporal course of free recall as well as a paradigm in which the contribution of the short-term store in free recall can be studied. The experimental results from this paradigm were used to test the model and to estimate short-term storage capacity on the basis of the time course of free recall. The model predictions were in good agreement with the data and the capacity estimate coincides well with estimates found by totally different methods reported in the literature.     

The subject of “We intend”

This paper examines and compares the ways in which intentions of the singular kind (“I intend”) and the plural kind (“we intend”) are subjective. Are intentions of the plural kind ours in the same way intentions of the singular kind are mine? Starting with the singular case, it is argued that “I intend” is subjective in virtue of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is special in that it is self-identifying, self-validating, self-committing, and self-authorizing. Moving to the plural form, it is argued that in spite of apparent differences, attitudes of the form “we intend” are subjective in the same way. The self-knowledge at work here is plural rather than singular. This supports a plural subject account of collective intentionality. It is argued that the worries sometimes raised in the literature against the metaphysical “spookiness” of plural subjects are due to a fundamental misconception of the way in which attitudes of either kind –singular and plural – are subjective.     

A 2 × 2 taxonomy of multilevel latent contextual models: accuracy-bias trade-offs in full and partial error correction models

In multilevel modeling, group-level variables (L2) for assessing contextual effects are frequently generated by aggregating variables from a lower level (L1). A major problem of contextual analyses in the social sciences is that there is no error-free measurement of constructs. In the present article, 2 types of error occurring in multilevel data when estimating contextual effects are distinguished: unreliability that is due to measurement error and unreliability that is due to sampling error. The fact that studies may or may not correct for these 2 types of error can be translated into a 2 × 2 taxonomy of multilevel latent contextual models comprising 4 approaches: an uncorrected approach, partial correction approaches correcting for either measurement or sampling error (but not both), and a full correction approach that adjusts for both sources of error. It is shown mathematically and with simulated data that the uncorrected and partial correction approaches can result in substantially biased estimates of contextual effects, depending on the number of L1 individuals per group, the number of groups, the intraclass correlation, the number of indicators, and the size of the factor loadings. However, the simulation study also shows that partial correction approaches can outperform full correction approaches when the data provide only limited information in terms of the L2 construct (i.e., small number of groups, low intraclass correlation). A real-data application from educational psychology is used to illustrate the different approaches.     

Happy with a difference, unhappy with an identity: Observers’ mood determines processing depth in visual search

Visual search for feature targets was employed to investigate whether the mechanisms underlying visual selective attention are modulated by observers’ mood. The effects of induced mood on overall mean reaction times and on changes and repetitions of target-defining features and dimensions across consecutive trials were measured. The results showed that reaction times were significantly slower in the negative than in the positive and neutral mood groups. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that the processing stage that is activated to select visual information in a feature search task is modulated by the observer’s mood. In participants with positive or neutral moods, dimension-specific, but no feature-specific, intertrial transition effects were found, suggesting that these observers based their responses on a salience signal coding the most conspicuous display location. Conversely, intertrial effects in observers in a negative mood were feature-specific in nature, suggesting that these participants accessed the feature identity level before responding.