Inhibition Tasks Are Not Associated with a Variety of Behaviours in College Students

Executive functions are (EF) top-down control processes involved in regulating thoughts, ignoring distractions, and inhibiting impulses. It is widely believed that these processes are critical to self-control and, therefore, that performance on behavioural task measures of EF should be associated with individual differences in everyday life outcomes. The purpose of the present study was to test this assumption, focusing on the core executive function facet of inhibition. A sample of 463 undergraduates completed five laboratory inhibition tasks, along with three self-report measures of self-control and 28 self-report measures of life outcomes. Results showed that although most of the life outcome measures were associated with self-reported self-control, only one of the outcomes was associated with inhibition task performance at the latent-variable level, and this association was in the unexpected direction. Furthermore, few associations were found at the individual task level. These findings challenge the criterion validity of lab-based inhibition tasks. More generally, when considered alongside the known lack of convergent validity between inhibition tasks and self-report measures of self-control, the findings cast doubt on the task's construct validity as measures of self-control processes. Potential methodological and theoretical reasons for the poor performance of laboratory-based inhibition tasks are discussed. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Mapping visual attention with change blindness: new directions for a new method

Change blindness provides a new technique for mapping visual attention with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. Change blindness can occur when a brief full-field blank interferes with the detection of changes in a scene that occur during the blank. This interference can be overcome by attending to the location of a change. Because changes are detected at attended locations, but not at unattended locations, detection accuracy provides an indirect measure of the distribution of visual attention. The likelihood of detecting a new element in a scene provides a measure of the occurrence of attention at that element’s location. Potential new directions, advantages, and problems with this method are considered.     

Training psychiatric teams to do family systems acute psychiatry

This article presents an account of a comprehensive eighteen‐day, multi‐team, multidisciplinary training approach to family systems inpatient acute psychiatry. It has been developed and tested as part of the SYMPA project (systems therapy in acute psychiatry), which aims to establish systemic case conceptualizations and interventions as routine practice in acute psychiatry. Content, didactic characteristics and specifications of this training are discussed. To illustrate the practical implementation of the training, specifically designed exercises are described and a clinical case is included. The article concludes by presenting first results of the research on implementation indicating that the training had a significant impact on the quantity and quality of conversations with patients.