Reflections on a Community Psychology Setting and the Future of the Field

The 50th anniversary of the Swampscott Conference offers an opportunity to reflect on a community psychology setting, The Consultation Center at Yale, that was formed in response to the 1963 Community Mental Health Act and the 1965 Swampscott Conference. The Center has flourished as a community psychology setting for practice, research, and training for 39 of the 50 years since Swampscott. Its creation and existence over this period offers an opportunity for reflection on the types of settings needed to sustain the field into the future.     

Self‐efficacy or perceived behavioural control: Which influences consumers' physical activity and healthful eating behaviour maintenance?

This research investigated the role of a commercial program, Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation (MB12WBT), that uses a variety of tools including social support to influence weight management behaviours such as exercising and eating healthfully. The need for research into weight management remains current given obesity rates have continued to increase in recent decades. Weight management is a complex behaviour that for many consumers involves barriers that influence their commitment to continue exercising and eating healthily. The Theory of Planned Behaviour is frequently used to explain, and to a lesser extent predict, behaviours such as physical activity and healthy eating; however, there is much debate as to whether a perceived behavioural control variable or self‐efficacy is the best predictor of behaviour. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse data from a sample of 724 respondents who answered a baseline and three month follow‐up survey. The analysis revealed self‐efficacy and perceived behavioural control were two distinct constructs. Self‐efficacy was a better predictor of behaviour than perceived behavioural control variables as suggested in the original Theory of Planned Behaviour. Furthermore, self‐efficacy had a significant impact on exercising and eating healthfully behaviour. The findings and implications for both behaviour change theory and practice are discussed.     

Remembering specific features of emotional events across time: The role of REM sleep and prefrontal theta oscillations

When an episode of emotional significance is encountered, it often results in the formation of a highly resistant memory representation that is easily retrieved for many succeeding years. Recent research shows that beyond generic consolidation processes, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep importantly contributes to this effect. However, the boundary conditions of consolidation processes during REM sleep, specifically whether these extend to source memory, have not been examined extensively. The current study tested the effects of putative consolidation processes emerging during REM sleep and slow wave sleep (SWS) on item and source memory of negative and neutral images, respectively. Results demonstrate superior emotional relative to neutral item memory retention after both late night REM sleep and early night SWS. Emotional source memory, on the other hand, exhibited an attenuated decline following late night REM sleep, whereas neutral source memory was selectively preserved across early night SWS. This pattern of results suggests a selective preservation of emotional source memory during REM sleep that is functionally dissociable from SWS-dependent reprocessing of neutral source memory. This was further substantiated by a neurophysiological dissociation: Postsleep emotional source memory was selectively correlated with frontal theta lateralization (REM sleep), whereas postsleep neutral item memory was correlated with SWS spindle power. As such, the present results contribute to a more comprehensive characterization of sleep-related consolidation mechanisms underlying emotional and neutral memory retention. Subsidiary analysis of emotional reactivity to previously encoded material revealed an enhancing rather than attenuating effect of late night REM sleep on emotional responses.     

Presaccadic target competition attenuates distraction

Although it is well known that salient nontargets can capture attention despite being task irrelevant, several studies have reported short fixation dwell times, suggesting the presence of an attentional mechanism to “rapidly reject” dissimilar distractors. Rapid rejection has been hypothesized to depend on the strong mismatch between distractor features and the target template, but it is unknown whether the presence of strong feature mismatch is sufficient, or if the presence of a target at a competing location is also necessary. Here, we investigated this question by first replicating the finding of rapid rejection for dissimilar distractors in the presence of a concurrent target (Experiment 1); manipulating the onset of the target stimulus relative to the distractor (Experiment 2); and using a saccade-contingent display to delay the target onset until after the first saccade was initiated. The results demonstrate that the speed of distractor rejection depends on the presence of target competition prior to the initiation of the first saccade, and not after the saccade. This suggests that stimulus competition for covert attention sets a “saccade priority map” that unfolds over time, resulting in faster corrective saccades to an anticipated object with higher top-down attentional priority.     

Projection of Own on Others' Job Characteristics: Evidence for the False Consensus Effect in Job Characteristics Information

The present study is an examination of the influence of rater characteristics as a source of bias in job characteristics information, as gleaned from the Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS). Participants (N=133) completed an initial JDS for own job characteristics. Non‐incumbents (n=104) then completed a secondary JDS in order to rate incumbents' job characteristics. Non‐incumbents' personality dimensions, own job characteristics, job satisfaction level, and incumbent satisfaction level were hypothesized as predictors of ratings of job characteristics of incumbents. Results indicate that two characteristics, job autonomy and dealing with others, were influenced by non‐incumbents standing on these characteristics, and demonstrated evidence of the false consensus effect. Limitations and implications for interpreting job information are discussed.     

HR Interventions that Go Viral

What causes one Human Resource (HR) intervention to thrive while another dies? The purpose of this paper is to explore the characteristics of HR interventions that are not only self-sustaining, but adapt and gain momentum over time. Based on a review of the literature, a case study, and 16 critical incident interviews with senior Industrial-Organizational (I–O) and HR professionals, several characteristics of the organization, the intervention, and the leader consistently emerged as important in creating sustainable HR programs, suggesting several new directions for future research.     

Genetic Counseling Considerations in the Evaluation of Families for Lynch Syndrome��A Review

Lynch syndrome is the most common hereditary colorectal cancer syndrome and the most common cause of hereditary endometrial cancer. Identifying and evaluating families for Lynch syndrome is increasing in complexity due to the recognition that: family history-based clinical criteria lack sensitivity and specificity; genetic testing for Lynch syndrome continues to evolve as understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying it evolves; and the Lynch syndrome phenotype encompasses multiple organ systems and demonstrates overlap with other hereditary cancer syndromes. This document is a summary of considerations when evaluating individuals and families for Lynch syndrome, including information on cancer risks, diagnostic criteria, tumor and genetic testing strategies, and the management of individuals with this condition.     

Epistemological and ethical assessment of obesity bias in industrialized countries

Bernard Lonergan's cognitive theory challenges us to raise questions about both the cognitive process through which obesity is perceived as a behaviour change issue and the objectivity of such a moral judgment. Lonergan's theory provides the theoretical tools to affirm that anti-fat discrimination, in the United States of America and in many industrialized countries, is the result of both a group bias that resists insights into the good of other groups and a general bias of anti-intellectualism that tends to set common sense against insights that require any thorough scientific analyses. While general bias diverts the public's attention away from the true aetiology of obesity, group bias sustains an anti-fat culture that subtly legitimates discriminatory practices and policies against obese people. Although anti-discrimination laws may seem to be a reasonable way of protecting obese and overweight individuals from discrimination, obesity bias can be best addressed by reframing the obesity debate from an environmental perspective from which tools and strategies to address both the social and individual determinants of obesity can be developed. Attention should not be concentrated on individuals' behaviour as it is related to lifestyle choices, without giving due consideration to the all-encompassing constraining factors which challenge the social and rational blindness of obesity bias.     

Holding a manual response sequence in memory can disrupt vocal responses that share semantic features with the manual response

Holding an action plan in memory for later execution can delay execution of another action if the actions share a similar (compatible) feature. This compatibility interference (CI) occurs for actions that share the same response modality (e.g., manual response). We investigated whether CI can generalize to actions that utilize different response modalities (manual and vocal). In three experiments, participants planned and withheld a sequence of key-presses with the left- or right-hand based on the visual identity of the first stimulus, and then immediately executed a speeded, vocal response (‘left’ or ‘right’) to a second visual stimulus. The vocal response was based on discriminating stimulus color (Experiment 1), reading a written word (Experiment 2), or reporting the antonym of a written word (Experiment 3). Results showed that CI occurred when the manual response hand (e.g., left) was compatible with the identity of the vocal response (e.g., ‘left’) in Experiment 1 and 3, but not in Experiment 2. This suggests that partial overlap of semantic codes is sufficient to obtain CI unless the intervening action can be accessed automatically (Experiment 2). These findings are consistent with the code occupation hypothesis and the general framework of the theory of event coding (Behav Brain Sci 24:849–878, 2001a; Behav Brain Sci 24:910–937, 2001b).