Action Research: A Missing Component in the Emergence of Social and Cross‐Cultural Psychology as a Fully Inter‐Connected Global Enterprise

Action research, as envisaged by Lewin, uses research to solve a social problem and provide theoretical knowledge. It involves a cyclical–spiral of planning, action, and evaluation with feedback between parties, taking into account power and value differences and empowering change agents. This has been all but abandoned by social psychologists today. Contemporary ‘participatory’ action research has migrated to fields like education and development and community studies that emphasize a social constructionist epistemology with a qualitative approach of recording bottom‐up processes of social change and community self‐awareness. The globalization of psychology affords new opportunities for a return to more top‐down Lewinian traditions, where academics in the developing world – embedded within a cultural milieu of interconnectedness and relatively exempt from pressures to publish or perish – can work together with academics in wealthy countries to produce a process oriented psychology that is capable of making a difference under conditions of climate change and the end of cheap oil. Asian social psychology, where strongly indigenous psychologies have taken root in growing economies, may take a leading role in this movement.     

Visual working memory capacity for objects from different categories: a face-specific maintenance effect

The capacity of visual working memory was examined when complex objects from different categories were remembered. Previous studies have not examined how visual similarity affects object memory, though it has long been known that similar-sounding phonological information interferes with rehearsal in auditory working memory. Here, experiments required memory for two or four objects. Memory capacity was compared between remembering four objects from a single object category to remembering four objects from two different categories. Two-category sets led to increased memory capacity only when upright faces were included. Capacity for face-only sets never exceeded their nonface counterparts, and the advantage for two-category sets when faces were one of the categories disappeared when inverted faces were used. These results suggest that two-category sets which include faces are advantaged in working memory but that faces alone do not lead to a memory capacity advantage.     

Attendance Rates in A Workplace Predict Subsequent Outcome of Employment-Based Reinforcement of Cocaine Abstinence in Methadone Patients

This study assessed whether attendance rates in a workplace predicted subsequent outcome of employment-based reinforcement of cocaine abstinence. Unemployed adults in Baltimore methadone programs who used cocaine (N  =  111) could work in a workplace for 4 hr every weekday and earn $10.00 per hour in vouchers for 26 weeks. During an induction period, participants provided urine samples but could work independent of their urinalysis results. After the induction period, participants had to provide urinalysis evidence of cocaine abstinence to work and maintain maximum pay. A multiple regression analysis showed that induction period attendance was independently associated with urinalysis evidence of cocaine abstinence under the employment-based abstinence reinforcement contingency. Induction period attendance may measure the reinforcing value of employment and could be used to guide the improvement of employment-based abstinence reinforcement.     

Iterated Belief Change and the Recovery Axiom

The axiom of recovery, while capturing a central intuition regarding belief change, has been the source of much controversy. We argue briefly against putative counterexamples to the axiom—while agreeing that some of their insight deserves to be preserved—and present additional recovery-like axioms in a framework that uses epistemic states, which encode preferences, as the object of revisions. This makes iterated revision possible and renders explicit the connection between iterated belief change and the axiom of recovery. We provide a representation theorem that connects the semantic conditions we impose on iterated revision and our additional syntactical properties. We show interesting similarities between our framework and that of Darwiche–Pearl (Artificial Intelligence 89:1–29 1997). In particular, we show that intuitions underlying the controversial (C2) postulate are captured by the recovery axiom and our recovery-like postulates (the latter can be seen as weakenings of (C2)). We present postulates for contraction, in the same spirit as the Darwiche–Pearl postulates for revision, and provide a theorem that connects our syntactic postulates with a set of semantic conditions. Lastly, we show a connection between the contraction postulates and a generalisation of the recovery axiom. Portions of this paper were originally presented at ECAI 2002.     

Stimulus spacing effects in duration perception are larger for auditory stimuli: Data and a model

Models of duration bisection have focused on the effects of stimulus spacing and stimulus modality. However, interactions between stimulus spacing and stimulus modality have not been examined systematically. Two duration bisection experiments that address this issue are reported. Experiment 1 showed that stimulus spacing influenced the classification of auditory, but not visual, stimuli. Experiment 2 used a wider stimulus range, and showed stimulus spacing effects for both visual and auditory stimuli, although the effects were larger for auditory stimuli. A version of Temporal Range Frequency Theory was applied to the data, and was used to demonstrate that the qualitative pattern of results can be captured with the single assumption that the durations of visual stimuli are less discriminable from one another than are the durations of auditory stimuli.     

Using eye-tracking to study audio-visual perceptual integration

Perceptual integration of audio-visual stimuli is fundamental to our everyday conscious experience. Eye-movement analysis may be a suitable tool for studying such integration, since eye movements respond to auditory as well as visual input. Previous studies have shown that additional auditory cues in visual-search tasks can guide eye movements more efficiently and reduce their latency. However, these auditory cues were task-relevant since they indicated the target position and onset time. Therefore, the observed effects may have been due to subjects using the cues as additional information to maximize their performance, without perceptually integrating them with the visual displays. Here, we combine a visual-tracking task with a continuous, task-irrelevant sound from a stationary source to demonstrate that audio-visual perceptual integration affects low-level oculomotor mechanisms. Auditory stimuli of constant, increasing, or decreasing pitch were presented. All sound categories induced more smooth-pursuit eye movement than silence, with the greatest effect occurring with stimuli of increasing pitch. A possible explanation is that integration of the visual scene with continuous sound creates the perception of continuous visual motion. Increasing pitch may amplify this effect through its common association with accelerating motion.     

Risk factors associated with suicide attempts and other self-injury among Hong Kong adolescents

This study examined 1,361 Chinese adolescents who reported self-injurious behaviors. Groups A and B both acknowledged deliberate self-injury, but only Group A had made a suicide attempt. Group C reported accidental self-injury. Deliberate self-injurers (Groups A and B) were more frequently girls, older, and with more suicidal ideation. Group A had more psychopathology, environmental and suicide-related risk factors than group B and C. Group C had higher depressive symptoms than noninjured controls. The study clarifies differences among self-injurious behavior groups based on expressed deliberate self-injury and self-reported suicide attempt. These three groups appear to present a continuum of risk.     

The validity and reliability of the Violence Risk Scale-Sexual Offender version: assessing sex offender risk and evaluating therapeutic change

The Violence Risk Scale-Sexual Offender version (VRS-SO) is a rating scale designed to assess risk and predict sexual recidivism, to measure and link treatment changes to sexual recidivism, and to inform the delivery of sexual offender treatment. The VRS-SO comprises 7 static and 17 dynamic items empirically or conceptually linked to sexual recidivism. Dynamic items with higher ratings identify treatment targets linked to sexual offending. A modified stages of change model assesses the offender's treatment readiness and change. File-based VRS-SO ratings were completed on 321 sex offenders followed up an average of 10 years post-release. VRS-SO scores predicted sexual and nonsexual violent recidivism post-release and demonstrated acceptable interrater reliability and concurrent validity. A factor analysis of the dynamic items generated 3 factors labeled Sexual Deviance, Criminality, and Treatment Responsivity, all of which predicted sexual recidivism and were differentially associated with different sex offender types. The dynamic items together made incremental contributions to sexual recidivism prediction after static risk was controlled for. Positive changes in the dynamic items, measured at pre- and posttreatment, were significantly related to reductions in sexual recidivism after risk and follow-up time were controlled for, suggesting that dynamic items are indeed dynamic or changeable in nature.     

Associations Among Asian Americans' Enculturation,Emotional Experiences,and Depressive Symptoms

Using a computer‐based text analysis of 218 Asian Americans' writing samples, the authors found that enculturation as well as use of negative emotion and positive emotion words were associated with depressive symptoms. Enculturation was also found to moderate the relation between use of negative emotion words and cognitive‐affective depressive symptoms. Utilizando un análisis de texto computerizado de muestras escritas por 218 individuos Asiático‐americanos, los autores hallaron que la asimilación cultural y el uso de palabras de emoción positivas y negativas están asociadas con síntomas depresivos. También se halló que la asimilación cultural modera la relación entre el uso de palabras de emoción negativas y los síntomas depresivos cognitivo‐afectivos.     

Cross‐Functional Team Organizational Citizenship Behavior in China: Shared Vision and Goal Interdependence Among Departments1

This study proposes that a shared organizational vision develops cooperative interdependence among departments that, in turn, facilitates cross‐functional teams' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Team members indicated their organizations' shared vision, and leaders indicated the goal interdependence among departments and the OCB of the teams. Structural equation analysis suggested that a shared organizational vision shapes goal interdependence among departments that, in turn, affected the OCB of 101 cross‐functional teams. The analysis suggested combining independent and competitive goals, and this combined measure negatively predicted team OCB. These results suggest that a shared organizational vision and cooperative goals among departments are important foundations for cross‐functional teams to contribute to the effective working of organizations through citizenship behavior.