Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Successes and Failures: Eight Personal Perspectives

Eight experts in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) provided personal examples of their own successes and failures in applying REBT to themselves. The experts actively talked to themselves both rationally and irrationally. Understandably, there were far more shoulds, oughts, musts, and have to's in the narratives in which the experts described when they failed to use REBT than when they succeeded in using REBT. Rational self‐talk was more prevalent in the examples of how REBT was successfully used by the experts.     

Dissociating affective evaluation and social cognitive processes in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex

In recent studies, various regions of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) have been implicated in at least two potentially different mental functions: reasoning about the minds of other people (social cognition) and processing reward related information (affective evaluation). In this study, we test whether the activation in a specific area of the vmPFC, the para-anterior cingulate cortex (PACC), correlates with the reward value of stimuli in general or is specifically associated with social cognition. Participants performed a time estimation task with trial-to-trial feedback in which reward and social context were manipulated separately. Reward was manipulated by giving either positive or negative feedback in the form of small squirts of fluid delivered orally. Social context was manipulated by instructing participants that positive and negative feedback was determined by another person or a computer. The data demonstrate a main effect of feedback, but not social context, in the PACC, suggesting that this area of the vmPFC serves a general function in evaluating and/or representing reward value. In addition, activity in a more anterior subregion of the vmPFC demonstrated reward-related sensitivity only in the social context. Another area that showed a similar interaction was the subgenual cingulate, but this region was only sensitive to negative feedback in the social condition. These findings suggest that, within the vmPFC, the PACC subserves primarily an affective function, whereas in other regions social context can modulate affective responses.     

Visual word recognition by bilinguals in a sentence context: evidence for nonselective lexical access

Recent research on bilingualism has shown that lexical access in visual word recognition by bilinguals is not selective with respect to language. In the present study, the authors investigated language-independent lexical access in bilinguals reading sentences, which constitutes a strong unilingual linguistic context. In the first experiment, Dutch-English bilinguals performing a 2nd language (L2) lexical decision task were faster to recognize identical and nonidentical cognate words (e.g., banaan-banana) presented in isolation than control words. A second experiment replicated this effect when the same set of cognates was presented as the final words of low-constraint sentences. In a third experiment that used eyetracking, the authors showed that early target reading time measures also yield cognate facilitation but only for identical cognates. These results suggest that a sentence context may influence, but does not nullify, cross-lingual lexical interactions during early visual word recognition by bilinguals.     

Norms of age of acquisition and concreteness for 30,000 Dutch words

Word processing studies increasingly make use of regression analyses based on large numbers of stimuli (the so-called megastudy approach) rather than experimental designs based on small factorial designs. This requires the availability of word features for many words. Following similar studies in English, we present and validate ratings of age of acquisition and concreteness for 30,000 Dutch words. These include nearly all lemmas language researchers are likely to be interested in. The ratings are freely available for research purposes.     

Sequential dynamics in visual short-term memory

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is thought to help bridge across changes in visual input, and yet many studies of VSTM employ static displays. Here we investigate how VSTM copes with sequential input. In particular, we characterize the temporal dynamics of several different components of VSTM performance, including: storage probability, precision, variability in precision, guessing, and swapping. We used a variant of the continuous-report VSTM task developed for static displays, quantifying the contribution of each component with statistical likelihood estimation, as a function of serial position and set size. In Experiments 1 and 2, storage probability did not vary by serial position for small set sizes, but showed a small primacy effect and a robust recency effect for larger set sizes; precision did not vary by serial position or set size. In Experiment 3, the recency effect was shown to reflect an increased likelihood of swapping out items from earlier serial positions and swapping in later items, rather than an increased rate of guessing for earlier items. Indeed, a model that incorporated responding to non-targets provided a better fit to these data than alternative models that did not allow for swapping or that tried to account for variable precision. These findings suggest that VSTM is updated in a first-in-first-out manner, and they bring VSTM research into closer alignment with classical working memory research that focuses on sequential behavior and interference effects.     

Attentional prioritisation of threatening information: Examining the role of the size of the attentional window

In line with most models of emotion, research has shown that threatening information receives attentional priority over neutral information. Recently, it has been suggested that the degree to which participants divide their attention across the visual field (the attentional window) may modulate the extent to which salient objects are attentionally prioritised. In the current study, participants were required to identify a target inside one of a variable number of coloured circles. One colour (Conditioned Stimulus, CS +) was fear-conditioned using an electrocutaneous stimulus at tolerance level. This search task was combined with a go/no-go task that required participants to either divide attention across the visual field to create a broad attentional window (global group), or focus their attention on the fixation point to create a narrow attentional window (local group). The results showed that only in the global group was the CS + colour prioritised over the neutral colours, indicating that a broader attentional window leads to enhanced attentional prioritisation of threat. Implications for research on attentional bias to threat are discussed.     

Increased susceptibility to proactive interference in adults with dyslexia?

Recent findings show that people with dyslexia have an impairment in serial-order memory. Based on these findings, the present study aimed to test the hypothesis that people with dyslexia have difficulties dealing with proactive interference (PI) in recognition memory. A group of 25 adults with dyslexia and a group of matched controls were subjected to a 2-back recognition task, which required participants to indicate whether an item (mis)matched the item that had been presented 2 trials before. PI was elicited using lure trials in which the item matched the item in the 3-back position instead of the targeted 2-back position. Our results demonstrate that the introduction of lure trials affected 2-back recognition performance more severely in the dyslexic group than in the control group, suggesting greater difficulty in resisting PI in dyslexia.     

Psychological Dimensions of Unemployment: A Gender Comparison Between Belgian and South African Unemployed

This study sought to compare South African and Belgian unemployed in their subjective experience of unemployment, committed towards employment and job search behaviour. We also considered gender differences regarding the psychological dimensions of unemployment between Belgium and South Africa. A cross-sectional survey design was used. Unemployed people were sampled from the Potchefstroom area in South Africa (N = 381) and the Brussels area in Belgium (N = 305). The Experiences of Unemployment Questionnaire was administered. While no significant gender differences were found in South Africa, significant differences were found for all three psychological dimensions of unemployment in the Belgian sample. South African intervention programmes should be developed in order to cope with long-lasting unemployment, social isolation and further financial deprivation.     

Are Older Adults More Dependent on Visual Information in Regulating Self-Motion Than Younger Adults?

Older adults look at the ground more while they are walking than younger adults do. In the present study, the effect of blocking that exproprioceptive visual information on the walking pattern of older adults was investigated. The first 0.75 m of the floor in front of healthy young adults (n = 10, mean age = 26.0 years) and 2 groups of older adults (n = 10, mean age 65.7 years; and n = 9, mean age = 75.9 years) was occluded. The dependent variables were step velocity, step length, and step frequency. The effect of the manipulation on those kinematic variables increased with age. The older adults had a significant increase in velocity and step length. The possible use of optic flow information from the ground to regulate the velocity of self-motion is discussed.     

Sensory Feedback in the Learning of a Novel Motor Task

The role of different forms of feedback is examined in learning a novel motor task. Five groups of ten subjects had to learn the voluntary control of the abduction of the big toe, each under a different feedback condition (proprioceptive feedback, visual feedback, EMG feedback, tactile feedback, force feedback). The task was selected for two reasons. First, in most motor learning studies subjects have to perform simple movements which present hardly any learning problem. Second, studying the learning of a new movement can provide useful information for neuromuscular reeducation, where patients often also have to learn movements for which no control strategy exists. The results show that artificial sensory feedback (EMG feedback, force feedback) is more powerful than “natural” (proprioceptive, visual, and tactile) feedback. The implications of these results for neuromuscular reeducation are discussed.