"I Can Tell You If I'll Really Lose All That Weight": Dispositional and Situated Optimism as Predictors of Weight Loss Following a Group Intervention

Weight loss is difficult to achieve and predict. We used Carver & Scheier's (1998 ) self-regulation theory to investigate the role of dispositional and situated optimism in weight loss following a group intervention. The theory proposes that dispositional optimism is related to persistence in goal pursuit as a result of greater confidence in goal attainment. Findings showed that situated optimism (higher goals, greater confidence in their attainment) predicted greater weight loss; whereas dispositional optimism, perceptions of controllability, timeline, and consequences of the weight problem were unrelated to weight loss. Changes in situated optimism following the intervention were related to weight-loss success/failure. The findings suggest that people possess quite accurate knowledge of their chances of success, which could be used to tailor interventions to participants.     

Choosing to switch: Spontaneous task switching despite associated behavioral costs

The literature shows that switching among simple cognitive tasks is difficult and involves a performance cost. Accordingly, cost-benefit considerations seem to predict that task switching would not occur spontaneously. Here we show that spontaneous task switching is a robust phenomenon, despite its costs. In Experiment 1, participants had to judge shapes according to one of three possible dimensions. Importantly, they were given the option to choose another relevant dimension or let the computer program change the dimension for them, but only if they wanted to do so. The results showed that spontaneous task switching was prevalent, despite robust switching costs. Experiment 2 extended this finding in showing spontaneous switching from an easy task to a more difficult task. The authors provide two possible explanations for the phenomenon that posit that spontaneous switching may be unpreventable or even advantageous.     

Development of and change in cognitive control: A comparison of children, young adults, and older adults

Cognitive control involves adjustments in behavior to conflicting information, develops throughout childhood, and declines in aging. Accordingly, developmental and age-related changes in cognitive control and response-conflict detection were assessed in a response-compatibility task. We recorded performance measures, pre-response time (pre-RT) activity and medial frontal negativity (MFN)—sequentially occurring, putative event-related potential (ERP) indexes, respectively, of cognitive control and response-conflict detection. When response conflict reached the highest levels by requiring incompatible responses on posterror trials, children and older adults showed the greatest performance decrements. ERPs indicated that young adults implemented control (pre-RT) and detected the increased conflict (MFN) only when that conflict was at the highest levels, whereas children and older adults did so at lower levels (e.g., posterror, compatible responses). Consequently, the developmental and age-related performance decrements observed here may be due to the undifferentiated and inefficient manner in which children and older adults recruited the processes associated with both cognitive control and response-conflict detection.     

How Do Body Diagrams Affect the Accuracy and Consistency of Children's Reports of Bodily Touch Across Repeated Interviews?

We examined the amount, accuracy, and consistency of information reported by 58 5‐ to 7‐year‐old children about a staged event that included physical contact/touching. Both 1 and 7 months following the event, children were asked both open and yes/no questions about touch [i] when provided with human body diagrams (HBDs), [ii] following instruction and practice using the HBDs, or [iii] without HBDs. Children interviewed with HBDs reported more information at 7 months, but a high proportion of inaccurate touches. Children seldom repeated touch‐related information across the two interviews and did not incorporate errors made in the 1‐month interview into their open‐ended accounts 6 months later. Asking children to talk about innocuous touch may lead them to report unreliable information, especially when HBDs are used as aids and repeated interviews are conducted across delays that resemble those typical of forensic contexts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Discrimination and categorization of actions by pigeons

Recognizing and categorizing behavior is essential for animals (e.g., during mate selection, courtship, and avoidance of predators). In a study examining if and how animals classify different actions, a go/no-go procedure was used to train 4 pigeons to discriminate among "walking" and "running" digital animal models (each portrayed from 12 different viewpoints). Action discrimination acquired for two models significantly transferred to six novel animal models moving in novel and biomechanically characteristic ways. Randomization of frame order in the animated sequences, stimulus inversion, and static presentation all disrupted this discrimination, whereas changes in the direction and speed (both increases and decreases) of the actions did not. These results suggest that the pigeons discriminated the behaviors on the basis of generalized recognition of the models' sequence of poses across time and provide the best evidence yet that animals use action categories to identify contrasting behavioral units.     

Exploration of values: Israeli teachers’ professional ethics

The main purpose of this study was to explore Israeli teachers’ professional ethics and values using the Facet Theory (Guttman in Psychmetrika 33:469–506, 1968). Since Israel does not have a teachers’ code of ethics, such exploration can be a basis for constructing one. The study is mainly exploratory, and the main hypotheses that guided the study were based upon universal structure of values (Pakizeh et al. in J Exp Soc Psychol 43(3): 458–465, 2007 Schwartz, in Advances in experimental social psychology. Academic Press, San Diego, 1992), and were examined using a mapping sentence. The initial findings showed the data deployment on the SSA map exhibits both a radial and an angular form in a Radex configuration. Israeli teachers believe that professional ethics is based on conditioned values. The variables in the SSA map appear in a radial configuration forming three concentric circles: personal values, social values, and universal values. The components representing the code of ethics were deployed in an angular form showing three elements: professionalism, reliability and honesty, and decency.     

Cultural modulations of space–time compatibility effects

The representation of elapsing time may require spatial attention. In certain circumstances, this spatial representation develops from left to right. This is suggested by a performance advantage in responding short with the left hand and long with the right hand (spatial–temporal association between response codes [STEARC]). The present study tests whether one possible determinant of the directionality of the STEARC effect is cultural. In particular, we investigated whether reading/writing habits can affect STEARC direction by administering a visual time judgment task to Italian participants, who were exposed to a left-to-right reading/writing system, and Israeli participants, who mainly used a right-to-left system. The Italian participants showed a left-to-right STEARC effect, while this effect was not present in the Israeli group. The study demonstrates that cultural habits can influence the way in which spatial attention supports the representation of time, similar to the pattern found in other nonspatial domains such as numbers.     

Burden and Growth during COVID-19: Comparing Parents of Children with and without Disabilities

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures taken to contain it have had a disproportionate impact on families with young children, especially with disabilities....     

Optimism buffers the detrimental effect of negative self-perceptions of ageing on physical and mental health

Objectives: First, to replicate previous findings on the detrimental effect of negative self-perceptions of ageing (SPA) on physical health outcomes and to expand them to the prediction of mental health; second, to test whether an optimistic outlook to the future can buffer the effect of negative SPA on physical and mental health outcomes.

Design: Data for this study comes from the 2008 and 2011 waves of the German Ageing Survey (DEAS; n?=?6205), a population-based representative survey of adults aged 40–85?years. Mean age of the participants was 61.50 (±12.1), 49.5% were women.

Main Outcome Measures: Self-rated health, physical functioning and depressive symptoms.

Results: Multiple regression analyses indicated that negative SPA predicted deterioration in the three health outcomes over a three-year period, controlling for demographics and illnesses. The most remarkable finding is the interaction with optimism: People who were prepared for physical losses (negative SPA), and who were nevertheless optimistic, were better able to maintain better physical functioning, and lower depressive symptoms.

Conclusion: A multidimensional perspective on ageing, considering both gains and losses at the same time, seems to be best for the maintenance of good health. Individual and societal positive views of ageing should be encouraged.