Processes operative during delay of gratification

Sixty-four middle-class preschool children chose between waiting for a preferred item and receiving a less desired item immediately. The items were of different classes, i.e., one food and one toy, and subjects waited with one, both, or neither of the rewards available for viewing. The likelihood that a subject would continue waiting for the delayed reward was found to increase as a function of previous waiting time rather than decrease or remain constant as required by two current theories of delay of gratification processes, an aversive affect model implied by Mischel and Ebbesen (1970) and Atkinson and Birch's (1970) dynamics of action. Although display of rewards impaired successful delay, replicating previous results, dynamics of action predictions of differential effects for display of immediately available and delayed outcomes of different classes were not confirmed. Systematic observation of spontaneous subject activities during the delay period offered additional support for the notion that distraction facilitates successful waiting behavior. A decision-attention model is proposed to account for the present results as well as those of previous studies of delay of gratification.We would like to thank the director, Mr. Jack Lewis, and the staff of the Red Bell Nursery of Plymouth, Michigan, for helping us obtain subjects for this study and providing access to their facilities. We are also grateful to Ms. Shirley St. Peter and Ms. Carolyn Jagacinski for their work as experimenters.     

Brain imaging: Applications in psychiatry

For more than a century psychiatrists have suspected neuropathology in patients with mental illness. In the last decade there have been developed several technologies that are capable of looking at both neuroanatomy and neurophysiology in the brains of living humans. First, x-ray computerized axial tomography led the way in visualizing the living brain, and now magnetic resonance imaging allows brain structure to be shown with even more clarity. Brain electrical activity mapping allows computerized maps of electrophysiological activity to be visualized in a way never before possible. Nuclear medicine has provided the means of looking at various metabolic and neurochemical parameters in the living brain. These include regional cerebral blood flow studies using xenon¹³³, single photon emission tomography, and positron emission tomography. Psychiatrists are cautiously optimistic that these various brain imaging technologies will be important new tools in continued exploration of the causes of mental illness and ultimately may lead to more effective treatments.     

Parental experience of childhood cancer using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Whilst survival rates for childhood cancer have improved dramatically over the past three decades, it is still a devastating diagnosis for family members and an illness which severely disrupts the lifestyle of the family unit. Developing an understanding of the impact of the illness on the family is crucial to better support families' deal with the demands of the illness. In this study nine families in which a child was diagnosed with cancer were interviewed twice over a 12 month period, approximately 6 months apart. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, a semi-structured interview was used to explicate parent's experience of childhood cancer. The results revealed five super-ordinate themes; (1) a pivotal moment in time, (2) the experience of adaptation in relation to having a sick child, (3) the nature of support, (4) re-evaluation of values during a critical life experience and (5) the experience of optimism and altruism. Findings indicate that parents express both negative and positive experiences as they re-evaluate the meaning and purpose of life, seek to redefine themselves, often in terms of priorities, relationships, sense of community and achieve degrees of optimism and altruism. Implications for addressing the needs of parents and for further research are discussed.     

Synchronous online CPD: empirical support for the value of webinars in career settings

The careers profession in England is facing unprecedented challenges. Initiatives to improve service delivery while keeping costs low are attractive and online training holds the promise of high impact at low cost. The present study employs a qualitative methodology to evaluate a series of online ‘webinars’ conducted with 15 careers advisers. Results showed that the technology itself could impede learning, and participants missed out on the peer-to-peer interaction that takes place in a ‘bricks and mortar’ setting, but overall participants found that access to relevant, good quality training from the convenience of their workplace more than compensated for the challenges. The article offers conceptual support for the viability of online learning through the theory of equivalency, andragogy and transactional distance theory, and makes recommendations for practice.     

Prospective relations among preschoolers' play,coping, and adjustment as moderated by stressful events

This study evaluated the prospective contribution of preschoolers' pretend play to observer reports of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems one year later, as mediated by observed coping flexibility during a delay of gratification task and as moderated by children's exposure to stressful life events. Preschoolers' (N = 250; M_age = 49.05 months, SD = 2.95; 50% female) fantasy and affect expression in pretend play were assessed during a laboratory visit. Moderated mediation models tested for conditional indirect effects of play fantasy and affect expression on behavior problems through coping flexibility as a function of the child's exposure to stress. Preschoolers' fantasy and negative affect expression in pretend play predicted lower rates of internalizing, but not externalizing, problems. Coping flexibility partially mediated this relation, particularly among children with relatively more life stress. These findings clarify processes by which, and contexts within which, preschoolers' pretend play influences later behavioral adjustment.     

Semantic neighborhood effects on the recognition of ambiguous words

The effect of semantic neighborhood on the processing of ambiguous words was examined in two lexical decision experiments. Semantic neighborhood was defined in terms of semantic set size and network connectivity. In Experiment 1, the variables of semantic set size, network connectivity, and ambiguity were crossed. An ambiguity advantage was observed only within small-set low-connectivity words. In Experiment 2, the effect of network connectivity on the processing of words of high and low meaning relatedness was examined. Participants responded more rapidly to words of high meaning relatedness, relative to words of low meaning relatedness, but only within high-connectivity words. These results are interpreted within a framework in which both semantic feedback processes and meaning-level competition can affect the recognition of semantically ambiguous words.     

Professional vs. amateur judgment accuracy: The case of foreign exchange rates

Highly knowledgeable people often fail to achieve highly accurate judgments, a phenomenon sometimes called the “process-performance paradox.” The present research tested for this paradox in foreign exchange (FX) rate forecasting. Forty professional and 57 sophisticated amateur forecasters made one-day and one-week-ahead FX predictions in deterministic and probabilistic formats. Among the conclusions indicated by the results are: (a) professional accuracy usually surpasses amateur accuracy, although many amateurs outperform many professionals; (b) professionals appear to achieve high proficiency via heavy reliance on predictive information (unlike what has been observed before, e.g., for stock prices); (c) forecast format strongly affects judgment accuracy and processes; and (d) apparent overconfidence can transform itself into underconfidence depending on when and how forecasters must articulate their confidence.