Assessing the impact of a family nurse-led intervention on young mothers’ references to internal states

A mother's propensity to refer to internal states during mother–child interactions is important for her child's developing social understanding. However, adolescent mothers are less likely to reference internal states when interacting with their children. We investigated whether young mothers’ references to internal states are promoted by the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) intervention, an intensive home-visiting programme designed to support adolescent mothers in England. We also investigated family, maternal, and child factors associated with young mothers’ references to inner states during interactions with their children. Adolescent mothers (n = 483, aged ≤ 19 years when recruited in pregnancy) and their children participated in an observational substudy of a randomized controlled trial investigating the impact of FNP compared to usual care. Mother–child dyads were video-recorded during free play, and mothers’ speech was coded for use of internal state language (references to cognitions, desires, emotions, intentions, preferences, physiology, and perception). We found no differences in mothers’ use of internal state language between the FNP and usual care groups. A sample-wide investigation identified that other features of mothers’ language and relationship status with the child's father were associated with internal state language use. Findings are discussed with reference to targeted interventions and implications for future research.     

Moral migration: Desires to become more empathic predict changes in moral foundations

Many people want to change their personality traits—and research on volitional change has documented their success in doing so. In the present study, we examine whether people also wish to change their levels of empathy, and whether these desires precede shifts in dispositional empathy and morality over a 15-week period. We recorded participants’ change goals, followed by weekly measurements of empathic concern and perspective-taking, as well as moral foundations. Results indicated that most participants wished to cultivate empathic concern and, especially, perspective-taking. Those who sought to develop these qualities tended to actually do so at a faster rate than their peers who did not—and, as a consequence, also drifted toward a characteristically liberal, individualizing morality.     

To Challenge the Morning Lark and the Night Owl: Using Smartphone Sensing Data to Investigate Day–Night Behaviour Patterns

For decades, day–night patterns in behaviour have been investigated by asking people about their sleep–wake timing, their diurnal activity patterns, and their sleep duration. We demonstrate that the increasing digitalization of lifestyle offers new possibilities for research to investigate day–night patterns and related traits with the help of behavioural data. Using smartphone sensing, we collected in vivo data from 597 participants across several weeks and extracted behavioural day–night pattern indicators. Using this data, we explored three popular research topics. First, we focused on individual differences in day–night patterns by investigating whether ‘morning larks’ and ‘night owls’ manifest in smartphone-sensed behavioural indicators. Second, we examined whether personality traits are related to day–night patterns. Finally, exploring social jetlag, we investigated whether traits and work weekly day–night behaviours influence day–night patterns on weekends. Our findings highlight that behavioural data play an essential role in understanding daily routines and their relations to personality traits. We discuss how psychological research can integrate new behavioural approaches to study personality.     

New Directions in the Conceptualization and Assessment of Personality—A Dynamic Systems Approach

In this paper, we demonstrate how an integrative approach to personality—one that combines within-person and between-person differences—can be achieved by drawing on the principles of dynamic systems theory. The dynamic systems perspective has the potential to reconcile both the stable and dynamic aspect of personality, it allows including different levels of analysis (i.e. traits and states), and it can account for regulatory mechanisms, as well as dynamic interactions between the elements of the system, and changes over time. While all of these features are obviously appealing, implementing a dynamic systems approach to personality is challenging. It requires new conceptual models, specific longitudinal research designs, and complex data analytical methods. In response to these issues, the first part of our paper discusses the Personality Dynamics model, a model that integrates the dynamic systems principles in a relatively straightforward way. Second, we review associated methodological and statistical tools that allow empirically testing the PersDyn model. Finally, the model and associated methodological and statistical tools are illustrated using an experience sampling methodology data set measuring Big Five personality states in 59 participants (N = 1916 repeated measurements). © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology     

内隐觉察的行为和神经活动特征

变化盲视是指在某些条件下人们往往觉察不到视觉场景中实质性的改变。最近研究表明,变化盲视发生时个体虽然不能有意识地报告变化,但却能无意识地对变化刺激进行加工和反应,也就是产生了内隐觉察。内隐觉察能够引导注意、影响反应速度。与觉察和无觉察相比,内隐觉察的眼动模式具有鲜明的特征。与无变化试次相比,盲视试次可以观察到显著的脑电活动变化以及不同的脑区激活。内隐觉察的研究虽然取得了丰富的成果,但也还存在着一些需要明确和解决的问题,如左侧前额叶在内隐觉察中的作用,以及如何将没有视觉干扰的范式应用到变化觉察的神经活动测量中等。     

Coherentist Contraction

A model of coherentist belief contraction is constructed. The outcome of belief contraction is required to be one of the coherent subsets of the original belief set, and a set of plausible properties is proposed for this set of coherent subsets. The contraction operators obtained in this way are shown to coincide with well-known belief base operations. This connection between coherentist and foundationalist approaches to belief change has important implications for the philosophical interpretation of models of belief change.     

Preference and resistance to change with constant-duration schedule components

Previous research on preference between variable-interval terminal links in concurrent chains has most often used variable-duration terminal links ending with a single reinforcer. By contrast, most research on resistance to change in multiple schedules has used constant-duration components that include variable numbers of reinforcers in each presentation. Grace and Nevin (1997) examined both preference and resistance in variable-duration components; here, preference and resistance were examined in constant-duration components. Reinforcer rates were varied across eight conditions, and a generalized-matching-law analysis showed that initial-link preference strongly over-matched terminal-link reinforcer ratios. In multiple schedules, baseline response rates were unaffected by reinforcer rates, but resistance to intercomponent food, to extinction, and to intercomponent food plus extinction was greater in the richer component. The between-component difference in resistance to change exhibited additive effects for the three resistance tests, and was systematically related to reinforcer ratios. However, resistance was less sensitive to reinforcer ratios than was preference. Resistance to intercomponent food and to intercomponent food plus extinction was more sensitive to reinforcer ratios in the present study than in Grace and Nevin (1997). Thus, relative to variable-duration components, constant-duration components increased the sensitivity of both preference and relative resistance, supporting the proposition that these are independent and convergent measures of the effects of a history of reinforcement.     

Religiosity and obsessive-compulsive behavior in Israeli Jews

Individual differences in obsessive-compulsive (OC) behavior in various cultures correlate with religiosity. The current paper explored the so far unstudied relationship between religiosity and OC behavior in Israeli Jews. Two studies were conducted. Study 1 focused on the relationship between religiosity and OC behavior in a representative sample of Israeli students. Study 2 focused on religious change and OC behavior in a non-random sample of 31 individuals who had become more religious (the MR group), and 30 individuals who were less religious (the LR group) than their parents. Instruments used were the Maudsley obsessive-compulsive inventory (MOCI), the student religiosity questionnaire, and questions about parental home observance, upbringing, and changes in religiosity. In the first study, no association was found between religiosity and OC behavior. Religiosity was related to some degree to perfectionism and to the parental attitude to upbringing. In the second study, a significant difference was observed between the MR and the LR groups on OC behavior as measured by the MOCI. Conclusion, among Israeli Jews a lot of religious observance is non-reflective, and is not associated with individual differences in personality or OC symptoms. Those who undergo religious change may do so in response to their behavioral propensities. One such path is that the more OC become MR, and the less OC less religiously observant.     

Contemporary Psychotherapy: Promoting Personal Responsibility for Therapeutic Change

An assortment of factors in modern society can be involved in the etiology and treatment of mental illness. Theories about etiology usually underlie, and therefore guide, most strategies for treatment. Although a comprehensive bio-psycho-social approach to mental illness can help to foster the collaboration of an interdisciplinary treatment team, a heavy emphasis on biological factors or cultural deprivation may reduce the client's feelings of personal responsibility for change. Contemporary psychotherapy can help clients reduce their tendency to attribute blame to biological predispositions or external societal factors. Instead, it is more helpful to cultivate attributions for personal responsibility for change, growth, and maturation.     

Rate of conditioned reinforcement affects observing rate but not resistance to change

The effects of rate of conditioned reinforcement on the resistance to change of operant behavior have not been examined. In addition, the effects of rate of conditioned reinforcement on the rate of observing have not been adequately examined. In two experiments, a multiple schedule of observing-response procedures was used to examine the effects of rate of conditioned reinforcement on observing rates and resistance to change. In a rich component, observing responses produced a higher frequency of stimuli correlated with alternating periods of random-interval schedule primary reinforcement or extinction. In a lean component, observing responses produced similar schedule-correlated stimuli but at a lower frequency. The rate of primary reinforcement in both components was the same. In Experiment 1, a 4:1 ratio of stimulus production was arranged by the rich and lean components. In Experiment 2, the ratio of stimulus production rates was increased to 6:1. In both experiments, observing rates were higher in the rich component than in the lean component. Disruptions in observing produced by presession feeding, extinction of observing responses, and response-independent food deliveries during intercomponent intervals usually were similar in the rich and lean components. When differences in resistance to change did occur, observing tended to be more resistant to change in the lean component. If resistance to change is accepted as a more appropriate measure of response strength than absolute response rates, then the present results provide no evidence that higher rates of stimuli generally considered to function as conditioned reinforcers engender greater response strength.