Emotions,narrative and change

There is a wide agreement that emotions are central to the evaluation and understanding of change processes in psychotherapy. Unfortunately, most of the debate on the role of emotions has been influenced by the reductionist view of ‘psychophysiological symbolism’ (Averill 1996). We defend the position that, in order to understand their role in psychotherapy fully, we need to move in the direction of a more complex view of emotions. This paper presents a view of emotionsas social constructed phenomena operating via language and narrative. We present research suggesting that these narratives may be an essential process for understanding psychological disorders, how these disorders are developed and, finally, how they can be changed.     

Sentencing,severity, and social norms: A rank-based model of contextual influence on judgments of crimes and punishments

Context effects have been shown to bias lay people's evaluations of the severity of crimes and punishments. To investigate the cognitive mechanisms behind these effects, we develop and apply a rank-based social norms approach to judgments of perceived crime seriousness and sentence appropriateness. In Study 1, we find that (a) people believe on average that 84% of people illegally download software more than they do themselves and (b) their judged severity of, and concern about, their own illegal software downloading is predicted not by its amount but by how this amount is believed (typically inaccurately) to rank within a social comparison distribution. Studies 2 and 3 find that the judged appropriateness of a given sentence length is highly dependent on the length of other sentences available in the decision-making context: The same objective sentence was judged as approximately four times stricter when it was the second longest sentence being considered than when it was the fifth longest. It is concluded that the same mechanisms that are used to judge the magnitude of psychophysical stimuli bias judgments about legal matters.     

'Gonnae no' dae that!'1 the internal and external worlds of the delinquent adolescent

In understanding delinquency in adolescence the key theoretical papers on the role of oedipal resolution and superego development remain essential and are summarized. To this we need to add our knowledge of trauma and of developmental deficit if we are to offer appropriate strategies for young delinquents and to be able to select those for whom therapy, intervention with the network or containment are appropriate. The defence of activity, commonplace in adolescence, becomes too easily enacted in the network around the delinquent and in the public domain, and thoughts are given on this process and on the roles open to the psychotherapist.

Afin de mieux cerner la délinquance chez l'adolescent, l'auteur passe en revue certains textes théoriques fondamentaux et toujours d'actualité sur l'importance de la dissolution du complexe d'?dipe et de la mise en place du Surmoi. À ces thèmes il convient d'ajouter ce que nous connaissons de l'impact des traumatismes et des défaillances développementales si nous voulons offrir au jeune délinquant des stratégies adéquates et identifier ceux pour qui une modalité particulière d'intervention - thérapie, prise en charge en réseau, structure contenante - semble la mieux indiquée. La défense par mise en acte, fréquente À l'adolescence, trouve trop facilement un écho dans le réseau d'intervenants autour de l'adolescent et dans le champ social ; l'auteur développe ses réflexions À ce sujet et explore les rôles que le thérapeute peut être amené À jouer.     

Distraction by irrelevant sound during foreperiods selectively impairs temporal preparation

The issue of unidimensionality is dealt with in various research areas in the field of Psychology (e.g. conceptual spaces, semantic modeling, psychometrics) and always involves spatial modeling. An investigation of the dimensionality of opposite spatial scales (even basic) has however not yet been carried out. In this paper we look at whether opposite judgments of height, size, width and length (high/low, large/small, wide/narrow, and long/short) imply underlying unidimensional continua. In three experiments, independent ratings for the 8 above mentioned properties were elicited with participants looking at photographic representations of various objects (Study 1), real life objects (Study 2) and spatial extensions in object-independent conditions (Study 3). Explorative and confirmative factor analysis and Andrich Extended Rating Scale Models were applied in order to determine whether the ratings referred to opposite scales on the same linear continuum. Results from the three studies consistently revealed that this is not the case. A joint analysis of the data showed interesting interactions between the spatial properties analyzed suggesting a possible explanation for the lack of unidimensionality.     

The components of visual attention and the ubiquitous Simon effect

Spatial responding is influenced by the degree of correspondence between the stimulus–response (S–R) code activated by the target's task-irrelevant location and the S–R code activated by the target's non-spatial, task-relevant feature. A generally accepted explanation of this “Simon effect,” named after its discoverer, is that there is a natural tendency to respond towards the source of stimulation. First we will review the ubiquity of the Simon effect. Then we will review the literature, including our own studies when appropriate, that has explored the relationship between the Simon effect and the components of attention: alertness, orienting and executive control, with an emphasis on visual orienting. The Simon effect is reduced when participants are not alert and when executive control is effective in filtering out the irrelevant location information. When attention is oriented endogenously, or is captured exogenously by uninformative peripheral stimulation, the Simon effect is additive with attentional facilitation (i.e., the Simon effect is the same magnitude for targets presented at attended and unattended locations). Yet, some forms of orienting, such as orienting directed by gaze and biased by inhibition of return, modulate the Simon effect. We will explore the implications of these patterns of additivity and interaction for our understanding of both the Simon effect and spatial attention.     

Dissecting the clock: understanding the mechanisms of timing across tasks and temporal intervals

Currently, it is unclear what model of timing best describes temporal processing across millisecond and second timescales in tasks with different response requirements. In the present set of experiments, we assessed whether the popular dedicated scalar model of timing accounts for performance across a restricted timescale surrounding the 1-second duration for different tasks. The first two experiments evaluate whether temporal variability scales proportionally with the timed duration within temporal reproduction. The third experiment compares timing across millisecond and second timescales using temporal reproduction and discrimination tasks designed with parallel structures. The data exhibit violations of the assumptions of a single scalar timekeeper across millisecond and second timescales within temporal reproduction; these violations are less apparent for temporal discrimination. The finding of differences across tasks suggests that task demands influence the mechanisms that are engaged for keeping time.     

Detrimental effects of using negative sentences in the autobiographical IAT

The autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) is a method that accurately identifies which one of two contrasting autobiographical events is true for the subject. The aIAT indexes the real autobiographical event (e.g. I was in Paris for Christmas) on the basis of the facilitating effect because it maps the real autobiographical event with true sentences (e.g. I am in front of a computer) on the same motor response. In this paper we focus on the conditions under which the autobiographical IAT accurately and reliably identifies autobiographical memories. A recent study showed a reduction in the accuracy of the aIAT when negative sentences are used. We have investigated the detrimental effect on aIAT accuracy of such negative sentence items, used to describe autobiographical events, compared with affirmative sentence items. While we highlight the reliability of the results obtained using negative sentences, we also show that the use of affirmative sentences in describing autobiographical events guarantees high accuracy and reliability of results in identifying the true autobiographical event. Finally, we summarise the criteria for preparing stimuli for an effective aIAT in order to maximise correct classifications of individual subjects.     

Playing the Simon game: Use of the Simon task for investigating human information processing

A little more than 40 years ago, J. R. Simon and colleagues introduced what is now called the Simon task, which yielded a correspondence effect known as the Simon effect. In this paper, I set Simon's contribution in the context of research on stimulus-response compatibility. The novel contribution of the Simon task is described, along with foundational findings using the task that Simon and colleagues reported. I acknowledge the significance of Simon's (1990) review chapter in generating my own interests in the Simon task and describe four selected lines of research from my lab that have been a result of those interests. The article concludes with a brief tribute to Simon and his contribution to experimental psychology.     

Inhibition and shifting capacities mediate adults' age-related differences in strategy selection and repertoire

Young and older adults differ in how many strategies they use to accomplish cognitive tasks. They also differ in how often they select the best strategy on each problem. Two experiments were run to determine whether two executive functions—inhibition and shifting capacities—mediate age-related differences in strategy repertoire and in strategy selection. Both experiments were run in arithmetic problem solving. In Experiment 1, young and older adults’ strategy repertoire was assessed on a problem-by-problem basis while participants solved two-digit addition problems (e.g., 42 + 76). In Experiment 2, young and older participants had to select the best strategy on each problem to find estimates of two-digit multiplication problems (e.g., 43 × 72). In both experiments, individuals’ inhibition and shifting capacities were assessed with the Trail Making Test and the Stroop Test. The main results showed that (a) older adults used a smaller strategy repertoire (Expt. 1) and selected the best strategy on each problem less frequently (Expt. 2) than young adults, (b) inhibition and shifting capacities mediated age-related differences in strategy repertoire and strategy selection, and unique age effects were no longer significant in strategy repertoire but were still significant in strategy selection after statistical control of inhibition and shifting capacities. We discuss important implications of these findings to further our understanding of strategic variations during cognitive aging.