Career guidance in five English independent schools

English independent schools are not required to follow government statutory guidance in a number of aspects including career education and guidance, and yet many are actively engaged in careers work and this has caught the attention of policymakers. State schools are subject to statutory guidance but, according to Ofsted and other authorities, the majority fail to adequately support young people through their post-school transitions. Using evidence from five English independent schools, the type of provision they offer is analysed against benchmarks of good practice to identify where their support is focussed. The factors that shape the resourcing and design of career education and guidance in the five schools are also explored. The extent to which the practices observed in the case studies can be replicated in all, or a sub-set of state schools, is discussed in the light of policy influence of independent schools.     

Individual differences and propensity to engage with in-vehicle distractions - A self-report survey

Ratings of severity and frequency of engagement with distracting driver behaviours are reported in this paper. Survey data were collected using an anonymous online questionnaire. Four hundred eighty-two respondents contributed to the survey during a 2 month data collection period. Results indicate that the three behaviours rated as most distracting when driving were (i) writing text messages (41%), (ii) reading text messages (62%), and (iii) using a cellular telephone hand-held (52%). The three most frequently reported distracting behaviours that resulted in accidents were (i) ‘interaction with child passengers’ 2.1% (near misses = 7.5%), (ii) both, route guidance destination entry with 2% (near misses = 2.8%) and use of an ‘… add-on media device, e.g., an iPod’ with 2% (near misses = 3.9%), and (iii) the three items ‘reading a text message’, ‘following advice from a route guidance system’, and ‘interaction with pets’, all with 1.7% of respondents reporting an accident when undertaking the activity (with 6.5%, 3%, and 2.2% respectively for near misses). Two hierarchical regression models were explored. The first introducing personal factors, i.e., age, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and intellect (R² = 0.131, p < 0.001). The second controlled for variables in the first model and introduced driver-related variables, mileage, penalty points, and frequency of accidents with assumed responsibility (R² = 0.253, p < 0.001). This model identified age, extraversion, mileage, penalty points and accidents all to be significant predictors of engagement with unnecessary distractions. The data presents a picture of widespread awareness of, and engagement with, distracting behaviours by drivers in the United Kingdom. Findings from the hierarchical regressions suggest scope may exist to mediate the levels of distracting behaviours by exploring individual differences and driving styles.     

Attentional bias towards angry faces in trait-reappraisal

Emotion regulation (ER) strategies differ in when and how they influence emotion experience, expression, and concomitant cognition. However, no study to date has directly compared cognition in individuals who have a clear disposition for either cognitive or behavioural ER strategies. The present study compared selective attention to angry faces in groups of high trait-suppressors (people who are hiding emotional reactions in response to emotional challenge) and high trait-reappraisers (people who cognitively reinterpret emotional events). Since reappraisers are also low trait-anxious and suppressors are high trait-anxious, high and low anxious control groups, both being low in trait-ER, were also included. Attention to angry faces was assessed using an emotional dot-probe task. Trait-reappraisers and high-anxious individuals both showed attentional biases towards angry faces. Trait-reappraisers’ vigilance for angry faces was significantly more pronounced compared to both trait-suppressors and low anxious controls. We suggest that threat prioritization in high trait-reappraisal may allow deeper cognitive processing of threat information without being associated with psychological maladjustment.     

The cost of action miscues: hemispheric asymmetries

Adaptive behaviors require preparation and when necessary inhibition or alteration of actions. The right hemisphere has been posited to be dominant for preparatory motor activation. This experiment was designed to learn if there are hemispheric asymmetries in the control of altered plans of actions. Cues, both valid and invalid, which indicate the hand most likely to be called onto respond, as well as the imperative stimuli that indicate the actual response hand, were presented to either the right or left visual fields of 14 normal right handed participants. The delay after a miscue is dependent on the time taken to inhibit the premotor and motor systems of the incorrectly activated hemisphere, as well as to activate the motor systems of the opposite hemisphere, which might have been interhemispherically inhibited by this miscue. Analyses of reaction times revealed that miscues presented in left hemispace (right hemisphere) cost more time than those miscues presented in right hemispace (left hemisphere), suggesting that activation of the preparatory systems controlled by the right hemisphere may take longer to reverse than those controlled by the left hemisphere. This asymmetry may be related to asymmetries in the strength of hemispheric activation with contralateral inhibition.     

Mindfulness predicts less texting while driving among young adults: Examining attention- and emotion-regulation motives as potential mediators

Many young adult drivers read and send text messages while driving despite clear safety risks. Understanding predictors of texting-while-driving may help to indentify relevant targets for interventions to reduce this dangerous behavior. The present study examined whether individual differences in mindfulness are associated with texting-while-driving in a sample of young-adult drivers. Using path analysis, we tested whether this relationship would be mediated by the degree to which individuals use text-messaging as a means of reducing unpleasant emotions (emotion-regulation motives) and the degree to which individuals limit texting in order to focus on present-moment experiences (attention-regulation motives). Individuals lower in mindfulness reported more frequent texting-while-driving and this relationship appeared to be mediated primarily by emotion-regulation motives. Results may help inform the development of mindfulness-based interventions to prevent texting-while-driving.     

Distributed attentional deficits in chronic methamphetamine abusers: evidence from the Attentional Network Task (ANT)

Objective

The goal of the present study was to examine distributed attentional functions in long-term but currently abstinent methamphetamine (MA) abusers using a task that measures attentional alertness, orienting, and conflict resolution.

Methods

Thirty currently abstinent MA abusers (1 month-5 years) and 22 healthy non-substance using adults were administered a multimodal version of the Attentional Network Task (ANT-I). In this task subjects identified the direction of a centrally presented arrow using a key press. Analyses examined the interaction between alerting tones, location cueing and congruency between the target arrows and flanking distractor stimuli.

Results

All participants were faster when an auditory tone preceded the trial onset (p < 0.001), on trials in which a valid cue preceded the location of the target arrow (p < 0.001), and on congruent trials (i.e., when all display arrows faced in the same direction) (p < 0.001). Of primary interest was the finding that MA abusers were more influenced by the conflict between the peripheral arrows and the central target arrow (p = 0.009). There were also correlations between length of drug sobriety and executive function as well as between drug-induced psychiatric symptoms and alertness.

Conclusions

These results suggest that chronic MA abusers display cognitive deficits that may reflect a specific vulnerability to distraction on a task of executive function. These findings are consistent with other studies that have reported deficits in anterior attentional systems and top-down cognitive control.     

Do conscious perception and unconscious processing rely on independent mechanisms? A meta-contrast study

There is currently no consensus regarding what measures are most valid to demonstrate perceptual processing without awareness. Likewise, whether conscious perception and unconscious processing rely on independent mechanisms or lie on a continuum remains a matter of debate. Here, we addressed these issues by comparing the time courses of subjective reports, objective discrimination performance and response priming during meta-contrast masking, under similar attentional demands. We found these to be strikingly similar, suggesting that conscious perception and unconscious processing cannot be dissociated by their time course. Our results also demonstrate that unconscious processing, indexed by response priming, occurs, and that objective discrimination performance indexes the same conscious processes as subjective visibility reports. Finally, our results underscore the role of attention by showing that how much attention the stimulus receives relative to the mask, rather than whether processing is measured by conscious discrimination or by priming, determines the time course of meta-contrast masking.     

Altered attention for stimuli on the hands

Attention operates in the space near the hands with unique, action-related priorities. Here, we examined how attention treats objects on the hands themselves. We tested two hypotheses. First, attention may treat stimuli on the hands like stimuli near the hands, as though the surface of the hands were the proximal case of near-hand space. Alternatively, we proposed that the surface of the hands may be attentionally distinct from the surrounding space. Specifically, we predicted that attention should be slow to orient toward the hands in order to remain entrained to near-hand space, where the targets of actions are usually located. In four experiments, we observed delayed orienting of attention on the hands compared to orienting attention near or far from the hands. Similar delayed orienting was also found for tools connected to the body compared to tools disconnected from the body. These results support our second hypothesis: attention operates differently on the functional surfaces of the hand. We suggest this effect serves a functional role in the execution of manual actions.     

Rythmicités de l’attention des enfants et synchronisation,perspective socioécologique

This study investigates the impact of socioecological synchronization on the level and variations in children's attention at school. The aim was to re-examine previous results and broaden the chronopsychological scope of the research to include new synchronizers originating from proximal ecological niches. Two time-management factors were considered, the organization of the school timetable and the regular and predictable daily time with parents, influenced by work organization and compromises within the family. Two studies were conducted on a total of 498 children between six and 11 years of age. Results confirm a daily attention pattern. The level of performance and the daily pattern are affected by the two time-management factors whose beneficial or adverse influence depends on the child's age. Thus, while the weekly school timetable organized over four days has the strongest negative impact on attention performance for the two age groups, desynchronization due to a longer week-end is greater in the older children. The effects of the two possible four-and-a-half-day timetables also differ according to age. The benefits of working on Wednesdays for younger children appeared less beneficial for the older pupils. Regular and predictable daily time with parents does appear to play a role which also varies according to age, as it has an effect on younger children but has no impact on older children's attention or performance. This study confirms the synchronizing role of temporal messages from school and parental niches in the level and variations in children's attention at school, and is in line with the ecological point of view demonstrated by chronobiological studies. These findings support the importance of research that takes an overall approach to the child's environment. Further work should investigate the prioritization of social synchronizers according to their proximity to the child and how they interact.