Who’s bringing the donuts: The role of affective patterns in group decision making

Two studies examined how intragroup affective patterns influence groups’ pervasive tendency to ignore the unique expertise of their members. Using a hidden profile task, Study 1 provided evidence that groups with at least one member experiencing positive affect shared more unique information than groups composed entirely of members experiencing neutral affect. This occurred because group members experiencing positive affect were more likely to initiate unique information sharing, as well as information seeking. Study 2 built upon this base by showing that confidence mediates the relationship between positive affect and the initiation of unique information sharing. Additionally, Study 2 investigated the role of negative affect in group decision making and how negative and positive affect concurrently influence decision making when groups are composed of members experiencing each. The results are discussed in terms of the role affect plays in influencing group behavior and the resultant importance of investigating specific affective patterns.     

Using Geospatial Research Methods to Examine Resource Accessibility and Availability as it Relates to Community Participation of Individuals with Serious Mental Illnesses

Greater community participation among individuals with serious mental illnesses is associated with better psychosocial and health outcomes. Typically, studies examining community participation have utilized self‐report measures and been conducted in limited settings. The introduction of methodological advances to examining community participation of individuals with serious mental illnesses has the potential to advance the science of community mental health research and invigorate the work of community psychologists in this area. This study employed an innovative geospatial approach to examine the relationship between community participation and resource accessibility (i.e., proximity) and availability (i.e., concentration) among 294 individuals utilizing community mental health services throughout the United States. Findings suggest small but significant associations between community participation and the accessibility and availability of resources needed for participation. Furthermore, findings demonstrate the importance of car access for individuals residing in both urban and non‐urban settings. The methods and results presented in this study have implications for community mental health research and services and provide an illustration of ways that geospatial methodologies can be used to investigate environmental factors that impact community inclusion and participation of individuals with serious mental illnesses.     

Diversity and unity of modularity

Since the publication of Fodor's (1983) The Modularity of Mind, there have been quite a few discussions of cognitive modularity among cognitive scientists. Generally, in those discussions, modularity means a property of specialized cognitive processes or a domain-specific body of information. In actuality, scholars understand modularity in many different ways. Different characterizations of modularity and modules were proposed and discussed, but they created misunderstanding and confusion. In this article, I classified and analyzed different approaches to modularity and argued for the unity of modularity. Modularity is a multidimensional property consisting of features from several dimensions specifying different aspects of cognition. Among those, there are core features of modularity, and these core features form a cross-dimensional unity. Despite the diverse and liberal characterizations, modularity contributes to cognitive science because of the unity of the core features.     

Statistical manifold as an affine space: A functional equation approach

A statistical manifold M_μ consists of positive functions f such that defines a probability measure. In order to define an atlas on the manifold, it is viewed as an affine space associated with a subspace of the Orlicz space L^Φ. This leads to a functional equation whose solution, after imposing the linearity constrain in line with the vector space assumption, gives rise to a general form of mappings between the affine probability manifold and the vector (Orlicz) space. These results generalize the exponential statistical manifold and clarify some foundational issues in non-parametric information geometry.     

Count out your intrusions: Effects of verbal encoding on intrusive memories

Peri-traumatic information processing is thought to affect the development of intrusive trauma memories. This study aimed to replicate and improve the study by Holmes, Brewin, and Hennessy (2004, Exp. 3) on the role of peri-traumatic verbal processing in analogue traumatic intrusion development. Participants viewed an aversive film under one of three conditions: counting backwards in 3s (“verbal interference”), verbalising emotions and thoughts (“verbal enhancement”), or without an extra task. A dual-process account of PTSD would predict that verbal interference would increase intrusion frequency compared to no task, whereas verbal enhancement would lead to a decrease. In contrast, mainstream memory theory predicts a decrease in intrusion frequency from any concurrent task that diverts attention away from the trauma film. The main finding was that the verbal interference task led to a decrease in intrusive memories of the film compared to the other two conditions. This finding does not support a dual-process account of PTSD, but is in line with general theories of memory and attention.     

How to achieve synergy in group decision making: Lessons to be learned from the hidden profile paradigm

Based on over 25 years of research on hidden profiles and information sharing in groups, and particularly our own work in this area, we outline a general model of how groups can achieve better decisions in a hidden profile situation than their individual members would have been capable of (i.e., synergy). At its core the model defines intensity and bias as the two key parameters that have to be optimised with regard to both the discussion of information and the processing of information in order to ensure synergy in group decision making. We review the empirical literature on information sharing and group decision making in the hidden profile paradigm (with a particular focus on our own studies) to illustrate how group decision quality can be enhanced by increasing intensity and decreasing bias in the discussion and processing of information. Finally we also outline why we think that the lessons learned from research using the hidden profile paradigm can be generalised to group decision-making research in general, and how these lessons can stimulate studies in other fields of group decision-making and group performance research.     

Attentional interference by threat and post-traumatic stress disorder: The role of thought control strategies

Attentional interference by threat is associated with PTSD, but the mechanisms of this relationship remain unclear. Attentional interference might be related to increased use of maladaptive thought control strategies, such as suppressing unwanted thoughts (thought suppression) or replacing threatening thoughts with everyday concerns (worry), which increase PTSD risk. Conversely, attentional interference might be associated with reduced use of adaptive strategies, such as talking about threatening thoughts (social control), which decrease PTSD risk. This study tested if thought control strategies mediate the relationship between attentional interference and PTSD. Sixty-one male Vietnam-era veterans completed measures of PTSD symptoms and thought control strategies. Participants also completed a Visual Search Task measuring attentional interference, which required participants to identify a target letter string among a group of threat or neutral words. Attentional interference by threat was related to PTSD symptoms, and mediation analyses revealed significant indirect effects of attentional interference through thought suppression and worry. Attentional interference was related to re-experiencing and avoidance, but not hyperarousal, symptom clusters. Thought suppression was a unique mediator for re-experiencing, whereas thought suppression and worry both mediated the relationship with avoidance. These results offer evidence for maladaptive thought control strategies as a mechanism linking attentional biases for threat to PTSD.     

The role of controlled attention on recall in major depression

Information processing biases are hallmark features of major depressive disorder (MDD). Depressed individuals display biased memory and attention for negative material. Given that memory is highly dependent on attention for initial encoding, understanding the interplay of these processes may provide important insight into mechanisms that produce memory biases in depression. In particular, attentional control—the ability to selectively attend to task-relevant information by both inhibiting the processing of irrelevant information and disengaging attention from irrelevant material—may be one area of impairment in MDD. In the current study, clinically depressed (MDD: n = 15) and never depressed (non-MDD: n = 22) participants' line of visual gaze was assessed while participants viewed positive and negative word pairs. For each word pair, participants were instructed to attend to one word (target) and ignore one word (distracter). Free recall of study stimuli was then assessed. Depressed individuals displayed greater recall of negatively valenced target words following the task. Although there were no group differences in attentional control in the context of negative words, attention to negative targets mediated the relationship between depression status and recall of negative words. Results suggest a stronger link between attention and memory for negative material in MDD.     

Seeing through the eyes of anxious individuals: An investigation of anxiety-related interpretations of emotional expressions

The interpretation of emotional states is necessary for successful social communication. Often individuals interpret emotional expressions intuitively and without full cognitive awareness. The aim of the present study was to test whether anxiety would influence affect interpretation in the manner suggested by interpretation bias—the tendency to interpret ambiguous cues in a threatening way. Interpretation of social cues was assessed with the similarity rating task (simtask) in two studies (n₁ = 116, n₂ = 76). The similarity ratings were analysed with a multidimensional scaling (MDS) approach, and the effects of anxiety on the interpretation of emotional expressions were analysed with multilevel modelling. The results of both studies showed evidence for an anxiety-related interpretation bias. High-anxious individuals tended to interpret milder threats as more negative than low-anxious individuals did. The consequences for anxiety research are discussed.