An examination of message-relevant affect in road safety messages: Should road safety advertisements aim to make us feel good or bad?

Drawing upon the multiple roles of affect posited by Elaboration Likelihood Model, the current paper examines the effectiveness of message-relevant affect. Specifically, humourous and fear-evoking anti-drink driving messages are examined in terms of perceptions of relative influence on self and others (i.e., the third-person effect) and their performance on a range of persuasion outcomes. The influence of involvement, response efficacy, and gender on persuasion outcomes is also examined. Participants (N = 201) viewed two advertisements and completed two questionnaires: the first, assessed pre-exposure attitudes and behaviour and immediate-post exposure attitudes and intentions; the second, 2–4 weeks later, assessed attitudes and behaviour. The results revealed, as predicted, interactions of the key variables and evidence of the greater persuasiveness of negative appeals immediately after exposure whilst greater improvement of positive appeals over time. The findings highlight the importance of continuing the exploration of positive appeals as a persuasive alternative to negative appeals.     

医护人员人文素质缺乏的管理责任及干预策略

医护人员人文素质缺乏与医学教育缺陷、人文管理意识不强、后续人文素质培养不利及执业环境恶化等综合因素密切相关。卫生行政主管部门和医院管理者首先应当确立人文管理理念,营造医院的人文氛围,承担起促进医学教育体制改革、加强岗位培训和着力培养社会需要的“人文科学型”医护人员的责任。     

Interference control in preschoolers: factors influencing performance on the day–night task

Two experiments investigated preschoolers' interference control in variants of the day–night task. The day–night task involves instructing children across 16 trials to say the word ‘day’ when viewing a card depicting a nighttime sky and to say ‘night’ when shown a picture of the daytime sky. The purpose of the experiments was to investigate whether the depiction on each card distracts children because it is semantically associated with the instructed response or because the depicted item cues the alternative (incorrect) response within the response set. The results in the first study (N=23, M=52.65 months) and second study (N=54, M=50.81 months) indicate that a close semantic relation between the picture and the target response does not pose substantial interference for preschoolers. In contrast, the pictured item poses a significant challenge for preschoolers when it depicts the interfering alternative in the response set. Theoretical implications of these results for the development of interference control are discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

项目反应理论新进展：基于3PLM和GRM的混合模型

IRT中的计量模型较多,不同计量模型适合不同特点的数据资料,实际工作者应根据实际情况选择适当的IRT模型来分析数据。我国是个考试、测评大国,测评的题型丰富多样,在实际应用IRT时,一个模型往往很难反应所有数据资料本身的特点,这时可考虑应用多个IRT模型（即“混合模型”）来分析,以达到对数据的最佳拟合。本文对混合模型的思想方法及原理、参数估计的实现、以及模型性能进行了研究,发现：（1）本文自主开发的混合模型参数估计程序Mix_Tu具有较高的返真性,且与国际知名测量软件Parscale相当。（2）在“项目异常”情况下,Mix_Tu程序对参数b和c的估计受数据异常程度的影响要大于Parscale程序,而对参数a的估计受数据异常程度的影响要小于Parscale程序,而在参数theta上两个程序相当。（3）在“被试异常”情况下,Mix_Tu程序对所有参数的估计受数据异常程度的影响均要小于Parscale程序,Mix_Tu程序表现的更为稳健。     

适应性测验的发展:历史与现状

适应性测验作为一种测验形式,与传统的纸笔测验形式相比,具有省时、高效等很多优越性。测验应该适合于被试的理念最初可见于比内的智力测验。上世纪七十年代以来,适应性测验的研究从经典测量理论阶段发展到项目反应理论阶段,经历了从二阶段、三阶段、多阶段测验、固定分支测验和分层适应性测验的发展,到现在的计算机化适应性测验研究。随着项目反应理论和计算机技术的发展,计算机化适应性测验已经在教育和心理测验领域中得到广泛应用。目前对它的研究日益深入,主要有项目克隆、项目曝光、多维适应性测验、被试诊断、人格适应性测验等问题。     

Practical Limitations in Making Decisions Regarding the Distribution of Applicant Personality Test Scores Based on Incumbent Data

For practitioners, the possibility of faking on personality tests has potential implications that are much broader than those captured by current theoretical debates over criterion-related validity, factor structure, or psychological processes. One unexplored potential impact of response distortion involves the pass rates associated with applying cutoff scores developed using a concurrent validation design to applicant samples. This practitioner-oriented paper compared applicant and incumbent scores on three personality dimensions and uncovered significant standardized group differences. These differences greatly influenced pass rates for three different selection models, which impacted expected utility of the selection system. Potential solutions for practitioners are provided, along with recommendations for future research in this area. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychologists in Orlando, Florida.     

The role of attentional biases in PTSD: is it interference or facilitation?

Although attentional biases have been demonstrated in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the cognitive methodologies used have not allowed for disambiguation of two types of attentional biases. It remains unclear if PTSD involves difficulty disengaging attention from threatening stimuli (interference) or facilitated detection. To differentiate between attentional interference and facilitation, 57 male Vietnam-era veterans (30 High PTSD and 27 Low PTSD) completed a visual search task with a lexical decision component. High PTSD veterans who engaged in the interference task first showed increased interference to threat-relevant words relative to Low PTSD veterans. However, no evidence was found for facilitated detection of threatening stimuli in PTSD.     

The psychological processes underlying symptoms of thought interference in psychosis

Morrison and colleagues have proposed that auditory hallucinations are the result of cognitive intrusions being misattributed to an external source due to such thoughts being inconsistent with the person's beliefs about his or her own mental processes (metacognitive beliefs). The aim of this study was to investigate the applicability of this model to psychotic symptoms of thought interference. Fifty psychotic patients with and without thought interference were compared on (i) frequency of cognitive intrusions, (ii) metacognitive beliefs, (iii) source monitoring and (iv) appraisals of an unrelated anomalous event (a card trick). As predicted, individuals with thought interference had an increased frequency of cognitive intrusions and of maladaptive metacognitive appraisals, lower perceived cognitive control, and were more likely to endorse appraisals regarding 'permeability' of the mind, on the card trick task, in comparison to individuals without thought interference. No significant differences were found on any measure when the patient group was divided into hallucinators and non-hallucinators, once other variables were controlled for. These findings suggest that Morrison's model may be more parsimonious for symptoms of thought interference than for auditory hallucinations.     

Enhanced spatial ability in aged dogs following dietary and behavioural enrichment

We examined the benefits of a broad spectrum antioxidant diet and enrichment comprised of physical exercise, environmental stimulants and cognitive testing, on spatial memory performance in beagle dogs. Both aged (N=48) and young (N=16) beagle dogs (Canus familiaris) were tested yearly on a three-component delayed non-match to position spatial task for three consecutive years. The results showed that young enriched animals acquired the task in fewer sessions, made fewer errors, responded slower and made fewer positional responses, compared to aged enriched animals. An analysis restricted to aged animals revealed that antioxidant administration and enrichment resulted in fewer errors, slower responses and decreased positional responses, particularly in Year 3. Finally, cohort differences emerged, which exemplify the significance of early environmental intervention. Aged dogs that were housed with other animals and exposed to an outdoor environment in early development displayed greater benefits from both interventions. These findings indicate that long-term dietary intervention and enrichment can buffer age-associated cognitive decline.     

The Normative Core Of Paternalism

The philosophical debate on paternalism is conducted as if the property of being paternalistic should be attributed to actions. Actions are typically deemed to be paternalistic if they amount to some kind of interference with a person and if the rationale for the action is the good of the person interfered with. This focus on actions obscures the normative issues involved. In particular, it makes it hard to provide an analysis of the traditional liberal resistance to paternalism. Given the fact that actions most often have mixed rationales, it is not clear how we should categorize and evaluate interfering actions for which only part of the rationale is the good of the person. The preferable solution is to attribute the property of being paternalistic not to actions, but to compounds of reasons and actions. The framework of action–reasons provides the tools for distinguishing where exactly paternalism lies in the complex web of reasons and actions.