Perceived benefits of using an Internet-based interactive career planning system

Making Better Career Decisions (MBCD) is an Internet-based interactive career planning system designed to help deliberating individuals. The present research examined the benefits of a dialogue with MBCD, by analyzing 712 users’ perceptions of its contribution to their career decision-making process, and locating variables associated with these perceptions. A pre-dialogue and a post-dialogue questionnaire were used to collect the users’ perceptions of its benefits and measure the change in the degree of decidedness. Perceived benefit was derived from participants’ ratings of the degree of progress they had made in their career decision-making process, whether they had learned about additional factors to be considered and their career-related preferences, as well as their ratings of the quality of the list of “promising” career alternatives presented to them during their dialogue with MBCD. This composite perceived benefit was found to be positively associated with the users’ decidedness at the completion of the dialogue with MBCD. Users’ satisfaction with the length and variety of their personal “promising alternatives” list was associated with a higher perceived benefit.     

Response monitoring and expectancy in random serial RT tasks

Two different sequential patterns have been reported in serial reaction-time (RT) tasks with random stimulus sequences, depending on the response-to-stimulus interval (RSI). When RSI is short a first-order repetition effect and a higher order benefit-only pattern are found, and when RSI is long a cost-benefit pattern is observed. In a series of three experiments, we found that the patterns are not unique for spatial dimensions, and that the benefit-only pattern does not appear for irrelevant stimulus features. The cost-benefit pattern, on the other hand, can shift to irrelevant locations, but not to irrelevant colour. Distributional analyses of the sequential effects demonstrate that the first-order repetition effect can be dissociated from the higher order effects. The results are interpreted as support for the role of response monitoring in the development of the benefit-only pattern at short RSI, while the first-order repetition effect is explained as repetition priming. With a long RSI, the cost-benefit pattern is confirmed as a low-level subjective expectancy process, which is primarily controlled by stimulus location. The data clearly strengthen the support for three different processes generating sequential effects in random serial RT tasks.     

Sequential combinations of drug and cognitive behavioral therapy for chronic insomnia: an exploratory study

This study explores the efficacy of sequential treatments involving medication and cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) for primary insomnia. Seventeen participants took part in a multiple baseline design and were assigned to: (a) medication for 5 weeks, followed by combined medication plus CBT for 5 weeks; (b) combined treatment for 5 weeks, followed by CBT alone; or (c) CBT alone. Each treatment sequence produced significant sleep improvements, but at different points in time. For the first sequence, most of the sleep improvement was obtained after the introduction of CBT, while for the other sequence and CBT alone, improvement appeared during the first weeks. These results suggest that sleep improvement seems affected by the way treatments are combined. Also, a sequence beginning with a combined treatment followed by CBT alone seems to produce the best outcome. Additional research should be conducted with larger samples to determine the most effective sequence.     

Sequential effects on speeded information processing: a developmental study

Two experiments were performed to assess age-related changes in sequential effects on choice reaction time (RT). Sequential effects portray the influence of previous trials on the RT to the current stimulus. In Experiment 1, three age groups (7-9, 10-12, and 18-25 years) performed a spatially compatible choice task, with response-to-stimulus intervals (RSIs) of 50 and 500 ms varied between trial blocks. In Experiment 2, three age groups (7-9, 15-16, and 18-25 years) performed the task with spatial stimulus-response (S-R) mappings (compatible versus incompatible) varied between participants. For adults, the experiments yielded a pattern of sequential effects suggestive of "automatic facilitation" (i.e., a first-order repetition effect and a higher order benefit-only pattern for short RSIs) and "subjective expectancy" (i.e., a first-order alternation effect and a higher order cost-benefit pattern for long RSIs). Automatic facilitation was more pronounced for incompatible responses than for compatible responses. Both experiments showed the anticipated decrease in automatic facilitation with advancing age. Finally, the first-order alternation effect showed the predicted age-related increase, but the cost-benefit pattern revealed an opposite trend, suggesting that the first-order and higher order indexes of subjective expectancy may relate to dissociable mechanisms.     

A Data Analysis Method for Using Longitudinal Binary Outcome Data from a SMART to Compare Adaptive Interventions

Sequential multiple assignment randomized trials (SMARTs) are a useful and increasingly popular approach for gathering information to inform the construction of adaptive interventions to treat psychological and behavioral health conditions. Until recently, analysis methods for data from SMART designs considered only a single measurement of the outcome of interest when comparing the efficacy of adaptive interventions. Lu et al. proposed a method for considering repeated outcome measurements to incorporate information about the longitudinal trajectory of change. While their proposed method can be applied to many kinds of outcome variables, they focused mainly on linear models for normally distributed outcomes. Practical guidelines and extensions are required to implement this methodology with other types of repeated outcome measures common in behavioral research. In this article, we discuss implementation of this method with repeated binary outcomes. We explain how to compare adaptive interventions in terms of various summaries of repeated binary outcome measures, including average outcome (area under the curve) and delayed effects. The method is illustrated using an empirical example from a SMART study to develop an adaptive intervention for engaging alcohol- and cocaine-dependent patients in treatment. Monte Carlo simulations are provided to demonstrate the good performance of the proposed technique.     

The effect of interstimulus interval on sequential effects in absolute identification

In absolute identification experiments, the participant is asked to identify stimuli drawn from a small set of items which differ on a single physical dimension (e.g., 10 tones which vary in frequency). Responses in these tasks show a striking pattern of sequential dependencies: The current response assimilates towards the immediately preceding stimulus but contrasts with the stimuli further back in the sequence. This pattern has been variously interpreted as resulting from confusion of items in memory, shifts in response criteria, or the action of selective attention, and these interpretations have been incorporated into competing formal models of absolute identification performance. In two experiments, we demonstrate that lengthening the time between trials increases contrast to both the previous stimulus and the stimulus two trials back. This surprising pattern of results is difficult to reconcile with the idea that sequential dependencies result from memory confusion or from criterion shifts, but is consistent with an account that emphasizes selective attention.     

The effect of blocking inter-trial interval on sequential effects in absolute identification

Sequential effects are ubiquitous in decision-making, but no more than in the absolute identification task where participants must identify stimuli from a set of items that vary on a single dimension. A number of competing explanations for these sequential effects have been proposed, and recently Matthews and Stewart [(2009a). The effect of inter-stimulus interval on sequential effects in absolute identification. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, 2014–2029] showed that manipulations of the time between decisions is useful in discriminating between these accounts. We use a Bayesian hierarchical regression model to show that inter-trial interval has an influence on behaviour when it varies across different blocks of trials, but not when it varies from trial to trial. We discuss the implications of both our and Matthews and Stewart's results on the effect of inter-trial interval for theories of sequential effects.     

The role of response inhibition in temporal preparation: Evidence from a go/no-go task

During the foreperiod (FP) of a warned reaction task, participants engage in a process of temporal preparation to speed response to the impending target stimulus. Previous neurophysiological studies have shown that inhibition is applied during FP to prevent premature response. Previous behavioral studies have shown that the duration of FP on both the current and the preceding trial codetermine response time to the target. Integrating these findings, the present study tested the hypothesis that the behavioral effects find their origin in response inhibition on the preceding trial. In two experiments the variable-FP paradigm was combined with a go/no-go task, in which no-go stimuli required explicit response inhibition. The resulting data pattern revealed sequential effects of both FP (long or short) and response requirement (go or no-go), which could be jointly understood as expressions of response inhibition, consistent with the hypothesis.     

Reward priming of temporal preparation

Recent studies have demonstrated a strong impact of reward on the expectancy of future target locations or features. In this study, we examined whether reward would have similar effects on temporal preparation. In two experiments, participants completed a reaction time task with a variable interval between a warning stimulus and the target stimulus. After each trial they were awarded either low or high reward which was converted to cash after the experiment. Crucially, reward magnitude was assigned randomly and was unrelated to task performance. Nevertheless, across experiments, the results revealed that reward modified future temporal preparation, especially in participants that could be identified as highly motivated. These findings generalize the principles of reward priming to the temporal domain.     

The dynamics of deferred decision

Decision makers are often unable to choose between the options that they are offered. In these settings they typically defer their decision, that is, delay the decision to a later point in time or avoid the decision altogether. In this paper, we outline eight behavioral findings regarding the causes and consequences of choice deferral that cognitive theories of decision making should be able to capture. We show that these findings can be accounted for by a deferral-based time limit applied to existing sequential sampling models of preferential choice. Our approach to modeling deferral as a time limit in a sequential sampling model also makes a number of novel predictions regarding the interactions between choice probabilities, deferral probabilities, and decision times, and we confirm these predictions in an experiment. Choice deferral is a key feature of everyday decision making, and our paper illustrates how established theoretical approaches can be used to understand the cognitive underpinnings of this important behavioral phenomenon.