Women’s preference of therapist based on sex of therapist and presenting problem: An analog study

An analog study was conducted to examine differences in women’s preference for and anticipated comfort self-disclosing to hypothetical therapists of different sexes based on the type of hypothetical presenting problem. The impact of general level of self-disclosure was also examined. Participants included female college students (n?=?187). Anticipated comfort self-disclosing to male or female therapist was rated by subjects when presented with therapists of each sex with the same qualifications. Women preferred and reported higher levels of anticipated comfort self-disclosing to a female therapist. The type of hypothetical presenting problem and general level of self-disclosure also impacted anticipated comfort self-disclosing. There was an interaction between general level self-disclosure and the sex of therapist on anticipated comfort self-disclosing. General level of self-disclosure only impacted anticipated comfort self-disclosing when the therapist was male. This information is relevant for therapists or organizations that provide psychosocial services to women. Organizations may want to inquire about a client’s preferences about sex of therapist beforehand and, if possible, cater to the client’s preference.     

The role of perceptual similarity of the task environments in children’s perseverative responding

Perseverative responding is often seen in children’s performance in a variety of contexts. One such context is symbolic comprehension in which 2- and 2½-year-olds demonstrate difficulty in appreciating the association of symbols (pictures and scale models) and their referents and show a high proportion of perseverative responding. Representational-level explanations of perseveration were explored in the current studies via examination of the impact of perceptual similarity of visual environments across trials. Across two experiments, children saw either a picture (Experiment 1) or a scale model (Experiment 2) of a hiding location of a room and were then encouraged to recover the toy from an identical room. Manipulating the perceptual similarity of the environments across successive trials affected performance and perseverative responding. These results highlight the critical role played by perceptual information not only in symbolic tasks but also in many other tasks and have important implications for theories of perseveration.     

A validation of a computerised task of risk-taking and moral decision-making and its association with sensation-seeking,impulsivity and sociomoral reasoning

The aim of this study was to investigate the reliability and validity of the computer based application of the Secret Agent (SA) task of risk-taking and moral decision-making. The participants were 100 male patients in a maximum security hospital (50 with severe mental illness and 50 with personality disorder) and 50 community based healthy controls. All participants completed the SA task, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), and measures of IQ, antisocial personality traits, sensation-seeking, impulsivity and sociomoral reasoning. The SA risk-taking and moral decision-making scales had satisfactory levels of reliability (Cronbach’s alpha). Risk-taking correlated significantly with sensation-seeking across all three participant groups. In contrast, risk-taking only correlated with impulsivity among the severe mental illness group. Moral decision-making correlated with sociomoral reasoning among the personality disorder group. No correlation was found between the SA scores and the IGT score and the IGT did not correlate with sensation-seeking or impulsivity. IQ and antisocial personality traits did not correlate with the SA or IGT scales. The study highlights the importance of context, the nature of the risk-taking task, and ‘problem framing’ of the instructions in their relationship with individual differences.     

Positive affect facilitates task switching in the dimensional change card sort task: Implications for the shifting aspect of executive function

Using the modified Dimensional Change Card Sort task, we examined the influence of positive affect on task switching by inspecting various markers for the costs, including restart cost, switch cost and mixing cost. Given that the executive-control processes that underlie switching performance—i.e., inhibition or shifting—are distinct from the component processes that underlie non-switching performance—i.e., stimulus evaluation, resource allocation or response execution—we hypothesised that if positive affect facilitates task switching via executive-control processes, rather than via component processes, positive affect would reduce both switch and restart costs, but not mixing cost, because both switch and restart costs rely on executive processes, while mixing cost imposes only minimal demands on executive processes. We found beneficial effects of positive affect on both restart and switch costs, but not on mixing costs. These results suggest that positive affect improves switching abilities via executive processes rather than via component processes.     

Task conflict,information processing,and decision-making: The damaging effect of relationship conflict

A popular theoretical assumption holds that task-related disagreements stimulate critical thinking, and thus may improve group decision making. Two recent meta-analyses showed, however, that task conflict can have a positive effect, a negative effect, or no effect at all on decision-making quality (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003; De Wit, Greer, & Jehn, 2012). In two studies, we built upon the suggestion of both meta-analyses that the presence of relationship conflict determines whether a task conflict is positively or negatively related to decision making. We hypothesized and found that the level of perceived relationship conflict during task conflict (Study 1), and the actual presence (vs. absence) of relationship conflict during task conflict (Study 2), increased group members’ rigidity in holding onto suboptimal initial preferences during decision making and thus led to poor decisions. In both studies the effect of relationship conflict on decision making was mediated by biased use of information.     

Regional brain activity change predicts responsiveness to treatment for stuttering in adults

Developmental stuttering is known to be associated with aberrant brain activity, but there is no evidence that this knowledge has benefited stuttering treatment. This study investigated whether brain activity could predict progress during stuttering treatment for 21 dextral adults who stutter (AWS). They received one of two treatment programs that included periodic H₂¹⁵O PET scanning (during oral reading, monologue, and eyes-closed rest conditions). All participants successfully completed an initial treatment phase and then entered a phase designed to transfer treatment gains; 9/21 failed to complete this latter phase. The 12 pass and 9 fail participants were similar on speech and neural system variables before treatment, and similar in speech performance after the initial phase of their treatment. At the end of the initial treatment phase, however, decreased activation within a single region, L. putamen, in all 3 scanning conditions was highly predictive of successful treatment progress.     

Developmental changes of win-stay and loss-shift strategies in decision making

This study aims to clarify the developmental changes in real-life decision making when strategy is adjusted using both positive and negative feedback, that is, whether strategic adjustment evolves with age. A total of 84 participants divided into three age groups (children, adolescents, and adults) performed the standard version of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Children and adolescents showed a strong bias in favor of disadvantageous choices whereas adults learned to decide advantageously during the course of the task. Interestingly, the results clearly demonstrate that children did not switch differently following gains and losses whereas adolescents and adults switched more often after a loss than after a gain, corresponding to the “loss-shift” and the “win-stay” strategies, respectively. The results also revealed that adults switched less often after losses compared to children and adolescents and, thus, used the loss-stay strategy more often than the 2 youngest groups. These new findings suggest that successful completion of the IGT by adults requires fine feedback monitoring and more frequent use of the win-stay and loss-stay strategic adjustments.     

Extended problem solving treatment for depression

Introduction: Effective brief psychological approaches for depression that can be delivered by a variety of health professionals with minimal training increase access to treatment by patients. Problem Solving Treatment (PST) was developed for primary care and was modified for this study (EPST) to better meet the needs of mental health patients. Method: A total of 92 therapists from different professional backgrounds completed EPST workshops and treated 92 patients with major depression with interval clinical and treatment process assessments. Results: EPST achieved a significant reduction in depressive symptom scores, life problem scores, and there were few treatment non‐completers. Treatment outcome was predicted by process and therapist variables. Discussion: EPST is an effective and easy to teach treatment that can be delivered by a variety of practitioners and suitable for busy primary mental health care settings.     

Differential attentional allocation and subsequent recognition for young and older adult faces

Studies examining own-age recognition biases report inconsistent results and often utilize paradigms that present faces individually and in isolation. We investigated young and older adults' attention towards young and older faces during learning and whether differential attention influences recognition. Participants viewed complex scenes while their eye movements were recorded; each scene contained two young and two older faces. Half of the participants formed scene impressions and half prepared for a memory test. Participants then completed an old/new face recognition task. Both age groups looked longer at young than older faces; however, only young adults showed an own-age recognition advantage. Participants in the memory condition looked longer at faces but did not show enhanced recognition relative to the impressions condition. Overall, attention during learning did not influence recognition. Our results provide evidence for a young adult face bias in attentional allocation but suggest that longer looking does not necessarily indicate deeper encoding.