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.     

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.     

Creating a strategy for progress: a contextual behavioral science approach

Behavior analysis is a field dedicated to the development and application of behavioral principles to the understanding and modification of the psychological actions of organisms. As such, behavior analysis was committed from the beginning to a comprehensive account of behavior, stretching from animal learning to complex human behavior. Despite that lofty goal, basic behavior analysis is having a generally harder time finding academic support, and applied behavior analysis has narrowed its focus. In the present paper we argue that both of these trends relate to the challenge of human language and cognition, and that developments within clinical behavior analysis and the analysis of derived relational responding are providing a way forward. To take full advantage of these developments, however, we argue that behavior analysts need to articulate their unique approach to theory, to develop more flexible language systems for applied workers, and to expand their methodological flexibility. This approach, which we term contextual behavioral science, is meant as an evolutionary step that will allow behavior analysis to better capture the center of modern psychological concerns in both the basic and applied areas. Clinical behavior analysis is showing a way forward for behavior analysis to regain its vision as a comprehensive approach to behavior.     

Quality of Work Life as a Mediator Between Emotional Labor and Work Family Interference

Purpose  We adopted the conservation of resources model (COR, Hobfoll Am Psychol 44:513–524, 1989; Hobfoll in Stress, culture, and community: the psychology and philosophy of stress, Plenum, New York, 1998) to examine the associations among emotional labor, work family interference, and quality of work life. Design/Methodology/Approach  Cross-sectional, self-reported data were obtained from 442 Hong Kong Chinese service employees. Findings  Correlation and hierarchical regression analyses showed that surface acting was a salient correlate of work-to-family interference, even when organizational display rules and employees’ demographic information were controlled. Furthermore, quality of work life had partially mediated the relationship between surface acting and work-to-family interference. However, deep acting and expression of naturally felt emotion did not relate to work-to-family interference. Finally, we found that family-to-work interference was a salient correlate of the use of surface acting in workplace. Implication  This study provided useful information of how adopting different emotional labor strategies related to work family interference. Based on our results, the use of deep acting should be promoted in workplace because it related positively to quality of work life and it did not amplify the work-to-family interference. Originality/value  While past studies often explored the role of emotional labor as the precursor of work family interference, our study is among the first attempt to examine family-to-work interference as the antecedent of emotional labor. Additionally, we had also confirmed the role of quality of work life as an important mediator between emotional labor-work-to-family interference.     

免疫分析中抗体干扰相关问题的探讨

免疫分析是一项应用广泛的技术,抗体是免疫分析的关键问题。循环中内源性抗体对免疫分析的干扰与该技术本身一样古老,由于抗体干扰造成的可疑或错误的结果一直与其并存。但对于其机制、类型扣对策并未廓清。有鉴于此,有必要对抗体干扰免疫分析的诸多问题进行更深入的基础与临床研究,以提高临床诊断水平。     

Interference by process, not content, determines semantic auditory distraction

Distraction by irrelevant background sound of visually-based cognitive tasks illustrates the vulnerability of attentional selectivity across modalities. Four experiments centred on auditory distraction during tests of memory for visually-presented semantic information. Meaningful irrelevant speech disrupted the free recall of semantic category-exemplars more than meaningless irrelevant sound (Experiment 1). This effect was exacerbated when the irrelevant speech was semantically related to the to-be-remembered material (Experiment 2). Importantly, however, these effects of meaningfulness and semantic relatedness were shown to arise only when instructions emphasized recall by category rather than by serial order (Experiments 3 and 4). The results favor a process-oriented, rather than a structural, approach to the breakdown of attentional selectivity and forgetting: performance is impaired by the similarity of process brought to bear on the relevant and irrelevant material, not the similarity in item content.     

The conjunction fallacy and interference effects

In the present article we consider the conjunction fallacy, a well known cognitive fallacy experimentally tested in cognitive science, which occurs for intuitive judgments. We show that the quantum formalism can be used to describe, in a very simple way, this fallacy, in terms of interference effect. We provide evidence that the quantum formalism leads quite naturally to violations of the joint probability rule of classic probability when considering the estimated probability of the conjunction of two events. By defining the concept of maximal conjunction error, we find a good agreement with experimental results. Thus we suggest that in cognitive science the formalism of quantum mechanics can be used to describe a quantum regime, where the cognitive fallacies and heuristics are valid.     

记忆的知觉干扰效应研究概述

知觉干扰效应是指在识记阶段快速呈现一个单词,紧接着给予一个倒行掩蔽的刺激,在随后的记忆测验中被试表现出对单词的记忆增强的一种现象。知觉干扰效应的影响因素分为测验方式、实验设计方式、实验材料的属性和其他影响因素四个方面。理论解释主要有六种：精细加工假说、时空背景假说、任务要求假说、补偿加工假说、选择性复述假说以及项目特异关联假说。最后,文章从研究领域和实验材料的拓展以及主观因素的影响展望了该研究领域     

影响整合式谈判的情境因素和过程因素

从“情境因素”和“过程因素”两个方面对整合式谈判影响因素的研究动态和研究成果进行了归纳和分析。其中“情境因素”是指在正式谈判一开始时就已经存在的因素,主要包括：（1）谈判者的文化价值观,如个人主义与集体主义、权力距离和沟通的高、低语境;（2）社会动机,研究谈判组的动机构成如何影响谈判过程和结果;（3）情绪因素,研究谈判中的积极情绪、消极情绪各自对达成整合式谈判的影响。对“过程因素”的研究考察了谈判沟通的过程,包括谈判过程中各种策略的使用频次、次序和谈判各个阶段的策略使用情况