Reduced goal specificity is associated with reduced memory specificity in depressed adults

Models of autobiographical memory suggest a close association between memories, future imagination and setting specific personal goals. However this association has yet to be tested with depressed individuals. The aim of this study was to examine whether the specificity of remembering past and imagining future personal events is associated with the specificity of approach and avoidance goals in depressed individuals. Two samples comprising adults who met criteria for major depressive disorder (MDD; N=30) and adults who had no prior history or current depression (N=30) completed autobiographical memory and future event tests, and a personal goal task. In the depressed sample, the specificity with which participants remembered the past was significantly associated with the specificity with which they generated future goals. The depressed sample also elicited fewer specific approach and avoidance goals compared to the non-depressed sample. These findings suggest that an overgeneral memory deficit extends to impairments in goal specificity.     

Invited Review—Survey of Value‐Focused Thinking: Applications,Research Developments and Areas for Future Research

Criteria are the central focus of multi‐criteria decision analysis. Many authors have suggested using our values (or preferences) to define the criteria we use to evaluate alternatives. Value‐focused thinking (VFT) is an important philosophy that advocates a more fundamental view of values in our decision making in our private and professional lives. VFT proponents advocate starting first with our values and then using our values to create decision opportunities, evaluate alternatives and finally develop improved alternatives. It has been 20 years since VFT was first introduced by Ralph Keeney. This paper surveys the VFT literature to provide a comprehensive summary of the significant applications, describe the main research developments and identify areas for future research. We review the scope and magnitude of VFT applications and the key developments in theory since VFT was introduced in 1992 and found 89 papers written in 29 journals from 1992 to 2010. We develop about 20 research questions that include the type of article (application, theory, case study, etc.), the size of the decision space (which, when given, ranged from $200K to billions of dollars), the contribution documented in the article (application benefits) and the research contributions (categorized by preferences, uncertainties and alternatives). After summarizing the answers to these questions, we conclude the paper with suggestions for improving VFT applications and potential future research. We found a large number of significant VFT applications and several useful research contributions. We also found an increasing number of VFT papers written by international authors. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Thinking Styles and Cognitive Development

Using R. J. Sternberg's (1988, 1997) theory of thinking styles and W. G. Perry's (1970) theory of cognitive development, the author investigated the nature of thinking styles as they relate to cognitive development. Eighty-two Hong Kong university students (44 male, 38 female) responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory (R. J. Sternberg & R. K. Wagner, 1992) and the Zhang Cognitive Development Inventory (L. F. Zhang, 1997). Statistical analyses provided varying degrees of support for the prediction of an overlap between the thinking style and cognitive development constructs. In general, students who reasoned at a higher cognitive developmental level tended to use a wider range of thinking styles than students who reasoned at a lower cognitive developmental level. Implications of results are discussed in relation to education and research.     

Mental time travel: Effects of trial duration on episodic and semantic content

Studies exploring mental time travel commonly use cue-word paradigms to elicit past and future autobiographical events. However, the effect of trial duration (how long participants are allowed to describe events) on the relationship between episodic and nonepisodic detail and episodic specificity (i.e., whether longer durations increase event specificity) has not been examined. To resolve these issues, a cue-word study was devised whereby participants described past and future events under three randomly administered time constraints: short (1-min), standard (3-min), and long (5-min) durations. Findings indicated that an individual's capacity for episodic and nonepisodic thought for the past and future were unrelated. This lends supports to the idea that independent mechanisms are responsible for episodic and semantic information. This study also offers clarity concerning the effect of different trial durations on episodic specificity, which may aid the design of future studies of mental time travel.     

Integrating Spirituality and Domestic Violence Treatment

Summary

This article provides a brief reflection on how the Change of Seasons treatment model developed and the reasons for its success with Aboriginal men. Parallels between Aboriginal perspectives, or worldviews, and Ken Wilber's transpersonal psychology, Rupert Sheldrake's fields theory, and Peter Senge's systems thinking are also discussed. Practical rituals and ceremonies that have been successfully integrated into psychoeducational group counselling as practiced in the Change of Seasons model are explained. These musings are included to initiate further dialogue on holistic approaches to counselling and other community initiatives.     

Language processing,activation and reasoning: A reply to Espino,Santamaría,and García-Madruga (2000)

Espino, Santamaría, and García-Madruga (2000) report three results on the time taken to respond to a probe word occurring as end term in the premises of a syllogistic argument. They argue that these results can only be predicted by the theory of mental models. It is argued that two of these results, on differential reaction times to end-terms occurring in different premises and in different figures, are consistent with Chater and Oaksford's (1999) probability heuristics model (PHM). It is argued that the third finding, on different reaction times between figures, does not address the issue of processing difficulty where PHM predicts no differences between figures. It is concluded that Espino et al.'s results do not discriminate between theories of syllogistic reasoning as effectively as they propose.     

Evidence for word length coding during visual word recognition

In a masked priming procedure manipulating orthographic neighbourhood size, the priming word activates a number of word candidates of which the target could be one. Whether the target is one of the candidates or not determines how quickly it is recognised. However, the efficiency of lexical processing may be markedly less if all possible candidates are activated. One solution to this problem is if the visual system uses prime length information to reduce the number of candidates to a more manageable amount. Here, we investigated in two masked priming experiments whether prime length and orthographic information combine to facilitate target word recognition. In Experiment 1, we showed that the efficiency of visual word recognition is not influenced by the length of primes alone. However, when combined with orthographically related primes, word length coding is preserved. In Experiment 2, we investigated whether length priming affects recognition of short and long words differently. Results showed that only short words benefit from a same-length orthographically related prime, and that the priming effect does not generalise to longer words. These results suggest that the length of a word is not an essential feature in lexical processing, but that it can facilitate recognition by constraining the activation of orthographically related words.