Teaching effective hand raising to children with autism during group instruction

We taught 3 children with autism to raise a hand or keep both hands down depending on their status (e.g., having heard a target word, possessing a specific item) using modeling, prompting, and reinforcement. All 3 children acquired accurate hand-raising skills in response to progressively more difficult discrimination tasks during group instruction. The implications for preparing children for general education settings are discussed.     

Crossed-categorization, evaluation, and face recognition

We investigated the relationship between evaluative intergroup bias and biased errors in intergroup face recognition after crossed-categorization (the combination of two social categories in defining a target of perception). Although evaluative bias and recognition bias often operate in parallel, we draw on two previously unconnected literatures to predict a divergence between these two processes after crossed-categorization. We tested this hypothesis by assessing participants’ evaluations of and recognition of targets who shared two ingroups with participants, targets who shared only one ingroup with participants, and targets who shared neither ingroup. Consistent with predictions, targets’ shared and unshared group memberships combined additively to affect evaluation, but targets who shared two ingroup memberships were better recognized than all other category combinations. These results document the relationship between evaluative bias and recognition bias after crossed-categorization and indicate that crossed-categorization affects evaluative bias and recognition bias in different ways.     

Emotional and self‐esteem consequences of perceiving discrimination against a new identity group

With a sample of Asian international students, the consequences of perceiving pervasive discrimination against one's in‐group were examined by experimentally manipulating perceived discrimination (pervasive vs rare) and group identification (low vs high). We report evidence that supports and integrates aspects of two contrasted models; namely, the discounting model and the rejection–identification model. Consistent with both models, the effects of perceiving discrimination on one's psychological well‐being depended on the level of group identification. Nevertheless, after reading about pervasive discrimination, low (vs high) identifiers reported less depressed affect, consistent with the discounting model. However, they also reported lower self‐esteem, consistent with the rejection–identification model.     

Being a psychoanalyst: An everyday audacity1

This paper is the work of fi ve psychoanalysts who came together as a group in order to refl ect on their work as analysts. How are we analysts to identify the unconscious resistances that may sometimes hold us back from offering psychoanalysis to some patients? Do these resistances sometimes hamper the inner freedom that we require in order to maintain a psychoanalytic focus once that process is under way? How do we manage from time to time to overcome these resistances or, better, make use of them in order to develop our understanding of the unconscious dynamics that create the link between analyst and patient? The authors discuss these issues with particular reference to clinical situations taken from classic psychoanalytic treatment cases during which the analyst had to fi nd within him‐ or herself the audacity to be a psychoanalyst. Each clinical situation is different: preliminary interviews, in the course of the actual treatment, issues that emerge in the training of candidates. One of the signifi cant features of this group lies in the fact that the participants are at different stages in their development as psychoanalysts (student, associate member, full member, training analyst). This means that their experiences complement one another and encourage a discussion of issues such as how psychoanalysis can be passed on, and the relationship between supervisor and supervisee.     

Changing patterns of infant behavior and mother–infant interaction: Intra- and interindividual variability

Mother–infant dyads were observed weekly at their homes for a 15-month period. In this way longitudinal data about the infants’ crying, fretting/fussing, smiling and different types of physical contact with the mother were collected. The subject of this study concerns the variability and stability in macroscopic patterns of associations between these behaviors. Different types of associations were found between the behaviors, and most of them changed considerably as the infant developed. Individual differences in the nature of the associations and in the changes they underwent over time predominated, but in a limited number of cases the infants shared the same developmental trajectories of behavioral associations. The results show how the use of intensive time series designs can be advantageous in clarifying issues of long-term variability and stability in human behavior. They also support the notion of changing patterns of behavior being a normal feature of early development.     

A Self‐regulation Perspective on Hidden‐profile Problems: If–Then Planning to Review Information Improves Group Decisions

In hidden‐profile (HP) problems, groups squander their potential to make superior decisions because members fail to capitalize on each other's unique knowledge (unshared information). A new self‐regulation perspective suggests that hindrances in goal striving (e.g., failing to seize action opportunities) contribute to this problem. Implementation intentions (if–then plans) are known to help deal with hindrances in goal striving; therefore, supporting decision goals with if–then plans should improve the impact of unshared information on group decisions. Indeed, in line with past research, control participants in two experiments rarely identified the best alternative despite monetary incentives and setting decision goals. In contrast, simply adding if–then plans to review advantages of the non‐preferred alternatives before making the final decision significantly increased solution rates. Process manipulations (Experiment 1) and measures (Experiment 2) indicate that conceptualizing HP problems as a self‐regulation challenge provides explanatory power beyond existing accounts. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“Here we're all in the same boat” – a qualitative study of group based rehabilitation for sick‐listed citizens with chronic pain

Musculoskeletal pain impacts upon everyday life. A degree of chronicity may pose an increased risk of sickness absence. One of two rehabilitative interventions, “Tailored Physical Activity” or “Chronic Pain Self‐Management Program”, was offered to sick‐listed citizens who experienced pain. The objectives of this paper were to: (1) Assess what factors are experienced as problematic for sick‐listed citizens in everyday life with chronic pain, and (2) Evaluate the significance of two distinct rehabilitative interventions on the future everyday lives of sick‐listed citizens. Seven semi‐structured interviews with sick‐listed citizens were analyzed using a phenomenological‐hermeneutical approach. Results were discussed by applying the theoretical framework of Antonovsky's salutogenetic model and Yaloms principles for group psychology. The potential for development of citizen's coping is evaluated based on Roessler's notion of progression. The analysis revealed four main themes: (1) Living with pain and unemployment; (2) “Putting my foot down” and “asking for help”; (3) Significance of the group, including instructors, and; (4) Aspects significant to progression. Unemployment is a major life event that promotes stress and can be accompanied by problems related to depressed mood, acceptance of the life situation, feelings of not being useful, feelings of losing control and identity conflicts. Group characteristics that gave a significant basis for progression in the self‐management program are both emotional and instrumental, while the physical training program offers a “here‐and‐now”‐experience and motivation to participate. This study indicates that the self‐management program could potentially improve coping while the physical activity program revealed one example of a means of progression.     

Syntactic processing in the human brain: what we know, what we don't know, and a suggestion for how to proceed

For every claim in the neuroimaging literature about a particular brain region supporting syntactic processing, there exist other claims implicating the target region in different linguistic processes, and, in many cases, in non-linguistic cognitive processes (e.g., Blumstein, 2009). We argue that traditional group analysis methods in neuroimaging may obscure functional specificity because of inter-subject anatomical variability (Fedorenko & Kanwisher, 2009). In Fedorenko, Hsieh, Nieto-Castanon, Whitfield-Gabrieli, and Kanwisher (2010) we presented a functional localizer that allows quick and reliable identification of key language-sensitive regions in each individual brain. This approach enables pooling data from corresponding functional regions across subjects rather than from the same locations in stereotaxic space that may differ functionally due to inter-subject anatomical variability. In the current paper we demonstrate that the individual-subjects functional localization approach is superior to the traditional methods in its ability to distinguish among conditions in a brain region’s response. This ability is at the core of all neuroimaging research and is critical for answering questions of functional specialization (e.g., does a brain region specialize for processing syntactic aspects of the linguistic signal), which is in turn essential for making inferences about the precise computations conducted in each brain region. Based on our results, we argue that supplementing existing methods with an individual-subjects functional localization approach may lead to a clearer picture of the neural basis of syntactic processing, as it has in some other domains, such as high-level vision (e.g., Kanwisher, 2010) and social cognition (e.g., Saxe & Kanwisher, 2003).     

Moral and Group‐based Criteria in Children's Evaluation of Peers after Transgressions

The present study investigated how group membership criteria and moral understanding can affect children's evaluations of peers after different types of transgressions. In all, the study included 47 participants attending a junior school in Cornwall. All participants were allocated to an in‐group and responded to a number of questions which tested intergroup bias and the differential evaluation of norm‐violating peers from the in‐group and the out‐group. Overall, moral transgressions (physical and relational aggression) were evaluated more negatively than a social‐conventional transgression. However, those who violated group norms by expressing positive attitudes towards the out‐group were viewed differently depending on both moral and group‐based criteria. These different criteria for evaluating peers were uncorrelated. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.