‘Between the woods and frozen lake’: a child psychotherapist’s experiences of developing a grant application for an RCT feasibility study

Drawing on the six stages identified by Henton and Midgley (2012) in the narratives of five child psychotherapists involved in the IMPACT study on their evolving attitudes towards participation in outcome research, this paper explores another child psychotherapist’s internal and external world experiences of writing a National Institute of Health Research grant application for a randomised controlled trial feasibility study. It makes use of the key associations that came to mind on first reading Henton and Midgley’s article, outlines the practical and emotional stages of developing the grant proposal and briefly considers some of the wider implications of this kind of work on a personal, organisational and professional level.     

The Effect of Terror on Institutional Trust: New Evidence from the 3/11 Madrid Terrorist Attack

Research from the United States suggests that the 9/11 terrorist attack increased trust in political institutions by creating a “rally effect.” In this research note we analyze Eurobarometer data collected immediately before and after the March 11, 2004 terrorist attack in Madrid to replicate and extend previous findings from the United States. We report that, first, trust in different types of institutions (political, media, justice) increased significantly immediately after the Madrid terrorist attack; second, the effect of the attack varied systematically across different types of institutions; and, third, the effect was generally short‐lived. Our results suggest that the rally effect of terror on trust in institutions generalizes across national contexts but also that the effect differs across types of institutions.     

Enhanced Cardiac Perception Is Associated With Increased Susceptibility to Framing Effects

Previous studies suggest in line with dual process models that interoceptive skills affect controlled decisions via automatic or implicit processing. The “framing effect” is considered to capture implicit effects of task‐irrelevant emotional stimuli on decision‐making. We hypothesized that cardiac awareness, as a measure of interoceptive skills, is positively associated with susceptibility to the framing effect. Forty volunteers performed a risky‐choice framing task in which the effect of loss versus gain frames on decisions based on identical information was assessed. The results show a positive association between cardiac awareness and the framing effect, accounting for 24% of the variance in the framing effect. These findings demonstrate that good interoceptive skills are linked to poorer performance in risky choices based on ambivalent information when implicit bias is induced by task‐irrelevant emotional information. These findings support a dual process perspective on decision‐making and suggest that interoceptive skills mediate effects of implicit bias on decisions.     

The Mechanisms of Space‐Time Association: Comparing Motor and Perceptual Contributions in Time Reproduction

The spatial‐temporal association indicates that time is represented spatially along a left‐to‐right line. It is unclear whether the spatial‐temporal association is mainly related to a perceptual or a motor component. In addition, the spatial‐temporal association is not consistently found using a time reproduction task. Our rationale for this finding is that, classically, a non‐lateralized button for performing the task has been used. Using two lateralized response buttons, the aim of the study was to find a spatial‐temporal association in a time reproduction task. To account for the perceptual component, reference and target stimuli were presented in different spaces through four experiments. In all experiments, a Spatial‐Temporal Association of Response Codes (STEARC) effect was found and this effect was not modulated by the spatial position of both reference and target stimuli. The results suggested that the spatial‐temporal association was mainly derived from the spatial information provided by response buttons, reflecting a motor but not visuospatial influence.     

道德概念的垂直空间隐喻及其对认知的影响

采用不同的研究方法考察道德概念的垂直空间隐喻表征, 及其对于人的认知的影响。实验1采用迫选法, 在明确要求被试把道德词放在垂直空间位置的上方或下方时, 发现在意识层面, 被试倾向于把道德词放在垂直空间的上部, 把不道德词放在垂直空间的下部。实验2采用无关任务法, 对实验词语作褒贬义判断, 实验结果发现, 道德词出现在空间的上方(相对于下方)时, 被试对道德词作褒贬义判断的时间短; 不道德词出现在空间的下方(相对于上方)时, 被试作褒贬义判断的时间则短。实验3通过记忆任务发现, 道德概念的启动使得个体高估了相继出现的客体的高度和长度, 不道德概念的启动使得个体低估了其高度和长度。三个实验的结果表明, 汉语道德概念的垂直空间隐喻具有心理现实性; 汉语道德概念的垂直空间隐喻既存在于无意识层面又可以在意识的层面显现; 汉语道德概念的垂直空间隐喻表征会影响对物体的高度和长度的估计, 表现为汉语道德概念隐喻表征的“认知偏移效应”。     

Cross-modal working memory binding and learning of visual-phonological associations in children with reading difficulties

Reading decoding requires the association of a visual input (the printed word) with a verbal output (the spoken word), and the learning of visual-phonological associations via repeated exposure occurs both explicitly (by instruction and training) and implicitly (by exposure to written material). However, a general ability to implicitly learn visual-phonological associations (or cross-modal bindings) in children with reading difficulties (RD) has not been deeply explored. The present paper examined this issue in two studies comparing groups of children with RD with matched groups of control children in a working memory binding task involving sequences of variable combinations of nonsense shapes and nonwords (odd trials), as well as fixed combinations (even trials). Stimuli presentation was followed by a recognition test in which the nonwords were given one at a time and the children were required to mouse click on their respective shapes. In Study 1, fixed bindings were presented in random sequences across even trials, and the recognition test presented the nonwords at random. In Study 2, fixed bindings were presented in the same order across even trials, and the recognition test presented the nonwords following the same sequence order. In both studies, a consistent and strong learning effect of fixed bindings was observed for the control groups, with significantly better performance than the groups with RD. Such results suggest that poor cross-modal binding learning is associated with reading difficulties. Implications for the study and treatment of dyslexia are discussed.     

Fractals and scaling in fracture induced by microcrack coalescence

A numerical model is proposed to simulate fracture induced by the coalescence of numerous microcracks, in which the condition for coalescence between two randomly nucleated microcracks is determined in terms of a load-sharing principle. The results of the simulation show that, as the number density of nucleated microcracks increases, stochastic coalescence first occurs followed by a small fluctuation, and finally a newly nucleated microcrack triggers a cascade coalescence of microcracks resulting in catastrophic failure. The fracture profiles exhibit self-affine fractal characteristics with a universal roughness exponent, but the critical damage threshold is sensitive to details of the model. The spatiotemporal distribution of nucleated microcracks in the vicinity of critical failure follows a power-law behaviour, which implies that the microcrack system may evolve to a critical state.     

Effect of cooling rate on size-dependent atomic ordering of CoPt nanoparticles

We report on the effect of cooling rate on the size-dependent atomic ordering of CoPt nanoparticles using aberration corrected high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. It was found that cooling rate plays a crucial role in promoting atomic ordering during the cooling process after annealing. Nanoparticles of ≈3?nm in diameter show the A1-disordered phase after annealing at 873?K for 1?h followed by rapid cooling (110?K/min), while the L1₀-ordered phase is obtained when the cooling rate is slow (1.5?K/min). The disordered phase is also obtained by rapid cooling after annealing at 973?K for 1?h. These results unambiguously indicate that the order–disorder transformation temperature is reduced to a temperature at least lower than 873?K for CoPt nanoparticles smaller than 3?nm in diameter. The slow cooling process promotes the atomic ordering, which resulted in an enhancement of magnetic coercivity as high as 2200?Oe. This study demonstrates that hard magnetic properties of the CoPt nanoparticles can be improved by controlling the cooling rate after heat treatments.     

Interactions of persistent slip bands with a grain boundary on the common primary slip plane in a copper bicrystal

In this letter, the dislocation patterns on the common primary slip plane in a fatigued \[1-34]-\[182-7] copper bicrystal with a Sigma=19b grain boundary (GB) have been investigated using the electron channelling contrast technique in a scanning electron microscope. The results show that the two-phase dislocation structure, such as veins and persistent slip band (PSB) walls, embedded within veins, can be clearly seen on the common primary slip plane. In particular, the interactions of PSBs with the GB are clearly revealed. It is found that there are three kinds of interaction mode between the GB and the dislocations during cyclic deformation, and those are discussed. It is suggested that the dislocations carried by PSBs cannot transfer through the GB continuously even though the bicrystal has a common primary slip plane and its surface slip bands are continuous across the GB.     

Specific heat and low-field magnetocaloric effect in A-site ordered PrBaMn2O6 manganite

The specific heat and magnetocaloric effect (MCE) of A-site ordered PrBaMn₂O₆ manganite have been studied. The anomalies caused by the ferromagnetic (FM) and antiferromagnetic (AFM) phase transitions are revealed in the specific heat curve. Direct and inverse MCE are observed at the Curie and Néel points correspondingly. A value of the inverse MCE in the heating run is smaller than in the cooling regime. We attribute this effect to the competition between FM and AFM interactions. A significant advantage of PrBaMn₂O₆ as a magnetocaloric material is an MCE spanning a broad range of temperature with a maximum at room temperature.