Reducing intergroup anxiety: Applying an imagined contact intervention with counselors-in-training

This study assessed the impacts of an (elaborated) imagined contact intervention (eICI) with graduate-level counseling students (N = 38) in a multicultural counseling course. Participant levels of intergroup anxiety were assessed, comparing those who completed an eICI versus those who did not. Intergroup anxiety decreased for both groups over time, albeit with a greater immediate reduction for those who received the ICI. Qualitative commentary suggests specific student learning from the activity.     

Evaluating children's mental health service systems: An analysis of critical behaviors and events

A lack of studies which evaluate system change by tracking client outcomes is noted in the children's mental health area. This deficit may be a result of the inability of researchers to define outcomes and to draw conclusions about which measures reflect the efficacy of services and service delivery systems. This paper reviews five social validation surveys which examined children's mental health outcome measures. Based on the results of the five surveys, a model of critical behaviors and events is presented. This model will assist evaluators and researchers in understanding which critical events and behaviors should be measured to assess the impact of community-based mental health services for children.     

Statistical learning of multiple speech streams: A challenge for monolingual infants

Language acquisition depends on the ability to detect and track the distributional properties of speech. Successful acquisition also necessitates detecting changes in those properties, which can occur when the learner encounters different speakers, topics, dialects, or languages. When encountering multiple speech streams with different underlying statistics but overlapping features, how do infants keep track of the properties of each speech stream separately? In four experiments, we tested whether 8‐month‐old monolingual infants (N = 144) can track the underlying statistics of two artificial speech streams that share a portion of their syllables. We first presented each stream individually. We then presented the two speech streams in sequence, without contextual cues signaling the different speech streams, and subsequently added pitch and accent cues to help learners track each stream separately. The results reveal that monolingual infants experience difficulty tracking the statistical regularities in two speech streams presented sequentially, even when provided with contextual cues intended to facilitate separation of the speech streams. We discuss the implications of our findings for understanding how infants learn and separate the input when confronted with multiple statistical structures.     

Reason and the Past: The Role of Rationality in Diachronic Self-Knowledge

Knowing one’s past thoughts and attitudes is a vital sort of self-knowledge. In the absence of memorial impressions to serve as evidence, we face a pressing question of how such self-knowledge is possible. Recently, philosophers of mind have argued that self-knowledge of past attitudes supervenes on rationality. I examine two kinds of argument for this supervenience claim, one from cognitive dynamics, and one from practical rationality, and reject both. I present an alternative account, on which knowledge of past attitudes is inferential knowledge, and depends upon contingent facts of one’s rationality and consistency. Failures of self-knowledge are better explained by the inferential account.     

Adolescent Psychopathy and Personality Theory—the Interpersonal Circumplex: Expanding Evidence of a Nomological Net

The construct validity of psychopathy was examined in a sample of 114 male and female young offenders (M_age = 15.16) at a southeastern detention center. The interpersonal circumplex served as a framework of general personality from which to examine the construct of adolescent psychopathy. A supplementary analysis of the psychopathy measures and the Big 5 factors of personality was also conducted using a matrix approach. Measures included: (a) Antisocial Process Screening Device (P. J. Frick & R. D. Hare, 2001); (b) Child Psychopathy Scale (D. R. Lynam, 1996); (c) Psychopathy Checklist—Youth Version (A. E. Forth, D. S. Kosson, & R. D. Hare, 2003); and (d) Interpersonal Adjective Scales Revised—Big 5 Version (P. Trapnell & J. S. Wiggins, 1991; J. S. Wiggins, 1995). Results showed substantial convergence among the three psychopathy measures. In addition, meaningful associations between psychopathy and constructs within the interpersonal circumplex and broader domains of the Big 5 were obtained. Two psychopathy scales correlated to a higher degree than expected with neuroticism. These findings provide evidence linking personality theory to the concept of child and adolescent psychopathy, thereby adding to its construct validity. However, they do so with the caveat that youth may also be displaying some characteristics of neuroticism, suggesting that worry and anxiety may accompany psychopathic features in earlier developmental stages. The implications of the current study are discussed.     

Perception of visual speed while moving

During self-motion, the world normally appears stationary. In part, this may be due to reductions in visual motion signals during self-motion. In 8 experiments, the authors used magnitude estimation to characterize changes in visual speed perception as a result of biomechanical self-motion alone (treadmill walking), physical translation alone (passive transport), and both biomechanical self-motion and physical translation together (walking). Their results show that each factor alone produces subtractive reductions in visual speed but that subtraction is greatest with both factors together, approximating the sum of the 2 separately. The similarity of results for biomechanical and passive self-motion support H. B. Barlow's (1990) inhibition theory of sensory correlation as a mechanism for implementing H. Wallach's (1987) compensation for self-motion.     

Scented memories of literature

This study examined the effects on recall of story details of congruity or incongruity between the hedonic valence of literary texts and odours inhaled while reading them. During the reading session, 24 undergraduates (12 males and 12 females) read two passages involving positive subject matter and two with negative subject matter while sniffing pleasant or unpleasant odours in a within-subject fully counterbalanced design. Subjects rated their experience of each text on eleven 7-point scales. During the test session 48 hours later, subjects read a two-word title associated with each of the passages and inhaled the odour that was paired with it in the reading session. They also rated their experience on six of the scales that had been used during the reading session. Results showed that hedonic congruence between the passage and the odour fostered enhanced recall during the test session. The combination of positive subject matter and positive odour was reflected in more accurate recall of character details, while pairing negative subject matter and negative odour resulted in more accurate recall of setting details. Regression analysis showed that overall recall accuracy was increased by identifying with the characters in the stories and for passages that were found pleasing and personally meaningful. Consistent with the literature on implicit learning involving odours, recall accuracy varied inversely with perceived odour intensity. Implicit learning involving odours and literary passages is therefore fostered by unity in the reading experience.     

Brains that are out of tune but in time

It is estimated that about 4% of the general population may have amusia (or tone deafness). Congenital amusia is a lifelong disability for processing music despite normal intellectual, memory, and language skills. Here we present evidence that the disorder stems from a deficit in fine-grained pitch perception. Amusic and control adults were presented with monotonic and isochronous sequences of five tones (i.e., constant pitch and intertone interval). They were required to detect when the fourth tone was displaced in pitch or time. All amusic participants were impaired in detecting the pitch changes, and showed no sign of improvement with practice. In contrast, they detected time changes as well as control adults and exhibited similar improvements with practice. Thus, the degraded pitch perception seen in the amusic individuals cannot be ascribed to nonspecific problems with the task or to poor hearing in general. Rather, the data point to the presence of a congenital neural anomaly that selectively impairs pitch processing.