Improving responding to questioning using a brief retrieval training

This research examined the effect of a brief training procedure for enhancing responding to questions about witnessed events. The training was based in research on metacognition and memory, and emphasized: attending to questions, searching for multiple responses, and weighing confidence in and considering the source of responses. In the main study, adult participants viewed a video of a burglary and after a 25 min delay half received the training. All participants were then asked answerable and unanswerable questions about the video. The training resulted in fewer errors and more rejections to unanswerable questions. Analysis of response diagnosticity indicated that responses made by the trained group were more likely to be correct responses to answerable questions. A second study showed that these findings were not due to awareness of the presence of unanswerable questions. The procedure has potential as a supplement when questioning is pursued.     

Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms that Predict Cognitive Decline or Impairment in Cognitively Normal Middle-Aged or Older Adults: a Meta-Analysis

Neuropsychology Review - Epidemiological studies have revealed that behavioral and psychological (or non-cognitive) symptoms are risk factors for cognitive decline in older adults. This study aimed...     

A comparison of individual and group cognitive-behavioural treatment for female pathological gambling

The current study aimed to determine the differential efficacy of a cognitive-behavioural treatment program for female pathological gamblers delivered in individual and group format. Fifty-six female pathological gamblers with electronic gaming machine gambling problems were randomly assigned to the control (waiting list) group or one of the treatment groups (individual or group treatment). Treatment comprised a 12-session program including financial limit setting, alternative activity planning, cognitive correction, problem solving, communication training, relapse prevention, and imaginal desensitisation. Treatment outcome was evaluated with conceptually related measures within the areas of gambling behaviour and psychological functioning. While individual and group treatment formats generally produced comparable outcomes in terms of gambling behaviour and psychological functioning, group treatment failed to produce superior outcomes to the control group in relation to several measures of psychological functioning. Moreover, by the completion of the six-month follow-up, 92% of the gamblers allocated to individual treatment compared with 60% allocated to group treatment no longer satisfied the diagnostic criteria for pathological gambling. These findings suggest that some caution should be employed when delivering cognitive-behavioural treatment in a group format until further research is conducted to establish its efficacy.     

Building tasks from verbal instructions: An EEG study on practice trial exposure and task structure complexity during novel sequences of behavior

Configuring the mind to perform a novel task is an effortful process and one that is related to differences in general intelligence. Previous research has suggested that when participants are given instructions for a future task, representations of the rules contained in the instructions can influence subsequent behavior, even when the rules are not necessary to perform the upcoming task. One hypothesis for the continued activation of rule representations suggests that the practice trials participants perform before the experimental trials may instantiate the unnecessary task rules into participants’ mental model of the task (i.e., the task space). To test this hypothesis, EEGs were recorded as participants (N = 66) completed a multirule task designed to contrast the effects of increasing task structure complexity and practice trial exposure. The results showed that, as was predicted, performance is significantly poorer when more task rules are specified in the task instructions. Practice trials with the extra rule did not affect task performance, indicating that an unacted verbal instruction is sufficient to incorporate the rule into participants’ mental model of the task. The EEG results showed that instruction complexity was linked to a phasic increase in frontal theta synchronization but reduced posterior alpha and beta desynchronization. These changes in synchronization occurred during a time period of low intertrial phase coherence and suggest that participants were “checking the task rules” amidst a trial. This transient neural activity may reflect compensatory mechanisms for dealing with increased mind-wandering that is more likely to occur in complex tasks.     

Consumer ethnocentrism,cultural sensitivity,and intention to purchase local products—evidence from Vietnam

• This study empirically investigates the impacts of consumer ethnocentrism and cultural sensitivity on both imported product judgment and intention to purchase local products in the context of a developing country—Vietnam. Structural equation modeling was used to test these impacts, utilizing a sample of 549 consumers. The results show that consumer ethnocentrism is negatively related to imported product judgment and positively related to intention to purchase local products. In addition, cultural sensitivity has a positive relationship with imported product judgment but not with consumer ethnocentrism. The results also indicate that the impacts of consumer ethnocentrism on imported product judgment and on intention to purchase local products are not different in terms of product categories, gender, income, and education levels. However, differences exist between younger and older consumers.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring moderators of the relationship between adolescents' social responsibility and civic actions

Scholars have regarded social responsibility as a motivator of civic actions. Social responsibility, however, does not consistently lead to civic actions. Informed by sociopolitical development theory and social cognitive theory, the present study examined critical reflection about societal inequalities and intentional self-regulation as potential moderators of the relationships between adolescents' social responsibility and political activities, social activism and community service. Survey data were collected from 737 adolescents in the Northeastern United States (M_age = 14.52, 58.2% girls, 57.5% White/European American). Path analysis indicated that social responsibility was associated with all three types of civic actions, and critical reflection moderated the relationship between social responsibility and political activities. We discussed limitations, implications and directions for future research. See Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement .     

Cognitive and emotional processes during dreaming: a neuroimaging view

Dream is a state of consciousness characterized by internally-generated sensory, cognitive and emotional experiences occurring during sleep. Dream reports tend to be particularly abundant, with complex, emotional, and perceptually vivid experiences after awakenings from rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This is why our current knowledge of the cerebral correlates of dreaming, mainly derives from studies of REM sleep. Neuroimaging results show that REM sleep is characterized by a specific pattern of regional brain activity. We demonstrate that this heterogeneous distribution of brain activity during sleep explains many typical features in dreams. Reciprocally, specific dream characteristics suggest the activation of selective brain regions during sleep. Such an integration of neuroimaging data of human sleep, mental imagery, and the content of dreams is critical for current models of dreaming; it also provides neurobiological support for an implication of sleep and dreaming in some important functions such as emotional regulation.