Children and adults as intuitive scientists.

The metaphor of children and lay adults as intuitive scientists has gained wide acceptance. Although useful in one sense, pertaining to scientific understanding, in another, pertaining to the process of scientific thinking, the metaphor may be fundamentally misleading. Research is reviewed indicating that processes of scientific thinking differ significantly in children, lay adults, and scientists. Hence, it is the instruments of scientific thinking, not just the products, that undergo "strong restructuring" (S. Carey; see record 1987-08644-001). A framework for conceptualizing development of scientific thinking processes is proposed, centering on progressive differentiation and coordination of theory and evidence. This development is metacognitive, as well as strategic. It requires thinking about theories, rather than merely with them, and thinking about evidence, rather than merely being influenced by it, and, hence, reflects the attainment of control over the interaction of theories and evidence in one's own thinking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hope for rehabilitation and vice versa.

Objectives: To use Snyder's (1989, 1994b) hope theory as a framework for understanding rehabilitation goals and designing effective interventions. Conclusions: According to this theory, hope reflects the perceived capacity to generate routes to desired goals (called pathway thinking) along with the associated motivational thoughts to use those paths (called agency thinking). Given that higher hope has correlated previously with superior physical and mental functioning, it is suggested that the hope construct may be helpful in fostering adaptive rehabilitation processes through the use of intervention techniques aimed at creating clearer and more sustainable goals, increasing pathways thoughts, and instilling greater agency. Furthermore, teaching patients about approaches for facilitating their recoveries using a hope-based vocabulary may have therapeutic value beyond the treatment team's use of hope theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development of biological explanation: Are children vitalists?

Whether and how an understanding of biological explanation changes with development was explored in interviews with 24 first graders, 24 third graders, and 24 adults. Participants were asked about the changeability of biological and psychological characteristics and the causal mechanisms underlying biological, psychological, and mechanical phenomena (using both open-ended and forced-choice questions). In saying how characteristics might be changed, children and adults similarly distinguished between biology and psychology; they also responded similarly to questions about specific processes underlying biological change. Children's attributions of intention or agency to biological organs or body parts (i.e., vitalistic attribution) did not differ from adults', contrary to previous findings. The authors concluded that children's thinking about biology is not necessarily more vitalistic than adults'. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A narrative approach to ethnic identity in emerging adulthood: Bringing life to the identity status model.

This study used a narrative approach to understand how emerging adults experience ethnicity in their everyday lives and to link ethnic identity processes with the content of how ethnic identity is experienced. Participants were 191 ethnically diverse emerging adults who completed the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) and provided a written narrative about a time at which they became aware of their ethnicity. Participants' narratives differed significantly by ethnic group and by ethnic identity status membership, as indexed by the MEIM. The results underscore the value of adopting a narrative approach to understanding the content of ethnic identity and the links between content and ethnic identity development processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hope: An individual motive for social commerce.

The authors suggest that people of all ages are goal oriented and that 2 related thought processes typically accompany this goal-related thinking. First, there are pathway thoughts, which tap the perceived capability to generate 1 or more workable routes to desired goals. Second, there are agentic thoughts, which reflect the perception that one can initiate and sustain movement toward a goal along the given pathways. Together, pathway and agentic goal-directed thinking define hope in the present model. After describing how hope develops, the self-report instruments for measuring hope in children and adults are reviewed. How hope is sustained in the context of larger groups is explored, and the importance of shared goals as the foundation of communal hope is described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do younger and older adults’ communicative goals influence off-topic speech in autobiographical narratives?

The present research investigated younger and older adults’ communicative goals and their effects on off-topic speech for autobiographical narratives. Participants indicated their communicative goals by rating preferences among paired goals, for example, focus–fascinating, one of which was designated as an expressive goal, appropriate for producing elaborative speech, and one of which was an objective goal, suited to producing concise speech. The participants then told stories about episodic and procedural topics, which were rated by groups of younger and older listeners. Age differences emerged in communicative goals, where younger adults clearly favored expressive goals for episodic topics and objective goals for procedural topics. In contrast, older adults’ goals were more diverse, consisting of a mixture of expressive and objective goals for both topic types, without a clear preference. Younger adults’ goals predicted ratings of off-topic speech assessed by listeners: Younger and older adults were perceived as equivalently focused, coherent, and clear for episodic topics, but older adults were perceived as less focused, less clear, and more talkative than younger adults on procedural topics. These results suggest that age-related changes in off-topic speech emerge as a result of younger adults selecting goals designed to produce more succinct stories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Body image disturbance in body dysmorphic disorder and eating disorders. Obsessions or delusions?

At this time, the question posed by this article's title--body image disturbance in body dysmorphic disorder and eating disorders: obsessions or delusions?--is probably best answered "both." Both disorders appear to be characterized by obsessional and delusional thinking. In addition, it is likely that their nondelusional and delusional variants constitute a single disorder encompassing a spectrum of insight, with the entire spectrum characterized by obsessional thinking. This view represents a considerable departure from DSM-III-R, in which the psychotic disorders were encapsulated in a separate section of the manual and considered different disorders from their nonpsychotic variants. The one exception was the mood disorders, which were acknowledged to have psychotic variants that were classified in the manual's "nonpsychotic" section. In DSM-IV, on the basis of emerging empirical evidence about the dimensional nature of the psychotic/nonpsychotic boundary, the dichotomy between delusional and nondelusional disorders is less clear. The double coding allowed for BDD acknowledges that BDD and its delusional disorder variant may constitute a single disorder; that allowed for OCD acknowledges that OCD may be delusional. With regard to eating disorders, however, DSM-IV is surprisingly silent, perhaps because delusional preoccupations are less common than in BDD. These issues also may apply to other disorders. Like BDD, hypochondriasis is classified as a somatoform disorder, with its delusional variant a type of delusional disorder, somatic type. Do the delusional and nondelusional variants of hypochondriasis constitute the same disorder? Do other types of somatic delusional disorder, such as parasitosis and olfactory reference syndrome (the belief that one emits a foul body odor) have nondelusional variants? It is likely that a number of disorders span a spectrum from delusional to nondelusional thinking, with unlimited shades of gray in between. Future research may indicate that obsessional disorders such as BDD, anorexia, OCD, and hypochondriasis, as well as other disorders such as major depression, should have qualifiers or subtypes--for example, "with good insight," "with poor insight," and "with delusional (or psychotic) thinking"--with an implied continuum of insight embraced by a single disorder. Such an approach, which scatters psychosis throughout the nomenclature, ultimately may be shown to be a more valid and clinically useful classification approach. Answers to these questions will not only improve our classification system but also may have important treatment implications. For example, the preliminary finding that delusional BDD responds preferentially to SRIs but not to neuroleptic agents contradicts conventional wisdom about the treatment of psychosis.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

Goals and everyday problem solving: Manipulating goal preferences in young and older adults.

In the present study, we examined the link between goal and problem-solving strategy preferences in 130 young and older adults using hypothetical family problem vignettes. At baseline, young adults preferred autonomy goals, whereas older adults preferred generative goals. Imagining an expanded future time perspective led older adults to show preferences for autonomy goals similar to those observed in young adults but did not eliminate age differences in generative goals. Autonomy goals were associated with more self-focused instrumental problem solving, whereas generative goals were related to more other-focused instrumental problem solving in the no-instruction and instruction conditions. Older adults were better at matching their strategies to their goals than young adults were. This suggests that older adults may become better at selecting their strategies in accordance with their goals. Our findings speak to a contextual approach to everyday problem solving by showing that goals are associated with the selection of problem-solving strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The negative self-concept in clinical depression: A discourse analysis.

Traditional models of depression have received criticism for their individualistic approach that focuses on hypothetical, unobservable, inner states or processes and attempts to abstract these processes from the context of a person's everyday life experiences. In response to this criticism, the current research advances a contrasting discursive account of depression in which depression is investigated as a socially negotiated phenomenon. Eight women and 8 men (aged 23–57 yrs) with a diagnosis of major depression were interviewed about their experiences of depression. The interviews were then discourse analyzed. Both similarities and differences in the way women and men talked about depression were observed; however, only similarities are reported in the current article. The discourse analysis shows that participants actively resisted taking blame for their depression and constructed themselves as worthy persons. The discrepancy of these results with traditional depression theory and research, in which depressed persons are described as inherently self-blaming, is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Goal-directed memory: The role of cognitive control in older adults' emotional memory.

The present study revealed that older adults recruit cognitive control processes to strengthen positive and diminish negative information in memory. In Experiment 1, older adults engaged in more elaborative processing when retrieving positive memories than they did when retrieving negative memories. In Experiment 2, older adults who did well on tasks involving cognitive control were more likely than those doing poorly to favor positive pictures in memory. In Experiment 3, older adults who were distracted during memory encoding no longer favored positive over negative pictures in their later recall, revealing that older adults use cognitive resources to implement emotional goals during encoding. In contrast, younger adults showed no signs of using cognitive control to make their memories more positive, indicating that, for them, emotion regulation goals are not chronically activated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The use of a 56-stimulus train for the rapid acquisition of auditory brainstem responses

PURPOSE: The aim was to describe and analyse the rehabilitation process of the geriatric stroke patient from two perspectives; the treatment goals expressed by the staff and the patient and the treatment interventions chosen by the physiotherapist and occupational therapist. A secondary aim was to test whether the process, treatment goals and interventions could be classified according to the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps (ICIDH). METHOD: Qualitative interviews were performed with patients and personnel; diaries were used to register treatment interventions. The 30 interviews were categorized according to the goals expressed by physiotherapists, occupational therapists, physicians and patients. The diaries (n = 22) were analysed to describe how treatment interventions were connected in time, at what levels (impairment, disability and handicap) the interventions were directed, and finally, whether certain decisions were made in order to change the rehabilitation process. RESULTS: The patients talked more about attaining their pre-stroke status than about their goals. The therapists set goals according to functional level, whereas the doctors expressed themselves in general terms. Three patterns of rehabilitation processes were found: one with clearly identified decision points, one with a set programme which was not changed through the process, and one where the goal was changed according to changes in medical status. CONCLUSIONS: The patient does not participate in the goal-setting process, and the vaguely expressed goals are not measurable. The rehabilitation process and reason for discharge demonstrate different patterns. Treatment interventions, if related to the ICIDH, give a clear picture of the process, though certain interventions do not fit in the classification.     

Perceiver self-presentational goals as moderators of expectancy influences: Ingratiation and the disconfirmation of negative expectancies.

Self-fulfilling prophecy processes enable people to confirm their negative expectancies for others. The perceiver goal of ingratiation was hypothesized to alter this behavioral dynamic and thus lead perceivers to disconfirm their negative expectancies. In an interview setting, interviewer Ss' expectancies and interaction goals were manipulated. As anticipated, "no goal" interviewers were relatively cold and challenging toward their negative-expectancy applicants; as a result, these applicants performed somewhat less favorably, consistent with interviewer expectancies. In contrast, "liking goal" interviewers were relatively warm and unthreatening toward their negative-expectancy applicants; as a result, these applicants performed favorably, disconfirming interviewer expectancies. These data support a framework in which perceiver self-presentation goals are conceptualized to moderate the expectancy-confirmation process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding AIDS developmentally: A comment on the November 1988 special issue on psychology and AIDS.

Comments on the concealment of major theoretical differences in psychology implied in the vague use of terms such as education, information giving, or communication and notes the need for attention to developmental process in education or prevention programs. Qualitatively different psychological processes related to cognitive development result in distinctively diverse ways of thinking about a disease. For instance, both adults and children may rely on concrete or magical thinking rather than abstract reasoning in their conception of any illness, including acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Thus, information must be tailored to systematic differences in cognitive maturity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Students' conceptions of matter.

The aim of this study was to reveal how upper level compulsory school students (13 to 16 years old) conceptualize matter. Twenty individually administered interviews were carried out, transcribed word for word and analyzed in accordance with the phenomenographic approach adopted. Six distinctively different conceptions were found. Matter can be understood as (a) homogeneous substance, (b) substance units, (c) substance units with "small atoms," (d) aggregate of particles, (e) particle units, or (f) systems of particles. Differences in focus constitute a variation in the internal structure of each conception. There are also alternative forms of the same conception in some cases. The different conceptions, their varying internal structures, and the alternative forms of conceptions found are logically interrelated in a system, called the "outcome space," which depicts how thinking about matter may vary qualitatively between and within students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conjunctive explanations: When two reasons are better than one.

The "knowledge structure" approach in attribution theory suggests that events interpretable as serving an actor's goals may dispose toward conjunctive explanations. In 2 studies, 68 undergraduates were presented vignettes about an individual undertaking goal-related activities and were asked to assign probability ratings to single explanatory reasons and to their conjunctions. Conjunctive explanations were rated more probable than one or more of their components for both mundane and important actions, for triple as well as simple conjunctions, for both goal-based and precondition-based reasons, and for various average probability levels. Conjunction effects were not found, however, for explanations of why an actor failed to take an action. Three theoretical approaches that might account for these results are compared, and it is concluded that a knowledge structure approach is less problematic than either a multiple-necessary and multiple-sufficient schema approach, or one based on H. J. Einhorn and R. M. Hogarth's (1983) model of causal strength. An attempt is made to reconcile conjunction effects with the "discounting principle" of classical attribution theory. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory performance and beliefs as a function of goal setting and aging.

This research examined the impact of goals on memory and memory beliefs. Older and younger adults completed memory beliefs questionnaires and list recall at baseline. After additional recall trials, the questionnaires were repeated. In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to low challenge or high challenge goals. In Experiment 2, moderate challenge goals were compared to control. In both studies, participants were given a specific goal based on their own performance and received positive feedback for memory gains. Both older and younger adults responded to the goals, showing improved performance across trials, with little change in the control condition. Memory beliefs changed in the moderate and low challenge goal conditions, showing more striking changes for the older groups. These results confirmed that self-regulatory processes related to goal setting can have considerable impact on memory across the adult life span. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emphasis on Interpersonal Factors in a Dynamic Model of Relapse.

Comment on "Relapse Prevention Needs More Emphasis on Interpersonal Factors" by Stanton (see record 2005-05480-011) which is a comment on the original article "Relapse Prevention for Alcohol and Drug Problems: That Was Zen, This Is Tao" by Katie Witkiewitz and G. Alan Marlatt (see record 2004-14303-002). In the current comment the authors of the original article respond to Stanton. Witkiewitz and Marlatt acknowledge that Stanton's comment is an important and thoughtful extension of the dynamic model of relapse they originally proposed. Stanton reviewed empirical research on the proximal role of social support in lapse events and provided a careful consideration of why interpersonal dynamics may serve as phasic processes within high-risk situations for relapse. Clearly the data provide support for an emphasis on interpersonal precipitants in the model. It is important to note that the relationship between interpersonal factors and treatment outcomes is not straightforward. The authors agree with Stanton that the dynamic relationship between interpersonal factors and relapse is an important area of future research. In general, the dynamic model of relapse that they proposed should be treated as an empirical question, and they encourage more critical thinking about, and revision of, the model. The field may benefit greatly by returning to the study of individual differences, systemic relapse processes, and the individual dynamics of treatment failure, as well as the protective factors that are predictive of treatment success. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)