31 research outputs found
Embodied Cognition in Skateboarding: Produces Superior Performance in Physics Judgment Task of Predicting Fastest Slope
No full textabstract: This study tests if embodied cognition associated with self-movement in skateboarding can provide superior insight in physics problem-solving. Most people are relatively poor at deciphering which of several slopes will produce the faster downhill route for a rolling ball. Here, we replicate work by Rohrer and confirm that participants are poor at this task when making predictions on a pen-and-paper test. Our principle hypothesis is that experience skateboarders should perform better than average when asked the equivalent question in the context of selecting the fastest skateboarding route between two different ramps. Our findings confirm that in a timed race, skateboarders are less prone to select a slower, but seemingly shorter, more constant-sloped route. When self-action is coupled to thinking in this way, it appears easier for participants to tap into a gut-level feeling for the overall speed advantage gained by descending more sharply earlier in time. The finding supports a physics pedagogy in which participants consider the problem from the perspective of the descending ball, which allows utilization of embodied cognitive resources that produce superior physics insight. This is the first study to demonstrate that skateboarding ought not to be viewed merely as a renegade hobby, but rather as an activity that holds promise for improving academic performance
Embodiment, Interaction, and Experience: Toward a Comprehensive Model in Addiction Science
No full textRecommended from our members
Rethinking the Conceptual History of the Term "Cognitive"
No full textPsychologist-historian Christopher D. Green posits that the word “cognitive" was never intended by its philosophical advocates to be synonymous with "mental" and, consequently, much of what now goes by the name of "cognition" in cognitive science is not really "cognitive" in the strict sense at all (Green in Canadian Psychology 37: 31- 39). After a brief presentation of his position, I argue that Green does not provide sufficient reason or evidence for us to accept his claim and his proposal ought to be disregarded unless further evidence can be put forth in its defense. In doing so, I clear the ground for a constructive engagement with the conceptual history of the term “cognitive” and its relevance to present-day concerns
Can We Learn to Treat One Another Better? A Test of a Social Intelligence Curriculum
No full textabstract: This paper reports on the first test of the value of an online curriculum in social intelligence (SI). Built from current social and cognitive neuroscience research findings, the 50 session SI program was administered, with facilitation in Spanish by classroom instructors, to 207 students from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid as part of their undergraduate classes. All materials were translated into Castilian Spanish, including outcome measures of SI that have been used in prior studies to provide valid estimates of two key components of social intelligence: 1) Sensitivity to others and 2) confidence in one’s capacity to manage social situations. Pre- and Posttest were administered to participants in the SI training, and also to 87 students in similar classes who did not receive the program who served as the control group. Gender and emotional intelligence levels at pretest also were examined as potential individual differences that might affect the impact of the program on study outcomes. Repeated measures ANOVAs on study outcomes revealed significant increases, from pre to post, in most measures of social intelligence for program participants in comparison to controls, with no effects of gender or age on program effectiveness. Prior scores on emotional intelligence were not a prerequisite for learning from the program. Some findings suggest ways the program may be improved to have stronger effects. Nonetheless, the findings indicate that the SI program tested here shows considerable promise as a means to increase the willingness of young adults to take the perspective of others and enhance their efficacy for initiating and sustaining positive social connections.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0128638.s001doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0128638.s00
PSYCHIATRY’S SECOND VALIDITY CRISIS: THE PROBLEM OF DISPARATE VALIDATION
No full textThesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Cognitive Science, 2024In response to the crisis of confidence in the validity of the DSM’s diagnostic categories, psychiatry has seen a proliferation of alternative research frameworks for studying and classifying psychiatric disorders in new ways. The big three alternative approaches—the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP), the Network Approach to Psychopathology, and the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)—have been characterized as healthy responses to the DSM’s crisis of validity.
A yet unexplored aspect of psychiatry’s validity crisis is related to disagreements regarding the standards of validity. Each of the approaches have multiple distinct senses of validity, which point to a thornier methodological problem for psychiatry that I term the problem of “disparate validation.” This two-part problem can be summarized as follows: scientific psychiatry aims at achieving empirically informed classifications that demonstrate validity in the sense that they correspond to real attributes of psychopathology. To achieve this, alternative research frameworks are now approaching the conceptualization, testing, organizing, and validation of different features of psychopathology by their own standards in the hopes of one day informing more valid systems of psychiatric classification. The first problem is given a system of classification, by whose standard of validity should such a system be validated? Is there a single validation procedure by which validation should proceed, or some other combination thereof? Second, when we attempt to validate classifications informed by differing standards of validity, will any such validation be capable of assessing a unified fundamental sense of validity that exists across the various frameworks, or will they only be valid in their own narrow sense?
In this dissertation, I offer an assessment of the problem of disparate validation through faithful reconstructions of the Holy Quadrinity of distinct senses of validity in psychiatry: starting with diagnostic validity (DSM) and proceeding with psychometric validity (HiTOP), network psychometric validity (the Network Approach), and etio-pathophysiological validity (RDoC). I introduce commonalities across frameworks that have not been previously addressed, including how each framework employs expert curation, being the selection and justification of certain elements into their model based on compromises, and how the goal of each framework eventually becomes a return to the original validators of Robins and Guze to evaluate prognosis, biomarkers, and etiology of psychiatric classifications.
By evaluating psychiatry’s distinct senses of validity, I argue that despite an appearance of a shared goal of informing more valid classifications, the existence of multiple frameworks in which each employs their own standards of validity and validation is a detrimental methodology to achieve any kind of unified validation work. At its core, fundamental disagreements concerning 1) the underlying phenomenon that researchers are attempting to make inferences about; 2) the sources of validating evidence; and 3) the very nature of validity and validation, move each framework further and further toward a state of unrecognized plurality, in which these frameworks are really not at all talking about the same thing and are in fact engaged in different projects with different aims. I conclude with a positive program that suggests in what ways such different frameworks with distinct validation procedures can achieve validity in their own specific sense while also coming to inform one another through a kind of complementary pluralism
Associations Between Financial Stress and Interpersonal Events: A Daily Diary Study of Middle-Aged Adults and Their Life Circumstances
No full textabstract: This study examined the relationships between daily negative financial events and positive and negative interpersonal events, as well as the moderating effects of life circumstances, for a sample of 182 adults between the age of 40 and 65 providing 30 days of diary data collected between 2008 and 2011. There was a significant and positive relationship between daily negative interpersonal events and daily levels of both negative interpersonal events and positive interpersonal events; these relationships varied by income, employment status, parenting roles, and the experience of major financial challenges over the previous year. The moderating effect of income was nonlinear but its effect disappeared when the interaction between major financial challenges over the previous year and daily negative financial events was entered into the model. The results were interpreted in the context of the stress proliferation and resource mobilization theoretical models and directions for future studies were delineated with respect to individual- and community-level factors that influence the role of financial events on the daily social worlds of middle-aged adults.Copyright 2014 American Psychological Association. This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record. The final published version can be viewed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a003796
Dynamic pain-emotion relations in chronic pain: a theoretical review of moderation studies
No full textThe Influence of Family Communication Patterns on Sexual Communication in Romantic Relationships: A Dyadic Analysis
No full textabstract: The current study employs dyadic data analysis to explore the intrapersonal and interpersonal antecedents of sexual communication in romantic relationships. Working from a family relational schema theoretical framework (family communication patterns [FCPs]; see Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 2002a), it is argued that FCPs within individuals’ family of origin structure their relational schema, which is subsequently associated with their openness and quality of sexual communication in their sexually active romantic relationships. In particular, dyadic data procedures are used to explore the interdependent influence of partners’ FCPs on reported sexual communication. It was predicted that individual (actor effects) and partner (partner effects) reports of FCPs are associated with individuals’ reports of sexual communication within romantic relationships. In addition, alternative models were proposed that predicted FCPs are associated with individuals’ self-schema (i.e., general and sexual self-concept), which is in turn associated with sexual communication. A sample of 216 heterosexual romantic dyads (N = 432) participated in a cross-sectional online questionnaire study. Results from path analyses provide partial support for hypotheses. Specifically, individuals from conversationally-oriented families tended to report higher levels of sexual communication in their romantic relationships. Also, the interaction effect between conversation and conformity orientations indicate that dyads tend to engage in more sexual communication when dyadic partners are from pluralistic families (i.e., high conversation, low conformity), and they engage in less sexual communication when partners are from laissez-faire families (i.e., low conversation, low conformity). Furthermore, FCPs were associated with the general and sexual self-concept (i.e., general self-esteem, general social anxiety, sexual self-esteem, and sexual anxiety), which in turn were associated with sexual communication. This study is important for its contribution to the family, interpersonal, and relational communication literature, as well as for its potential to expand Koerner and Fitzpatrick’s (2002a) theory of family relational schema to more domain-specific areas of communication, like sexual communication.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Communication Studies 201
Unlocking resilience : the key to healthy aging in Arizona
No full textabstract: This report follows The Coming of Age report produced in 2002 by some of the principals involved in this project, and published by St. Luke’s Health Initiatives. That research showed that Arizona had much to do to get ready for the baby boomer age wave. The results of Unlocking Resilience from new survey data, interviews, and secondary research indicates Arizona still has much to do to prepare for aging and must make concrete policy decisions about aging.Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-50)
Affective Responses to Laboratory Stressors in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients: A Comparison of Mindfulness-based Emotion Regulation and Cognitive Behavioral Interventions
No full textabstract: This study examined whether cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness interventions affect positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) reports for patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) before, during, and after stress induction. The study also investigated the effects of a history of recurrent depression on intervention effects and testing effects due to the Solomon-6 study design utilized. The 144 RA patients were assessed for a history of major depressive episodes by diagnostic interview and half of the participants completed a laboratory study before the intervention began. The RA patients were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 treatments: cognitive behavioral therapy for pain (P), mindfulness meditation and emotion regulation therapy (M), or education only attention control group (E). Upon completion of the intervention, 128 of the RA patients participated in a laboratory session designed to induce stress in which they were asked to report on their PA and NA throughout the laboratory study. Patients in the M group exhibited dampened negative and positive affective reactivity to stress, and sustained PA at recovery, compared to the P and E groups. PA increased in response to induced stress for all groups, suggesting an "emotional immune response." History of recurrent depression increased negative affective reactivity, but did not predict reports of PA. RA patients who underwent a pre-intervention laboratory study showed less reactivity to stressors for both NA and PA during the post-intervention laboratory study. The M intervention demonstrated dampened emotional reactions to stress and lessened loss of PA after stress induction, displaying active emotion regulation in comparison to the other groups. These findings provide additional information about the effects of mindfulness on the dynamics of affect and adaptation to stress in chronic pain patients.Dissertation/ThesisM.A. Psychology 201
