Perceptions of procedural justice among female offenders: Time does not heal all wounds.

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The current study examined the association between perceived procedural injustice of court experiences and emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral outcomes among 94 adolescent and young adult females incarcerated in a high security juvenile facility. Specifically, perceived injustice was related to background characteristics (e.g., race), as well as increased levels of depressive symptoms, institutional offending, and substance use within the facility. These negative effects of perceived injustice were most evident among participants who had been incarcerated for longer periods of time. This suggests that perceived unjust treatment during a court proceeding may have long-term effects once an offender is incarcerated and that both court and correctional settings need to take these perceptions into account. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law – Vol 18, Iss 2

Numbers can be worth a thousand pictures: Individual differences in understanding graphical and numerical representations of health-related information.

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Objective: Informed medical decision making requires comprehending statistical information. We aimed to improve the understanding of conveying health-related statistical information with graphical representations compared with numerical representations. First, we investigated whether the iconicity of representations (i.e., their abstractness vs. concreteness) affected comprehension and recall of statistical information. Second, we investigated whether graph literacy helps to identify individuals who comprehend graphical representations better than numerical representations. Method: Participants (
N = 275) were randomly assigned to receive different representations of health-related statistical information, ranging from very low iconicity (numbers) to very high iconicity (icon arrays including photographs). Comprehension and recall of the information were assessed. Additionally, participants rated the accessibility of the information and the attractiveness of the representation. Graph literacy was assessed by means of a recently developed scale. Results: The only difference between representations that affected comprehension and recall was the difference between graphics and numbers; the actual level of iconicity of graphics did not matter. Individuals with high graph literacy had better comprehension and recall when presented with graphics instead of numbers, and they rated graphical information as more accessible than numerical information, whereas the reverse was true for individuals with low graph literacy,
F(4, 185) = 2.60,
p = .04, η
p² = .05, and F(4, 245) = 2.71, p = .03, ηp2 = .04, respectively. Both groups judged graphical representations as more attractive than numerical representations. Conclusion: An assessment of graph literacy distinguished individuals who are best informed with graphical representations of statistical information from those who are better informed with numerical representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Health Psychology – Vol 31, Iss 3

Treatment Planning for Children with Disruptive Behaviour Problems

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Format: Workshop
PD Points: 6
Location: VIC Metro
Venue: Sandringham Yacht Club
Jetty Road, Sandringham.3191
Start/End dates: Mon, 21 May 2012 to Mon, 21 May 2012
Cost: $ 290 Early Bird $ 250
Organiser: J. Costin, Clin Coll member
Contact Name: Janet Costin
Email: jcostin1@bigpond.com.au
Australian Psychological Society Events

Theories of the syllogism: A meta-analysis.

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Syllogisms are arguments about the properties of entities. They consist of 2 premises and a conclusion, which can each be in 1 of 4 “moods”: All A are B, Some A are B, No A are B, and Some A are not B. Their logical analysis began with Aristotle, and their psychological investigation began over 100 years ago. This article outlines the logic of inferences about syllogisms, which includes the evaluation of the consistency of sets of assertions. It also describes the main phenomena of reasoning about properties. There are 12 extant theories of such inferences, and the article outlines each of them and describes their strengths and weaknesses. The theories are of 3 main sorts: heuristic theories that capture principles that could underlie intuitive responses, theories of deliberative reasoning based on formal rules of inference akin to those of logic, and theories of deliberative reasoning based on set-theoretic diagrams or models. The article presents a meta-analysis of these extant theories of syllogisms using data from 6 studies. None of the 12 theories provides an adequate account, and so the article concludes with a guide—based on its qualitative and quantitative analyses—of how best to make progress toward a satisfactory theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Psychological Bulletin – Vol 138, Iss 3

Understanding Behaviour Conducting a Functional Behavioural Assessment for People Using Unwanted Behaviours

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Format: Training Course
PD Points: 6.5
Location: TAS Metro
Venue: Lenna of Hobart
20 Runnymede Street Battery Point, Battery Point
Start/End dates: Mon, 21 May 2012 to Mon, 21 May 2012
Cost: Full Price: $ 198 per person Early Bird – Paying before 23.04.12> Single booking – $ 176 > $ 165 per person for group bookings (2 or more people) (ALL bookings $ 198 single or multiple after Early bird discount date)
Organiser: Fabic
Contact Name: Amanda Fullarton
Email: info@fabic.com.au
Australian Psychological Society Events

Attachment predicts daily catastrophizing and social coping in women with pain.

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Objective: To examine how anxious and avoidant adult attachment styles moderate within-day associations between pain intensity, pain catastrophizing, and social coping. Method: Two-hundred and ten women with osteoarthritis and/or fibromyalgia from the community completed an initial questionnaire assessing attachment dimensions and a 30 day electronic diary. Outcomes were measured with daily ratings of pain intensity, catastrophizing, and social coping. Results: Attachment anxiety showed a context-specific relation with catastrophizing: days of increased pain predicted greater increases in pain catastrophizing for women who were anxious compared to nonanxious women. Attachment avoidance scores were related to higher mean levels of pain intensity and pain catastrophizing, and lower mean levels of social coping, across the diary period. In addition, compared to nonavoidant women, avoidant women showed smaller increases in use of social coping strategies on days of high catastrophizing. Conclusions: Dimensions of adult attachment, anxiety and avoidance, predict different aspects of daily pain and pain coping in women with chronic pain. Findings suggest that a social development perspective can inform our understanding of adjustment to chronic pain and the creation and use of more effective prevention and treatment strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Health Psychology – Vol 31, Iss 3

Context, not conflict, drives cognitive control.

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Theories of cognitive control generally assume that perceived conflict acts as a signal to engage inhibitory mechanisms that suppress subsequent conflicting information. Crucially, an absence of conflict is not regarded as being a relevant signal for cognitive control. Using a cueing, a priming, and a Simon task, we provide evidence that conflict does not have this unique signal status: Encountering a conflict does not lead to behavioral adjustments on subsequent conflict trials, whereas encountering a nonconflict trial does lead to behavioral adjustments on subsequent nonconflict trials. We propose that this apparent role-reversal can be explained by a mechanism that responds to both the presence and the absence of conflict, down-regulating the visuomotor system following conflict, and up-regulating it following nonconflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance – Vol 38, Iss 2

Robust decision making in a nonlinear world.

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The authors propose a general modeling framework called the general monotone model (GeMM), which allows one to model psychological phenomena that manifest as nonlinear relations in behavior data without the need for making (overly) precise assumptions about functional form. Using both simulated and real data, the authors illustrate that GeMM performs as well as or better than standard statistical approaches (including ordinary least squares, robust, and Bayesian regression) in terms of power and predictive accuracy when the functional relations are strictly linear but outperforms these approaches under conditions in which the functional relations are monotone but nonlinear. Finally, the authors recast their framework within the context of contemporary models of behavioral decision making, including the lens model and the take-the-best heuristic, and use GeMM to highlight several important issues within the judgment and decision-making literature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Psychological Review – Vol 119, Iss 2

Navigating Clinical Complexity: Personality as a Roadmap for Psychotherapy

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Format: Workshop
PD Points: 0
Location: NSW Metro
Venue: Kensington Campus, The University of New South Wales, Matthews Building
High Street, Sydney
Start/End dates: Sun, 20 May 2012 to Sun, 20 May 2012
Cost: ACPA Members $ 155 Non-Members $ 220 Student Members $ 70 Student Non-Members $ 100
Organiser: The Australian Clinical Psychology Association (ACPA)
Contact Name: Samantha May
Email: events@acpa.org.au
Australian Psychological Society Events

Is that what Bayesians believe? Reply to Griffiths, Chater, Norris, and Pouget (2012).

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Griffiths, Chater, Norris, and Pouget (2012) argue that we have misunderstood the Bayesian approach. In their view, it is rarely the case that researchers are making claims that performance in a given task is near optimal, and few, if any, researchers adopt the theoretical Bayesian perspective according to which the mind or brain is actually performing (or approximating) Bayesian computations. Rather, researchers are said to adopt something more akin to what we called the methodological Bayesian approach, according to which Bayesian models are statistical tools that allow researchers to provide teleological explanations of behavior. In our reply we argue that many Bayesian researchers often appear to be make claims regarding optimality, and often appear to be making claims regarding how the mind computes at algorithmic and implementational levels of descriptions. We agree that some Bayesian theorists adopt the methodological approach, but we question the value of this approach. If Bayesian theories in psychology and neuroscience are only designed to provide insights into teleological questions, we expect that many readers have misunderstood, and hence there is a pressing need to clarify what Bayesian theories of cognition are all about. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Psychological Bulletin – Vol 138, Iss 3