Mentoring: A Traditional Cook Island Approach to Support Men.

The present study examines a unique Cook Island approach to the rehabilitation and support of men, particularly those who have been convicted of criminal offending or who are experiencing other mental health or interpersonal difficulties. The culturally appropriate method of enabling change is offered via a community-based 24-hr mentoring system to support men. Run by men, the program is based on traditional Pacific ways of male mentoring in which one man helps another. This study examines the male mentoring program via qualitative analyses of semi-structured interviews. Seven men who had experienced mentoring and six mentors who deliver the program describe the mentoring system and their experiences. The study identifies several perceived benefits or themes in relation to the program. The unique Cook Islands' male mentoring program is viewed as beneficial in that it allows males to be open and supported to make change to be re-absorbed into the community, have healthy functioning, and reduce re-offending via the ongoing supportive care.

Look into my eyes: a "faceless" avatar interviewer lowers reporting threshold for adult eyewitnesses.

Evidential interviewing is often used to gather important information, which can determine the outcome of a criminal case. An interviewer's facial features, however, may impact reporting during this task. Here, we investigated adults' interview performance using a novel tool-a faceless avatar interviewer-designed to minimize the impact of an interviewer's visual communication signals, potentially enhancing memory performance. Adults were interviewed about the details of a video by (1) a human-appearing avatar or a human interviewer (Experiment 1; N = 105) or (2) a human-appearing avatar or a faceless avatar interviewer (Experiment 2; N = 109). Participants assigned to the avatar interviewer condition were (1) asked whether they thought the interviewer was either computer or human operated (Experiment 1) or (2) explicitly told that the interviewer was either computer or human operated (Experiment 2). Adults' memory performance was statistically equivalent when they were interviewed by a human-appearing avatar or a human interviewer, but, relative to the human-appearing avatar, adults who were interviewed by a faceless avatar reported more correct (but also incorrect) details in response to free-recall questions. Participants who indicated that the avatar interviewer was computer operated-as opposed to human operated-provided more accurate memory reports, but specifically telling participants that the avatar was computer operated or human operated had no influence on their memory reports. The present study introduced a novel interviewing tool and highlighted the possible cognitive and social influences of an interviewer's facial features on adults' report of a witnessed event.

Does Gender Affect Judges' Perceptions of Sexual Assault Cases?

There is growing recognition that females engage in harmful sexual behaviour that is similar in severity and type to males. Existing research, however, suggests that there is a bias towards leniency in judicial systems for female sexual offenders (FSOs) in comparison to male sexual offenders (MSOs). Specifically, FSOs receive shorter sentences than do MSOs and are less likely to be sentenced to prison. The majority of research examining disparity in sentence outcomes for FSOs have been analysed through a quantitative lens. Qualitative methodology is also needed to understand any subjective differences in the way that judges perceive case-relevant factors and whether these perceptions differ as a function of the offender's gender. The present study is a qualitative study that examined judges' perceptions and descriptions of FSO compared to MSO in 10 matched cases of sexual offending. The study found that although there were many similarities in how judges perceived FSO compared to MSO, there were also unique differences that could explain more lenient sentences for FSOs (i.e. the vulnerability, poor mental health and adverse backgrounds of FSOs). Other unique differences found were that judges' perception of FSOs behaviour was described as depraved and cruel, whereas MSOs similar behaviour was not described in such an emotive way. The present study provides additional insight into the reasons for a bias towards leniency for FSOs. In particular, it points towards judicial focus on particular personal circumstances that are seen as relevant in sentencing FSOs but not for MSOs.

Spirituality: A Key Component of the Salvation Army's Bridge Programme Model of Treatment in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Spirituality is vital to The Salvation Army's Bridge model of treatment for alcohol and drug addiction. Spirituality is expressed through Recovery Church, prayer, spirituality lifters, the 12-step programme, and focuses on meaning and purpose. We recruited participants from several regional centers throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and evaluated spirituality using the WHOQol-SRPB and open-ended questions. Most participants held broad understandings of spirituality, only a minority equating it with religion. Participants who completed the Programme had statistically significant increases in spiritual wellbeing at end-of-treatment. These increases were maintained at a 3-month follow-up. Increases in spiritual wellbeing were associated with decreases in severity of alcohol and drug use.

Narrative identity in borderline personality disorder.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe psychiatric condition that is associated with functional impairment and pathological traits. It has been argued that identity impairment is one of the core features of BPD, which can be manifested in different ways, including fragmented autobiographical narratives. Here, we considered both the traditional and modern conceptualizations of BPD to examine the relation between identity impairment, as operationalized through autobiographical memory, and features of BPD. We hypothesized that BPD features would be associated with higher levels of fragmentation in narrative identity, narrative intimacy, and narrative coherence in participants' autobiographical memory. To test this hypothesis, we recruited 298 university students who were administered a series of self-report measures of BPD and were asked to describe an autobiographical memory about a turning point in their lives. Narrative identity, but not narrative intimacy nor coherence, was the dominant predictor of BPD features. We discuss our findings in terms of how individuals with features of BPD struggle with many aspects of a distorted sense of self. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Dissociation and false memory: the moderating role of trauma and cognitive ability.

The term dissociation is often used to refer to a diverse range of psychological symptoms, including perceptual impairments, emotional detachment, and memory fragmentation. In the present study, we examined whether there was a relation between participants' self-reports of dissociative experiences and their memory performance in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm-a laboratory-based procedure that is frequently used to investigate false memory. University students (N = 298) completed the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) and the Traumatic Life Events Questionnaire (TLEQ). Participants were also administered a standardised intelligence test (Shipley-2), and they were tested in the DRM paradigm. Overall, experiencing trauma and dissociation, as well as lower levels of cognitive ability, were associated with higher false memory. These findings are discussed in the context of the activation monitoring theory of DRM false memory.

How does social distancing during COVID-19 affect negative moods and memory?

In the absence of an effective vaccine or treatment, the current best defence against COVID-19 is social distancing - staying at home as much as possible, keeping distance from others, and avoiding large gatherings. Although social distancing improves physical health in terms of helping to reduce viral transmission, its psychological consequences are less clear, particularly its effects on memory. In this research, we investigated the effect of social distancing duration on negative moods and memory. The relation between social distancing duration and both negative mood and memory errors followed the same U-shaped function: negative moods and memory errors initially decreased as social distancing duration increased, and then at approximately 30 days, they began to increase. Subsequent analyses indicated that memory errors were mediated by lonely mood in particular. Thus, short-term social distancing might benefit psychological well-being and memory performance, but extended social distancing has a negative impact on mood and memory.

An age-related positivity effect in semantic true memory but not false memory.

The positivity effect in older adults (i.e., over 60 years old) has been demonstrated across a wide range of stimuli with a wide range of experimental paradigms that are designed to assess memory; however, very little research has investigated the positivity effect in semantic memory. The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm is one of the best procedures to investigate age-related changes in the key cognitive mechanisms of semantic memory, including associative activation and gist extraction. Here we used the DRM paradigm to investigate whether mood, particularly positive mood, at the time of encoding would influence age-related differences in semantic memory in younger and older adults. Participants were induced into a positive, negative, or neutral mood and were then presented with word lists consisting of positive, negative, or neutral words. Older relative to younger adults exhibited higher true recognition for positive over negative words, but this pattern was not shown in false recognition. When participants were induced in positive moods, older adults exhibited more false recognition than did young adults. The age-related difference in false recognition, however, had nothing to do with the valence of information. Taken together, these findings support Socioemotional Selectivity Theory, a life span theory of motivation, and Fuzzy-Trace Theory, a dual-process theory of false memory, as well as the assumptions regarding the impact of mood on information processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Giving Children a Voice About Their Dental Care.

Purpose: To assess young children's views of their experiences of dental treatment.
Methods: Forty-two four- to seven-year-old children were recruited between August and December 2017. Half were asked to tell the interviewer about their recent dental treatment and the remaining half were asked to draw at the same time they talked about this treatment. Only children's verbal responses were coded, not the content of their drawings.
Results: Drawing while talking increased the amount of neutral information that children verbally reported and helped to overcome limitations in language skills. Children talked primarily about emotionally neutral information. They talked about things that they did and did not like, and provided suggestions about how their experience of dental treatment could be improved.
Conclusion: Drawing during the interview helped children talk about their experiences of dental treatment. Gaining children's insights in this way could be used to optimize their oral health.

The effect of drawing and socioeconomic status on children's reports of a past experience.

When children are interviewed about a prior experience using open-ended questions, the opportunity to draw increases the amount of information they report without decreasing their accuracy. Given that prior research has only included children from middle- to upper-middle class backgrounds, it is not clear whether the technique is effective for children from more challenging backgrounds that are overrepresented in clinical and legal contexts. Here, we examined the effect of drawing on children's verbal reports as a function of the socioeconomic status (SES) of their families. A total of 125 children (5- and 6-year-olds) were recruited from schools with a socioeconomic rating of low-, middle-, or upper-middle class. They participated in a novel event and were interviewed 1 month later. Half of the children were given the opportunity to draw during the interview and half were not. Regardless of SES, drawing increased the amount of information that children reported. Drawing also ameliorated the impact of memory ability on the amount that children reported. Additionally, children from low SES backgrounds were less accurate than were children from higher SES backgrounds and they remained less accurate even when they were drawing. These findings have important implications for interviewing children in clinical and legal contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

"What Was His Name, Again?": A New Method for Reducing Memory-Based Errors in an Adult False-Belief Task.

Despite considerable interest in the development of Theory of Mind (ToM) during early childhood, until recently, there has been little consideration about whether and how ToM skills continue to change into adulthood. Furthermore, the false-belief task, which is believed to capture the underlying mechanisms of ToM, is rarely used in studies of ToM with adults; those tasks that do assess false-belief understanding may be confounded by incidental task demands, such as complex narratives and excessive memory requirements, making it difficult to isolate adults' true ToM skills, much less to compare them with the skills of children. Here, we adapted a task developed by Valle, Massaro, Castelli, and Marchetti (2015, https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v11i1.829) to assess false-belief understanding in adults. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the reading condition, participants read a story about the unexpected transfer of a ball between three brothers. In the video condition, participants watched a video version of the same story. Finally, in the training condition, participants were first trained on the names of the characters, before watching the video. Although condition did not affect participants' ability to correctly answer a standard false belief question ("Where does X think Y thinks the ball is?"), participants in the training condition used more mental state language to justify their responses ("Why does X think Y thinks the ball is here?"), and this improved performance was mediated by improved memory for the story details. We conclude that at least some "failures" of ToM use may be due to an inability to understand, recall, or communicate complex information in a ToM task, raising important questions about how best to measure ToM in adults (and children) in the future.

Mood impedes monitoring of emotional false memories: evidence for the associative theories.

In the present experiment, we investigated whether warnings provided at the time of retrieval would reduce emotional false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. The provision of retrieval warnings allowed us to test specific predictions based on the associative theories (e.g., Activation-Monitoring Theory; AMT) and Fuzzy-Trace Theory (FTT) that have been used to account for false memories in the DRM paradigm. Participants were randomly assigned to either a no-warning group or a retrieval-warning group. In each group, mood-induction procedures were used to elicit a positive, negative, or neutral mood and participants were then presented with word lists comprised of positive, negative, or neutral words. Retrieval warnings reduced false recognition, regardless of the valence of the to-be-remembered information or participants' mood. Consistent with the associative theories' predictions, within the warning condition, positive moods yielded greater false recognition for positive critical lures, and negative moods yielded greater false recognition for negative critical lures, compared to neutral moods. These findings have important practical implications for our understanding of the effect of mood on memory.

If You're Happy and You Know It: Positive Moods Reduce Age-Related Differences in False Memory.

When tested in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, children typically exhibit fewer false memories than do adolescents or adults. Here, participants' moods and the valence of word lists were manipulated to explore the mechanism responsible for this developmental reversal in memory performance. Children (7- to 8-year-olds), adolescents (11- to 12-year-olds), and young adults (18- to 22-year-olds; N = 270) were assigned to one of three induced mood conditions and were presented with emotional word lists. In negative moods, adolescents and adults falsely recalled more negative information than did children, showing the typical developmental reversal effect. This effect, however, was eliminated when participants were in positive moods. The findings provide support for associative-activation theory and have important implications for our understanding of the development of emotional false memories.

"What" and "where" was when? Memory for the temporal order of episodic events in children.

In the past, researchers have shown that the individual components of episodic memory (i.e "what," "where," and "when") may emerge at different points in development. Specifically, while children as young as three can accurately report the "what" and "where" of an event, they struggle to accurately report when the event occurred. One explanation for children's difficulty in reporting when an event took place is a rudimentary understanding, and ability to use, temporal terms. In the current experiment, we employed a physical timeline to aid children's reporting of the order in which a series of episodic events occurred. Overall, while 4-, 5-, and 6-year olds performed above chance, 3-year olds did not. Our findings suggest that 3-year olds' limited ability to produce temporal terms may not be the rate-limiting step preventing them from identifying when events occurred in their recent past.

The effect of mood on false memory for emotional DRM word lists.

In the present study, we investigated the effect of participants' mood on true and false memories of emotional word lists in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. In Experiment 1, we constructed DRM word lists in which all the studied words and corresponding critical lures reflected a specified emotional valence. In Experiment 2, we used these lists to assess mood-congruent true and false memory. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three induced-mood conditions (positive, negative, or neutral) and were presented with word lists comprised of positive, negative, or neutral words. For both true and false memory, there was a mood-congruent effect in the negative mood condition; this effect was due to a decrease in true and false recognition of the positive and neutral words. These findings are consistent with both spreading-activation and fuzzy-trace theories of DRM performance and have practical implications for our understanding of the effect of mood on memory.

Interviews with children about their mental health problems: The congruence and validity of information that children report.

To obtain a child's perspective during a mental health assessment, he or she is usually interviewed. Although researchers and clinicians generally agree that it is beneficial to hear a child's account of his or her presenting issues, there is debate about whether children provide reliable or valid clinical information during these interviews. Here, we examined whether children provide clinically and diagnostically relevant information in a clinical setting. In all, 31 children aged 5-12-years undergoing mental health assessments were asked open-ended questions about their presenting problems during a semi-structured interview. We coded the information that children reported to determine whether it was clinically relevant and could be used to diagnose their problems and to formulate and plan treatment. We also coded children's information to determine whether it was congruent with the children's presenting problems and their eventual clinical diagnoses. Most of the information that children reported was clinically relevant and included information about behaviour, affect, temporal details, thoughts, people, the environment, and the child's physical experiences. The information that children reported was also clinically valid; it was congruent with the problems that were discussed (84%) and also with the eventual diagnosis that the child received after a complete assessment (74%). We conclude that children can contribute relevant, clinically useful, valid information during clinical psychological assessments.

Memory by association: Integrating memories prolongs retention by two-year-olds.

Recalling one memory often leads to the recollection of other memories that share overlapping features. This phenomenon, spreading activation, was originally documented in studies conducted with verbal adults, and more recently, it has been demonstrated with preverbal infants. Here, we examine the effect of spreading activation on long-term retention by 2-year-olds. Participants were tested in the Visual Recognition Memory (VRM) paradigm and the deferred imitation paradigm. Typically, infants of this age exhibit retention in the VRM paradigm for 24h, while they exhibit retention in the deferred imitation paradigm for at least 8 weeks. In the present experiment, we paired these tasks together during original encoding and tested infants after an 8-week delay. Two-year-olds exhibited retention in both tasks. That is, when these two tasks initially occurred together - one task that is extremely memorable and one that is not - retrieving the memory of the more memorable task cued retrieval of the less memorable task, extending its longevity.

Visual attention to meaningful stimuli by 1- to 3-year olds: implications for the measurement of memory.

The visual recognition memory (VRM) paradigm has been widely used to measure memory during infancy and early childhood; it has also been used to study memory in human and nonhuman adults. Typically, participants are familiarized with stimuli that have no special significance to them. Under these conditions, greater attention to the novel stimulus during the test (i.e., novelty preference) is used as the primary index of memory. Here, we took a novel approach to the VRM paradigm and tested 1-, 2-, and 3-year olds using photos of meaningful stimuli that were drawn from the participants' own environment (e.g., photos of their mother, father, siblings, house). We also compared their performance to that of participants of the same age who were tested in an explicit pointing version of the VRM task. Two- and 3-year olds exhibited a strong familiarity preference for some, but not all, of the meaningful stimuli; 1-year olds did not. At no age did participants exhibit the kind of novelty preference that is commonly used to define memory in the VRM task. Furthermore, when compared to pointing, looking measures provided a rough approximation of recognition memory, but in some instances, the looking measure underestimated retention. The use of meaningful stimuli raise important questions about the way in which visual attention is interpreted in the VRM paradigm, and may provide new opportunities to measure memory during infancy and early childhood.

Where There's Smoke, There's Fire: the Effect of Truncated Testimony on Juror Decision-making.

In countries that allow child complainants of abuse to present their direct evidence via pre-recorded videotape, the recording is sometimes truncated for relevance or admissibility purposes before it is presented to the jury. In two experiments, we investigated how this practice affects mock jurors' judgments of child credibility and defendant culpability when truncation omitted the child's less plausible allegations. Mock jurors read a transcript of a 6-year-old girl making an abuse allegation against the janitor at her school. Some jurors read this allegation only (truncated version), while others also read either one or two additional - but less plausible - allegations by the same child. Contrary to what we predicted, the presence of these additional allegations did not decrease jurors' belief in the core allegation, nor did it influence their judgments about the child complainant's honesty or cognitive competence. In fact, under at least one condition, reading additional, less plausible allegations made jurors more likely to pronounce the defendant guilty of the core allegation - even when jurors did not believe the additional allegations. This finding stands in stark contrast to prior research on jurors' evaluation of adults' testimony that includes implausible details. Future research in this area will help to elucidate the conditions under which the presentation of truncated testimony may or may not influence juror decision-making. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Developmental reversals in recognition memory in children and adults.

Older members of a given species typically exhibit superior learning and memory abilities relative to younger members, however, the developmental difference does not always occur in this younger-to-older direction. Developmental reversals are thought to reflect adaptive responses to the unique challenges imposed by the infant's niche. In humans, identification of developmental reversals has largely been precluded because infants, children, and adults are rarely tested using the same experimental procedures. Here, we adapted the visual recognition memory task and tested 3-year-olds and adults using one set of child-oriented stimuli and one set of adult-orientated stimuli. When tested immediately, children and adults exhibited recognition memory for both stimuli. When tested after a 1-week delay, children exhibited recognition memory for the child-oriented stimuli, but not for the adult-oriented stimuli and adults exhibited recognition memory for the adult-oriented stimuli, but not for the child-oriented stimuli. These data have important implications for current theories of memory development.