There is a long tradition of studying children’s reasoning and thinking in cognitive development and education. The initial studies in the cognitive development of reasoning were motivated by Piagetian models, and developmental age was thought to bring the gradual onset of logical thinking. The introduction of heuristics and biases tasks in adults and dual process models have provided new perspectives for understanding the development of reasoning, judgment, and decision-making skills. These heuristics and biases tasks provided a way to operationalize the systematic errors that people make in their judgments. Dual process models have advanced our understanding of the basic processes implicated in both optimal and non-optimal responders on several types of paradigms, including heuristics and biases tasks and classic reasoning paradigms. Importantly, these skills and competencies are generally separable from the types of higher cognition assessed on measures of intelligence and executive function task performance.
Given the history of the study of reasoning in cognitive development, there is a need to integrate our understanding across these somewhat separate literatures. This is especially true given the opposite predictions that seem to be suggested in these different research traditions. Specifically, there is a focus on increasing logical development in the classic cognitive developmental literature and alternatively, there has been a focus on systematic errors in judgment and decision-making in the study of reasoning in adults. This article provides an integration of the two aforementioned perspectives that are rooted in different empirical and historical traditions. These considerations are addressed by drawing upon their research traditions and by summarizing more recent developmental work that has investigated these paradigms.
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Article
Fred Zijlstra and Henny Mulders
People with disabilities have more problems in finding adequate employment than people without disabilities. In most countries, the law requires that people with disabilities have equal rights and opportunities to find a job. However, in the various stages of finding a job—selection and recruitment, hiring, and employment—there are hindrances that place people with disabilities in a disadvantaged position. There are various options in the application process (i.e. ‘open hiring’), or offering accommodations in the workplace that can help to overcome the barriers people with disabilities face. Making changes to the work processes and job design is a form of ‘workplace accommodations’ that can help to create a better fit between requirements of the job and the capabilities and competences of applicants with a disability. This generally works best if the focus is on human resources related problems and needs in organizations, and it is explored to what extent people with disabilities or chronic diseases can be part of the solution to these organizational human resources-related problems.
Article
Regine Bendl, Astrid Hainzl, and Heike Mensi-Klarbach
Diversity in the workplace, with a central focus on gender, sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, (dis)ability, and religious belief, has become a major issue in organizations worldwide since the 1990s. How these different diversity dimensions are defined and constructed, as well as by whom and in what context, determines organizational practices. In turn, this determines the transformation of organizations from exclusive to inclusive ones.
The workplace is one context of social interaction, in which dimensions of diversity become highly relevant and visible. Depending on the organization’s perspective toward diversity in a managerial context, individual differences between employees can create value and foster innovation and creativity, or can lead to conflict. How diversity is constructed and reproduced within diversity management and inclusion determines how employees feel accepted and included and, thus, how they are able to realize their potential and to contribute to the organization’s vision and aims. However, legitimizing initiatives that foster diversity in the workplace only with potential profits it might generate – called the business case for diversity – and forgetting its roots in the moral case, has shortcomings and potential drawbacks on the aims of diversity management and inclusion.
Research on diversity in the workplace can be found in different forms. Generally, there are two main groups. Mainstream diversity literature works within the positivist research tradition and focuses mostly on the performance aspects of diverse workforces by conducting quantitative empirical studies. Critical diversity literature aims at promoting social justice by deeply understanding, criticizing and developing possible solutions. Both research streams have contributed to comprehend diversity in the workplace, realize its potentials and support marginalized groups.
Article
Amber M. Gaffney and Natasha La Vogue
Research and both applications of theories of dogmatism and the need for closure implicate the importance of closed belief systems in cognition, social interactions, and decision-making. Research traditionally examines dogmatism as a personality trait wherein people vary in the extent to which they actively justify and maintain their closed belief systems through ideological rigidity. The need for cognitive closure is a related concept, but research and theorizing in this area provides an account of an epistemic motivation to obtain knowledge and answers rapidly—to find information quickly and hold fast to the conclusions drawn from that information. Research on both dogmatism and the need for cognition hold significant implications for and applications to political decision-making and ideology, in-group favoritism and out-group derogation, and resistance to change.
Article
Eloisa Tudella, Meyene Duque Weber, Carolina Fioroni Ribeiro da Silva, and Cristina Hamamura Moriyama
Down syndrome (DS) is the most common chromosomal condition associated with intellectual disability. Individuals with DS have restrictions on social participation. In addition, affected body structures and functions and activity limitations may lead to incapacity and impact individuals, families, health systems, and society. Evidence suggests using a window of therapeutic opportunity in early childhood when neuroplasticity is intense and that it is essential to plan treatment strategies for different phases of life. Pharmacological interventions have also been studied to improve cognitive performance, but effectiveness has not been proven. Nevertheless, early clinical interventions (e.g., physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy) are recommended to help children with DS acquire developmental milestones. The literature presents strong biopsychosocial and economic arguments for early intervention, starting with protection, support, and promotion of development of individuals with DS from conception to aging.
Article
Andrew Luttrell
Issues of attitudes and attitude change are the foundation of many social processes. Psychologists have long sought to understand people’s opinions and evaluations and many studies have sought to understand how, why, and when those attitudes change in the face of persuasive communication. Early persuasion research identified many variables that influence the effectiveness of persuasive messages. These variables include characteristics of the communicator, the recipient, and the message itself. Over the years, however, the evidence for these influences became rather mixed, prompting a new generation of persuasion psychologists to ask whether there was a sensible pattern underlying it.
This question ushered in several new approaches to thinking about persuasion. These “dual process” models proposed key moderators, identifying the conditions under which certain variables would and would not produce attitude change. A particularly influential model has been the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), which proposed that the audience’s motivation and ability to think deeply about a persuasive message determines how much a given characteristic of that message will change the audience’s attitude. Other models, such as the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM), have contributed additional insights about the “when” and “why” of attitude change. In sum, these nuanced accounts of attitude change have been demonstrated time and again across cultures and topics of persuasion.
Article
Jeremy B. Yorgason, Melanie S. Hill, and Mallory Millett
The study of development across the lifespan has traditionally focused on the individual. However, dyadic designs within lifespan developmental methodology allow researchers to better understand individuals in a larger context that includes various familial relationships (husbands and wives, parents and children, and caregivers and patients). Dyadic designs involve data that are not independent, and thus outcome measures from dyad members need to be modeled as correlated. Typically, non-independent outcomes are appropriately modeled using multilevel or structural equation modeling approaches. Many dyadic researchers use the actor-partner interdependence model as a basic analysis framework, while new and exciting approaches are coming forth in the literature. Dyadic designs can be extended and applied in various ways, including with intensive longitudinal data (e.g., daily diaries), grid sequence analysis, repeated measures actor/partner interdependence models, and vector field diagrams. As researchers continue to use and expand upon dyadic designs, new methods for addressing dyadic research questions will be developed.
Article
Manfred Diehl, Eden Griffin, and Allyson Brothers
Dynamic integration theory (DIT) describes emotion development across the lifespan, from childhood to old age. In doing so, DIT draws on a number of perspectives, such as equilibrium theories, theories of cognitive development, and theories of behavioral adaptation, and takes a strong cognitive-developmental view on emotion experience and emotion regulation. Two propositions are at the core of DIT. First, the development of emotion experience and emotion regulation proceeds from simple and automatic reactions to increasingly complex and integrated cognitive-affective structures (i.e., schemas). These cognitive-affective structures can be ordered in terms of increasing levels of cognitive complexity and integration, with integration referring to a person’s ability to acknowledge both positive and negative affect states and to tolerate and reconcile the contradictions and tensions that these states generate. Second, DIT also postulates that the efficiency with which cognitive-affective systems work is a result of the dynamic interplay between contextual variables and person-specific characteristics. Three key factors contribute to this dynamic interplay between person and context: (1) the strength of the affective arousal, (2) the person’s cognitive resources for dealing with different affect states, and (3) pre-existing trait-like dispositions and reaction tendencies that may either hinder or facilitate emotion regulation. Thus, a person’s emotion experience and emotion regulation in a given situation are the product of the dynamic interaction of these factors. Considerable empirical evidence supports the theoretical propositions of DIT, including findings speaking to changes in emotion experience and emotion regulation in later life when declines in cognitive functioning tend to become normative.
Article
Linda Siegel
Dyslexia, or a reading disability, occurs when an individual has great difficulty at the level of word reading and decoding. Comprehension of text, writing, and spelling are also affected. The diagnosis of dyslexia involves the use of reading tests, but the continuum of reading performance means that any cutoff point is arbitrary. The IQ score does not play a role in the diagnosis of dyslexia. Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability. The cognitive difficulties of dyslexics include problems with recognizing and manipulating the basic sounds in a language, language memory, and learning the sounds of letters. Dyslexia is a neurological condition with a genetic basis. There are abnormalities in the brains of dyslexic individuals. There are also differences in the electrophysiological and structural characteristics of the brains of dyslexics. Hope for dyslexia involves early detection and intervention and evidence-based instruction.
Article
Young children develop at a breathtaking rate. Within just a few years, they change from helpless newborns into schoolchildren with all the abilities and skills needed to start formal education. To understand how such rapid cognitive development is at all possible, we can turn to five fundamental principles of infant learning: First, infants come into this world equipped to learn. From early on, they are sensitive to statistical information in their environment and readily detect and retain statistical structures they observe. Second, infants use this information to build predictive models of the world. Moreover, they are able to continuously and flexibly update these models in light of new information. Third, infant learning is fast and effective because it is supported by early existing attentional biases. Infants allocate attention to and preferably explore stimuli that are optimally informative. Fourth, adult interaction partners create ideal learning opportunities for infants by skillfully adapting their behavior to infants’ attentional preferences and learning capabilities. Fifth, infants’ learning is impacted by the development of their bodies and brains. These developmental changes modify the way infants engage with their environment and provide them with new learning experiences. In sum, the intricate interaction of infants’ basic learning mechanisms, their attentional and exploration biases, and their social exchanges brings about the astonishing developmental changes of early childhood.
Article
Throughout the world, individuals, groups, and communities are faced with major incidents, crises, and disasters. The impact of disasters can be wide-ranging, involving death, severe injury, the loss of home, shelter, liberty, security, and food, in addition to social dislocation and destroyed infrastructure and networks. Victims can experience distress, anger, grief, and fear together with symptoms of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress. First responders and those delivering longer-term social and psychological support can be adversely affected by direct exposure to the disaster, by learning about the details of the disaster from the testimony of victims, or by viewing distressing images or artifacts connected to the disaster.
To reduce the impact of disasters, communities and emergency services need to prepare plans to meet the physical, social, and psychological needs of those involved and undertake thorough testing of these plans to ensure they are fit for purpose. This planning needs to consider natural hazards such as forest fires, floods, drought, and biological hazards, including Covid-19, influenza, foot and mouth disease, and severe acute respiratory syndrome. Human and technological failings can also create hazards seen in transport crashes, the release of toxic substances, and armed conflict.
Contingency planning is used to reduce exposure to a hazard by identifying and protecting those at most risk of harm. However, it is impossible to prevent crises and disasters from happening, making it essential to provide appropriate and timely support. Initial support ensures that disaster survivors are taken to a safe place where their immediate needs for food, drinks, and shelter are met.
The aim of early psychosocial responses to disasters are fourfold: (a) to increase disaster preparedness to reduce the impact of hazards and vulnerabilities, (b) to respond to the immediate human needs for safety and survival, (c) to communicate care and provide psychological support, and (d) to provide an opportunity for survivors to process and create meaning from experiences.
Ideally, all early psychosocial interventions would be evidence-based and delivered by trained and monitored practitioners; however, often, this is not the case. Despite the development of an abundance of disaster-related models, few have been evaluated; this failure is due to a lack of agreement on the aims, scope, measures, and training required to deliver evidence-based interventions. Humanitarian and emergency response organizations look toward psychologists to provide them with the evidence-based interventions, evaluation tools, and guidance they need for dealing with disasters.
Article
Brigitte Röder and Ramesh Kekunnaya
As a consequence of congenital blindness, compensatory performance in the intact sensory modalities has been documented in humans in many domains, including auditory and tactile perception, auditory localization, voice and language processing, and memory. Both changes of the neural circuits associated with the intact sensory systems (intramodal plasticity) and an activation of deprived visual cortex (crossmodal plasticity) have been observed in blind humans. Compensation in congenitally blind and late-blind individuals involves partially different neural mechanisms. If sight is restored in patients who were born with dense bilateral cataracts (opaque lenses preventing patterned light to reach the retina), considerable visual recovery has been observed in basic visual functions even after long periods of visual deprivation. Functional recovery has been found to be lower for higher-order visual processes, which has been linked to deficits in the functional specialization of neural circuits. First evidence has suggested that crossmodal plasticity largely retracts after sight restoration but that crossmodal activity does not seem to fully dissolve. In contrast, intramodal adaptations in the auditory system have been observed to persist after sight restoration. Except for predominantly subcortically mediated multisensory functions, many multisensory processes have been found to be altered even many years after sight restoration.
On the one hand, research in permanently blind humans has documented a high capability of the human neurocognitive system to adapt to an atypical environment. On the other hand, research in sight recovery individuals who had suffered a transient phase of visual deprivation following birth has demonstrated functional specific sensitive periods in the development of visual and multisensory neural circuits.
Article
Claudio Robazza and Montse C. Ruiz
Emotions are multifaceted subjective feelings that reflect expected, current, or past interactions with the environment. They involve sets of interrelated psychological processes, encompassing affective, cognitive, motivational, physiological, and expressive or behavioral components. Emotions play a fundamental role in human adaptation and performance by improving sensory intake, detection of relevant stimuli, readiness for behavioral responses, decision-making, memory, and interpersonal interactions. These beneficial effects enhance human health and performance in any endeavor, including sport, work, and the arts. However, emotions can also be maladaptive. Their beneficial or maladaptive effects depend on their content, time of occurrence, and intensity level. Emotional self-regulation refers to the processes by which individuals modify the type, quality, time course, and intensity of their emotions. Individuals attempt to regulate their emotions to attain beneficial effects, to deal with unfavorable circumstances, or both. Emotional self-regulation occurs when persons monitor the emotions they are experiencing and try to modify or maintain them. It can be automatic or effortful, conscious or unconscious. The process model of emotion regulation provides a framework for the classification of antecedent- and response-focused regulation processes. These processes are categorized according to the point at which they have their primary impact in the emotion generative process: situation selection (e.g., confrontation and avoidance), situation modification (e.g., direct situation modification, support-seeking, and conflict resolution), attentional deployment (e.g., distraction, concentration, and mindfulness), cognitive change (e.g., self-efficacy appraisals, challenge/threat appraisals, positive reappraisal, and acceptance), and response modulation (e.g., regulation of experience, arousal regulation, and expressive suppression). In addition to the process model of emotion regulation, other prominent approaches provide useful insights to the study of adaptation and self-regulation for performance enhancement. These include the strength model of self-control, the dual-process theories, the biopsychosocial model, the attentional control theory, and the individual zones of optimal functioning model. Based on the latter model, emotion-centered and action-centered interrelated strategies have been proposed for self-regulation in sport. Within this framework, performers identify, regulate, and optimize their functional and dysfunctional emotions and their most relevant components of functional performance patterns.
Article
Neal M. Ashkanasy and Agata Bialkowski
Beginning in the 1980s, interest in studying emotions in organizational psychology has been on the rise. Prior to 2003, however, researchers in organizational psychology and organizational behavior tended to focus on only one or two levels of analysis. Ashkanasy argued that emotions are more appropriately conceived of as spanning all levels of organizational analysis, and introduced a theory of emotions in organizations that spans five levels of analysis. Level 1 of the model refers to within-person temporal variations in mood and emotion, which employees experience in their everyday working lives. Level 2 refers to individual differences in emotional intelligence and trait affectivity (i.e., between-person emotional variables). Level 3 relates to the perception of emotions in dyadic interactions. Level 4 relates to the emotional states and process that take place between leaders and group members. Level 5 involves organization-wide variables. The article concludes with a discussion of how, via the concept of emotional intelligence, emotions at each level of the model form an integrated picture of emotions in organizational settings.
Article
Eric L. Stocks and David A. Lishner
The term empathy has been used as a label for a broad range of phenomena, including feeling what another person is feeling, understanding another person’s point of view, and imagining oneself in another person’s situation. However, perhaps the most widely researched phenomenon that goes by this label involves an other-oriented emotional state that is congruent with the perceived welfare of another person. The feelings associated with empathy include sympathy, tenderness, and warmth toward the other person. Other variations of empathic emotions have been investigated too, including empathic joy, empathic embarrassment, and empathic anger. The term altruism has also been used as a label for a broad range of phenomena, including any type of helping behavior, personality traits associated with helpful persons, and biological influences that spur protection of genetically related others. However, a particularly fruitful research tradition has focused on altruism as a motivational state with the ultimate goal of protecting or promoting the welfare of a valued other. For example, the empathy–altruism hypothesis claims that empathy (construed as an other-oriented emotional state) evokes altruism (construed as a motivational state). Empathy and altruism, regardless of how they are construed, have important consequences for understanding human behavior in general, and for understanding social relationships and well-being in particular.
Article
Remus Ilies and Sherry Aw
Since the late 1990s, organizational psychology has gone through an “affective revolution,” producing a large body of work demonstrating how emotions and feelings are part and parcel of organizational life that have far-reaching effects on employees’ attitudes, cognitions, and behaviors. This stream of research has been particularly important in providing new insights into the origins of (im)moral behavior in the workplace—while (im)moral behavior was traditionally thought to be a result of personality, i.e., individuals with certain traits would be predisposed to engage in deviant behaviors, organizational psychologists now know that employees’ daily emotions too may facilitate (or inhibit) moral behavior. It is therefore important to have a comprehensive understanding of not only how and why emotions may influence moral behavior, but also the antecedents and predictors of these affective states, such as employees’ experiences of workplace events.
Further, emotions may be studied not only as broad, diffuse states of positive and negative affect but also as discrete emotions (e.g., anger, happiness, anxiety, and guilt). Particularly relevant to the discussion of moral behaviors are the moral emotions of empathy and compassion, guilt, shame, and gratitude. Examining these discrete emotions (as opposed to broad positive and negative affective states) would allow for a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of how the individual discrete emotions may influence (or be influenced by) employees’ moral cognitions—moral disengagement and moral licensing, and subsequently their moral behaviors (counterproductive work behaviors and organizational citizenship behaviors). For instance, while gratitude is often thought of as a self-transcendent, moral emotion that encourages prosocial and ethical behaviors, it is possible that under specific situations, feelings of gratitude may instead facilitate moral disengagement or moral licensing strategies, and free employees to perform unethical behaviors instead. Similarly, guilt, shame, and compassion too may have complex relationships with the moral cognitions and behaviors. Finally, while much of emotions research involves within-individual, fluctuating emotional and psychological states, it would be remiss to neglect these relationships within the context of individual differences (e.g., propensity to feel guilt and shame, empathy).
Article
Trevor A. Harley
Research in the psychology of language has been dogged by some enduring controversies, many of which continue to divide researchers. Furthermore, language research has been riven by too many dichotomies and too many people taking too extreme a position, and progress is only likely to be made when researchers recognize that language is a complex system where simple dichotomies may not be relevant. The enduring controversies cover the width of psycholinguistics, including the work of Chomsky and the nature of language, to what extent language is innately determined and the origin of language and how it evolved. Chomsky’s work has also influenced our conceptions of the modularity of the structure of the mind and the nature of psychological processing. Advances in the sophistication of brain imaging techniques have led to debate about exactly what these techniques can tell us about the psychological processing of language. There has also been much debate about whether psychological processing occurs through explicit rules or statistical mapping, a debate driven by connectionist modeling, deep learning, and techniques for the analysis of “big data.” Another debate concerns the role of prediction in language and cognition and the related issues of the relationship between language comprehension and language production. To what extent is language processing embodied, and how does it relate to controversies about “embedded cognition”? Finally, there has been debate about the purpose and use of language.
Article
Daniel L. Schacter, Aleea L. Devitt, and Donna Rose Addis
Episodic future thinking refers to the ability to imagine or simulate experiences that might occur in an individual’s personal future. It has been known for decades that cognitive aging is associated with declines in episodic memory, and recent research has documented correlated age-related declines in episodic future thinking. Previous research has considered both cognitive and neural mechanisms that are responsible for age-related changes in episodic future thinking, as well as effects of aging on the functions served by episodic future thinking. Studies concerned with mechanism indicate that multiple cognitive mechanisms contribute to changes in episodic future thinking during aging, including episodic memory retrieval, narrative style, and executive processes. Recent studies using an episodic specificity induction—brief training in recollecting episodic details of a recent experience—have proven useful in separating the contributions of episodic retrieval from other non-episodic processes during future thinking tasks in both old and young adults. Neuroimaging studies provide preliminary evidence of a role for age-related changes in default and executive brain networks in episodic future thinking and autobiographical planning. Studies concerned with function have examined age-related effects on the link between episodic future thinking and a variety of processes, including everyday problem-solving, prospective memory, prosocial intentions, and intertemporal choice/delay discounting. The general finding in these studies is for age-related reductions, consistent with the work on mechanisms that consistently reveals reduced episodic detail in older adults when they imagine future events. However, several studies have revealed that episodic simulation nonetheless confers some benefits for tasks tapping adaptive functions in older adults, such as problem-solving, prospective memory, and prosocial intentions, even though age-related deficits on these tasks are not eliminated or reduced by episodic future thinking.
Article
Carolyn M. Aldwin and Ritwik Nath
Erythocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) is one of the oldest measures of inflammation. It is used extensively in clinical medicine and has shown some utility in biomedical research. It is a nonspecific inflammation assay, and although it is less sensitive than more modern measures such as C-reactive protein, it is a useful measure in chronic illnesses.
In general, ESR increases with age and appears to be a biomarker of aging in general. It predicts both cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer and is elevated in autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis. Further, it predicts mortality both in the general population and in those with chronic illnesses such as CVD and cancer, independent of other indicators of illness severity.
Interestingly, ESR is not associated with anxiety or general measures of distress but is consistently associated with measures of depression and suicidal ideation. Further, the effect of depressive symptoms on mortality appears to be mediated through increases in ESR.
Studies of the relationship between stress and ESR have been less consistent, primarily because early studies were largely cross-sectional and in small samples. Studies using more modern, longitudinal analyses in larger samples may show more consistent results, especially if multilevel modeling was used that examined within-person changes in ESR in response to stress. Given that other large, longitudinal studies, such as the Baltimore Longitudinal Study on Aging, the Rotterdam Study, The Reykjavik Cohort Study, and Women’s Healthy Ageing Study have included ESR in their biomedical assays, it should be possible to analyze existing data to examine how psychosocial factors influence inflamm-aging in humans.
Article
Edward F. Etzel and Leigh A. Skvarla
The field of sport, exercise, and performance psychology (SEPP) has evolved over the past 100 plus years. SEPP includes professional consultants, teachers, researchers, and students from diverse educational and training backgrounds. Persons primarily from the merging of sport science, kinesiology, and professional psychology have shaped SEPP into what it is today. Client populations typically served include athletes, coaches, and exercisers, and more recently, performing artists (musicians, singers, dancers), businesspersons, sports medicine professionals, and military personnel.
These people and phenomena have fashioned an ethical climate that is generally similar to—but in various ways different from—mainstream psychology. While the ethical values and codes of organizations like the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association of Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) are generally comparable, the perceptions and application of these values and codes in SEPP realms may not match; this is due to the different histories of its membership, as well as the sometimes unusual work demands and atypical settings and circumstances in which SEPP persons function.
For both mainstream psychology and SEPP professionals, developments in technology and social media communications have presented ethical dilemmas for many who seek to maintain regular contact with their clientele. These issues, such as the use of technology in consulting, emphasize the importance of core ethical tenets such as privacy, confidentiality, and competence, among others, in the growing area of telehealth. In view of the rather unique ethical climate within SEPP, teaching applied ethics via classroom discussion, continued education, and sourcebooks is essential. To date, there appears to be a lack of continuity in the training and supervision of SEPP students and young professionals with respect to ethical decision making. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity to the current and next generation of scholars, researchers, and practitioners.
