How well do indirect measures assess sexual interest in children? A meta-analysis.

Objective: We quantitatively reviewed the construct validity evidence for all cognitively based indirect measures of sexual interest in prepubescent children (pedophilic interest) and pubescent children (hebephilic interest) using meta-analysis.

Method: Studies were included if they presented scores on a cognitively based indirect measure of pedohebephilic interest for a sample of adolescent or adult males who had committed a sexual offense against a child 16 years of age or younger, or who reported sexual interest in children, and for a comparison group. Studies were also included if they reported on the strength of association between scores on an indirect measure and an independent indicator of pedohebephilic interest in a sample of males.

Beyond overall effects: A Bayesian approach to finding constraints in meta-analysis.

Most meta-analyses focus on the behavior of meta-analytic means. In many cases, however, this mean is difficult to defend as a construct because the underlying distribution of studies reflects many factors, including how we as researchers choose to design studies. We present an alternative goal for meta-analysis.

Null Effects of Game Violence, Game Difficulty, and 2D:4D Digit Ratio on Aggressive Behavior.

Researchers have suggested that acute exposure to violent video games is a cause of aggressive behavior. We tested this hypothesis by using violent and nonviolent games that were closely matched, collecting a large sample, and using a single outcome. We randomly assigned 275 male undergraduates to play a first-person-shooter game modified to be either violent or less violent and hard or easy.

Improving Psychological Science through Transparency and Openness: An Overview.

The ability to independently verify and replicate observations made by other researchers is a hallmark of science. In this article, we provide an overview of recent discussions concerning replicability and best practices in mainstream psychology with an emphasis on the practical benefists to both researchers and the field as a whole. We first review challenges individual researchers face in producing research that is both publishable and reliable.

Pathological game use in adults with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder.

This study tested whether adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at higher risk for pathological game use than typically developing (TD) adults. Participants included 119 adults with and without ASD. Participants completed measures assessing daily hours of video game use, percent of free time spent playing video games, and symptoms of pathological game use.

Overstated evidence for short-term effects of violent games on affect and behavior: A reanalysis of Anderson et al. (2010).

Violent video games are theorized to be a significant cause of aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Important evidence for this claim comes from a large meta-analysis by Anderson and colleagues (2010), who found effects of violent games in experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal research. In that meta-analysis, the authors argued that there is little publication or analytic bias in the literature, an argument supported by their use of the trim-and-fill procedure.

Brief use of a specific gun in a violent game does not affect attitudes towards that gun.

Although much attention has been paid to the question of whether violent video games increase aggressive behaviour, little attention has been paid to how such games might encourage antecedents of gun violence. In this study, we examined how product placement, the attractive in-game presentation of certain real-world firearm brands, might encourage gun ownership, a necessary antecedent of gun violence. We sought to study how the virtual portrayal of a real-world firearm (the Bushmaster AR-15) could influence players' attitudes towards the AR-15 specifically and gun ownership in general.

Bedtime Electronic Media Use and Sleep in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to better understand the use of screen-based media at bedtime among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The study specifically examined whether the presence of media devices in the child's bedroom, the use of media as part of the bedtime routine, and exposure to media with violent content just before bedtime were associated with sleep difficulties.

Methods: Parents of 101 children with ASD completed questionnaires assessing their children's sleep habits, bedroom media access (including television, video game devices, and computers), and patterns of nighttime media use (including timing of media exposure and violent media content).

The Alcohol Sensitivity Questionnaire: Evidence for Construct Validity.

Background: Variability in sensitivity to the acute effects of alcohol is an important risk factor for the development of alcohol use disorder (AUD). The most commonly used retrospective self-report measure of sensitivity, the Self-Rating of the Effects of Alcohol (SRE) form, queries a limited number of alcohol effects and relies on respondents' ability to recall experiences that might have occurred in the distant past. Here, we investigated the construct validity of an alternative measure that queries a larger number of alcohol effects, the Alcohol Sensitivity Questionnaire (ASQ), and compared it to the SRE in predicting momentary subjective responses to an acute dose of alcohol.

Effects of Violent-Video-Game Exposure on Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive-Thought Accessibility, and Aggressive Affect Among Adults With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Recent mass shootings have prompted the idea among some members of the public that exposure to violent video games can have a pronounced effect on individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Empirical evidence for or against this claim has been missing, however. To address this issue, we assigned adults with and without ASD to play a violent or nonviolent version of a customized first-person shooter video game.

The negativity bias in affective picture processing depends on top-down and bottom-up motivational significance.

It is widely believed that negative information is psychologically more meaningful than positive information, a phenomenon known generally as the negativity bias. However, findings concerning the possibility of a negativity bias in emotional picture processing have been mixed, with recent studies indicating the lack of such a bias in event-related brain potentials (ERPs) when pleasant and unpleasant images are equated for motivational relevance. Here, we investigated 2 factors that could influence the detection of a negativity bias: picture-presentation paradigm and specific picture content.

Characterizing switching and congruency effects in the Implicit Association Test as reactive and proactive cognitive control.

Recent research has identified an important role for task switching, a cognitive control process often associated with executive functioning, in the Implicit Association Test (IAT). However, switching does not fully account for IAT effects, particularly when performance is scored using more recent d-score formulations. The current study sought to characterize multiple control processes involved in IAT performance through the use of event-related brain potentials (ERPs).

Individual differences in motives, preferences, and pathology in video games: the gaming attitudes, motives, and experiences scales (GAMES).

A new measure of individual habits and preferences in video game use is developed in order to better study the risk factors of pathological game use (i.e., excessively frequent or prolonged use, sometimes called "game addiction").

Emotional targets: evaluative categorization as a function of context and content.

Event-related potential (ERP) studies of early evaluative categorization have often used variants of an oddball paradigm to assess attention to target stimuli as a function of content (i.e., valence) and context (e.

Decreased functional brain connectivity in individuals with early-treated phenylketonuria: evidence from resting state fMRI.

Previous histological and neuroimaging studies have documented structural abnormalities in the white matter of the brain in individuals with early-treated phenylketonuria (ETPKU). It remains unclear, however, the extent to which the function of the brain's interconnections are impacted by this condition. Presently, we utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to evaluate the synchronization of neural signals (i.

Domain independence and stability in young and older adults' discounting of delayed rewards.

Individual discounting rates for different types of delayed reward are typically assumed to reflect a single, underlying trait of impulsivity. Recently, we showed that discounting rates are orders of magnitude steeper for directly consumable liquid rewards than for monetary rewards (Jimura et al., 2009), raising the question of whether discounting rates for different types of reward covary at the individual level.

Are people really more patient than other animals? Evidence from human discounting of real liquid rewards.

In previous studies, researchers have found that humans discount delayed rewards orders of magnitude less steeply than do other animals. Humans also discount smaller delayed reward amounts more steeply than larger amounts, whereas animals apparently do not. These differences between humans and animals might reflect differences in the types of rewards studied and/or the fact that animals actually had to wait for their rewards.