Examining the Effects of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy With a Virtual Agent on User Motivation and Improvement in Psychological Distress and Anxiety: Two-Session Experimental Study.

Background: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a valuable treatment for mood disorders and anxiety. CBT methods, such as cognitive restructuring, are employed to change automatic negative thoughts to more realistic ones.

Objective: This study extends on previous research conducted by the authors, focused on the process of correcting automatic negative thoughts to realistic ones and reducing distress and anxiety via CBT with a virtual agent.

Psychological differences and similarities between vegans, prospective vegans, and vegetarians. Motivation, knowledge, vegan literacy - and cheese.

Introduction: Although vegan and vegetarian diets and lifestyles differ significantly from each other, among other things, notably in their respective consequences regarding animal welfare and their ecological impact, vegans and vegetarians are often grouped together and usually compared to omnivores in psychological research. Considering that vegans and vegetarians often share similar motives for their lifestyle choices, namely animal and environmental issues, the question arises why similar motives lead to different conclusions and correspondingly different behaviors, most notably, of course, that vegetarians consume animal-derived foods such as cheese or milk while vegans do not consume animal-derived products (e.g.

Re-examining the testing effect as a learning strategy: the advantage of retrieval practice over concept mapping as a methodological artifact.

Several previous studies appear to have demonstrated that studying with retrieval practice produces more learning than studying with concept mapping, a finding based on which an extended use of retrieval practice in educational practice was recommended. However, a closer examination of the methods used in these previous studies reveals a crucial confounding variable: Whereas participants in the concept mapping conditions performed a concept mapping task without any subsequent memorizing of the learning material, participants in the retrieval practice conditions performed not only retrieval practice but also an additional memorization task, which doubled the total memorization time. The present preregistered study examined whether the advantage observed in the retrieval practice condition over the concept mapping condition in previous studies was actually driven by additional memorization rather than by retrieval practice.