Support for the predictive validity of the multifactor offender readiness model (MORM): forensic patients' readiness and engagement with therapeutic groups.

Background: Treatment non-engagement in forensic health settings has ethical and economic implications. The multifactor offender readiness model (MORM) provides a framework for assessing treatment readiness across person, programme and contexts.

Aims: To answer the following question: Are the internal factors of the MORM associated with likelihood of engagement in groups by patients in forensic mental health services?

Method: In a retrospective design, associations were investigated between internal factors of the MORM, measured as part of assessment for group participation, and the outcomes of treatment refusal, treatment dropout and treatment completion.

Metacognitive monitoring and control processes in children with autism spectrum disorder: Diminished judgement of confidence accuracy.

Metacognition consists of monitoring processes (the ability to accurately represent one's own mental states) and control processes (the ability to control one's cognitive processes effectively). Both processes play vital roles in self-regulated learning. However, currently it is unclear whether these processes are impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs).

Internalized weight stigma moderates eating behavior outcomes in women with high BMI participating in a healthy living program.

Weight stigma is a significant socio-structural barrier to reducing health disparities and improving quality of life for higher weight individuals. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of internalized weight stigma on eating behaviors after participating in a randomized controlled trial comparing the health benefits of a weight-neutral program to a conventional weight-management program for 80 community women with high body mass index (BMI > 30, age range: 30-45). Programs involved 6 months of facilitator-guided weekly group meetings using structured manuals.

Is liberal bias universal? An international perspective on social psychologists.

Based on our comparison of political orientation and research interests of social psychologists in capitalist Western countries versus post-Communist Eastern European countries, we suggest that Duarte and colleagues' claim of liberal bias in the field seems American-centric. We propose an alternative account of political biases which focuses on the academic tendency to explain attitudes of lower status groups.

A Practical Guide to Assessing Adult Firesetters' Fire-Specific Treatment Needs Using the Four Factor Fire Scales.

Objective: Practitioners working with offenders who have set fires have access to very few measures examining fire-specific treatment needs (e.g., fire interest, fire attitudes).

Responding to social and symbolic extrafoveal cues: cue shape trumps biological relevance.

Social cues presented at visual fixation have been shown to strongly influence an observer's attention and response selection. Here we ask whether the same holds for cues (initially) presented away from fixation, as cues are commonly perceived in natural vision. In six experiments, we show that extrafoveally presented cues with a distinct outline, such as pointing hands, rotated heads, and arrow cues result in strong cueing of responses (either to the cue itself, or a cued object).

Using affective knowledge to generate and validate a set of emotion-related, action words.

Emotion concepts are built through situated experience. Abstract word meaning is grounded in this affective knowledge, giving words the potential to evoke emotional feelings and reactions (e.g.

Adrian Stokes and the portrait of Melanie Klein.

This paper focuses on the offer by the art writer Adrian Stokes to commission and pay for a portrait of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein by the artist William Coldstream. It details some of the precursors of this offer in Stokes's preceding involvement first with Klein and then with Coldstream; her response to this offer; and its outcome and aftermath in Stokes's subsequent writing about Klein and Coldstream.

Any of them will do: In-group identification, out-group entitativity, and gang membership as predictors of group-based retribution.

In non-gang populations, the degree of identification with an in-group and perceptions of out-group entitativity, the perception of an out-group as bonded or unified, are important contributors to group-based aggression or vicarious retribution. The link between these factors and group-based aggression, however, has not been examined in the context of street gangs. The current study assessed the relationship among in-group identification, perceptions of out-group entitativity, and the willingness to retaliate against members of rival groups who did not themselves attack the in-group among juvenile gang and non-gang members in London.

Eaten up by boredom: consuming food to escape awareness of the bored self.

Research indicates that being bored affectively marks an appraised lack of meaning in the present situation and in life. We propose that state boredom increases eating in an attempt to distract from this experience, especially among people high in objective self-awareness. Three studies were conducted to investigate boredom's effects on eating, both naturally occurring in a diary study and manipulated in two experiments.

Social status modulates prosocial behavior and egalitarianism in preschool children and adults.

Humans are a cooperative species, capable of altruism and the creation of shared norms that ensure fairness in society. However, individuals with different educational, cultural, economic, or ethnic backgrounds differ in their levels of social investment and endorsement of egalitarian values. We present four experiments showing that subtle cues to social status (i.

Empathy predicts false belief reasoning ability: evidence from the N400.

Interpreting others' actions relies on an understanding of their current mental state. Emerging research has begun to identify a number of factors that give rise to individual differences in this ability. We report an event-related brain potential study where participants (N = 28) read contexts that described a character having a true belief (TB) or false belief (FB) about an object's location.

The consequences of ignoring measurement invariance for path coefficients in structural equation models.

We report a Monte Carlo study examining the effects of two strategies for handling measurement non-invariance - modeling and ignoring non-invariant items - on structural regression coefficients between latent variables measured with item response theory models for categorical indicators. These strategies were examined across four levels and three types of non-invariance - non-invariant loadings, non-invariant thresholds, and combined non-invariance on loadings and thresholds - in simple, partial, mediated and moderated regression models where the non-invariant latent variable occupied predictor, mediator, and criterion positions in the structural regression models. When non-invariance is ignored in the latent predictor, the focal group regression parameters are biased in the opposite direction to the difference in loadings and thresholds relative to the referent group (i.

From lists of behaviour change techniques (BCTs) to structured hierarchies: comparison of two methods of developing a hierarchy of BCTs.

Objectives: Behaviour change technique (BCT) Taxonomy v1 is a hierarchically grouped, consensus-based taxonomy of 93 BCTs for reporting intervention content. To enhance the use and understanding of BCTs, the aims of the present study were to (1) quantitatively examine the 'bottom-up' hierarchical structure of Taxonomy v1, (2) identify whether BCTs can be reliably mapped to theoretical domains using a 'top-down' theoretically driven approach, and (3) identify any overlap between the 'bottom-up' and 'top-down' groupings.

Methods And Design: The 'bottom-up' structure was examined for higher-order groupings using a dendrogram derived from hierarchical cluster analysis.

Reflections of Oneself: Neurocognitive Evidence for Dissociable Forms of Self-Referential Recollection.

Research links the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) with a number of social cognitive processes that involve reflecting on oneself and other people. Here, we investigated how mPFC might support the ability to recollect information about oneself and others relating to previous experiences. Participants judged whether they had previously related stimuli conceptually to themselves or someone else, or whether they or another agent had performed actions.

Investigating some of the factors that influence "consumer" choice when adopting a shelter dog in the United kingdom.

This study examined which characteristics of dogs available at a large rehoming organization in the United Kingdom influenced prospective adopters' choices. The revealed preference data used to model "consumer" choice were from the Dogs Trust rehoming web pages. The analysis of the probability of adoption involved a logistic regression model with multiple imputation.

Discriminability effect on Garner interference: evidence from recognition of facial identity and expression.

Using Garner's speeded classification task existing studies demonstrated an asymmetric interference in the recognition of facial identity and facial expression. It seems that expression is hard to interfere with identity recognition. However, discriminability of identity and expression, a potential confounding variable, had not been carefully examined in existing studies.

Sequential effects in judgements of attractiveness: the influences of face race and sex.

In perceptual decision-making, a person's response on a given trial is influenced by their response on the immediately preceding trial. This sequential effect was initially demonstrated in psychophysical tasks, but has now been found in more complex, real-world judgements. The similarity of the current and previous stimuli determines the nature of the effect, with more similar items producing assimilation in judgements, while less similarity can cause a contrast effect.

Online action monitoring and memory for self-performed actions in autism spectrum disorder.

This study explored whether individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience difficulties with action monitoring. Two experimental tasks examined whether adults with ASD are able to monitor their own actions online, and whether they also show a typical enactment effects in memory (enhanced memory for actions they have performed compared to actions they have observed being performed). Individuals with ASD and comparison participants showed a similar pattern of performance on both tasks.

On objects and actions: situating self-objectification in a system justification context.

Integrating objectification and system justification perspectives, this chapter offers a conception of self-objectification as a dominant cultural lens through which women come to view themselves that garners their compliance in the sexist status quo. This chapter begins with an overview of objectification theory (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997) and system justification theory (Jost and Banaji, 1994). Then, an integration of the two perspectives is presented that situates self-objectification in a system justification context, extending the scope of impact of self-objectification beyond the domains of body image and mental health.

The effect of mindfulness meditation on time perception.

Research has increasingly focussed on the benefits of meditation in everyday life and performance. Mindfulness in particular improves attention, working memory capacity, and reading comprehension. Given its emphasis on moment-to-moment awareness, we hypothesised that mindfulness meditation would alter time perception.

Angry at the unjust, scared of the powerful: emotional responses to terrorist threat.

The threat of terrorist attacks motivates emotional reactions that elicit functional behavioral responses to characteristics of a threatening group. We argue that the more the group is seen as unjust, the more anger arises, whereas the more it is seen as powerful, the more fear arises. In Experiment 1, British participants read about terrorist groups with varied levels of injustice and power.

An evaluation of mandatory polygraph testing for sexual offenders in the United kingdom.

This research examined whether a government-initiated pilot project of mandatory polygraph testing would increase the disclosures made by community-supervised sexual offenders in the United Kingdom. The Offender Managers of 332 pilot polygraph sexual offenders and 303 sexual offenders who were receiving usual community supervision were telephoned quarterly, over a 21-month period, to collect information about numbers of clinically relevant disclosures, the seriousness of disclosures made, and actions taken as a result of disclosures. Perceptions of polygraph usefulness were also collected.

Bodily moral disgust: what it is, how it is different from anger, and why it is an unreasoned emotion.

With the recent upswing in research interest on the moral implications of disgust, there has been uncertainty about what kind of situations elicit moral disgust and whether disgust is a rational or irrational player in moral decision making. We first outline the benefits of distinguishing between bodily violations (e.g.