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In this study, we examined an unexplored type of partner knowledge—familiarity with partners’ subjective well-being (i.e., SWB familiarity). Using multilevel models, we analyzed data from 101 heterosexual couples to examine how SWB was associated with partner knowledge and to determine whether SWB familiarity was associated with relationship and mental health benefits. We found that higher levels of positive affect and life satisfaction and lower levels of negative affect were associated with greater normative and distinctive accuracy in partner knowledge of attitudes and traits. We also calculated both normative and distinctive indices of SWB familiarity and found that participants’ and their partners’ familiarity with normative (i.e., average) profiles of SWB were associated with respondents reporting greater relationship satisfaction, perceived support from their partner, positive affect, and life satisfaction, as well as less negative affect. Conversely, distinctive (i.e., unique) SWB familiarity was not related to any relationship or mental health outcomes. Thus, one’s perception of their partner as having normative levels of SWB appears to be more important for relationship and mental health outcomes than knowledge of partners’ unique experiences of SWB.

Context Simulation is a frequently used technique for interprofessional education, allowing students from multiple professions to work together in providing quality patient care. However, little is known about the impact of interprofessional simulation with the inclusion of athletic training students because of the lack of literature. Objective This study explored the impact of an interprofessional simulation on athletic training, nursing, and occupational therapy students' attitudes toward interprofessional collaboration after participation in an interprofessional simulation. Design Quasi-experimental mixed-methods study, using a single-group, pretest-posttest design. The quantitative results are reported here. Setting Private mid-sized Midwestern university. Participants Seventy-nine students, representing athletic training, nursing, and occupational therapy, participated in the simulation; 32 of these students completed pretest/posttest questionnaires. Intervention Students in all professions cared for or observed the care of a standardized patient from the time of a spinal cord injury on the football field through an ambulance ride and subsequent emergency and inpatient care. Students completed pretest/posttest questionnaires in the week before and immediately after the simulation. Main Outcome Measure The Jefferson Scale of Attitudes Toward Interprofessional Collaboration (JeffSATIC) measured attitudes toward interprofessional collaboration. It consists of 2 subscales: Accountability and Working Relationships. Higher scores indicated more orientation toward teamwork and collaboration. Results Participants demonstrated significant change on the JeffSATIC's Working Relationship subscale (P = .003). The Cohen d effect size was calculated for presimulation and postsimulation change, which showed a medium effect for the overall scale (d = 0.46), a negligible effect for the Accountability subscale (d = 0.02), and a large effect for the Working Relationship subscale (d = 0.79). Conclusions This study demonstrates the utility of the simulation in improving attitudes toward interprofessional working relationships. Further research should explore the differences noted between athletic training students and other health care profession students.

Augmented-reality (AR) displays render virtual content overlaid on the real world. AR offers great potential for Soldiers to immediately perceive relevant tactical information without the need to consult a physical map or other reference material, or divert their eyes away from the immediate environment. However, realizing the potential benefits of using AR requires that the conformal subset of virtual content is perceived in the correct physical location. Conformal virtual content must be correctly associated with the physical location, object, or person intended to be augmented. In this report, we provide emerging recommendations aimed at improving spatial perception of virtual content.

In light of the Army’s intent to leverage advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for augmenting dismounted Soldier Lethality through the development of in-scope and Heads-Up Display (HUD)-based Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) systems, the Combat Capabilities Development Command U. S. Army Research Laboratory’s Human Research and Engineering Directorate (CCDC-ARL/HRED) has identified several critical gaps that must be addressed in order to effectively team the Soldier with ATR for the desired augmented Lethality. One of these areas pertains to the way in which ATR is displayed and requires a thorough understanding and leveraging of relevant cognitive processes that will enable use of this technology. Additionally, insufficient consideration of perceptual, attentional, and cognitive capabilities increases the risk of burdening the Soldier with excessive, unnecessary, or distracting representations of information, which may impede Lethality rather than augment it. HRED’s planned and ongoing research is intended to develop novel mechanisms through which Soldiers teamed with ATR will perform more adaptively and effectively than either the Soldier or the intelligent system could accomplish individually. Based on HRED’s significant expertise in the cognitive sciences, coupled with familiarity with the military-relevant domain spaces, the following initial recommendations for ATR information display requirements are made:1.ATR highlighting should leverage a non-binary display schema to continuously encode threat information (e.g., target class/identity, uncertainty, and prioritization).2.ATR highlighting should be integrated with the target itself instead of functioning as a discrete feature of the display (i.e., highlight the target rather than highlighting a region with the target inside).3.Information about threat certainty or classification confidence (which can also include priority) should be embedded into ATR highlighting.4.Yellow highlights may offer advantages for display5.Changing information (e.g., target certainty) should be accomplished through formation or modification of highlight gradients rather than sudden changes in the display.6.Human performance evaluations of ATR should consider the incorporation of changing threat states and contexts into scenarios for more relevant findings.7.Human performance evaluations of ATR should consider the incorporation of uncued (non-highlighted) targets and miscued targets (false identifications; e.g. ATR identifies non-threat as threat) for more relevant findings.

Previous research suggests that behavior is generally predicted by specific self-concepts but not global self-concepts. A study was conducted to examine the conditions under which global conceptions of self are predictive of decision-making. Participants were given the opportunity to bet lottery tickets on their performance in the “Utah Challenge” competition. Both global and specific self-concepts independently predicted betting on specific known contests and betting on a contest that was unknown. Global but not specific self-concepts independently predicted betting on a multi-faceted contest. Mediation analyses suggest that self-concepts guide decisions by influencing the perceived likelihood of success. Participants’ were more overconfident about their chances of winning when a task was unknown rather than familiar.

It is unknown whether teams communicate more effectively in virtual spaces than when using more traditional technologies due to a lack of objective measures of team performance. Social psychology research shows that teams struggle to share information and suggests the absence of certain social cues in virtual reality (VR) would making sharing information more difficult. We developed a methodology to assess objective performance of communication during an information-gathering task. In this study, using a within-subjects design, 24 pairs of participants examined maps of cities both in VR, using a head-mounted display, and on desktop monitors. For each map, pairs worked together to read the maps, identify patterns amongst variables, and make predictions beyond the given data. In VR, the only cues from one’s partner were speech and the ability to point out places on the map with a laser. In contrast, when working on the desktop monitors, partners were also able to view one another. Because groups struggle to share unique information, we anticipated a task providing partners with unique variables and requiring pairs to exchange information in order to solve problems would create a sufficiently challenging situation and be an effective way to measure team performance. Overall, performance in VR did not suffer, as pairs were just as fast and equally accurate at identifying patterns and predicting future events. Pairs performed better at reading the maps when in VR but did have better recall of the information viewed on the desktop monitors.

Academic healthcare programs are incorporating interprofessional education (IPE) into students' learning experiences in order to prepare students for optimal clinical practice. This paper describes a simulation-based learning experience (SBLE) designed to encourage students (n = 130) from six healthcare professions to learn more about interprofessional communication, roles and responsibilities of the healthcare team, and knowledge of interprofessional collaborative practice. Data analysis showed statistically significant differences in participants' perceptions of roles/responsibilities for collaborative practice (p = 0.001) and the patient outcomes from collaborative practice (p = 0.002). Additionally, participants identified the importance of holistic, patient-centered care, a greater understanding of the roles and responsibilities of healthcare team members, and a greater desire to participate in IPE activities. Utilizing SBLE with students in athletic training, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, social work, and psychology led to positive perceptions of IPE and collaborative practice.

Multitasking diminishes the self-awareness of performance that is often essential for self-regulation and self-knowledge. Participants drove in a simulator while either talking or not talking on a hands-free cell phone. Following previous research, participants who talked on a cell phone made more serious driving errors than control participants who did not use a phone while driving. Control participants' assessments of the safeness of their driving and general ability to drive safely while distracted were negatively correlated with the actual number of errors made when they were driving. By contrast, cell-phone participants' assessments of the safeness of their driving and confidence in their driving abilities were uncorrelated with their actual errors. Thus, talking on a cell phone not only diminished the safeness of participants' driving, it diminished their awareness of the safeness of their driving.

Research was conducted to understand and extend Rothbart and Park's (1986) innovative study of trait attribution. Participants estimated the baserate frequency of correspondent behaviors and the behavioral expectations of trait stereotypes. The frequency of correspondent behavior appears to determine the evidence needed to confirm and disconfirm traits observed by Rothbart and Park by shaping the behavior expected of persons with a trait. When the baserate of correspondent behavior is high, it is generally expected of everyone, and less likely to impact trait attributions. In contrast, when correspondent behavior is uncommon, it is expected primarily of persons with a trait, and weighted more heavily in the inference process. The findings help to explain why traits that are “hard to acquire are easy to lose” and why positive trait attributions are harder to acquire but easier to lose than negative trait attributions.

Attributions for stress in one's life are one of the important determinants of self-regulatory coping processes. Research was conducted to examine the impact of considering a possible cause of stress on attributions and coping behavior. Participants in two studies were prompted to assess the role of a particular cause of their relationship stress (Study 1) or everyday stress (Study 2). As expected, participants in both studies tended to select coping procedures aimed at treating the randomly selected cause rather than alternative possible causes of their stress. Hence, selectively considering a possible cause of their personal problems biased participants' coping intentions. The findings from both studies suggest that the effects of selective causal thinking on coping behavior resulted from the overestimation of the responsibility of the judged cause of stress.

Similarity and familiarity with partner's attitudes (Byrne, Clore, & Smeaton, 1986; Sanbonmatsu, Uchino, & Birmingham, 2011) are linked to positive relationship outcomes, while interpersonal variables have been linked to mental health (e.g., Lakey & Cronin, 2008). Using multilevel models (MLMs), we modeled the associations between these attitudinal variables and mental health outcomes in 74 married couples. We found that higher levels of attitude similarity in couples were linked to lower depression, while higher levels of attitude familiarity in couples were associated with greater satisfaction with life. Mediational analyses indicated marital satisfaction and interpersonal stress mediated the link between attitude similarity and depression. Marital satisfaction also mediated the link between familiarity and satisfaction with life. This study is the first linking attitude familiarity to mental health and provides evidence that familiarity and similarity have mental health effects partly due to their interpersonal consequences.

Our research explored the incidence and appropriateness of the much-maligned confirmatory approach to testing scientific hypotheses. Psychological scientists completed a survey about their research goals and strategies. The most frequently reported goal is to test the non-absolute hypothesis that a particular relation exists in some conditions. As expected, few scientists reported testing universal hypotheses. Most indicated an inclination to use a confirmation strategy to test the non-absolute hypotheses that a particular relation sometimes occurs or sometimes does not occur, and a disconfirmation strategy to test the absolute hypotheses that a particular relation always occurs or never occurs. The confirmatory search that dominates the field was found to be associated with the testing of non-absolute hypotheses. Our analysis indicates that a confirmatory approach is the normatively correct test of the non-absolute hypotheses that are the starting point of most studies. It also suggests that the strategy of falsification that was once proposed by Popper is generally incorrect given the infrequency of tests of universal hypotheses.