James E. Cane

The Behavior Change Technique Taxonomy (v1) of 93 Hierarchically Clustered Techniques: Building an International Consensus for the Reporting of Behavior Change Interventions.

BackgroundCONSORT guidelines call for precise reporting of behavior change interventions: we need rigorous methods of characterizing active content of interventions with precision and specificity.ObjectivesThe objective of this study is to develop an extensive, consensually agreed hierarchically structured taxonomy of techniques [behavior change techniques (BCTs)] used in behavior change interventions.MethodsIn a Delphi-type exercise, 14 experts rated labels and definitions of 124 BCTs from six published classification systems. Another 18 experts grouped BCTs according to similarity of active ingredients in an open-sort task. Inter-rater agreement amongst six researchers coding 85 intervention descriptions by BCTs was assessed.ResultsThis resulted in 93 BCTs clustered into 16 groups. Of the 26 BCTs occurring at least five times, 23 had adjusted kappas of 0.60 or above.Conclusions“BCT taxonomy v1,” an extensive taxonomy of 93 consensually agreed, distinct BCTs, offers a step change as a method for specifying interventions, but we anticipate further development and evaluation based on international, interdisciplinary consensus.

Validation of the theoretical domains framework for use in behaviour change and implementation research

BackgroundAn integrative theoretical framework, developed for cross-disciplinary implementation and other behaviour change research, has been applied across a wide range of clinical situations. This study tests the validity of this framework.MethodsValidity was investigated by behavioural experts sorting 112 unique theoretical constructs using closed and open sort tasks. The extent of replication was tested by Discriminant Content Validation and Fuzzy Cluster Analysis.ResultsThere was good support for a refinement of the framework comprising 14 domains of theoretical constructs (average silhouette value 0.29): ‘Knowledge’, ‘Skills’, ‘Social/Professional Role and Identity’, ‘Beliefs about Capabilities’, ‘Optimism’, ‘Beliefs about Consequences’, ‘Reinforcement’, ‘Intentions’, ‘Goals’, ‘Memory, Attention and Decision Processes’, ‘Environmental Context and Resources’, ‘Social Influences’, ‘Emotions’, and ‘Behavioural Regulation’.ConclusionsThe refined Theoretical Domains Framework has a strengthened empirical base and provides a method for theoretically assessing implementation problems, as well as professional and other health-related behaviours as a basis for intervention development.

The addiction Stroop task: examining the fast and slow effects of smoking and marijuana-related cues

Abstract Research has shown that attentional bias toward smoking-related stimuli is related to the maintenance of smoking behaviour and the chance of a relapse during a quit attempt. Effects of smoking attentional bias can occur both during smoking stimulus presentation (fast effect) and on stimuli that immediately follow smoking stimuli (slow effect). The current research builds on these findings by closely examining the temporal aspects of these fast and slow effects across groups of different smoking status. In Experiment 1 (n = 64), smokers, smokers attempting to quit (SATQ) and non-smokers completed an addiction Stroop task using smoking related, negative emotion and neutral stimuli. In Experiment 2 (n = 32), marijuana smokers and non-marijuana smokers completed an addiction Stroop task using marijuana and neutral stimuli. Results showed fast effects across all smoking groups (except non-smokers) and slow effects in SATQ and marijuana smokers. Furthermore, marijuana smokers showed slow effects over extended periods of time. Results also show a relationship between anxiety, nicotine dependence and attentional bias in SATQ. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Behaviour change among overweight and socially disadvantaged adults: A longitudinal study of the NHS Health Trainer Service

Social disadvantage is associated with being overweight, a poor diet and physical inactivity. The NHS Health Trainer Service (HTS) is a national initiative designed to promote behaviour change among socially disadvantaged people in England and Wales. This study reports pre–post changes in Body Mass Index (BMI), associated behaviours and cognitions among service users who set dietary or physical activity goals during a 12-month period (2008–2009; N = 4418). Sixty-nine percent of clients were from the two most deprived population quintiles and 94.7% were overweight or obese. Mean BMI decreased from 34.03 to 32.26, with overweight/obesity prevalence decreasing by 3.7%. There were increases in fruit and vegetable consumption, reductions in fried snack consumption, increases in frequency of moderate or intensive activity and gains in self-efficacy and perceived health and wellbeing. Clients with higher BMI, poorer diet or less activity at baseline achieved greater change. Findings suggest that the NHS HTS has the potential to improve population health and reduce health inequalities through behaviour change.

Using Perspective to Resolve Reference: The Impact of Cognitive Load and Motivation.

Research has demonstrated a link between perspective taking and working memory. Here we used eye tracking to examine the time course with which working memory load (WML) influences perspective-taking ability in a referential communication task and how motivation to take another’s perspective modulates these effects. In Experiment 1, where there was no reward or time pressure, listeners only showed evidence of incorporating perspective knowledge during integration of the target object but did not anticipate reference to this common ground object during the pretarget-noun period. WML did not affect this perspective use. In Experiment 2, where a reward for speed and accuracy was applied, listeners used perspective cues to disambiguate the target object from the competitor object from the earliest moments of processing (i.e., during the pretarget-noun period), but only under low load. Under high load, responses were comparable with the control condition, where both objects were in common ground. Furthermore, attempts to initiate perspective-relevant responses under high load led to impaired recall on the concurrent WML task, indicating that perspective-relevant responses were drawing on limited cognitive resources. These results show that when there is ambiguity, perspective cues guide rapid referential interpretation when there is sufficient motivation and sufficient cognitive resources.

The time-course of recovery from interruption during reading: eye movement evidence for the role of interruption lag and spatial memory.

Two experiments examined how interruptions impact reading and how interruption lags and the readers spatial memory affect the recovery from such interruptions. Participants read paragraphs of text and were interrupted unpredictably by a spoken news story while their eye movements were monitored. Time made available for consolidation prior to responding to the interruption did not aid reading resumption. However, providing readers with a visual cue that indicated the interruption location did aid task resumption substantially in Experiment 2. Taken together, the findings show that the recovery from interruptions during reading draws on spatial memory resources and can be aided by processes that support spatial memory. Practical implications are discussed.

Eye tracking reveals the cost of switching between self and other perspectives in a visual perspective-taking task

Previous studies have shown that while people can rapidly and accurately compute their own and other peoples visual perspectives, they experience difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective when the two perspectives differ. We used the “avatar” perspective-taking task to examine the mechanisms that underlie these egocentric (i.e., interference from their own perspective) and altercentric (i.e., interference from the other persons perspective) tendencies. Participants were eye-tracked as they verified the number of discs in a visual scene according to either their own or an on-screen avatars perspective. Crucially in some trials the two perspectives were inconsistent (i.e., each saw a different number of discs), while in others they were consistent. To examine the effect of perspective switching, performance was compared for trials that were preceded with the same versus a different perspective cue. We found that altercentric interference can be reduced or eliminated when participants stick with their own perspective across consecutive trials. Our eye-tracking analyses revealed distinct fixation patterns for self and other perspective taking, suggesting that consistency effects in this paradigm are driven by implicit mentalizing of what others can see, and not automatic directional cues from the avatar.

Tracking the impact of depression in a perspective-taking task

Research has identified impairments in Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities in depressed patients, particularly in relation to tasks involving empathetic responses and belief reasoning. We aimed to build on this research by exploring the relationship between depressed mood and cognitive ToM, specifically visual perspective-taking ability. High and low depressed participants were eye-tracked as they completed a perspective-taking task, in which they followed the instructions of a ‘director’ to move target objects (e.g. a “teapot with spots on”) around a grid, in the presence of a temporarily-ambiguous competitor object (e.g. a “teapot with stars on”). Importantly, some of the objects in the grid were occluded from the director’s (but not the participant’s) view. Results revealed no group-based difference in participants’ ability to use perspective cues to identify the target object. All participants were faster to select the target object when the competitor was only available to the participant, compared to when the competitor was mutually available to the participant and director. Eye-tracking measures supported this pattern, revealing that perspective directed participants’ visual search immediately upon hearing the ambiguous object’s name (e.g. “teapot”). We discuss how these results fit with previous studies that have shown a negative relationship between depression and ToM.

The role of executive functions in self and other perspective use

Thursday, 9 January, 2014 Session A. Richard J. Harris, Grace E. Rice, Andrew W. Young and Timothy J. Andrews (King’s College London, University of York) Neural coding of faces and names remains segregated in the fusiform gyrus. Mladen Sormaz, Andrew W. Young, William A.P. Smith, David M. Watson and Timothy J. Andrews (University of York) Representation of facial expressions in face-responsive brain regions. David M. Watson, Tom Hartley and Timothy J. Andrews (University of York) The topographic organization of scene-selective regions in the human brain is closely linked to the statistical properties of the image. Mike Burton and Adam Sandford (University of Aberdeen) Tolerance for distorted faces: A challenge to the configural processing account of recognition. Patrick Haggard and Christina Fuentes (University College London) How do I look? Knowledge for the features of one’s own face. Bruno Rossion, Adriano Boremanse and Anthony M. Norcia (University of Louvain, Stanford University) The whole of a face is more than the sum of its parts: Direct evidence from frequency-tagging of a composite face. Lilia Psalta, Andrew W. Young, Peter Thompson and Timothy J. Andrews (University of York) The Thatcher Illusion reveals orientation-dependence in brain regions involved in processing facial expression.