Floral arrangement as a cognitive training tool for schizophrenia

It's the hallucinations and delusions associated with schizophrenia that typically attract discussion and research. However, patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia also exhibit deficits in memory and perception and, importantly, the severity of these is predictive of quality of life, social functioning and autonomy. How can these cognitive deficits be helped? Researchers have found some success with computer-based training but patient motivation can be problem. Now a team of researchers led by Hiroko Mochizuki-Kawai at the delightfully named National Institute of Floricultural Science in Japan have tested out the benefits of floral arranging. 'The use of natural materials may reduce tension and anxiety' they predicted.

Ten patients (six men) with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder agreed to undertake four one-hour sessions of flower arranging, supported by staff, over two weeks. The arranging involved following simple written instructions, holding them in memory one at a time, and placing flowers and leaves into the correct slots in an absorbent sponge. Two patients failed to attend; average attendance for the remainder was 3.1 sessions.

Before the intervention, the flower arranging patients' performance on the 'block-tapping' measure of non-verbal working memory was the same as that displayed by ten controls. After two weeks' flower arranging, however, the flower patients' performance had improved and was now superior to the controls. The block tapping task involves observing blocks being touched one at a time and then reproducing that same order from memory. On another test, which involved copying a complex figure from memory, the flower arranging patients were again no better than controls at the study outset but were superior to controls after the two weeks of training (although this was because the controls had deteriorated at the task rather than because the flower arrangers had improved).

This was only a pilot study and it has obvious short-comings including the small sample sizes, the lack of any comparison intervention for the control group, and no way of measuring the impact of cognitive gains on quality of life. However, the researchers were upbeat in their conclusion: 'We believe that the findings of the present study may contribute to the improvement of cognitive rehabilitation in schizophrenic patients'.
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Mochizuki-Kawai, H., Yamakawa, Y., Mochizuki, S., Anzai, S., & Arai, M. (2010). Structured floral arrangement programme for improving visuospatial working memory in schizophrenia. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 20 (4), 624-636 DOI: 10.1080/09602011003715141

Psychology Student Survival Guide

Based on my experiences as a student and then a lecturer in the subject, I'm currently in the process of putting together a survival guide for psychology students. This will be a free eBook; which among other things will include help guides, tip lists and access to invaluable resources.

To make sure I'm on the right lines and to cover as many bases as possible, It would be really useful to find what you would like to see covered in the guide.

If you would like to let me know what would be on your help wishlist, you can do so via the following link.

Psychology Student Survival Guide.

I hope to have the first edition of the guide ready by the end of August. I'll be posting updates regarding progress both on the main website and the psychology facebook page.

Psychology facebook Page.

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That's not a poker face, this is a poker face

What does your poker face look like? If it's the traditional, stern, emotionless expression, you may want to consider practising a new one. Erik Schlicht and colleagues report that a friendly, trustworthy face is more likely to influence your opponents, leading them to think that you've got a good hand - that you're not bluffing.

Schlicht's team had 14 relative novices play hundreds of one-shot rounds of a simplified version of Texas Hold'em poker against hundreds of different 'opponents'. Each round the participants received a two-card hand and their opponent had bet 5000 chips. They had to decide whether to 'fold' or 'call'. Folding meant they would lose 100 chips guaranteed. By calling, they would win 5000 chips if their hand was stronger then their opponent's, or lose the same amount if their hand was weaker. To boost their motivation, participants had the chance to win a small amount of money based on the outcome of one randomly chosen hand out of the 300 that they played.

Each round, before making their decision, the participants saw a picture of their opponent's face. These were morphed to appear either untrustworthy, neutral or trustworthy (see picture). Participants were told that, as in real poker, the different opponents could have different styles of play (but no mention was made of faces providing a clue to style).

Because participants played just one round against each opponent there was no opportunity to use past behaviour to make judgments about their style. This meant the only information participants had to go on was the cards in their own hand and any inferences they'd made about their current opponent's playing style based on his face. They didn't receive any feedback during play on whether they'd won a round or not.

On each round, there was an optimal decision for participants to make considering the cards in their hand and the stakes involved in holding or calling. The researchers were careful to ensure that participants' hands were of equal value across the different categories of opponent face - trustworthy, neutral, untrustworthy. Unbeknown to the participants, their opponents' hands bore no relation to their facial expression.

The key finding was that faces with neutral or untrustworthy expressions made no difference to the decisions the participants made. By contrast, if an opponent had a trustworthy face, the participants took longer to decide what to do and they made less optimal decisions. Effectively, they were behaving as if their opponent had a better hand.

'Contrary to the popular belief that the optimal face is neutral in appearance,' the researchers said, 'poker players who bluff frequently may actually benefit from appearing trustworthy, since the natural tendency seems to be inferring that a trustworthy-looking player bluffs less.' Before you try this out at your local poker den, remember the findings apply when you're up against new opposition and there's little other information to go on.
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Schlicht EJ, Shimojo S, Camerer CF, Battaglia P, & Nakayama K (2010). Human wagering behavior depends on opponents' faces. PloS one, 5 (7) PMID: 20657772

For further info, lead author Erik Schlicht has created a webpage where he answers frequently asked questions about this research.