Toward a focus on positive psychology in school psychology.

Introduces this special issue of School Psychology Quarterly and summarizes the articles contained in this issue. The major purposes of this special issue are twofold. One purpose is to illustrate that some of the various threads of positive psychology research related to children and youth, particularly focusing on the area of positive subjective experience (or subjective well-being: SWB). The second purpose is to underscore the importance of understanding the interrelationships of SWB of children and youth, and their various environmental contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The fair: Experimental psychology for high school students.

Discusses the college psychology fair as a vehicle for providing the public with a view of experimental psychology. In the 1-day fair for high school students and teachers described here, psychology students prepared demonstrations and exhibits depicting most areas of psychology. Such exhibits can assist in balancing the nonexperimental nature of most high school psychology courses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characteristics and perceptions of beginning doctoral students in school psychology.

A national sample of 251 1st- and 2nd-yr doctoral students in school psychology responded to a questionnaire measuring demographic characteristics, preferences among applied specialties in professional psychology, graduate program applications, anticipated internship setting, preferred client population, personal interests, professional goals, and satisfaction with current training. Survey responses showed a clear preference for working directly with children and adolescents following graduation, a high degree of correspondence between training program emphases and student interests and goals, and a moderate degree of student satisfaction with training experiences. Results are interpreted with respect to training trends and standards in school psychology, the relationship between school and clinical psychology, satisfaction of students in clinical and counseling psychology programs, and methodology limitations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The teaching of psychology in high school.

Psychology is taught as a separate subject of instruction in some high schools in at least 40 states, probably in all of them. According to the 1948-50 Biennial Survey of Education, roughly fewer than 10% of the high schools offer a course under the title "psychology," and the enrollments in psychology courses is about 1% of the high school population. Purposes for which instruction in psychology is offered, educational preparation and experience of teachers, licensing or certification requirements, textbook and other teaching materials, methods of presentation, and attitudes toward the teaching of psychology in high schools are discussed. 63 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attitudinal comparison of business employees and students in the school of business administration.

"An attitude survey blank containing 40 statements and covering the areas of government control, personnel policy, profit distribution, unionism, and the free enterprise system was completed by 49 business employees and 146 business administration students. 1. Significant differences between responses of the two groups were found on 6 of the 40 statements. 2. Disagreement was greatest in the area of equality of profit distribution. Students regarded equality of distribution with considerable disfavor." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading in graduate school: A survey of doctoral students in clinical psychology.

To what extent do graduate students in clinical psychology complete assigned readings? A total of 744 graduate students in American Psychological Association-accredited doctoral programs completed an online survey regarding reading in graduate school (67% response rate, of those viewing the survey). The reported amount of assigned reading varied widely, with an average of 330 pages per week. Compliance ratings suggested that about half the assigned reading is completed thoroughly and that thorough reading is more common than skimming or not reading assigned material. Motivating and hindering factors for reading are reported, and implications for faculty are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Further on the development of school psychology.

Extends J. L. French's (see record 1985-21247-001) discussion of the development of school psychology. The early involvement of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education in the accreditation of school psychology programs and S. Bonham's role in the founding of the Journal of School Psychology are clarified. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of perceived barriers and relational support in the educational and vocational lives of urban high school students.

Drawing on developmental contextual theory, the authors examined the relationship of perceived barriers and support with school engagement and vocational attitudes among 9th-grade urban high school students in 2 studies. Study 1 (N=174) showed that both perceived barriers and perceived support from family kin were associated with youths' commitment to school and aspirations for success in their future careers. Study 2 (N=181) replicated and extended Study 1, demonstrating that perceived barriers, general perceptions of support, and kinship support were associated with behavioral and attitudinal indexes of school engagement, as well as with aspirations for career success, expectations for attaining career goals, and the importance of work in one's future. The findings contribute to efforts to identify individual and contextual factors relevant to the educational and vocational lives of urban minority youth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.

In this article, the author describes a new theoretical perspective on positive emotions and situates this in perspective within the emerging field of positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory posits that experience of positive emotions broaden people's momentary thought–action repertoires, which in turn serves to build their enduring personal resources, ranging from physical and intellectual resources to social and psychological resources. Preliminary empirical evidence supporting the broaden-and-build theory is reviewed, and open empirical questions that remain to be tested are identified. The theory and findings suggest that the capacity to experience positive emotions may be a fundamental human strength central to the study of human flourishing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of age on positive and negative affect: A developmental perspective on happiness.

The effect of age on happiness, as defined by positive and negative affect, was examined in a survey of 2,727 persons of a broad age range (25–74) conducted by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development. The age–affect association was examined, controlling for a host of sociodemographic, personality, and contextual influences. Among women, age was related to positive affect nonlinearly but was unrelated to negative affect. Among men, age interacted with 2 key variables in predicting affect: extraversion and marital status. These findings lend support to recent life span theories of emotion and indicate that personality, contextual, and sociodemographic variables, as well as their interactions, are all needed to fully understand the age–affect relationship. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploring the Mozart effect among high school students.

Much past work on the Mozart effect--the temporary increase in performance on spatial relations tasks following listening to Mozart--tried determining if the cause is due to neurological priming or changes in general arousal. Results have been mixed, and no work to date has attempted to examine this phenomenon in high school students. The present study sought to address these gaps in the extant literature by examining the neurological and arousal hypotheses in this previously unstudied population of adolescents. Toward this end, 86 high school students were randomly assigned to Mozart or control (silence) conditions, then assessed on arousal levels and spatial reasoning. Results indicated that those in the Mozart condition had higher spatial reasoning scores, but were not systematically more or less aroused. Decreased arousal, regardless of listening conditioning, was related to lower spatial reasoning. While arousal and listening condition were not related to each other, inclusion of both in a single model negated these direct effects. Implications for future work on these phenomena are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The independence of positive and negative affect.

Five studies, with 776 undergraduates and 34 33–85 yr old community residents, investigated the relation beween positive and negative affect. Instruments included the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Eysenck Personality Inventory, and 16PF. In Studies 1 and 2, positive feelings were remembered as being nearly independent of negative feelings in the past year, but the 2 types of affect were moderately negatively correlated for the past month. In Studies 3 and 5, Ss completed daily mood reports for 70 and 30 days, respectively. In Study 4, Ss completed 3-wk, daily, and moment mood reports and also filled out reports when they experienced strong emotions. The principal finding was that the relation between positive and negative affect differed greatly depending on the time frame. The strongest negative correlation between the 2 affects occurred during emotional times. The correlation decreased in a linear fashion as the time span covered increased logarithmically. It appears that positive and negative affect are independent in terms of how much people feel in their lives over longer time periods. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Further thoughts on professionalism in school psychology.

The author responds to comments by J. I. Bardon, L. H. Levy, and C. R. Reynolds (see PA, Vol 74:13964, 13981, and 13990, respectively) regarding his (see record 1987-13985-001) article on professionalism in school psychology. The 3 reaction papers develop a number of common themes that are then addressed by the present author: the need to clarify the roles and functions of school psychology, the generic nature of psychology within which school psychology resides, the unique characteristics of this specialty, and skepticisms regarding the future. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Another influence on the direction of school psychology.

Describes an influence on school psychology omitted in the article by J. I. Bardon (see record 1977-30103-001): the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142). Possible new roles that school psychologists could assume as a result of this legislation are offered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What makes dreams positive or negative: relations to fundamental dimensions of positive and negative mood

The coding sequence at the boundaries of exons flanking nuclear introns shows some degree of conservation. To the extent that such sequences might be recognized by the splicing machinery, this conservation may be a derived result of evolution for efficient splicing. Alternatively, such conserved sequences might be remnants of proto-splice sites, which might have existed early in eukaryotic genes and served as the targets for the insertion of introns, as has been proposed by the introns-late theory. The distribution of intron phases, the position of the intron within a codon, is biased with an over-representation of phase 0 introns. Could any distribution of proto-splice sites account for today's intron phase distribution? Here, we examine the dicodon usage in six model organisms, based on current sequences in the GenBank database, and predict the phase distribution that would be expected if introns had been inserted into proto-splice sites. However, these predictions differ between the various model organisms and disagree with the observed intron phase distributions. Thus, we reject the hypothesis that introns are inserted into hypothetical proto-splice sites. Finally, we analyze the sequences around the splice sites of introns in all six of the species to show that the actual conservation of sequence in exon regions near introns is very small and differs considerably between these species, which is inconsistent with a general proto-splice sites model.     

Undergraduate students and the history of psychology.

Presents data on undergraduates' sentiments about the history of psychology, based on surveys in the early 1960s (e.g., R. D. Nance [1961]) and the early 1970s. Undergraduates preferred emphasis on contemporary and recent events, although they found the study of history somewhat useful. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of practice on utilization of information from positive and negative instances in identifying disjunctive concepts.

Previous research by V. Freibergs and E. Tulving has shown that positive instances are used more efficiently than negative instances by naive Ss attempting to solve conjunctive concept problems, and that this difference diminishes with practice. The present study examined practice effects on the identification of disjunctive concepts with either positive or negative instances presented to 60 undergraduates. Results are the opposite of those of Freibergs and Tulving, with Ss who were shown only negative instances having systematically lower solution times than those shown only positive instances, and with the difference diminishing with practice. Data were interpreted in terms of the relative efficiency of strategies appropriate to the 2 types of presentation. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The training of school psychologists and implications for a professional school of psychology.

Suggests that the training one should receive at a professional school of psychology toward the doctorate in school psychology should focus on skills not currently offered. These include training in group, individual, crisis, and family counseling, and in the psychological ramifications on youth of social stresses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The inaction effect in the psychology of regret.

Previous research showed that decisions to act (i.e., actions) produce more regret than decisions not to act (i.e., inactions). This previous research focused on decisions made in isolation and ignored that decisions are often made in response to earlier outcomes. The authors show in 4 experiments that these prior outcomes may promote action and hence make inaction more abnormal. They manipulated information about a prior outcome. As hypothesized, when prior outcomes were positive or absent, people attributed more regret to action than to inaction. However, as predicted and counter to previous research, following negative prior outcomes, more regret was attributed to inaction, a finding that the authors label the inaction effect. Experiment 4, showing differential effects for regret and disappointment, demonstrates the need for emotion-specific predictions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)