Everyday rules for behavior: Mothers' requests to young children.

Examined how mothers socialize young children toward behavioral self-regulation. In a longitudinal paradigm focused on developmental issues, mothers of toddlers and preschoolers reported rules for everyday behaviors and noted the child's level of compliance. Results showed (1) commonalities among mothers in the network of rules being socialized, (2) age-related increases in numbers and kinds of rules, (3) a shift in the structure of rule networks from an early emphasis on safety toward encouraging autonomy and integrating children into the family, and (4) an inherent developmental organization within rule networks. For children, findings revealed (1) compliance was highest in situations that involved rules for safety and other's possessions, and (2) gradual age-related movement from external control to internally mediated compliance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

If you need help, just ask: Underestimating compliance with direct requests for help.

A series of studies tested whether people underestimate the likelihood that others will comply with their direct requests for help. In the first 3 studies, people underestimated by as much as 50% the likelihood that others would agree to a direct request for help, across a range of requests occurring in both experimental and natural field settings. Studies 4 and 5 demonstrated that experimentally manipulating a person's perspective (as help seeker or potential helper) could elicit this underestimation effect. Finally, in Study 6, the authors explored the source of the bias, finding that help seekers were less willing than potential helpers were to appreciate the social costs of refusing a direct request for help (the costs of saying "no"), attending instead to the instrumental costs of helping (the costs of saying "yes"). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of contrast upon compliance with socially undesirable requests in the door-in-the-face paradigm.

Tested the adequacy of the perceptual contrast explanation of the door-in-the-face phenomenon when socially undesirable requests were used. 60 undergraduates were first asked a large and unreasonable favor. Immediately following rejection of this initial request, Ss were presented with a less demanding request that involved either a concession on the part of the requester, a gain to the S, or both. 20 control Ss were presented with the 2nd request only. Relative to these controls, Ss in the gaining condition, which involved contrast, showed the greatest increase in the rate of compliance with the 2nd request. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eliciting information from groups: Social information and the Concealed Information Test.

Polygraph recordings of physiological reactions to a Group Concealed Information Test identified exposure to one of three mock village scenarios. Sixty-nine participants worked in groups on a card construction project while viewing tea making, bomb making, or no event. Participants denied knowledge of the events, but skin resistance and heart rate scores analysed by means of a multivariate analysis of variance, F(8, 106) = 4.08, and analyses of variance showed the tea group responding most on tea-related questions on skin resistance, F(2, 56) = 11.57, and heart rate, F(2, 56) = 4.58. The bomb group was highest for skin resistance, F(2, 56) = 6.17. Four of five and three of four groups who witnessed bomb and tea making, respectively, were identified at the 90% level of confidence, with combined scores suggesting that populations exposed to dangerous activities can be selectively distinguished. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Resilience: Enhancing well-being through the positive cognitive triad.

The present study tested whether the relationships among resilience, life satisfaction, and depression could be explained by positive views toward the self, the world, and the future (positive cognitive triad). Structural equation modeling and mediation analyses were conducted based on 1,419 college students in Hong Kong. The model of positive cognitive triad as mediator between resilience and well-being fit the data (comparative fit index = .94, Tucker–Lewis index = .93, root-mean-square error of approximation = .08). Findings showed resilience to be significantly related to positive cognitions about the self, the world, and the future. Individuals who had higher level of resilience held significantly more positive cognitions and reported significantly higher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of depression. The utility of the positive cognitive triad as the mechanism through which resilience enhances well-being was supported. Applications in cultivating resilience and positive cognitions in counseling services are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Generalization of dissonance reduction: Decreasing prejudice through induced compliance.

Three studies involving a total of 318 White college students demonstrated that induced compliance can change socially significant attitudes and that the change generalizes to broader beliefs. Ss wrote an essay endorsing a pro-Black policy that was costly to Whites. In Exps 1 and 2, attitudes and general beliefs about Blacks became more favorable in both high- and low-choice conditions, provided publicity of the essay was high. Overall, choice and publicity had additive effects on attitude change. Some high-choice Ss wrote only semipositive (semicompliant) essays and did not change their essay attitudes. Yet their beliefs about Blacks still became more favorable. In Exp 3, racial ambivalence, but not prior attitude, predicted essay compliance. Ambivalent Ss were more likely to comply than were less ambivalent Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of compliance for chronic asthmatic children.

Compliance to a theophylline regimen by 11 male and 11 female chronically asthmatic 7–12 yr olds was assessed by a riboflavin tracer method. Ss who took 80% or more of their prescribed medication were considered compliant; Ss who took less were considered noncompliant. Results indicate that noncompliant Ss experienced significantly more wheezing, greater variability in peak flow rates, and lower overall scores than compliant Ss. (5 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Youth violence and positive psychology: Research potential through integration.

Positive psychologists can study the relation between some of the discipline's core dimensions and aversive outcomes, including youth violence. Dimensions such as gratitude, forgiveness, sense of meaning, altruism (or at least apparent altruism), prudence, and humility have received attention within positive psychology, and evidence is reviewed suggesting that these may also deserve empirical attention in terms of their relation to youth violence and even their potential to reduce youth violence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eliciting cryptomnesia: Unconscious plagiarism in a puzzle task.

Investigated cryptomnesia (unconscious plagiarism) and source memory using a word-search puzzle task in 3 experiments. Ss first alternated with a "computer partner" in locating words from 4 puzzles. They then attempted to recall their previously generated items as well as to locate additional new words. Substantially more plagiarism was committed in these tasks than was observed in a study by A. S. Brown and D. R. Murphy (1989), in which Ss generated category exemplars. Manipulations of retention interval (Exp 1) and degree of encoding (Exps 2a and 2b) reliably influenced plagiarism rates. Source confusions from a modified recognition memory task (Exp 3) were used as the basis for a unitary relative strength model to explain both source and occurrence (item) forgetting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Research: promoting positive attitudes through education

This paper outlines a study which was undertaken to explore the relationship between nurses' attitudes towards research and their educational experience. A Likert-type attitude questionnaire, using statements derived from themes emerging within the literature, was used prior to, and following, 61 students' learning experiences on research modules at diploma and degree levels. Teaching and learning strategies adopted within the modules focused on overcoming some of the main barriers to utilization of research findings identified within the literature. The results obtained identified a significant shift towards more positive attitudes to research following the modules. The conclusions exhort nurse educators to not only include research into curricula, but also to reflect on the teaching and learning strategies adopted.     

Predicting compliance of children with and without developmental delay.

Noncompliance is a common problem exhibited by children with developmental delay (DD; Walker, 1993). The authors evaluated whether performance on the Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities (ABLA) test would predict compliance of children with and without DD to instructions alone (IA) versus instructions with modelling and/or gestures (IMG) administered by their caregivers. The ABLA test uses standard prompting and reinforcement procedures to assess the ease or difficulty with which a testee is able to learn a simple imitation and five two-choice discriminations. Twenty-one children without DD and 16 children with DD were presented with five age-appropriate educational tasks by their respective caregivers in a structured teaching session that included IA on some trials and IMG on others. The ABLA test performance reliably predicted the compliance of the children in the two conditions, and the results were consistent across both groups. The results are important for providing information to caregivers on how best to instruct their children in an effort to increase compliance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Information requests in the context of escalation.

Staw's (1981) theory of escalation, that decision makers who are responsible for a failure will be more retrospectively oriented than those who are not responsible for a failure, was tested by monitoring the information requests of subjects performing the Adams and Smith decision case (Staw, 1976). A total of 72 Master of Business Administration (MBA) students completed a computer-administered version of the case, in which they were permitted to request information files that had been preclassified as retrospective or prospective on the basis of the results of data collected from a different sample of MBA students. We found that 75% of the subjects who were responsible for a previous failure requested retrospective information, compared to about 25% of the subjects who were not responsible for a failure. This significant difference (i.e., p?     

Vibration as positive reinforcement for retarded children.

Contends that previous studies investigating vibration as a positive reinforcer did not provide: adequate controls for touch and noise; a sufficient number of Ss; or comparisons of vibration with other reinforcers. In the present study, 4 groups of 40 trainable, institutionalized, retarded 8-12 yr. olds were exposed to an operant button-pressing paradigm. Results indicate that vibration compared favorably with a food reinforcer and that vibration was significantly more effective as a reward than the touch or the noise emitted by the vibrator. It is suggested that vibration may be used as an effective reinforcer to train retarded children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How to deal with requests for assisted suicide: Some experiences and practical guidelines from the Netherlands.

In the Netherlands, physician-assisted suicide may be justifiable for patients with physical illness as well as for patients with unbearable mental suffering. Explicit requests for physician-assisted suicide are frequently made, but in psychiatric practice they are infrequently granted. In this contribution, some information on the Dutch practices related to assisted death is presented, with emphasis on assisted suicide in patients with unbearable mental suffering. The aim of this contribution is to demonstrate that the Dutch law and jurisprudence permit clinicians to deal effectively with requests for assisted suicide. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On assessing social psychological theories through the study of individual differences: Template matching and forced compliance.

55 undergraduates were induced to advocate counterattitudinal political positions either relatively close to their own (acceptance) or further from their own (rejection). Significant attitude change toward the advocated position was observed in both conditions. Individual-difference prediction templates were derived from dissonance, self-perception, and self-presentation theories. A template was derived from an informal theory of psychological momentum that assumes Ss sometimes give altered attitude reports because of a tendency to unconsciously continue the advocacy in which they have just been engaged. The self-presentation template was the best predictor of attitude change within the latitude of acceptance; the momentum template was the best predictor within the latitude of rejection, and also overall. Various technical and substantive aspects of the template-matching technique are discussed. (44 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relative reading achievement: A longitudinal study of 187 children from first through sixth grades.

This article reports results of a longitudinal study of relative reading achievement of 87 boys and 100 girls from 1st through 6th grades. Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests (W. H. MacGinitie, J Kamons, R. L. Kowalski, R. K. MacGinitie, & T. MacKay, 1980) data were drawn from records of 1 rural school district in Eastern Canada. There was a systematic relationship between gender and reading categorization in Grades 1-3, with more boys below average, and no systematic relationship in Grades 4-6. Probabilities of 6th-grade reading-achievement categorization conditioned on 1st-grade achievement were used to challenge the stability of reading categorization reported in previous studies. The courses of relative reading achievement over the 6 grades of key subgroups of children were followed to show how reading-achievement categorization changes. The implications include a case for early reading intervention and for reconsideration of the view that relative reading achievement is largely immutable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obtaining help from strangers: Effects of eye contact, visible struggling, and direct requests.

Two wheelchair-bound confederates attempted each of 5 tasks 10 times at a shopping mall and sought help while playing 4 roles: (a) making eye contact with a stranger and then asking for help; (b) approaching a bystander and requesting help without prior eye contact; (c) struggling to execute the task while looking around for prospective helpers; and (d) concentrating on a task without visually searching for help. In both (a) and (b), help was given 100% of the time. In roles (c) and (d), help was highly dependent on the task and the confederate's visual searching behavior. (2 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perspective-taking skills in young children: Seeing the world through rose-colored glasses.

Classic and modified perspective-taking tasks were given to 100 children evenly divided into groups of 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-yr-olds. In the classic task, Ss were asked to select pictures showing how block arrays looked to them and to an experimenter (E) seated opposite them. The youngest Ss responded indiscriminately across problems, generally even failing questions about their own view. Performance was also examined as a function of array variables such as the symmetry of the arrangement and the number and visibility of blocks. Results suggest that children's difficulty in identifying another's right–left is not attributable simply to difficulty in identifying their own and that intellectual realism may affect children's performance on perspective-taking tasks. In the modified task, the S and/or the E wore colored glasses and the S was asked to describe how a white card appeared to each of them. Egocentric responses were common only in the 3-yr-old group. It is concluded that even very young children are aware that they and others may see things differently but do not demonstrate this awareness on spatially and representationally complex tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)