Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

A comparison of 4 methods of teaching introductory psychology underscored educational points concerning teachers' and undergraduates' expressed dissatisfaction with instruction. Bright students achieved more than duller students regardless of the teaching method used or student characteristics. Students' satisfaction with a course was a function of teachers' personal involvement with the course material. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stochastic independence between two implicit memory tasks.

Two experiments tested the statistical relation between performances on two implicit, priming tests of memory: word-fragment completion and perceptual identification. If performance on implicit priming tests is mediated by a single memory system, then stochastic dependence between them should be found. Contrary to this prediction, stochastic independence was obtained between performances on the two tests in all but one condition. For that condition (Experiment 1) the results suggest that subjects may have knowingly used information derived from the first test to complete the second. When perceived similarity was eliminated by altering contextual cues (Experiment 2), stochastic independence was found in this condition as well. The results are not consistent with current multiple memory system interpretations that assign all implicit, priming tests to one system and explicit tests to another. An alternative interpretation is that the degree of dependence between performances on memory tests is determined by the similarity of the component processes that the tests engage and of the information they use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Those who were born poor: A qualitative study of Philippine poverty.

This qualitative study investigated the psychological experience of poverty among 2 groups of Filipinos who were interviewed about the effects of being raised poor, 12 who became rich, and 13 who remained poor. Using constructivist and critical theories as research paradigms and grounded theory as methodology, the results of the study illustrated perceived causes, coping mechanisms, and cultural factors. Surprisingly, both groups were very similar in their experiences of not having basic needs met, of negative emotions, and of generally attributing their poverty to familial circumstances. The ways of coping with poverty, such as receiving and giving assistance and imploring God for help, and the cultural features of perseverance (pagpupunyagi) and reliance on others (pakikipagkapwa) were similarly influential in both groups. Because the main difference between both groups is the occurrence of chance events that provided access to education and opportunities to emigrate for those who have become rich, the oppressive structures of a society that perpetuate poverty are discussed. In developing countries such as the Philippines, the psychological experience of poverty is characterized by the impossibility of upward mobility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Health independence and developmental tasks of adulthood in cystic fibrosis.

Examined participation in health behaviors, health locus of control, and negotiation of developmental tasks of adulthood with 75 patients with cystic fibrosis (CF), aged 18–42 yrs old. Ss completed the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale. Results indicate there were a number of health behaviors for which Ss had not yet assumed responsibility, such as managing their medical insurance correspondence and monitoring nutrition. Ss reported that they were more compliant with their medical regimen currently than when first assuming responsibility for their health as adolescents. Multidimensional health locus of control profiles were similar to those of other chronic illness populations. Most Ss appeared to have successfully mastered adult developmental tasks, such as living independently, getting married, and attaining educational or vocational goals. Ss who continued to live with their parents tended to be younger. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Those who broke the cycle: Therapy with nonabusive adults who were physically abused as children.

Based on observations of 10 nonabusive adults who were physically abused as children, it is contended that these Ss differ from abusive adults who were abused as children in significant ways. It is recommended that abused children receive intensive therapy either at the time that the abuse is discovered or at a developmentally more appropriate stage to block persistence of symptoms into adulthood. It is suggested that these nonabusive adults present a constellation of symptoms that may not be recognized as posttraumatic stress syndrome. For both the abused child and the adult a highly interactive course of therapy is recommended, during which the major goal is reparenting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivation in later life: Personal projects and well-being.

"Personal projects," as defined by B. R. Little (1983), were elicited from 600 community residents aged 70+, representing a broad range of health and illness. Factor analysis revealed 6 types of personal projects: activities of daily living, active recreation, other-oriented activities, intellectual activities, home planning, and spiritual/moral activities. Background factors and health were shown to affect the number and type of projects reported. Most indices of personal projects were associated with positive affect and valuation of life. Only 1 was associated with depression. This confirms the differential association of personal projects to positive but not negative affect. Personal projects are seen as part of an open motivational system in which social position, cognitive ability, health, and positive mental health are mutually interacting members. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Those who can, tutor: High-ability students' conceptions of fair ways to organize learning.

When conceptions of fair learning practices of high-ability (HA) students (aged 6–18 yrs) were compared with those from a more representative group, the HA Ss typically chose peer tutoring as fairest. This was the case even though they regularly experienced acceleration and enrichment programs. The 2 groups held equivalent conceptions of fair learning practices. It was not until late adolescence that students in both groups articulated a rationale for placing HA students in accelerated learning programs. HA students were also no more likely than those in the representative group to select the acceleration and enrichment practices they experience as fair. Findings suggest that HA Ss do not emphasize self-interest when evaluating fair practices and are consistent with the cognitive-developmental position that children's evaluations of institutional practices reflect their developing conceptions of social justice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Politeness and psychological distance: A construal level perspective.

According to politeness theory (P. Brown & S. Levinson, 1987), politeness serves to both reflect and regulate social distance. On the basis of this notion and on construal level theory (N. Liberman & Y. Trope, 2008; N. Liberman, Y. Trope, & E. Stephan, 2007), it was predicted that politeness would be related to abstract construal, temporal distance, and spatial distance. Eight studies supported this prediction. Politeness increased when the addressees were construed abstractly (Study 1), were temporally distant (Studies 2, 3), and were spatially distant (Study 4). It was also found that increasing politeness produced abstract construals (Study 5), greater temporal distance (Study 6), and greater spatial distance (Study 7, 8). These findings shed light on the way politeness operates in different cultures and is conveyed in different languages, and they support the idea that dimensions of psychological distance are interrelated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sorting Second-Grade Students: Differentiating Those Retained From Those Promoted.

A cohort of 2nd-grade students provided comparisons of academic and social competence based on school retention/promotion decisions. Sample groups were (a) retained, (b) at risk for retention, (c) special education, and (d) promoted. Findings suggested most children with academic deficiencies are identified by schools early and are sorted into educational treatments differing in intensity that represent a continuum of competence. The authors provide empirical evidence counter to the assumptions that retained students have the requisite ability to catch up and have more problem behaviors than other low-achieving students. The relevance of high-stakes test scores for promotion/retention decisions and the parallels between schools' implementation of retention policy and implementation of regulations for identifying children with disabilities are included in the discussion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Steps to improve the quality of life for people who are dying.

Congress has largely ignored the public health crisis of pain and symptom management in the United States. However, the state of Oregon has taken several steps to improve quality of life for people who are dying. The author has also worked to improve the care provided to the terminally ill by introducing the Conquering Pain Act, by asking the General Accounting Office to explore why people do not receive their full hospice benefit, and by examining ways to respond to the mental health issues associated with dying. The author believes that quality end-of-life care is both a right and a responsibility and that it deserves immediate attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Surface construal and the mental representation of scenes.

What distinguishes scenes from nonscenes? Photographs of objects on both naturalistic and blank backgrounds yielded boundary extension (BE: memory for unseen spatial expanse outside the picture's boundaries). However, line-drawn objects on blank backgrounds did not (Experiment 1). Perhaps the blank background was construed as depicting a real-world surface in the photograph condition but was construed as depicting nothing in the line-drawn condition. To change background construal, the authors used objects cut out of photographs; these were placed on blank backgrounds while viewers watched (Experiments 2 and 3). BE was eliminated. The authors propose that amodal continuation is a fundamental aspect of scene perception. However, not all pictures are scenes--only pictures construed as depicting a truncated view of a continuous world, (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A dynamic interactive theory of person construal.

A dynamic interactive theory of person construal is proposed. It assumes that the perception of other people is accomplished by a dynamical system involving continuous interaction between social categories, stereotypes, high-level cognitive states, and the low-level processing of facial, vocal, and bodily cues. This system permits lower-level sensory perception and higher-order social cognition to dynamically coordinate across multiple interactive levels of processing to give rise to stable person construals. A recurrent connectionist model of this system is described, which accounts for major findings on (a) partial parallel activation and dynamic competition in categorization and stereotyping, (b) top-down influences of high-level cognitive states and stereotype activations on categorization, (c) bottom-up category interactions due to shared perceptual features, and (d) contextual and cross-modal effects on categorization. The system's probabilistic and continuously evolving activation states permit multiple construals to be flexibly active in parallel. These activation states are also able to be tightly yoked to ongoing changes in external perceptual cues and to ongoing changes in high-level cognitive states. The implications of a rapidly adaptive, dynamic, and interactive person construal system are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developing independence in a life transition: Investing the self in the concerns of the day.

Developing independence involves mastering the tasks of each life transition. Those more anxious about developing independence will become more invested in the normative tasks of each transition, and this anxiety will spread to the domain represented by these tasks. In Study 1, Honors College students expressed their anxiety about developing independence in academic performance at the beginning of college when this was the normative task and in social relationships after college when this was the normative task. This anxiety could be distinguished from other (e.g., academic) anxiety. In Study 2, sorority women expressed anxiety about developing independence in family and sorority relationships. Data demonstrate the social construction of anxiety and the dynamics of personality change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social intelligence: Evidence for multidimensionality and construct independence.

Examined the multidimensional nature of the construct of social intelligence and whether it is independent of general intelligence, using 188 Ss (aged 18–65 yrs) who were employed in a state-funded mental hospital. Ss were administered a battery of tests to assess social interest, social self-efficacy, empathy skills, social skills, and intelligence. Factor analyses identified 5 domains of social intelligence (prosocial attitude, social skills, empathy skills, emotionality, social anxiety) that were independent of verbal and abstract intelligence. The prosocial attitude domain reflected both social interest and social self-efficacy, and the domains of emotionality and social anxiety were unexpected findings. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory for student-performed tasks.

Examined whether memory improved in a series of 10 student-performed tasks in three conditions administered to students who expected a posttest. The results indicated that the subjects in a rhyming mnemonic condition recalled significantly more of the student-performed tasks than did subjects in paraphrase or control conditions. In addition, subjects in a paraphrase condition recalled significantly more student-performed tasks than did subjects in the control condition. In Experiment 2, we did not use the rhyming mnemonic condition. Results confirmed those of Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, we contrasted conditions in which unrelated student-performed tasks were used as the to-be-remembered events with conditions in which the student-performed tasks made up an overall procedure. Results indicated that the type of task influenced recall. Overall conclusions suggest that encoding of student-performed tasks is strategic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of construal processes in conformity and dissent.

Develops 3 hypotheses to explain the role of construal processes in conformity behavior. According to the preconformity change of meaning hypothesis, social influence leads to changes in situational construal that precede and mediate conformity behavior; according to the postconformity change of meaning hypothesis, construal change follows and justifies conformity; and according to the construal-consistency hypothesis, preexisting situational construal distinguishes those who conform from those who dissent. Four experimental studies with varying methodology and involving a total of 361 undergraduate students were performed to test these hypotheses. The results of all studies provide strong evidence for postconformity change of meaning effects. Discussion centers on possible domains in which the different construal mechanisms might operate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Caring for patients who threaten suicide. The relationship as a bridge to life

66 patients with reactive arthritis took dry air radon baths. Radon concentration was 1.5 kBq/l (40 nCi/l), temperature regimens 27 +/- 3 and 37 +/- 3 degrees C. The procedures produced analgetic, anti-inflammatory and immunocorrective effects.     

Equal ratings but separate meanings: Stereotypes and the construal of traits.

The same trait may imply different behaviors when applied to members of differently stereotyped groups. For example, these studies show that aggressive connotes physical violence when applied to a construction worker, but verbal abuse when applied to a lawyer. Such stereotype-driven construals of traits can be more readily explained by a parallel-constraint-satisfaction model of impression formation (Z. Kunda & P. Thagard, 1996) than by more traditional models of representation commonly used by social psychologists. These studies show also that stereotypes affect predictions about a person's trait-related behavior even after the stereotype's impact on the trait itself has been undermined by individuating information about that person. The parallel-constraint-satisfaction model is better able to account for such a pattern than are earlier, serial models of stereotype use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Systems for describing human tasks.

Describes some historical trends in the role of taxonomic development in science and in the biological and behavioral sciences in particular. General principles, assumptions, and goals of taxonomic development are discussed. The aim is to show relations between the evolution of taxonomies in other sciences and the needs in psychology's present stage of development, particularly in the areas of human learning and performance. Conceptual issues and guidelines for developing such systems are discussed, as well as criteria for their evaluation. Alternative systems are reviewed in the light of these issues. A particular programmatic effort in ability requirements and classifications is described, along with some recent developments and applications. (72 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preference for people and tasks.

The authors investigated the preferences of Social (S) and Investigative (I) people for performing S and I tasks with either S or I people or alone. Participants, 38 upper division undergraduates in Social majors and 15 upper division undergraduates in Investigative majors, were administered a paired-comparison inventory in which the stimuli to be compared were task (S or I) and people (S, I, or alone) combinations. As expected, S participants preferred to work with S people, particularly on S tasks, although they preferred (slightly) to perform an I task with S people rather than an S task with I people. I participants most preferred to perform I tasks with I people and least preferred to perform an I task with S people, confirming the conjecture that I people avoid S environments that require emotional interactions, in spite of the tasks that might be performed in the environment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)