The Teenage Inventory of Social Skills: Development, reliability, and validity.

Describes the development and the evaluation of reliability and convergent and discriminant validity of a newly designed self-report questionnaire for the assessment of adolescent social competence: the Teenage Inventory of Social Skills (TISS). Two-week test–retest reliabilities for positive and negative behavior scales were .90 and .72; internal consistencies were .88. Convergent validity was assessed by comparing TISS scales with self-monitoring data, ratings by peers, and sociometric data. Discriminant validity was examined by investigating correlations between scores on the TISS and social desirability, SES, and another paper-and-pencil self-report instrument (Conflict Behavior Questionnaire) thought not to be necessarily related to adolescent social behavior. Results provided adequate evidence for both the convergent and discriminant validity of the TISS scales. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lack of contextual modulation of habituated neuroendocrine responses to repeated audiogenic stress.

Exposure to stress reliably activates the hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenocortical (HPA) axis response in rodents, which is significantly reduced (habituated) following repeated exposures. In the current study, it was first established that HPA axis response habituation to repeated loud noise lasted for at least 4 weeks in rats. In the next experiment, a contextual extinction procedure following repeated loud noise exposures failed to restore the habituated HPA axis response. Although an additional study indicated some recovery of responses when the context was modified on a test day following habituation, this effect could be mostly attributed to the familiarity with the contextual cues. A final study confirmed that rats could distinguish between the contexts used and further indicated that context preexposures reduce acute HPA axis responses to loud noise. These studies therefore provide no support for the hypothesis that contextual cues regulate HPA axis response habituation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Convexity of Yield Surface with Directional Distortional Hardening Rules

The present paper examines the convexity of the yield surface in the directional distortional hardening models by Feigenbaum and Dafalias. In these models anisotropy develops through kinematic and directional distortional hardening, supplemented by the classical isotropic hardening, and the associative flow rule is used. However, the issue of convexity, which naturally arises due to the distortion of the yield surface, was not fully addressed. The present paper derives the necessary and sufficient conditions to ensure convexity of the yield surface for the simpler Feigenbaum and Dafalias models, but it is not as straightforward to derive corresponding conditions for convexity of the Feigenbaum and Dafalias model version which contains an evolving fourth-order tensor. In this case convexity will be addressed first in general and then at the limit state for which simple restrictions on the material constants to ensure convexity are derived. Numerical examples will show that some of the yield surfaces simulated in the original Feigenbaum and Dafalias publication will not stay convex if loaded beyond what was done in these publications. Therefore the material constants for these cases are recalibrated based on the derived relations for satisfaction of the convexity requirement, and the fitting of the yield surfaces is repeated with the new set of constants and compared with the previous case.     

Situated na?ve physics: Task constraints decide what children know about density.

Children's understanding of density is riddled with misconceptions—or so it seems. Yet even preschoolers at times appear to understand density. This article seeks to reconcile these conflicting outcomes by investigating the nature of constraints available in different experimental protocols. Protocols that report misconceptions about density used stimulus arrangements that make differences in mass and volume more salient than differences in density. In contrast, protocols that report successful performance used stimulus arrangements that might have increased the salience of density. To test this hypothesis, the present experiments manipulate the salience of object density. Children between 2 and 9 years of age and adults responded whether an object would sink or float when placed in water. Results indicated that children's performance on exactly the same objects differed as a function of the saliency of the dimension of density, relative to the dimensions of mass and volume. These results support the idea that constraints—rather than stable knowledge—drive performance, with implications for teaching children about nonobvious concepts such as density. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term outcome from childhood traumatic brain injury: Intellectual ability, personality, and quality of life.

Objective: Only a handful of studies have attempted to explore very long-term outcomes from childhood traumatic brain injury (TBI). These studies have generally failed to fully consider the impact of injury severity or employ measures sensitive to the survivor's day-to-day function. This study examined outcomes in adulthood, with a focus on functional abilities including education, employment, and quality of life (QOL), and employed predictors including injury severity, age at injury, socioeconomic factors, intelligence, and personality. Method: The study was retrospective and cross-sectional and included 50 adult survivors of child TBI (31 males), aged 19–30 years at evaluation (M = 24.2, SD = 3.6), with injury on average 13.3 years prior to evaluation. Participants were divided according to injury severity—mild (n = 20), moderate (n = 12), and severe (n = 18)—completed an intellectual evaluation and questionnaires regarding educational and employment status, personality, and quality of life. Results: Intellectual and personality measures indicated good outcomes, with mean scores for all groups in the average range and few severity-based findings. In contrast, those with more severe TBI were more likely to have educational and employment problems. QOL was significantly reduced in the context of severe insult, with lower IQ and personality factors most predictive of outcome in this domain. Mild and moderate TBI were generally more benign. Conclusions: Findings suggest that, while TBI is a lifelong problem, its impact is most dramatic in the domain of QOL, where a complex interaction occurs between injury factors, cognition, and personality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sharing morphemes without sharing meaning: Production and comprehension of German verbs in the context of morphological relatives.

We investigated the impact of derived German verbs on the production and recognition of morphologically related simple verbs. In order to disentangle effects of morphological, semantic, and phonological relatedness, target verbs were combined (e.g., z?hlen – to count) with four context verbs: Two morphologically related context verbs that were either semantically transparent (verz?hlen – to miscount) or semantically opaque (erz?hlen – to tell), a semantically related (rechnen – to calculate) and a phonologically related (z?hmen – to tame) context verb. Morphologically related complex verbs reduced picture naming latencies as well as lexical decision latencies. Semantically related verbs did not show any reliable effects. In production, morphological facilitation was almost four times larger than phonological facilitation. In comprehension, pure form overlap produced inhibition. We argue that in German, production and comprehension processes operate on morphologically decomposed lexical form representations. Independent from semantic transparency, complex verbs are broken down into their morphemes during comprehension and are assembled during production. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prevalence of civilian trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder in a representative national sample of women.

Prevalence of crime and noncrime civilian traumatic events, lifetime posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and PTSD in the past 6 mo were assessed in a sample of 4,008 US adult women. Random digit-dial telephone methods were used to identify study participants. Structured telephone interviews for assessment of specific crime or other traumatic event history and PTSD were conducted by trained female interviewers. Lifetime exposure to any type of traumatic event was 69%, whereas exposure to crimes that included sexual or aggravated assault or homicide of a close relative or friend occurred among 36%. Overall sample prevalence of PTSD was 12.3% lifetime and 4.6% within the past 6 mo. The rate of PTSD was significantly higher among crime vs noncrime victims (25.8% vs 9.4%). History of incidents that included direct threat to life or receipt of injury was a risk factor for PTSD. Findings are compared with data from other epidemiological studies. Results are discussed as they relate to PTSD etiology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Oxidized banana starch–polyvinyl alcohol film: Partial characterization

Composites of polyvinyl alcohol, native banana starch, oxidized banana starch using glycerol like plasticizer, were studied by mechanical tests (MT), scanning electronic microscopy (SEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and solubility in water. The oxidized banana starch showed higher level of carboxyl groups than of carbonyl groups. Composites of native banana starch/polyvinyl alcohol and oxidized banana starch/polyvinyl alcohol showed irregularities, indicating incomplete dispersion of the polymers. However, the film elaborated with the blend oxidized banana starch/polyvinyl alcohol showed the highest mechanical properties and the melting temperature of the first transition, as well as the lowest water vapor permeability, indicating higher interaction between both polymers. The composite oxidized banana starch/polyvinyl alcohol showed higher water solubility than the one of its counterpart with native banana starch at 25°C, and similar values were obtained for both films at 60°C. The oxidation of banana starch in order to elaborate a film blended with polyvinyl alcohol improved some mechanical and barrier properties, and this composite could be used for specific applications in the packing of food.