Predicting the impact of child sexual abuse on women: The role of abuse severity, parental support, and coping strategies.

Female Navy recruits (N=5,226) completed surveys assessing history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), childhood strategies for coping with CSA, childhood parental support, and current psychological adjustment. Both CSA and parental support independently predicted later adjustment. In analyses examining whether CSA victims' functioning was associated with CSA severity (indexed by 5 variables), parental support (indexed by 3 variables), and coping (constructive, self-destructive, and avoidant), the negative coping variables were the strongest predictors. A structural equation model revealed that the effect of abuse severity on later functioning was partially mediated by coping strategies. However, contrary to predictions, the model revealed that childhood parental support had little direct or indirect impact on adult adjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of self-efficacy, goals, and task strategies on task performance.

Manipulated self-efficacy and task strategies in the training of 209 undergraduates under high strategy, low strategy, and control conditions. Ss underwent 5 trials and were administered a self-efficacy scale after each trial. Results show that ability, past performance, and self-efficacy were the major predictors of goal choice. Ability, self-efficacy, goals, and task strategies were related to task performance. Self-efficacy was more strongly related to past performance than to future performance but remained a significant predictor of future performance even when past performance was controlled. Self-efficacy ratings for moderate to difficult levels of performance were the best predictors of future performance; a reanalysis of 2 previous goal-setting studies by the first author confirms this finding. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Manipulation of matter by electric and magnetic fields: Toward novel synthesis and processing routes of inorganic materials

The use of external electric and magnetic fields for the synthesis and processing of inorganic materials such as metals and ceramics has seen renewed interest in recent years. Electromagnetic energy can be utilized in different ways to improve or accelerate phase formation and stabilization, chemical ordering, densification and coarsening of particle-based materials (pore elimination and grain growth), and mechanical deformation (plasticity and creep). In these new synthesis and processing routes, the resulting microstructures and macroscopic material behavior are determined by the interaction of the applied fields with defects such as single or clustered point defects, dislocation networks, and interfaces. Multiscale experimental investigations and modeling are necessary to unveil the mechanisms underlying this field-assisted manipulation of matter.     

Visual search for natural grains in pigeons (Columba livia): Search images and selective attention.

The experiments reported here were designed to test the suggestion of many researchers that selective attention to visual features of a prey can account for search-image effects. In 3 experiments pigeons ate wheat and vetch grains presented on multicolored and gray gravel trays. In Experiment 1 search-image effects were evident when grains were cryptic but not when they were conspicuous. Experiment 2 demonstrated that search images can be activated when the grains encountered are either cryptic or conspicuous but that search images affect search performance only when the grains are cryptic. Experiment 3 demonstrated that search images are short-term in nature: A 3-min delay between successive encounters with a type of grain disrupted an activated search image. The discussion addresses how these results further develop a model in which search images are viewed as selective attention to visual features of a prey. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Situational approach to the assessment of social competence in children.

Generated and evaluated a taxonomy of the situations and tasks most likely to lead deviant children to experience social difficulties. In Study 1, elementary school teachers and clinicians were asked to notice such situations as they occurred. The outcome was a 44-item taxonomy of problematic social situations for children. This survey was administered to teachers of 45 socially rejected children (79% male) from Grades 3–5 and 39 adaptive children of the opposite sociometric criteria who were matched by sex and age to the rejected Ss. The survey was found to have high internal consistency and high test–retest reliability. Six situation types emerged as factors in analyses: Peer Group Entry, Response to Peer Provocations, Response to Failure, Response to Success, Social Expectations, and Teacher Expectations. Teachers rated the rejected group as having more problems than the adaptive group in each situation, but particularly in Response to Peer Provocations and Teacher Expectations. In Study 2, 15 items within the 6 factors were presented in a hypothetical format to 39 clinic-referred rejected aggressive children (77% males) from Grades 3–5 and 34 adaptive children selected by opposite criteria and matched by sex and age to the rejected aggressive Ss, who were asked to role play their responses. The items, in particular the provocation items, again differentiated the 2 groups. Sex and age differences were also found. The usefulness of this taxonomy in a 3-step model of clinical assessment is proposed. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A model of personality test item response dissimulation.

Proposes and empirically evaluates a general model of faking on self-report personality test items. The model predicts that differential test item response latencies should be faster for schema-congruent test answers than for noncongruent responses. Thus, individuals faking good should take relatively longer to endorse socially undesirable test item content than desirable test item content. Conversely, individuals faking bad should endorse socially desirable test item content relatively slower than undesirable test item content. Support for the model was found to generalize across personality inventories and across populations of university students and maximum security prisoners. Conflicting results from previous research are viewed in terms of the model. Further testing of the model's generality and practical relevance is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Between Psoriasis and Ptarmigan: American encyclopedia portrayals of psychology, 1880–1940.

Articles in encyclopedias represented 1 of several avenues that the new experimental psychologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had to portray their science to the public, and as such, these entries are important documents in understanding the agenda of the psychologist authors and the bases for the public's understanding of psychology. This article describes a content analysis of the psychology entries from 174 American encyclopedias published between 1880 and 1940. The analysis focuses on the changes in this content over time and the correspondence of those changes to the evolution of American psychology. The data show that the encyclopedia entries were slow in reporting changes in psychology and often promoted a singular view of the subject matter of psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An artificial life approach to dense stereo disparity

This article presents an adaptive approach to improving the infection algorithm that we have used to solve the dense stereo matching problem. The algorithm presented here incorporates two different epidemic automata along a single execution of the infection algorithm. The new algorithm attempts to provide a general behavior of guessing the best correspondence between a pair of images. Our aim is to provide a new strategy inspired by evolutionary computation, which combines the behaviors of both automata into a single correspondence problem. The new algorithm will decide which automata will be used based on the transmission of information and mutation, as well as the attributes, texture, and geometry, of the input images. This article gives details about how the rules used in the infection algorithm are coded. Finally, we show experiments with a real stereo pair, as well as with a standard test bed, to show how the infection algorithm works.