"Controlling teaching strategies: Undermining children's self-determination and performance": Correction to Flink et al.

Reports an error in "Controlling teaching strategies: Undermining children's self-determination and performance" by Cheryl Flink, Ann K. Boggiano and Marty Barrett (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1990[Nov], Vol 59[5], 916-924). In the article, Figure 1 on page 922 is labeled incorrectly. The labels in both the left and right panels of the figure should be reversed so that No Pressure Condition is the label for the broken lines and Pressure Condition is the label for the solid lines. The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1991-13808-001.) Examined the hypothesis that students would show performance impairment when they were exposed to teachers who were pressured to maximize student performance level and who used controlling strategies. For this purpose, 4th-grade teachers and their students participated in a field experiment in which teachers either were pressured to maximize student performance or were told simply to help their students learn. In addition, the teaching sessions were videotaped to assess teachers' use of controlling strategies, as rated by blind coders. Following the teaching sessions, student performance on tasks initially taught by teachers as well as on a generalization task was assessed by blind experimenters. As predicted, the data indicated that students evidenced performance impairment during the subsequent testing session only when they were exposed to pressured teachers using controlling strategies. Results are discussed within the context of self-determination theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Religious orientation and overt versus covert racial prejudice.

Tested the prediction that being more religious in one way—as an intrinsic end in itself—would be associated with displaying less racial prejudice when the prejudice was overt, but not when it was covert. It was also predicted that being more religious in another way—as an open-end quest—would be associated with displaying less racial prejudice even when the prejudice was covert. An attributional ambiguity technique developed by M. L. Snyder et al (see record 1981-05489-001) was used. 44 White undergraduates interested in religion chose between sitting with a Black person or a White person to watch a movie. In the overt prejudice condition, the same movie was being shown in both locations; in the covert prejudice condition, 2 movies were being shown. Although not all predicted relations were statistically reliable, the pattern of correlations was consistent with both predictions. An intrinsic orientation to religion was significantly negatively correlated with choosing to sit with the White person in the overt condition, but this correlation was close to zero in the covert condition. Only the quest orientation to religion was significantly negatively correlated with choosing to sit with the White person in the covert condition. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characterization of rubber-cellulose-fibre composites by mechanical measurements and electron microscopy

Mechanical measurements, SEM micrographs and crosslink density measurements on cellulose-fibre-filled natural rubber suggest that there are bonds between untreated cellulose fibres and the rubber matrix. Mechanical tests indicate that the dispersion or lack of dispersion of the fibres in the matrix is at least as influential a parameter in determining the strength of the composite as is the adhesion between fibre and matrix. Stress/strain measurements indicate that there is no obvious correlation between adhesion and the shape of the stress/strain curve unless the curve is clearly jagged.     

A social relations analysis of agreement in liking judgments.

Using a round-robin design in which every subject served both as judge and target, subjects made liking judgments, trait ratings, and physical attractiveness ratings of each other on each of 4 days. Although there was some agreement in the liking judgments, most of the variance was due to idiosyncratic preferences for different targets. Differences in evaluations were due to at least 2 factors: disagreements in how targets were perceived (is this person honest?) and disagreements in how to weight the trait attributes that predicted liking (is honesty more important than friendliness?) When evaluating the targets in specific roles (as a study partner), judgments showed much greater agreement, as did the weights of the trait attributes. A 2nd study confirmed the differential weighting of trait attributes when rating liking in general and the increased agreement when rating specific roles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of A-elements (ASi, Ge or Sn) on the structure and electrical contact properties of Ti-A-C-Ag nanocomposites

Ti-A-C-Ag (A is Si, Ge or Sn) nanocomposite coatings have been deposited by dc magnetron sputtering in an ultra high vacuum chamber. Electron microscopy, energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and x-ray diffraction show that all coatings contain nanocrystalline TiC and Ag grains in a matrix of mainly amorphous C. A C/Ti ratio above unity yields a homogenous distribution of Ag with a reduced grain size. From a chemical point of view, the addition of Ge and Sn to the Ti-C-Ag system should increase the conductivity of the coatings since the formation of more metallic phases than Si. We demonstrate that Si can be replaced with Ge and Sn and still yield a homogeneous distribution of Ag. The incorporation of Ge and Sn to the Ti-C-Ag system results in elemental precipitation and intermetallic phases, respectively. This gives improved electrical properties compared to Ti-Si-C-Ag coatings, and a contact resistance at loads of ~ 1 N against an Au probe (radius of 0.7 mm) that is comparable to that of Ag.     

Design of an artificial skin. Part III. Control of pore structure

Several methods are compared for preparing collagen-glycosaminoglycan (GAG) membranes of high or low porosity. Collagen-GAG membranes have been used to cover satisfactorily large experimental full-thickness skin wounds in guinea pigs over the past few years. Methods studied as means for controlling pore size are confined to purely physical processes which do not require use of additives or chemical reagents to form the porous membrane. We find that membranes, initially swollen in distilled water or saline, shrink linearly to no less than 94% of original dimension after freeze drying; to 75% after critical point drying (from CO2, following water-ethanol exchange); and to 41% of original dimension following air drying from the swollen state. Scanning electron microscopic study of the pore structure resulting from eah drying procedure confirms our major conclusion: A carefully designed freeze drying process, two variants of which are described in detail, yields membranes with the highest mean pore size, as measured by quantitative stereological procedures. Critical point drying gave significantly more shrinkage and a lower mean pore size than either one of the two freeze drying procedures used.