Affect and facilitative self-control: Influence of ecological setting, cognition, and social agent.

Three components of a situation--the ecological setting, the child's cognition, and the social agent--were imbued with positive, neutral, or negative affect to determine if they were functionally related to the continued maintenance of performance at a motor task by 108 1st and 2nd graders. Maintenance of performance is discussed in terms of facilitative self-control, and theoretical linkages to cognitive self-reinforcement and distractibility-frustrative nonreward theories are proposed. The most powerful effects occurred when the affect of the ecological setting was changed: Ss who experienced a happy room (happy pictures and faces) persisted longer than those in the sad or neutral room. Also, Ss who thought about happy things persisted longer than Ss who thought about sad or neutral things, but only when the E acted happy and recently had told the S a happy story. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Studies in the self-regulation of behavior: Effects of contingent cognitive and affective events.

Performed 5 experiments with 232 4-yr-olds to test the hypothesis that the evaluations and affective responses which accompany ongoing behavior may operate as reinforcers and punishers, thus exercising control over the persistence of those behaviors. Results show that (a) children persisted longer when they labeled work at a motor task as fun rather than no fun, easy rather than difficult, or when they expressed pride in their ongoing work as opposed to being self-critical; (b) when children contingently reminded themselves of pleasant events unrelated to the task itself, they persisted longer than when they reminded themselves of unpleasant events; and (c) when children labeled a problem-solving task as easy, they persisted longer when they rendered this evaluation with neutral or negative affective intonation ("disparagement"), but under positive intonation ("enthusiasm"), children persisted longer when they contingently labeled the task as difficult. Results are discussed in terms of the effectiveness of self-evaluation and affective-responses for regulating ongoing behavior and the degree to which the contingency of such responses is truly necessary for their effectiveness. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Isotopic analyses based on the mass spectrum of carbon dioxide

Measurements of carbon and oxygen isotopic abundances are commonly based on the mass spectrum of carbon dioxide, but analysis of that spectrum is not trivial because three isotope ratios (17O/16O, 18O/16O, and 13C/12C) must be determined from only two readily observable ion-current ratios (45/44 and 46/44). Here, approaches to the problem are reassessed in the light of new information regarding the distribution of oxygen isotopes in natural samples. It is shown that methods of calculation conventionally employed can lead to systematic errors in the computed abundance of 13C and that these errors may be related to incorrect assessment of the absolute abundance of 17O. Further, problems arising during the analysis of samples enriched by admixture of 18O-labeled materials are discussed, and it is shown (i) that serious inaccuracies arise in the computed abundance of 17O and 13C if methods of calculation conventionally employed in the analysis of natural materials are applied to material labeled with 18O but (ii) that computed fractional abundances of 18O are always within 0.4% of the correct result. Methods for exact calculation of two isotope ratios when the third is known are presented and discussed, and a more exact approach to the computation of all three isotope ratios in natural materials is given.     

Effects of social comparison on facilitative self-control in young children.

Investigated the effects of social comparison upon 96 4- and 5-yr-old children's subsequent task perseveration, attention to task, and self-confidence. Ss, from a middle-class nursery school, were 6 pairs of boys and 6 pairs of girls for each of 4 experimental conditions. Ss in the negative social comparison condition attended less efficiently to, and expressed less confidence in, their ability to solve a difficult wooden-cube puzzle than did a control group of nonsocial comparison children. The length of task perseveration by Ss in the social comparison groups did not differ significantly, although the negative comparison group persisted as long or longer than the positive, equal, or nonsocial comparison groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of children's family structure status on the development of stereotypes by teachers.

The possibility that teacher ratings of children may indicate a stereotype on the part of teachers was investigated by showing 30 teachers a videotape that focused on the social interaction of an 8-yr-old boy. Half of the teachers were given a background information sheet indicating that he was from a divorced home, while the other half were told he was from an intact home. Ss rated the boy on a wide range of 11 personality traits and predicted what his behavior would be like in 5 different school situations (e.g., copes with stress and popularity). The Bonferroni multiple-comparisons procedure indicated that the teachers rated the divorced child more negatively on the following 3 variables reflecting affective state or relations: happiness, emotional adjustment, and copes with stress. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)