Media and violence: The case of professional football championship games

Recently much research has linked media violence with actual violence. The most serious violence, suicides, and homicides have been connected to events portrayed in the mass media. In this study I examine the effect of NFL football playoff games on the relative incidence of homicides between standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs) with and without participating teams. Results show that homicides may be related to participation. Specifically, SMSAs with losing teams experience significantly more homicides than SMSAs with winning teams.     

Fixation disengagement and eye-movement latency

We examined eye-movement latencies to a target that appeared during visual fixation of a stationary stimulus, a moving stimulus, or an extrafoveal stimulus. The stimulus at fixation was turned off either before target onset (gap condition) or after target onset (overlap condition). Consistent with previous research, saccadic latencies were shorter in gap conditions than they were in overlap conditions (the gap effect). In Experiment 1, a gap effect was observed for vergence eye movements. In Experiment 2, a gap effect was observed for saccades directed at a target that appeared during visual pursuit of a moving stimulus. In Experiment 3, a gap effect was observed for saccades directed at a target that appeared during extrafoveal fixation. The present results extend reports of the gap effect for saccadic shifts during visual fixation to (a) vergence shifts during visual fixation, (b) saccadic shifts during smooth visual pursuit, and (c) saccadic shifts during extrafoveal fixation. The present findings are discussed with respect to the incompatible goals of fixation-locking and fixation-shifting oculomotor responses.     

Declarative knowledge and professional vision in teacher education: Effect of courses in teaching and learning

Background. Teachers’ professional vision includes the ability to apply general pedagogical knowledge about components of effective teaching and learning to reason about significant features of classroom practice. It requires teachers to (a) describe, (b) explain, and (c) predict classroom situations. Although the acquisition of underling knowledge can be considered as a key element of university‐based teacher education programmes, to date, there has been little empirical research on teacher candidates’ development of professional vision. Aims. This study aims to improve understanding of how different university‐based courses in teaching and learning impact the development of professional vision. Sample. Participants were teacher candidates (N= 53) attending the same teacher education programme at a German university. They were enrolled in one of three different compulsory courses in teaching and learning, lasting one semester. Methods. In a pre‐test–post‐test design, participants’ declarative knowledge about teaching and learning was measured with a test, professional vision with the online tool Observer. Analysis of covariance and multivariate analysis of variance were conducted. Results. Teacher candidates in all three courses showed significant gains both in declarative knowledge and professional vision. Patterns of results differed depending on the course attended. A video‐based course with a focus on effective teaching resulted in highest gains in prediction of the consequences of observed events for student learning processes, which is the highest level of knowledge transfer. Conclusion. The development of professional vision is a strongly knowledge‐guided process. In line with their content and aims, university‐based courses can enhance teaching‐relevant knowledge for teacher candidates.     

Viewing behavior: Ocular and attentional disengagement

In five experiments, we examined the role of the ocular and attentional systems in determining saccadic latencies. Prior to making a saccade to a target stimulus, subjects were required to direct their attention to a foveal stimulus or to an eccentric stimulus. Either stimulus could be extinguished before the onset of the target. Saccadic latencies were shortest when the foveal stimulus was extinguished, regardless of whether it was attended or not. Control experiments showed that subjects were able to attend properly and that warning, arising from turning off a stimulus before target onset, could not completely account for the results. The results were discussed in terms of ocular disengagement, attentional disengagement, and joint ocular-attentional disengagement. It was concluded that an explanation emphasizing ocular disengagement provided the best account of the data.     

Facilitated cognitive disengagement in depression

The present study was conducted to test predictions derived from the hypothesis that depression may serve the purpose of adaptively facilitating disengagement from obsolete cognitive plans. Groups of students with either low or high depression scores were contrasted using a procedure that featured an initial learning phase, within which participants learned to perform a task, followed by a relearning phase within which they needed to disengage from initial learning in order to relearn to perform an altered task. It was assumed that performance in the relearning phase would be affected by the degree to which participants could readily disengage from their initial learning. As predicted, participants in the high depression group, relative to those in the low depression group, demonstrated superior performance in the relearning phase alone. The theoretical and applied implications of this finding are discussed.     

Attentional disengagement in adults with Williams syndrome

Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by a distinctive behavioral and cognitive profile, including widespread problems with attention. However, the specific nature of their attentional difficulties, such as inappropriate attentional allocation and/or poor attentional disengagement abilities, has yet to be elucidated. Furthermore, it is unknown if there is an underlying difficulty with the temporal dynamics of attention in WS or if their attentional difficulties are task-dependent, because previous studies have examined attention in established areas of deficit and atypicality (specifically, visuospatial and face processing). In this study, we examined attentional processing in 14 adults with WS (20–59 years) and 17 typically developing controls (19–39 years) using an attentional blink (AB) paradigm. The AB is the decreased ability to detect a second target when it is presented in close proximity to an initial target. Overall, adults with WS had an AB that was prolonged in duration, but no different in magnitude, compared with typically developing control participants. AB performance was not explained by IQ, working memory, or processing speed in either group. Thus, results suggest that the attention problems in WS are primarily due to general attentional disengagement difficulties rather than inappropriate attentional allocation.     

Child-to-parent violence and its association with exposure to marital violence and parent-to-child violence

The aims of this study were: (a) to examine the relationships between the exposure to different types of family violence (intraparental violence and parent-to-child aggression) and the perpetration of child-to-parent violence (CPV); (b) to analyze sex differences in the relationships specified. The sample comprised 1681 Spanish university students who reported the exposure to different types of family violence during their childhood. Both psychological and physical family violence were analyzed separately. Results showed that both witnessing marital psychological violence and parent-to-child psychological aggression are related to CPV. Furthermore, psychological and physical parent-to-child aggression as well as witnessing physical aggression between parents was associated with physical CPV. Multigroup analyses showed that the relationships among variables were not significantly different as a function of sex. This finding suggests that the relation between exposure to family violence and CPV is similar for men and women.     

Situational disengagement and persistence in the face of adversity

Research suggests that the experience of belonging to a group whose academic abilities are negatively stereotyped fosters disidentification over time, that is, the psychological insulation of the self from academic evaluations and outcomes (Crocker, Major, & Steele, 1998). This research tests whether the process of disidentification can ironically improve motivation when mobilized in response to specific situations. Black and White participants were given negative feedback on an ability-diagnostic or non-diagnostic task. Subsequently, all participants were given the opportunity to persist on the task and their level of disengagement was assessed. As hypothesized, Black participants in the diagnostic condition displayed the most persistence as well as the most disengagement and this persistence response was mediated by their disengagement. The results suggest that, in contrast to chronic disengagement, situational disengagement may help facilitate motivation and persistence.     

Educational performance and psychological disengagement among ethnic-minority and Dutch adolescents

The authors used a questionnaire (N = 587) among ethnic-minority and majority group adolescents in The Netherlands to examine the idea that under certain conditions minority group members tend to psychologically disengage their self-evaluation from educational performance. The results showed that only among ethnic minorities, perceived discrimination in school was related to psychological disengagement. Furthermore, among both groups of participants, perceived diagnosticity of performance feedback was negatively related to disengagement. However, among the ethnic minority group this effect was found for only those participants with relatively high educational performance. The results showed that negative experiences in school can lead to psychological disengagement from the academic domain and that disengagement is not restricted to African American students.     

Interacting effects of worry and anxiety on attentional disengagement from threat

Recent work suggests that the ability to disengage attention from threatening information is impaired in people who suffer from anxiety and dysphoria. It has been suggested that this impaired ability to disengage from threat might specifically be associated with the tendency to perseverate about threat (i.e., worry), which is a main characteristic of anxiety disorders and a wide range of other psychopathologies. However, no studies have yet addressed this issue. The present study examined whether trait worry as well as worry intensity after experimental worry induction are associated with impaired ability to disengage attention from threatening cues (angry faces), independently from or in conjunction with anxiety. Sixty-one participants performed a visual cueing experiment that required detection of a target stimulus at one of two possible locations. Prior to the target neutral, happy or angry facial cues appeared at one of these two locations; when there is a relatively long period between the cue and the target (>300 ms), an overall faster responding to invalidly cued trials relative to validly cued trials is believed to indicate inhibition of return (IOR) to a recently attended location. A reduced IOR for angry faces was only found when both trait worry and anxiety were high. When anxiety was kept constant, both trait worry and state worry were associated with enhanced IOR for neutral faces instead. The results seem to suggest that specific threat-related deficiencies in IOR may be a function of the co-occurrence of worry and anxiety.     

Influences of information processing and disengagement in infants' looking behaviour

The present study considers the joint influences of information processing and disengagement in looking behaviour within a habituation paradigm. Six‐month‐old infants were habituated, during which their heart rate (HR) was measured. A parametric model of habituation yielded for each infant parameter estimates of their habituation performance. These parameters were interpreted as assessing information processing and disengagement. Corresponding measures were obtained from the HR data. The HR measures and habituation model parameter estimates were significantly correlated, as predicted. In addition, an attention getter, presented prior to each habituation trial, influenced indicators of information processing, but not of disengagement. Results confirmed the advantages of a modelling approach. In addition, and more importantly, findings led to the conclusion that both information processing as well as disengagement are involved in infants' looking behaviour in visual habituation. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Shades of disengagement: high school dropouts speak out

The purpose of this study was to describe how dropouts navigate their educational journeys. Eighty dropouts participated to individual interviews which were recorded and transcribed. The data analysis yielded three broad categories in answering the research question. Setting the stage in the family and the school, the dropouts described their teetering between in and out of school contexts and proceeded to explain how they ended their educational journey. For 20 dropouts, family turmoil represented a pervasive force negatively influencing their schooling. For 24 dropouts, problems in school set the stage for dropping out. Teetering represented juggling strategies to prolongand to sabotage the journey, while the end of the journey occurred as a result of a pivotal moment (48%) or a gradual fade out (52%) from the school context.