Relationships among spatial skills, communication skills, and field independence in deaf students

The hypotheses that deaf students would be more field-dependent than hearing students and that their competence in communication skills would be positively related to field-independence were supported for a group of 77 male and 67 female deaf students. Step-wise multiple regression analyses of the data showed that for females spatial skills followed by communication skills were significant predictors of field-independence; for males spatial skills followed by the extent of hearing loss were significant predictors of field-independence. Sex differences found on tests of field-independence and spatial relations were consistent with those obtained from the hearing population. It was suggested that socialization experiences and competence in communication skills may influence development of field-independence in deaf students.     

Emotion communication skills in young, middle-aged, and older women

We assessed the effectiveness of an emotion induction procedure for the study of emotional communication in adults; we also gathered preliminary age-comparative data on the expressive and receptive capacities of a sample of adult women. Young, middle-aged, and older women (encoders) related emotional experiences following mood induction and then assessed the intensity of their affective experiences. Videotapes of these sessions (facial expressions only) were shown to young, middle-aged, and older female judges (decoders), who rated the encoders for emotional intensity as well as for type of affect being communicated. Validity and reliability issues with respect to the procedure's usefulness are discussed. Decoding accuracy was found to vary with age congruence between encoder and decoder, suggesting a decoding advantage accruing through social contact with like-aged peers. Older decoders did most poorly, but a differential warm-up effect was evident, suggesting that the performance of older subjects might be enhanced with practice. There were also trends suggesting that the affective expressions of older subjects may be harder to decode owing to age-related structural changes in the face. Results are discussed in the context of theoretical models of affective development.     

Reading practices,reading skills,and cognitive growth in adulthood

Reading is assumed to play an important role in the development of literate persons in that it is consciousness-altering activity. The manner by which reading contributes to development is unclear, however, and has been debated by social scientists for some years. Despite the importance of reading in adult life, only recently have researchers devoted significant attention to what and how well adults read. Less scrutiny has been directed toward understanding what sorts of benefits may be gained from reading in adult life and how reading contributes to adult development. This paper describes adults' reading practices across a variety of social contexts, the types of skills employed in these practices, and how reading may contribute to adult cognitive development. Implications deriving from a better understanding of adult reading practices and skills across the life span are discussed.     

Effects of training intensity on observers' ratings of anxiety, social skills, and alcohol-specific coping skills

Few studies have addressed the amount of training needed to obtain reliable ratings in behavioral observation data. The current study examined the effects of differing intensities of frame-of-reference (FOR) rater training on observers' ratings of anxiety, social skills, and alcohol-specific coping skills in community volunteers with and without social anxiety and alcohol use disorders. Interrater reliability was assessed by comparing three training conditions (no-training, moderate FOR, and intensive FOR) on discrepancies between raters'scores and the strength of association between raters'scoring patterns. The discrepancies between raters' scores were significantly larger in the control condition than in the intensive and moderate training conditions. Generally, small and nonsignificant differences were found between intensive and moderate training's discrepancy scores. Strength of association results showed significantly lower correlations in the control group compared to the intensive group. However, these correlational results showed less consistent differences between the moderate and other training conditions; differences when found were in the expected directions. Study findings suggest that differing training intensities can affect rating scores and that interrater reliability may be meaningfully assessed through multiple methods.     

Self-concept, social anxiety, and interpersonal perception skills

The Interpersonal Perception Task videotape provided a criterion variable to test hypotheses about social information processing skills of socially anxious subjects. Results from 68 undergraduates show negative correlations between both shyness social anxiety and nonverbal decoding scores, and positive correlations between shyness and measures of test anxiety. Results are interpreted in light of cognitive conceptions of social anxiety and its role in decoding nonverbal communication.     

Number games, magnitude representation, and basic number skills in preschoolers

The effect of 3 intervention board games (linear number, linear color, and nonlinear number) on young children's (mean age = 3.8 years) counting abilities, number naming, magnitude comprehension, accuracy in number-to-position estimation tasks, and best-fit numerical magnitude representations was examined. Pre- and posttest performance was compared following four 25-min intervention sessions. The linear number board game significantly improved children's performance in all posttest measures and facilitated a shift from a logarithmic to a linear representation of numerical magnitude, emphasizing the importance of spatial cues in estimation. Exposure to the number card games involving nonsymbolic magnitude judgments and association of symbolic and nonsymbolic quantities, but without any linear spatial cues, improved some aspects of children's basic number skills but not numerical estimation precision.     

Anxiety, perceptual and motor skills in an underwater environment

This research has analyzed the perceptual and motor skills in an underwater environment at 30 m of 24 subjects differing in diving experience. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Form X-1, was administered to evaluate possible changes in anxiety associated with hyperbaric conditions during the perceptual and motor task. Analysis indicates that in comparison with experienced divers, less experienced divers showed a performance decrement. No changes in anxiety were observed.     

The moral compass and life skills in navigating radicalization processes: Examining the interplay among life skills,moral disengagement,and extremism

The present study investigated the interplay among deficient life skills, moral disengagement, and extremist attitude across two national contexts. Using a sample of young students in high school or college (N = 686), the present study found significant indirect effects between deficient life skills (agency and structure) and various aspects of an extremist mindset through moral disengagement. These findings suggest that these two psychological concepts of life skills and moral disengagement are relevant for understanding and countering violent radicalization processes; that is to say that morality can direct the life skills toward either violent extremism or nonviolent, legal civil participation. Furthermore, the development and empowerment of life skills could enhance individual resilience to morally disengaging narratives and radicalized ideologies.     

Allocation of attention, reading skills, and deafness.

Brannan and Williams (1987) found that poor readers cannot successfully utilize parafoveal cues to identify letter targets. Whether a similar deficit in the use of cue information occurs in deaf poor readers and whether it is only specific to processes that capture attention automatically were investigated in congenitally deaf young adults classified as poor or good readers and hearing controls classified as good readers. Subjects were presented with central or parafoveal cues that varied in cue validity probability, followed by letter targets presented to the left or right of fixation. The reaction time data analyses showed significant main effects for cue type and cue location and significant interactions among cue type, cue location, cue validity probability, and visual field. No significant main effect or interactions involving groups were found. These results raise the possibility that reading difficulties associated with deafness do no involve a deficit in the visual attentional system of deaf people. They also confirm that parafoveal cues are more effective than central cues in capturing attention.     

Leisure counselling, coping skills and therapeutic applications

Leisure counselling is defined as the systematic exploitation of a client's past, existing or prospective hobbies, activities and interests for broad psychotherapeutic purposes. It functions as a powerful agent in the invigoration of a range of existing but inadequate coping skills, and can also act in an innovatory style when such key skills are absent. The effective functioning of leisure counselling, as this paper argues, requires a methodology of application, and the author's main contribution has been to identify a triad of approach techniques open to the leisure counsellor, namely, distraction, anticipation and confrontation, and to outline appropriate settings in which they may be fruitfully implemented. Effective leisure counselling requires a new mode of thinking, wherein leisure becomes instrumental and hobbies, activities and interests, its tools. So as to sharpen awareness of the full possible range of leisure counselling's application, this paper outlines how it may be applied across a wide span of coping needs and covers three broad domains: the need to ease phobias, panics, stress and tension states, and the aftermath of traumatic episodes; the need to create and sustain positive moods; and the need to contain and limit the destructive demands of habits and impulses as well as address the very sharp therapeutic challenge of obsessions and compulsions.     

Comparison of memory skills in learning disabled, low-reading, and nondisabled adolescents

Concerns are raised regarding the samples used in studies of learning disabled children. In this study, subjects were 56 high school students; 10 exhibited perceptual or processing difficulties ("learning disabled"), 15 performed poorly on reading achievement tests ("low readers"), and 31 showed no scholastic problems ("nondisabled"). Scores of the three groups were compared on nine memory tasks involving either auditory or visual input and encompassing a wide variety of content (digits, pictures, related and unrelated words, paired-associates, or sentences). The nondisabled group performed significantly better than the learning disabled group on all but one of the tasks. The low readers' performance was similar to that of the learning disabled group for some tasks, but significantly different on other tasks, most notably on tasks involving visual factors. Implications for research with learning disabled populations are discussed.     

Behavioral coaching in the development of skills in football, gymnastics, and tennis

A review of the literature indicates that methods of skill acquisition based on the operant paradigm have been scientifically validated with many motor behaviors. However, these procedures have been limited to the use of positive reinforcement for correct performance when applied to the acquisition of complex sports skills in natural settings. To find complementary procedures to enhance skill acquisition, a coaching method involving several behavioral techniques was developed that focused on remediation of errors. This coaching method combined the following components: (1) systematic use of verbal instructions and feedback, (2) positive and negative reinforcement, (3) positive practice, and (4) time out. Three sports, football, gymnastics, and tennis, were selected to determine the effectiveness and generality of this behavioral coaching method. A total of 23 male and female subjects, ranging in age from 11 to 35, was included in this study. Baseline data were first collected for each sport under standard coaching conditions. Next, the behavioral coaching method was evaluated depending on the sport in either a multiple baseline or a reversal design. The behavioral dimensions selected were blocking in football; backward walkovers, front hand springs, and reverse kips in gymnastics; and the forehand, backhand, and serve in tennis. Behavioral coaching was immediately effective in increasing the correct execution of complex skills in all three sports. Gains of up to 10 times the baseline performance were achieved in each sport. In football, behavioral coaching resulted in an increase in correct blocking performance from a baseline average of 5% to 51.3%. Gymnasts' performances increased from baseline averages of 2.7% to 52.6% across the three skills. In tennis, standard coaching produced an average of 6% correct performance which increased dramatically under behavioral coaching to 57% across the three strokes. The success of the behavioral coaching package used here suggests that a technology of behavior may offer additional and complementary strategies to the acquisition of motor skills in the natural environment.     

Longer,smaller, faster,stronger: On skills and intelligence

ABSTRACT

How does practice change our behaviors such that they go from being awkward, unskilled actions to elegant, skilled performances? This is the question that I wish to explore in this paper. In the first section of the paper, I will defend the tight connection between practice and skill and then go on to make precise how we ought to construe the concept of practice. In the second section, I will suggest that practice contributes to skill by structuring and automatizing the motor routines constitutive of skilled actions. I will cite how this fact about skilled action has misled many philosophers to conclude that skills are mindless or bodily. In the third section of the paper, I will challenge this common misconception about automaticity by appealing to empirical evidence of motor chunking. This evidence reveals that there are two opposing processes involved in the automaticity of skilled action: one process that is largely associative, which I will call “concatenation,” and a second which is a controlled cognitive process, which I will call “segmentation.” As a result of this evidence, we will be in a position to see clearly why skills are minded and intelligent not merely during their acquisition and not simply in virtue of their connection to intentional states but, rather, in their very nature. I will end by reflecting on some theoretical reasons for why this is exactly what we should expect to be the case when it comes to skilled action.     

Real-life spatial skills, handedness, and family history of handedness

According to , pronounced left hemisphere lateralization for language abilities in women, as in female absolute right-handers, limits their right hemisphere capacity and spatial abilities. This study examines the degree of handedness and the family history of non-right-handedness with respect to real-life spatial abilities in women. Twenty-four women had, first, to learn a new route and, second, to orient themselves within a labyrinth. In the former task, the number of errors and completion time were evaluated; in the latter task, degree of error for orienting was recorded. The results show that, contrary to Annett's prediction, right-handers with and without a family history of non-right-handedness did not differ on these measures. In addition, and unexpectedly, absolute right-handers were found to surpass non-absolute ones in the spatial orientation task. These findings do not support Annett's hypothesis and are discussed in relation to functional cerebral organization.     

Executive function, intellectual decline and daily living skills

Understanding the cognitive changes associated with compromised daily living skills in elderly individuals is important for making appropriate recommendations about the capacity for independent functioning. To this end, we retrospectively examined data from 92 elderly individuals presenting with cognitive decline who were administered measures of executive functioning, general intelligence, and daily living skills. Multiple regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between executive functioning and daily living skills, while controlling for age, depression, and either IQ decline or current IQ. Executive functioning accounted for additional variance in a broad range of daily living skills after controlling for IQ decline. When FSIQ was used in the regression model rather than IQ decline, executive functioning was no longer uniquely associated with daily living skills. Executive functions appear to be important for daily living skills until a critical threshold of low intellectual functioning is reached, reflecting the combined influence of premorbid ability and the extent of intellectual decline. Our results suggest that understanding the relative contribution of different cognitive domains to functional decline in elderly individuals should take into account general intellectual functioning and estimated decline, and that the initiation and/or persistence of self-directed cognitive processes may be important for adaptive daily functioning. These findings have implications for making more evidence-based recommendations about the capacity for independent living.     

Working memory, reading, and mathematical skills in children with developmental coordination disorder

The aim of the present study was investigate the relationship between working memory and reading and mathematical skills in 55 children diagnosed with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). The findings indicate a pervasive memory deficit in all memory measures. In particular, deficits observed in visuospatial short-term and working memory tasks were significantly worse than in the verbal short-term memory ones. On the basis of these deficits, the sample was divided into high and low visuospatial memory ability groups. The low visuospatial memory group performed significantly worse on the attainment measures compared to the high visuospatial memory group, even when the contribution of IQ was taken into account. When the sample was divided into high and low verbal working memory ability groups, verbal working memory skills made a unique contribution to attainment only when verbal IQ was taken into account, but not when performance IQ was statistically controlled. It is possible that the processing demands of the working memory tasks together with the active motor component reflected in the visuospatial memory tasks and performance IQ subtest both play a crucial role in learning in children with DCD.     

Empathy,social skills,and other relevant cognitive processes in rapists and child molesters

Considerable theoretical and research efforts have gone into formulations which suggest that sex offenders differ from nonoffenders in their processing of sexual material. This article reviews the literature concerning patterns of empathy, social skills, and other cognitive processes (i.e., theories, attitudes, and distorted cognitions) of incarcerated sex offenders or those who have identified themselves as sex offenders. We choose these three general topic areas because many see these phenomena as central to the understanding of sex offending. First, we present general empirical findings relevant to the phenomena of empathy, social skills, and distorted cognitions. We then move to a discussion of specific cognitive models that have been offered to account for the data. We briefly discuss the available data relevant to these cognitive models. The next section of the article reviews the treatments that have been applied to sex offenders with the stated goal of modifying the processes we are examining. Our final section attempts to summarize and highlight some of the identified problems and weaknesses in the study of the aforementioned processes in sex offending. We argue that too little attention has been paid to basic cognitive psychology and the role that cognitions or conceptualizations can play in promoting our understanding of the sex offender. We suggest that following the information processing approach as a generalized model will help integrate and direct research efforts.