The configuration and relaxation of motor task sets

Often the performance of a task does not only require the processing of certain stimuli in certain ways, but also certain patterns of interlimb coordination. We studied shifts between different tasks involving different patterns of intermanual coupling by means of the timed-response procedure, which allows to trace state variables related to task sets. The tasks required the production of rapid bimanual reversal movements with symmetric or parallel directions. Symmetric movements are associated with symmetric coupling, as indicated by positive intermanual correlations between the directions of left-hand and right-hand movements, whereas parallel movements are associated with parallel coupling, as indicated by negative intermanual correlations. Task switches were associated with gradual changes of the intermanual correlations, which indicate the state of intermanual coupling as a major ingredient of a task set, in the course of action preparation. At short preparation intervals intermanual correlations were those appropriate for the preceding trial; with increasing preparation time they were replaced by those appropriate for the current trial, but the influence of the preceding trial did not disappear completely. In-between trials, intermanual coupling drifted toward a symmetric coupling, but not to uncoupled limbs. After a change of the task the specification of movement directions was slowed, but its initiation was not delayed. According to these results, task sets relax toward attractors which can be different from the absence of task sets. They are gradually configured during task preparation with a persistent influence of the preceding task, and the specification of response characteristics does not wait until the configuration of the new task set is completed. The research reported in this paper was supported by grant He 1187/14-1 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. We thank Barbara Herbst, Holger Küper, Kevin Schepers, and Elisei Rotaro for their support in running the experiment.     

Relations of some sociocultural variables and attitudes and motivations of young Arab students learning English as a second language

This paper examined a number of variables pertaining to the sociocultural outlooks of 412 young Arab students learning English as a foreign language and the relation of their attitudes and motivations prior to their learning of the language. Analysis indicated clearly that certain variables appeared to be correlated with their attitudes and motivations more than others. Most of the students had maids in their homes, and the presence of a maid was associated with most of the psycholinguistic variables tested. Their previous learning experience of the language was positively correlated as was their knowledge of English stories. Having some sort of English games had the highest correlations (.25 to .41). Potential pedagogical implications of these results were discussed.     

The Rorschach Comprehensive System Egocentricity Index in psychiatric inpatients

This paper reports an exploratory study of potential correlates of Exner's Rorschach Egocentricity Index, a measure of self-focusing, in a sample of 70 psychiatric inpatients. We examined the relationship of the Index of the MMPI Ego Strength scale and to other MMPI and Exner Comprehensive System Rorschach variables, using Pearson Product-Moment correlations with partialling of the number of Rorschach responses. There were seven meaningful significant correlations between the Index and Rorschach variables: M, FM, X +%, F +%, Lambda, D, and A%. The Index-MMPI correlations were not significant. Sex differences and differences between these intercorrelations and some reported by Exner (1983) are discussed.     

Relationships between individual-level factors and burnout: A meta-analysis of Chinese participants

We meta-analytically tested the relationships between job burnout dimensions (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment) and five factor model personality traits, personal resources, and coping strategies in Chinese participants. It showed that most of the variables considered were significantly related to job burnout dimensions in the expected direction. A comparison of the results of this study with Alarcon’s meta analysis showed that the correlations of burnout with individual level factors were in the same direction, but the magnitudes of the effect sizes differed to a certain extent. Implications of the findings and future research directions were discussed.     

Searching for Specificity Between Cognitive Vulnerabilities and Mood and Anxiety Symptoms

Using two large nonclinical samples (N = 725), relations between five targeted cognitive variables [intolerance of uncertainty, negative problem orientation, perfectionism/certainty, responsibility/threat estimation, and importance/control of thoughts] and mood [depression] and anxiety [social anxiety, generalized anxiety, and obsessive–compulsive] symptoms were examined. Analyses provided multiple levels of specificity, including zero-order correlations, partial correlations controlling for the effects of positive and negative affect, regression analyses, and hierarchical structural modeling. Results were that (a) intolerance of uncertainty showed relative specificity to anxiety versus depression symptoms and (b) negative problem orientation was common to mood and anxiety symptoms. Although certain analyses suggested that (c) perfectionism/certainty specifically predicted generalized anxiety and (d) both responsibility/threat estimation and importance/control of thoughts were unique predictors of obsessive–compulsive symptoms, these three cognitive variables inconsistently predicted symptom scores across the two studies. Conceptual and therapeutic implications are discussed.     

The Data Box and Within-Subject Analyses: A Comment on Nesselroade and Molenaar (2016)

Nesselroade and Molenaar suggest that it is the relationships between latent variables within subjects that are invariant across subjects and thus the appropriate unit of analysis. We disagree and take the view that between-factor correlations may differ systematically across subjects. Further, individual differences in these correlations may be an important source of information about each unique individual. Following from this premise, analyses of consistencies and differences between subjects of the within-subject pattern of interfactor correlations is a step toward an integrative science of behavior. We give several examples demonstrating how this approach has the potential to yield novel insights into personality functioning.     

Understanding the Relationship of Trauma,Substance Use,and Resilience Among Religiously Affiliated University Students

This study examined patterns of association between experiencing 12 traumatic life events, resilience, and substance use at a conservative church-affiliated university. The authors used data (N?=?278) from a Health Risk and Protective Factors Study that was conducted during the 2012 spring semester. Initial bivariate analysis indicated several significant positive and negative associations between three of the traumatic life event variables and alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco use within the past year and between two of the traumatic life event variables and alcohol use within the past 30 days. Preliminarily, resilience was only inversely associated with amphetamine use within the past year for men. When examined further using partial correlations to clarify these relationships while controlling for resilience, strong significant positive associations were found specifically between experiencing a disaster-type event and alcohol use within the past year and within the past 30 days for men only. Overall significant moderate positive associations were found between experiencing parental divorce and alcohol use within the past year, and between experiencing a disaster-type event and alcohol use within the past year and within the past 30 days. Use of two-way between-groups ANOVA found no significant interaction among these variables. Results may suggest that experiencing certain traumatic life events and male gender are more likely connected to alcohol use behaviors, whereas resilience may have multiple pathways for adaptive coping.     

Modeling Common Traits and Method Effects in Multitrait-Multimethod Analysis

Method effects often occur when constructs are measured by different methods. In traditional multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) models method effects are regarded as residuals, which implies a mean method effect of zero and no correlation between trait and method effects. Furthermore, in some recent MTMM models, traits are modeled to be specific to a certain method. However, often we are not interested in a method-specific trait but in a trait that is common to all methods. Here we present the Method Effect model with common trait factors, which allows modeling “common” trait factors and method factors that represent method “effects” rather than residuals. The common trait factors are defined as the mean of the true-score variables of all variables measuring the same trait and the method factors are defined as differences between true-score variables and means of true-score variables. Because the model allows estimating mean method effects, correlations between method factors, and correlations between trait and method factors, new research questions may be investigated. The application of the model is demonstrated by 2 examples studying the effect of negative, as compared with positive, item wording for the measurement of mood states.     

The temporal stability of some Rorschach features

One hundred nonpatient adults, screened for evidence of personality disorganization, were retested after a three-year interval to study the temporal consistency of the Rorschach. In general, the correlational analysis for 19 basic variables studied, and a directionality analysis for five ratios, illustrate a considerable sturdiness over time. It is postulated that these variables can be separated into situational related indices (state variables), and more stable scores indicative of durable response styles (trait variables), based on the assumption that variables with lower correlations would identify state variables, while the higher correlations would signify the trait features. Nine of the 19 variables yield retest correlations in excess of.     

Supervisors as SMEs: The Relationship Between Supervisor Job Experience and Ratings of Subordinate Skill Importance

This study investigated the relationship between supervisor job experience and ratings of the importance of eight skill components for performing subordinates' jobs. When examining these correlations, statistical control was utilized to ensure that supervisor and subordinate characteristics confounded with supervisor job experience were not affecting hypothesized relationships. As predicted, there were statistically significant positive correlations between supervisor job experience and ratings on 6 of the 8 components. Also as predicted, controlling for the characteristics confounded with supervisor job experience made a substantial difference in results; 13 of the 16 correlations using statistical control significantly differed from correlations that did not. This illustrates that future research on SME characteristics should consider controlling variables confounded with the focal characteristic(s) under study in order to more thoroughly understand characteristic–rating relationships. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed and suggestions for future research are offered.     

DO SITUATIONAL VARIABLES ACT AS SUBSTANTIVE CAUSES OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCE VARIABLES? TWO LARGE-SCALE TESTS OF “COMMON CAUSE” MODELS

James, Demaree, Mulaik, and Ladd (1992) proposed that situational variables may act as substantive ("common") causes of relationships between individual difference variables as well as statistical artifacts (i.e., measurement unreliability) associated with these variables, thus invalidating assumptions of current validity generalization/meta-analysis procedures. In this investigation, we report the results of two large-scale studies designed to test hypothesized relationships derived from two "common cause" models. Study 1 examines relationships between store-level organizational climate variables and employee satisfaction and performance variables for 33,097 sales personnel in 537 retail stores. Study 2 investigates relationships between store-level situational constraints and customer service perception and shopping variables for 31,611 customers from 564 retail stores. The results of these studies did not support the proposition that situational variables act as substantive causes of correlations among the respective employee and customer variables or the variances and reliabilities of these variables. The implications of these findings for meta-analyses in applied psychology as well as the generalizability of the findings are discussed.     

Neuroanatomical substrates of age-related cognitive decline

There are many reports of relations between age and cognitive variables and of relations between age and variables representing different aspects of brain structure and a few reports of relations between brain structure variables and cognitive variables. These findings have sometimes led to inferences that the age-related brain changes cause the age-related cognitive changes. Although this conclusion may well be true, it is widely recognized that simple correlations are not sufficient to warrant causal conclusions, and other types of correlational information, such as mediation and correlations between longitudinal brain changes and longitudinal cognitive changes, also have limitations with respect to causal inferences. These issues are discussed, and the existing results on relations of regional volume, white matter hyperintensities, and diffusion tensor imaging measures of white matter integrity to age and to measures of cognitive functioning are reviewed. It is concluded that at the current time the evidence that these aspects of brain structure are neuroanatomical substrates of age-related cognitive decline is weak. The final section contains several suggestions concerning measurement and methodology that may lead to stronger conclusions in the future.     

Organizing principles of involvement in human rights and their social anchoring in value priorities

Two questionnaire studies were conducted (N=80 and N=175) to examine the structure and the social anchoring of the organizing principles of personal and governmental involvement concerning human rights. The results indicated that these organizing principles had, as hypothesized one abstract and one applied dimension. The second study evaluated the correlations between these dimensions and values. Results were consistent with Schwartz's (1992) model predicting both the internal structure of values and their relations with other variables. Amongst other results, self-transcendence values were positively correlated with the abstract involvements and the applied personal involvement, and negatively with the applied governmental involvement. The results concerning the correlations between conservation values and the four organizing principles were the opposite. Results concerning the links between different levels of social anchorings, particularly between the value types and variables such as religious affiliation and practice political preferences, and social and political activism were also presented and discussed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Achievement age-death age correlations alone cannot provide unequivocal support for the precocity-longevity hypothesis

This study is a further exploration (see S. J. H. McCann, 2001) of the capacity of the selection bias and life expectancy artifacts to produce correlations between peak achievement ages and death ages that could be mistakenly construed as support for the precocity-longevity hypothesis that those who reach career pinnacles earlier tend to have shorter lives. For 1,672 governors, 10 fake achievement age variables and 10 fake death age variables were randomly generated. Fake achievement age variables were correlated with real death age; fake death age variables were correlated with real achievement age. However, the real age correlations were much larger than the fake age correlations, and when the 2 artifacts were controlled through a subsample strategy, only real age correlations were significant. Overall, the results support the precocity-longevity hypothesis.     

Functional and dysfunctional impulsivity, depression, and suicidal ideation in a prison population

D. Lester (1993) was not able to show any association between dysfunctional impulsivity and suicidal ideation, but he did find a negative correlation between suicidal ideation and functional impulsivity. The correlation was weak and was not significant when depression was controlled for. Given the fact that college students were the participants in that study, the low correlations may have resulted from insufficient variance in the data. In the current study, data were collected from prisoners (half of whom had recently attempted suicide); correlations among the variables were stronger (but still quite low) than the correlations found in Lester's study. As expected, the association between dysfunctional impulsivity and suicidal ideation was stronger than that between functional impulsivity and suicidal ideation. However, consistent with Lester's study, these correlations were not significant when depression was controlled for. Results indicate that a direct association between impulsivity and suicidal ideation is unlikely.     

Unidimensional factor models imply weaker partial correlations than zero-order correlations

In this paper we present a new implication of the unidimensional factor model. We prove that the partial correlation between two observed variables that load on one factor given any subset of other observed variables that load on this factor lies between zero and the zero-order correlation between these two observed variables. We implement this result in an empirical bootstrap test that rejects the unidimensional factor model when partial correlations are identified that are either stronger than the zero-order correlation or have a different sign than the zero-order correlation. We demonstrate the use of the test in an empirical data example with data consisting of fourteen items that measure extraversion.     

The Correlations Between Parliamentary Debate Participation,Communication Competence,Communication Apprehension,Argumentativeness, and Willingness to Communicate in a Japanese Context

Studies focusing on debate as pedagogy have been gaining attention recently. However, most research has employed policy debate, which is a traditional debate style. Parliamentary debate, which is an impromptu debate style, has been recently gaining popularity worldwide. As minimal research exists on parliamentary debate as pedagogy, the present study examined the correlations between parliamentary debate participation, communication competence, communication apprehension, argumentativeness, and willingness to communicate. Moreover, this study aimed to investigate the unique characteristics of communication variables and correlations with the experience of participating in a parliamentary debate in a Japanese context, an area that interests many scholars. The results showed some differences in correlations between Japanese and United States samples, which was explained by analyzing a trait of Japanese culture that is characterized as highly contextual. Regarding the correlations between communication variables and parliamentary debate participation, significant differences were found for all variables except for communication competence, where less communication apprehension, more argument approach, less argument avoidance, and more willingness to communicate were observed compared to non-debaters. Finally, the study findings revealed that those with parliamentary debate experience obtained lower scores for communication apprehension and higher scores for argumentative approaches compared with those who did not have such experience; the effect sizes were smaller in women than men. These findings suggest that parliamentary debate participation is an effective way to foster communication variables.

     

Study on a Christian Chinese sample: sense of self-worth,well-being and locus of control

The purpose of this study was to explore Chinese Christians’ sense of self-worth, well-being, locus of control and the correlations between these variables. One hundred and two Chinese Christians with a range of 18–40 years old were surveyed by the Scale of Self-worth, Chinese version of General Well-Being Scale and internal–external Locus of Control Scale. A control group of 134 Chinese non-Christians participated in the same survey. Christians scored lower on locus of control and higher on self-worth than the non-Christians. No significant general well-being difference was between the Christian and non-Christian samples. The correlations were significant between locus of control and self-worth/general well-being (negative) and between self-worth and general well-being (positive). Results suggest that Christians experience better self-worth and tend to be internals on locus of control.     

Mood and personality: A search for the causal relationship1

Previous findings of correlations between mood and personality variables were noted. It was suggested that the establishment of a causal relationship was crucially important, not merely to the understanding of how mood is related to personality but to the conceptualization of mood as a source of error in personality measurement as well. A prior attempt to establish a causal role for mood failed, but may have done so for methodological reasons. The present study investigated the influence of a mood manipulation on personality measures. There was also an opportunity to replicate prior correlational findings independent of the effect of the mood manipulation. College students were asked to think of happy, sad, or affectively neutral events and then filled out several personality measures. A manipulation check confirmed that different moods were induced by this procedure. The prior correlations between mood and personality variables were replicated, but the mood manipulation did not affect any of the personality measures. The implications of these results for personality measurement and for the relation between mood and behavior were discussed.