Religiosity and self-destructive crises in the institutionalized elderly

The relationship of religiosity to self-destructive behavior has largely been considered in terms of the impact of religious affiliation, or church membership, on rates of suicide for various geographical populations. This study departs from that approach and focuses instead on the relationship of intensity of religious commitment to the use of indirect life-threatening behavior (ILTB) among elderly, chronically ill hospital patients. A rating scale to measure the occurrence of ILTB was developed and administered to a sample of 58 patients in a Veterans Administration hospital. Findings for this sample indicate that intensity of religious commitment is a potentially more meaningful measure of religiosity than is formal church membership, that intensity of religious commitment tends to vary inversely with the extent of ILTB observed for the patient, and that "stigma avoidance" may play a role in the tendency for certain religious affiliates to make more extensive use of ILTB.     

Environmental factors in suicide in long-term care facilities.

One major purpose of this study was to identify environmental factors related to suicide in long-term care facilities. Questionnaires were mailed to a random sample of administrators at 1,080 facilities. Information was collected on facility characteristics, overt suicide, and intentional life-threatening behavior. Chi-square analyses revealed 4 environmental characteristics related to suicidal behavior and deaths from suicide: staff turnover, size, auspices, and per diem cost. More suicides occurred in larger facilities and facilities with higher staff turnover. Religious or "other" facilities experienced more suicidal deaths than public or private facilities; facilities charging less experienced more deaths.     

Personality and drug testing: An exploration of the perceived fairness of alternatives to urinalysis

Paper-and-pencil inventories have been suggested as a less invasive alternative to urinalysis drug testing. Using 702 students in three experiments, an overt integrity test, a personality inventory, an interest inventory and a no-testing control condition were compared. Subjects reacted most positively when no testing was required. When drug testing was required, subjects were most satisfied with either overt tests or urinalysis, and least satisfied with the personality inventory. Attempts to increase the acceptability of personality testing by providing explanations and rationale had no effect on subjects' attitudes.We wish to express our appreciation to Andrew Colfelt for his assistance in research design and data collection, and to Kevin Murphy and Terry Stecher for their comments on previous drafts of this paper.     

Mothers' Parenting and Young Economically Disadvantaged Children's Relational and Overt Bullying

We examined links between mothers' parenting and children's relational bullying and overt bullying in a sample of children attending a Head Start program. Mothers completed surveys and face-to-face interviews. Head Start teachers completed assessments on children. Results indicated that a small percentage of children in the sample was rated by teachers as engaging in relational bullying “frequently to almost always,” and slightly over half of the sample was rated by teachers as engaging in relational bullying “occasionally to about half of the time.” Similar results were found for the frequency with which children engaged in overt physical bullying. Regarding mothers' parenting, maternal empathy was most strongly correlated with both children's relational bullying and overt physical bullying. In addition, mothers' inappropriate developmental expectations for children and mothers' need to exert power over children rather than grant them independence were related to children's relational bullying. A composite variable for mothering predicted 11% of the variance in children's relational bullying. No gender differences were found for children's relational bullying and children's overt bullying.     

攻击行为对儿童受欺负的预测：社会喜好的中介效应及性别差异

摘 要 以455名武汉某小学四、五、六年级的儿童为被试,采用同伴提名法、班级戏剧问卷,考察了不同性别儿童的外部攻击、关系攻击、社会喜好与受欺负之间的关系,重点检验了社会喜好在不同类型攻击行为与受欺负之间的中介效应及性别差异。结果表明：（1）小学儿童的外部攻击、关系攻击、社会喜好与受欺负之间均存在显著相关;其中男生的外部攻击与社会喜好、关系攻击与社会喜好的相关系数均显著高于女生;（2）小学儿童在外部攻击和社会喜好维度上得分存在显著的性别差异,男生的外部攻击得分显著高于女生,社会喜好得分显著低于女生;（3）社会喜好分别在外部攻击、关系攻击与受欺负之间存在中介效应,且外部攻击和关系攻击对社会喜好的预测系数均存在显著性别差异,表现为外部攻击、关系攻击对社会喜好的预测作用男生显著高于女生;社会喜好对受欺负的预测系数存在显著的性别差异,表现为社会喜好对受欺负的预测作用女生显著高于男生;而外部攻击和关系攻击对受欺负的预测系数均不存在性别差异。     

Neuropsychological Impairment of Face Recognition Units

Despite the absence of “conscious”, overt identification, some patients with face recognition impairments continue covertly to process information regarding face familiarity. The fact that by no means all patients show these covert effects has led to the suggestion that indirect recogntion tasks may help in identifying different types of face recognition impairment. The present report describes a number of experiments with the patient NR, who, after a closed head injury, has been severely impaired at recognizing familiar faces. Investigations mostly failed to show overt or covert face recognition, but NR performed at an above-chance level in selecting the familiar face on a task requiring a forced-choice between a familiar and an unfamiliar face. This discrepancy between a degree of rudimentary overt recognition and absence of covert effects on most indirect tests was addressed using a cross-domaim identity priming paradigm. This examined separately the possibility of preserved recognition for faces that NR consistently chose correctly in a forced-choice familiarity decision and those on which he performed at chance level. Priming effects were apparent only for the faces that were consistently chosen as “familiar” in forced-choice. We suggest that NR's stored representations of familiar faces are degraded, so that face recognition is possible only via a limited set of relatively preserved representations able to support a rudimentary form of overt recognition and to facilitate performance in matching and priming tasks.     

Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality Assessment in Conjunction with the 80th Annual Meetings of the American Psychological Association

Summary: Investigated the relationship between thresholds for perception of aggressive cues and overt aggressive behavior in 86 male undergraduate students. Overt aggressive behavior was measured by the amount of shock the subject attempted to inflict on his presumed opponent. It was found that individuals with low thresholds for aggressive cues expressed less overt aggressive behavior while individuals with high thresholds for aggression expressed more overt aggression. Thus an inverse relationship was found with respect to perceptual recognition thresholds for aggressive stimuli and overt aggressive behavior. The implications of these findings for projective techniques and their relevance to perception as it relates to overt behavior were discussed.     

An Empirical Examination of Overt and Covert Integrity Tests

This study investigated the relationship between overt and covert integrity tests. Undergraduate college students completed both an overt and covert integrity test, a personality test, a survey about counter-productive behavior, and a survey about attitudes toward tests. Both the overt and covert integrity tests were predictive of self reports of theft admissions and counterproductive behaviors. While different personality constructs were related to each integrity test, hierarchical regression indicated the personality subtests predicted additional variance for both the overt and covert integrity tests. Differential effects for integrity test type on test-taking attitudes were also found.     

Development of covert and overt hostility scales from the Buss-Durkee Inventory

The purpose of this study was to develop covert and overt hostility scales from the Buss-Durkee Inventory. First, 22 covert hostility and 29 overt hostility items were identified by the authors. Second, an item analysis was done to assess the content saturation of the individual items on these scales. This analysis yielded the final form for 7 items for covert hostility and 14 for overt hostility. Cronbach alphas for the covert and overt scales were .67 and .77, respectively, and their intercorrelation was .08. Correlations for these Buss-Durkee scales with several existing measures of anger expression were consistent with expectations.     

The relation of student behavior, peer status, race, and gender to decisions about school discipline using CHAID decision trees and regression modeling

Peer nominations and demographic information were collected from a diverse sample of 1493 elementary school participants to examine behavior (overt and relational aggression, impulsivity, and prosociality), context (peer status), and demographic characteristics (race and gender) as predictors of teacher and administrator decisions about discipline. Exploratory results using classification tree analyses indicated students nominated as average or highly overtly aggressive were more likely to be disciplined than others. Among these students, race was the most significant predictor, with African American students more likely to be disciplined than Caucasians, Hispanics, or Others. Among the students nominated as low in overt aggression, a lack of prosocial behavior was the most significant predictor. Confirmatory analysis using hierarchical logistic regression supported the exploratory results. Similarities with other biased referral patterns, proactive classroom management strategies, and culturally sensitive recommendations are discussed.     

Narcissism and Adult Attachment: A Multivariate Approach

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between maladaptive narcissism, attachment anxiety, and attachment avoidance. The secondary objective of the present research was to explore further the differences between overt and covert forms of narcissistic vulnerability. Female participants (N = 171) completed measures of adult attachment, overt narcissism, and covert narcissism. Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) explored the multivariate relationship between overt and covert narcissism, on one hand, and adult attachment dimensions of anxiety and avoidance, on the other hand. CCA indicated the two linear combinations of variables overlapped significantly and shared about a quarter of their variance in common. The most important variable within the narcissism set was covert narcissism; and within the adult attachment set, both anxiety and avoidance were important, but the former more than the latter. The implications of the present findings are discussed in the context of past and future research on personality, attachment, and the experience of emotions.     

Overt head movements and persuasion: a self-validation analysis

The authors report 3 experiments that examine a new mechanism by which overt head movements can affect attitude change. In each experiment, participants were induced to either nod or to shake their heads while listening to a persuasive message. When the message arguments were strong, nodding produced more persuasion than shaking. When the arguments were weak, the reverse occurred. These effects were most pronounced when elaboration was high. These findings are consistent with the "self-validation" hypothesis that postulates that head movements either enhance (nodding) or undermine (shaking) confidence in one's thoughts about the message. In a 4th experiment, the authors extended this result to another overt behavior (writing with the dominant or nondominant hand) and a different attitude domain (self-esteem).     

Gender Differences in Predicting Antisocial Behaviors: Developmental Consequences of Physical and Relational Aggression

This study investigated gender differences in the relationship of early physical and relational aggression to later peer rejection and overt and covert antisocial behaviors. Significant gender differences were found indicating physically aggressive boys were more likely than girls to experience later peer rejection. Early physical aggression was related to later overt antisocial behavior for boys and girls, and more strongly for girls than for boys. Early relational aggression was not associated with later forms of antisocial behavior. In the context of early physical aggression, for boys and girls peer rejection generally served to increment risk for later overt and covert antisocial behavior in an additive fashion. The data suggest some gender specificity in the social risk processes associated with the development of early overt and covert antisocial behaviors.     

Programmed Instruction: Construction Responding, Discrimination Responding, and Highlighted Keywords

Skinner (1958) expressed the need for an increase in the effectiveness and efficiency of education. In particular, he suggested that programmed instruction could provide such efficiency. The present study used a within-subject design to compare the effects of four types of instructional materials; those requiring overt construction responses, overt discrimination responses, covert reading of text with highlighted key words, and covert reading of standard text. The materials requiring overt responding produced greater learning than did the covert reading materials, with or without highlighting. There was no difference found between the two types of overt responding; nor were there differences between the two types of covert reading materials. Thus, this study supports the assumption that overt responding is more effective. However, the overt response materials also required proportionately more time. Therefore, this showed no benefit of overt responding in terms of efficiency.     

Is overt stuttered speech a prerequisite for the neural activations associated with chronic developmental stuttering?

Four adult right-handed chronic stutterers and four age-matched controls completed H(2)(15)O PET scans involving overt and imagined oral reading tasks. During overt stuttered speech prominent activations occurred in SMA (medial), BA 46 (right), anterior insula (bilateral), and cerebellum (bilateral) plus deactivations in right A2 (BA 21/22). These activations and deactivations also occurred when the same stutterers imagined they were stuttering. Some parietal regions were significantly activated during imagined stuttering, but not during overt stuttering. Most regional activations changed in the same direction when overt stuttering ceased (during chorus reading) and when subjects imagined that they were not stuttering (also during chorus reading). Controls displayed fewer similarities between regional activations and deactivations during actual and imagined oral reading. Thus overt stuttering appears not to be a prerequisite for the prominent regional activations and deactivations associated with stuttering.     

The Human Movement Factor (M) in the Rorschach,Motor Activity,and Behavior

The relationship between the M response and one of its basic theoretical components, overt motor activity, measured by participation in varsity level sports and related activities, was determined. 114 Ss were assigned to a participant group and 108 Ss to a non-participant group. The Group Rorschach, the Group Form of Coan’s Individual Movement Cards, and the Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey were administered. The results failed to confirm Rorschach’s theory that overt motor activity inhibits kinesthetic perception. Flexor movement was significantly associated with non-participation. The participant group scored significantly higher in Factors G (General Activity), A (Ascendance), S (Sociability), and E (Emotional Stability) of the Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey. Intellectual functioning appeared as the most important factor in M production.     

‘Until that magical day…no campus is safe’: reflections on how transgender students experience gender and stigma on campus

Based on interview data garnered from two transgender university students (transman and transwoman) and a reflexive narrative analysis, this research found that some transgender students experience overt forms of gender discrimination, violence, and stigma on campus spaces. Particularly troubling are the inadequate athletic facilities, social organizations, and counselling resources available to trans students. There is a need to have more readily available staff members educated on trans needs and human rights. That said, some narratives emphasize the activist and resilient roles some trans students undertake to make campuses a safer and more gender-inclusive space for trans and cisgender communities. Given the small sample size, the goal of this paper is to raise larger awareness toward the social issues present amongst transgender students, and emphasize the need for further research on gender diversity, marginalization, stigma, and best practices within campus spaces.     

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN OVERT AND PERSONALITY-BASED INTEGRITY TESTS

Overt and personality-based integrity tests are used for the same purposes, but the relationship between the two kinds of measures is unclear. Moreover, although the construct validity of personality-based integrity measures is well understood, the psychological meaning of overt integrity measures is unclear. A sample of applicants ( N = 2,168) for driver, warehouse, and clerical jobs completed an overt integrity test (Reid Report), a personality-based integrity test (Employee Reliability Index) and a measure of normal personality (Hogan Personality Inventory). A principal components analysis of the intercorrelations between the overt and the personality-based integrity item responses revealed four themes: (a) punitive attitudes, (b) admissions of illegal drug use, (c) reliability, and (d) theft admissions. A model testing for a general conscientiousness factor provided a good fit for the overt and personality-based integrity test variables, although item overlap between the two test types was minimal. Finally, the punitive attitudes and theft admissions components of the Reid item pool are most closely related to the Big Five personality factors of conscientiousness and emotional stability; the Reid component of illegal drug use was unrelated to personality measures.     

Thinking about thinking and feeling about feeling

Traditional clinical psychology generally posits "mental" events that differ from "behavioral" events. Mental events are not publicly observable, take place in a different dimension from overt behavior, and are the topic of primary concern. For example, mental events are often taken to be causes of troublesome overt behavior. In addition, the mental events themselves may be regarded as troublesome, independent of their relation to any specific overt behavior. Therapy is usually aimed at fixing these troublesome mental events, under an assumption that improvement in the client's status will follow in due course. Behavior analysis has its own position on the relations among clinical matters, overt behavior, and such private events as thinking and feeling. In a behavior-analytic view, private events are behavioral phenomena rather than mental phenomena. They are not initiating causes of behavior; rather, they are themselves caused by antecedent conditions, but they may contribute to discriminative control over subsequent behavior, both verbal and nonverbal. Verbal processes are viewed as vitally important in understanding troublesome behavior. However, the circumstances that cause both the troublesome private events and the troublesome behavior in the first place still need to be addressed. Finally, clinical behavior analysis will need to market its insights into diagnosis and treatment very adroitly, because it rejects the mentalism upon which most traditional forms of therapy are predicated and the mentalism that most consumers expect to encounter.     

The Importance of Overt Responding in Programmed Instruction Even with Added Incentives for Learning

Among the fundamental tenets of programmed instruction is the requirement of overt responding. Past research has not determined when this tenet holds true. We systematically replicated the work of Tudor (1995) by showing that overt responding in computer-based instruction improves learning, even when there is an incentive that might be thought to improve learning enough to mask the effect of overt responding. Subjects were exposed to both read-only and overt-response materials. One group received course-related, bonus points based on posttest performance, whereas the other group received points simply for participation. Within-subject comparison showed greater performance increases when overt responding was required, regardless of the point incentive. No significant differences were found between groups.