Role of Timing of Visual Monitoring and Motor Rehearsal in Observational Learning of Action Patterns

This experiment tested the hypothesis that observational learning is enhanced by visual monitoring of enactments that is optimally timed for conception-action matching and by motor rehearsal that serves to refine the cognitive representation. Subjects observed a modeled action pattern, after which they enacted it with either concurrent, delayed, or no visual monitoring. They then engaged in motor rehearsal or did not rehearse the action pattern. Development of the cognitive representation of the modeled action was also measured. Concurrent visual monitoring of enactments greatly facilitated observational learning, whereas delayed visual monitoring did not affect the acquisition process. Rehearsal aided cognitive representation and behavioral reproduction. The more accurate the cognitive representation of the modeled action pattern, the more skilled were the subsequent reproductions of it. After gaining proficiency in converting conception to action, subjects showed no decline in reproduction accuracy when modeling and visual monitoring were withdrawn.     

Rorschach Indices of Perceptual and Conceptual Disorganization

Figure drawings were obtained from 97 preadolescent males who differed in self and behavioral assessments of self-esteem. These subjects had been selected from a much larger sample and represented five different types of self-esteem. The figure drawings were scored for 15 variables, dealing with formal characteristics, content, and global-interpretations of the total drawings. Five significant differences were obtained, with the content and global-interpretative categories proving more differentiating between self-esteem groups than did the formal characteristics. Behavioral expressions of self-esteem were more associated with figure drawing characteristics than were subjective evaluations. Discussion focuses on the nature of self-concept and self-esteem in children as a sensorimotor rather than symbolic expression.     

Generating Nonnormal Multivariate Data Using Copulas: Applications to SEM

This article develops a procedure based on copulas to simulate multivariate nonnormal data that satisfy a prespecified variance-covariance matrix. The covariance matrix used can comply with a specific moment structure form (e.g., a factor analysis or a general structural equation model). Thus, the method is particularly useful for Monte Carlo evaluation of structural equation models within the context of nonnormal data. The new procedure for nonnormal data simulation is theoretically described and also implemented in the widely used R environment. The quality of the method is assessed by Monte Carlo simulations. A 1-sample test on the observed covariance matrix based on the copula methodology is proposed. This new test for evaluating the quality of a simulation is defined through a particular structural model specification and is robust against normality violations.     

Costs and Benefits of Bullying in the Context of the Peer Group: A Three Wave Longitudinal Analysis

Whereas previous research has shown that bullying in youth is predictive of a range of negative outcomes later in life, the more proximal consequences of bullying in the context of the peer group at school are not as clear. The present three-wave longitudinal study followed children (N?=?394; 53 % girls; M _age?=?10.3 at Time 1) from late childhood into early adolescence. Joint trajectory analyses were used to examine the dynamic prospective relations between bullying on the one hand, and indices tapping perceived popularity, peer-reported social acceptance, self-perceived social competence, and internalizing symptoms on the other. Results show that although young bullies may be on a developmental path that in the long run becomes problematic, from the bullies’ perspective in the shorter term personal advantages outweigh disadvantages. High bullying is highly positively related to high social status as indexed by perceived popularity. Although bullies are not very high in peer-rated social acceptance, most are not very low either. Moreover, bullies do not demonstrate elevated internalizing symptoms, or problems in the social domain as indexed by self-perceived social competence. As bullying yields clear personal benefits for the bullies without strong costs, the findings underscore the need for interventions targeting mechanisms that reward bullying (198 words).     

Effects of anonymous peer observation on adolescents' preference for immediate rewards

Research suggests that the presence of peers influences adolescent risk‐taking by increasing the perceived reward value of risky decisions. While prior work has involved observation of participants by their friends, the current study examined whether observation by an anonymous peer could elicit similarly increased reward sensitivity. Late adolescent participants completed a delay discounting task either alone or under the belief that performance was being observed from a neighboring room by an unknown viewer of the same gender and age. Even in this limited social context, participants demonstrated a significantly increased preference for smaller, immediate rewards when they believed that they were being watched. This outcome challenges several intuitive accounts of the peer effect on adolescent risk‐taking, and indicates that the peer influence on reward sensitivity during late adolescence is not dependent on familiarity with the observer. The findings have both theoretical and practical implications for our understanding of social influences on adolescents' risky behavior.