Tri-ethnic alcohol use and religion,family, and gender

Nine different behavioral responses to alcohol by over two hundred ninth-graders in Austin, Texas, were examined in a survey designed to identify the relationship between adolescents' alcohol use, religious affiliation, religiosity, and gender. The relationship between alcohol use and family adaptability was also examined. While religious affiliation was found to be mildly predictive of use, religiosity determined only specific behavior. Gender differences in alcohol use appeared to be narrowing. Family adaptability was the most predictive variable, showing a relationship with six of the nine kinds of alcohol behavior. Future studies of family influences on adolescents' alcohol behavior and alcohol use among females are recommended.     

Full-time studying and long-term relationships: Make or break for mature students?

Results are reported of a 2-year longitudinal study looking at the effects of full-time degree study on full-time mature students who were also in long-term committed relationships. The findings from the first year of the research suggested that while there were particular stresses for students with domestic responsibilities; the single most buffering effect was support from the student's partner. The follow-up study in the second year confirmed these findings, but also suggested that there was a decrease in the amount of partner support experienced in the second year. The implications for counselling and student support services are discussed.     

The role of item distinctiveness in short-term recall of order information

In two experiments, we examined short-term recall of order information using a partial-report distractor task. We manipulated the characteristics of a single letter in one of two four-letter segments. Participants knew in advance the identity of the letters in each segment. We made a single letter distinctive at presentation either by printing it in red or by replacing it with a red dash. Presenting the letter in red did not affect overall recall of the positions of the letters in the segment but did facilitate specific recall of the position of the distinct letter. Replacing the letter with a red dash inhibited overall recall as well as specific recall of the distinct letter. Participants were also less likely to respond in the regular output order when there was a dash replacing a letter in the segment. These effects of distinctiveness are explained in terms of output order processes in recent versions of the perturbation model.     

Same—differentjudgments of multiletter strings: Insensitivity to positional bias and spacing

Several recent studies of multiletter matching have included pairs of strings that have-the-same letters in different positions (rearranged pairs). The task can be defined such that these rearranged pairs are correctly classified asdifferent (i.e., subjects respond “same” only if the strings have the same letters in the same positions—the order task) or assame (i.e., subjects respond “same” if the strings have the same letters regardless of their positions—the item task). The order task produces left-to-right serial-position effects, whereas the item task produces U-shaped serial position effects. Because these differences suggest that subjects may be able to exert strategic control over the comparison process, two sets of experiments were designed to test whether or not subjects can change the relative weightings devoted to the respective serial positions. In Experiments 1 and 2, the probability that a mismatch occurred in the different positions was manipulated. In Experiments 3 and 4, the physical spacing between letters, as well as whether or not the spaces were filled with neutral noise characters, was varied. None of the manipulations had much influence on the serial-position effects. Thus, the distinct serial-position effects for the order and item tasks apparently are mandatory and not due-to-any voluntary-comparison strategy.     

Checklist procedures and the cost of automaticity

Automaticity is usually discussed in terms of its benefits. Automaticity has, however, a cost that manifests itself in procedures that are highly routinized but require close attention, such as verbal checklist procedures. In such procedures, errors occur because the routine leads to automaticity. In three paper-and-pen experiments, we tested this manifestation and investigated ways to decrease automaticity in verbal checklist procedures. In the experiments, subjects proofread sets of multiplication problems to detect erroneous operations, simulating the checklist procedure. In Experiments 1 and 2, two conditions were compared: a fixed-order condition (in which each set contained operations in the same order) and a varied-order condition (in which the operations were in a different order in each set). In Experiment 1, proofreading times were measured to establish the role of fixed sequential order as a consistent environment promoting the emergence of automaticity. In Experiment 2, we introduced errors into the material, and in Experiment 3 we introduced “alerting” conditions to interfere with the development of automaticity. The results indicated that the subjects in the varied-order and alert conditions detected significantly more errors than did those in the fixed-order condition. The implications of the findings for current theories of automaticity are discussed as well as those for the design of checklist procedures.     

Component Skills as Predictors of Chinese Reading Proficiency in Primary School Children

This study was designed to examine the relevance of some cognitive skills to Chinese reading and to identify those that distinguish readers of different proficiency levels. Third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade children were given two sets of tests, the Chinese Reading Proficiency Test and five component skill tests. Skills in word recognition and in comprehension were examined through tasks measuring component detection, lexical coding, memory for gist, knowledge of syntax, and use of context. Subjects' responses on the knowledge of syntax task and the lexical coding task were found to be most effective in predicting reading proficiency of the third graders, but not the fourth- and fifth-grade children. Instead, use of context task was the best predictor of the older children's reading proficiency.     

Specific fears as predictors of generalized anxiety in children

The study investigated the relationship between fear and anxiety in childhood. One hundred fifty-one children aged 6 to 11 years (mean=8.7 years) completed the Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised (FSSC-R) and the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS). Correlational analyses demonstrated that the FSSC-R and each of the fear factors were significantly correlated with each other and with the RCMAS score. A stepwise regression procedure was used to determine if the FSSC-R or any of its five factors was significantly related to scores on the RCMAS. Results indicated that Factor 1 (Failure and Criticism) accounted for 31% of the variance (p < .0001)and Factor 2 (Fear of the Unknown) accounted for an additional 1% of the variance (p < .03)in the RCMAS scores. The relationship between these results and those from a similar study with adults (Goetsch, Tishelman, & Adams, 1987), as well as how the results add to an understanding of childhood anxiety, is discussed.This study was supported by BRSG Grant S07RR0714917 from the Biomedical Research Support Grant Program, Division of Research Resources, National Institute of Health, to the Research Foundation of the State University of New York at Binghamton.     

Bringing “The Dead” to Life: Reading James Joyce

The author offers a personal reading of James Joyce's The Dead. She focuses on how the sounds of the language are used to portray the main character's deadness and his beginning to come to life once the barriers to inner self and self-knowledge are broken.     

Helping as a function of feeling state and nature of the helping behavior

The proposition that positive feelings increase helping because they increase the perception of personal power implies that if the person prefers not to help, positive feelings would decrease helping. This was tested in an experiment that varied feelings and pleasantness of the helping task. False meter feedback was used to manipulate feelings, and an indirect check on the manipulation showed that it was effective in varying feelings. As expected from the notion that positive feelings allow the person to feel free to refuse to help, there was an interaction between feelings and pleasantness of the helping task; positive feelings produced less helping than neutral or negative feelings when the helping task was unpleasant.This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.