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.     

Parental stress, coping styles, and social supports in chinese families with hepatitis-b-carrying children

The purpose of the study was to examine the hypothesis that parents’ psychological well-being can be affected by a child’s illness and their social situations. In this study, we discuss the roles of coping, social support and situational context related to stress. These factors cannot only affect stress levels but can also influence whether the individual adopts a certain type of coping style for stressful events. Parental stress, coping styles and social support were compared between groups of parents of Hepatitis B virus (HBV) carrier children or healthy children. Results showed that parents of affected children were significantly more stressed and psychologically at risk, and tended to mobilize personal resources and to rely more on themselves to solve stressful life events. They also sought help from social resources more often than did parents of healthy children. Parents of healthy children had a higher number of close friends and relatives available to them. Ninety Chinese parents and their HBV or healthy children participated in this study. These families were all living in the city of Guangzhou, China.     

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.     

A modified Aitken Pivotal Condensation Method for partial regression and multiple correlation

In this modification of the Aitken Pivotal Condensation Method for obtaining partial regression weights and multiple correlation coefficients, the unit matrices used by Aitken are eliminated, with a resultant decrease in the computational work. Through a simplified arrangement of successive matrices, each one is reduced by the same simple rule. Other modifications also contribute to ease of computation and facilitate checking.     

Terrorists and Democrats: Individual Reactions to International Attacks

Three experiments conducted in 1997 and 1998 explored individual responses to reported fictitious international conflict involving the United States and other nations. Participants escalated the conflictual level of their responses to repeated attacks. In Experiment 1, escalation of conflict was greater in response to terrorist attacks than to military ones. In Experiment 2, after the initial attacks, men were more conflictual in responding to terrorist attacks by a democratic nation than by a nondemocratic nation, whereas the opposite pattern was found for women. In Experiment 3, participants responded with a higher level of conflict to terrorist attacks on military targets than to attacks on cultural/educational targets. Participants with greater personality dominance showed steeper escalation of conflict in their responses across successive attacks. These results are interpreted within the framework of an image theory of international relations and an expansion of the democratic peace hypothesis.     

Trade-offs in detecting letters and comprehending text.

Critics of the letter detection task have questioned whether findings from that paradigm reflect normal reading processes. The present study addresses these questions using a new computerized version of the letter detection task in which reading rate along with letter detection and comprehension accuracy are examined. Previous letter detection findings were replicated with this new computerized task. Different conditions were compared in which detection and comprehension instructions were manipulated as well as the salience of the target letters. The requirement to comprehend had small effects on letter detection accuracy and reading rate, and letter detection only modestly reduced comprehension. Thus, the procedures developed in this study permit examination of the component processes contributing to performance in the letter detection task.     

Global inhibition and midcourse corrections in speeded aiming

When some perceptual-motor relationships are reversed, participants might adopt a global inhibition strategy that replaces all normal movements with reversed movements. In two experiments, participants practiced moving a cursor from a start position to target locations. In a perceptual-motor reversal condition, in which horizontal but not vertical movements were reversed, participants were trained to move only to certain locations. Testing involved moving to all locations under the same reversal condition. Training on a subset of locations yielded partial transfer to untrained locations. These results support a global inhibition hypothesis modified to include both midcourse corrective movements and training specificity.     

A mental practice superiority effect: less retroactive interference and more transfer than physical practice

Two experiments explored the benefits to retention and transfer conferred by mental practice. During familiarization, participants typed 4-digit numbers and took an immediate typing test on both old and new numbers. Participants then typed old 4-digit numbers, either physically or mentally, with either a different response configuration or the opposite hand from that used during familiarization. On a delayed test, participants physically typed both old and new numbers with the same response configuration and hand used during familiarization. Mental practice led to less retroactive interference and more transfer than did physical practice, supporting the hypothesis that mental practice strengthens an abstract representation that does not involve specific effectors.     

Age-related positivity enhancement is not universal: older Chinese look away from positive stimuli

Socioemotional selectivity theory postulates that with age, people are motivated to derive emotional meaning from life, leading them to pay more attention to positive relative to negative/neutral stimuli. The authors argue that cultures that differ in what they consider to be emotionally meaningful may show this preference to different extents. Using eye-tracking techniques, the authors compared visual attention toward emotional (happy, fearful, sad, and angry) and neutral facial expressions among 46 younger and 57 older Hong Kong Chinese. In contrast to prior Western findings, older but not younger Chinese looked away from happy facial expressions, suggesting that they do not show attentional preferences toward positive stimuli.