Development of Teaching Skills and Relations to Theory of Mind in Preschoolers

The aims of this research were to examine the development of teaching skills in preschool children and to explore the relation between teaching and theory of mind (ToM). After learning a new board game, 3.5-, 4.5-, and 5.5-year-old children (N = 46) were asked to teach a confederate who “doesn't know how to play the game.” They also received two ToM tasks. Children's teaching skills increased significantly with age: older children taught longer, explained more rules, used more strategies when teaching, and were more likely to recognize and attempt to correct “errors” committed by the confederate. After being controlled for age, individual differences in ToM were significantly correlated with the number of strategies used when teaching. This research suggests that a dynamic teaching task is sensitive to developmental changes and that aspects of children's teaching may serve as a window into their developing understanding of mental states.     

MMPI–2 Characteristics of Transsexuals Requesting Sex Reassignment: Comparison of Patients in Prehormonal and Presurgical Phases

Forty-three medical students and 78 nursing students each filled out four copies of the Interpersonal Check List. The subjects described self, ideal self as physician or nurse, and typical and ideal work partner. For each questionnaire the two summary scores Dom and Lov were computed. The results indicate a discrepancy between concepts of self and ideal self and the results also point to considerable disagreement between medical students and nursing students about their roles on the physician-nurse team.     

The Mediating Role of Peritraumatic Dissociation and Thought Control Strategies on Posttraumatic Stress in Women Survivors of Child Sexual and Physical Abuse

This study examined the link between cognitive coping strategies, type of abuse, and posttraumatic stress symptomatology. In a sample of 294 undergraduate women, several key findings emerged: (a) reported use of cognitive coping strategies significantly differed based on the type of abuse; (b) some differences in posttraumatic stress symptomatology emerged based on the type of abuse; (c) once the cognitive coping strategies were accounted for, the type of abuse was no longer associated with posttraumatic stress symptomatology. These findings suggest that peritraumatic dissociation, punishment, and social control significantly mediated the relationship between the type of abuse and posttraumatic stress symptomatology. This is important information for interventionists striving to help their clients maximize already-occurring adaptive strategies (e.g., social control).     

Validation of the Impulsive/Premeditated Aggression Scale in College Students

ABSTRACT

Impulsive (IA) and premeditated (PM) aggression reflect functions of aggressive behavior that may have differential correlates and clinical utility. The purpose of this study was to extend the use of the Impulsive/Premeditated Aggression Scale (IPAS) for characterizing aggression in a college student sample. Three hundred forty students completed the IPAS, Buss and Perry's (1992) Buss, A. H. and Perry, M. 1992. The Aggression Questionnaire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63: 452–459. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] Aggression Questionnaire (AQ), and measures of childhood maltreatment and negative life events. Principal components analyses supported reliable IA and PM factors. The degree of IA was significantly higher than that of PM. Convergent validity for the IA scale was supported with significant relationships with certain AQ scales. Implications for studying aggressive functions in this age group may inform violence prevention and treatment on college campuses.     

Domain‐specific impulsivity in school‐age children

Impulsivity is a salient individual difference in children with well‐established predictive validity for life outcomes. The current investigation proposes that impulsive behaviors vary systematically by domain. In a series of studies with ethnically and socioeconomically diverse samples of middle school students, we find that schoolwork‐related and interpersonal‐related impulsivity, as observed by teachers, parents, and the students themselves, are distinct, moderately correlated behavioral tendencies. Each demonstrates differentiated relationships with dimensions of childhood temperament, Big Five personality factors, and outcomes, such as report card grades. Implications for theoretical conceptions of impulsivity as well as for practical applications (e.g. domain‐specific interventions) are discussed.     

Time of Day Affects Episodic Memory in Older Adults*

ABSTRACT

The neuropsychological test scores of 2,030 cognitively normal older adults were examined to evaluate performance patterns as they related to time of day (TOD) at which testing was initiated. Multiple regression analyses were used to examine the association of TOD with scores on seven neuropsychological tests used in the clinical evaluation of dementia. Episodic memory performance was significantly related to TOD, while memory span and verbal fluency were not. Best performance occurred during early morning hours and late afternoon; worst performance occurred mid-day (i.e., noon). These findings may have implications for clinical assessment, the design of research on dementia, and the daily functioning of older adults.     

Social relevance enhances memory for impressions in older adults

Previous research has demonstrated that older adults have difficulty retrieving contextual material over items alone. Recent research suggests this deficit can be reduced by adding emotional context, allowing for the possibility that memory for social impressions may show less age-related decline than memory for other types of contextual information. Two studies investigated how orienting to social or self-relevant aspects of information contributed to the learning and retrieval of impressions in young and older adults. Participants encoded impressions of others in conditions varying in the use of self-reference (Experiment 1) and interpersonal meaningfulness (Experiment 2), and completed memory tasks requiring the retrieval of specific traits. For both experiments, age groups remembered similar numbers of impressions. In Experiment 1 using more self-relevant encoding contexts increased memory for impressions over orienting to stimuli in a non-social way, regardless of age. In Experiment 2 older adults had enhanced memory for impressions presented in an interpersonally meaningful relative to a personally irrelevant way, whereas young adults were unaffected by this manipulation. The results provide evidence that increasing social relevance ameliorates age differences in memory for impressions, and enhances older adults’ ability to successfully retrieve contextual information.     

Locus of evaluation control,task directions,and type of problem effects on creativity

Abstract:

Ninety‐one eleventh‐graders from one suburban, middle‐class high school completed one realistic and one unrealistic divergent thinking problem. Students were randomly assigned to groups directed to think of unique or common ideas, and their locus of evaluation control was assessed. Internal males and external females were most fluent on the unrealistic task, but males asked to give common ideas and females asked to give unique instructions were the most original. Results were discussed in terms of gender role stereotypes and their differential effects on males’ and females’ creative problem solving.     

Opening the Creative Mind of High Need for Cognitive Closure Individuals through Activation of Uncreative Ideas

Drawing on the integrative system theory of creativity combining the person, process, and press perspectives, this research offers the first evidence of how high-need-for-cognitive-closure (NFC) individuals’ creative mind can be opened up, by making them become more cognizant of uncreative ideas as consensually invalid solutions to creative problems. A validation study was conducted to first establish the utility of a newly developed chocolate design task. In the second study, half of the participants were made aware of conventional chocolate designs by drawing these designs before generating a revolutionized design of chocolate; the other half did not have to draw out the conventional designs first. Results confirmed that, given the opportunity to cognize uncreative solutions, high-NFC participants who had a higher creative ideation potential became the most creative. Their low-NFC counterparts, however, did not seem to benefit from the trigger of uncreative solutions. The implication that holding onto a chronic motive to attain cognitive closure or epistemic certainty is not necessarily detrimental to creative performance was discussed.     

The Numerical Stroop Effect in Primary School Children: A Comparison of Low,Normal, and High Achievers

Sixty-six primary school children were selected, of which 21 scored low on a standardized math achievement test, 23 were normal, and 22 high achievers. In a numerical Stroop experiment, children were asked to make numerical and physical size comparisons on digit pairs. The effects of congruity and numerical distance were determined. All children exhibited congruity and distance effects in the numerical comparison. In the physical comparison, children of all performance groups showed Stroop effects when the numerical distance between the digits was large but failed to show them when the distance was small. Numerical distance effects depended on the congruity condition, with a typical effect of distance in the congruent, and a reversed distance effect in the incongruent condition. Our results are hard to reconcile with theories that suggest that deficits in the automaticity of numerical processing can be related to differential math achievement levels. Immaturity in the precision of mappings between numbers and their numerical magnitudes might be better suited to explain the Stroop effects in children. However, as the results for the high achievers demonstrate, in addition to numerical processing capacity per se, domain-general functions might play a crucial role in Stroop performance, too.