Structural validity and reliability of the Spanish version of the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI) in a sample of the general Spanish population

This paper introduces the validation of the Spanish adaptation of the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI) by Wegner and Zanakos (1994). A sample of 833 people from the general population completed the WBSI along with other questionnaires. The exploratory factor analysis and the confirmatory factor analysis supported a two-factor solution accounting for 51.8% of the cumulative variance. This structure is comprised of the two following factors: unwanted intrusive thoughts (alpha = .87, r = .70) and actions of distraction and suppression of thoughts (alpha = .80, r = .60). Both internal consistency reliability (alpha = .89) and test-retest reliability (r = .71) showed adequate homogeneity, sound consistency, and stability over time. The results are discussed bearing in mind both isolated factors and the possible relationships of the suppression factor with automatic negative thoughts and insomnia.     

Psychometric properties of the Reynolds Child Depression Scale in community and clinical samples

The factor structure of the Reynolds Child Depression Scale (RCDS; Reynolds, 1989), analyzed by confirmatory factor analysis and the scale's psychometric characteristics in a sample of 315 participants (140 boys and 175 girls) and a clinical sample of 62 participants (37 boys and 25 girls) between 10 and 12 years old, are presented. Two models are tested with confirmatory factor analysis: a one-factor model and a five-factor model. Both models show a good fit, but the one-factor model was chosen because it is the most parsimonious. The reliability coefficient ranged from .87 (at test) to .89 (at retest) in the community sample, and was .90 in the clinical sample (at test). Test-retest reliability was .66 in the community sample. Concurrent validity with other self-reports that measure depressive symptomatology was high, both in the community sample (.76) and the clinical sample (.71). There were no significant sex differences but there were differences due to age (school grade).     

Perceived fit with an academic environment: Attitudinal and behavioral outcomes

Because person–organization fit relates to important outcomes, and because fit is a time-dependent process, there exists a need to model longitudinal data related to fit. In a multi-university sample (N = 1174), we tested hypotheses concerning person–organization fit and various behavioral and attitudinal outcomes; correlations between changes in these variables over time, and the correlates of these changes. Using autoregressive modeling and latent growth curve modeling, results indicated that academic fit leads to academic satisfaction, which in turn leads to turnover intent, and to a lesser extent GPA and class absenteeism. Changes in academic fit correlated highly with similar changes in satisfaction and GPA and with opposite changes in turnover intent. Academic satisfaction did not correlate with subsequent organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) as predicted; changes across these domains were significantly related, but were small. Consistent with our hypotheses, Realistic interests correlated negatively with changes in academic fit and satisfaction. Investigative interests were correlated positively with changes in fit and initial satisfaction levels. We conclude by discussing implications, limitations, and future research concerning the longitudinal analysis of person–organization fit.     

Supervision and imagination

Abstract :  This paper explores the role of imagination for the supervisor and examines the differences between the supervisor's use of creative and defensive imagination. It is suggested that reverie and imagining play a central role in supervision but that these need to be harnessed in the service of the reality principle. It is argued that the Jungian emphasis on the ego-self relationship provides a context for this process. A clinical example of work with a supervisee is described in which hidden aspects of a strong erotic transference/countertransference were revealed in the supervisor's imagining and became available for reflection.     

An evaluation of intraverbal training and listener training for teaching categorization skills

The effects of vocal intraverbal training and listener training on the emergence of untrained categorization skills were evaluated. Five typically developing preschool children initially learned to name a number of previously unfamiliar visual stimuli. Each child then received one of two types of training. Intraverbal training involved reinforcing vocally emitted category names by the child in the presence of a spoken exemplar name. Listener training involved reinforcing the selection of visual stimuli by the child in the presence of a spoken category name. A multiple baseline design was used to evaluate the effects of training on each child's intraverbal category naming and stimulus selection. Pre- and posttests were used to assess additional emergent relations. Four of 5 participants did not demonstrate the emergence of any untrained relations. The current findings suggest that additional research is needed to determine the optimal sequencing of conditions in programs designed to teach categorization skills.     

Computer‐mediated communication: synchronicity and compensatory effort

Groups might perform compensatory communicative actions if media characteristics impede a particular communication process. The present study examined this hypothesis for the process of information integration, which is a sub‐task in collaborative problem‐solving. Synchronous media characteristics support the information integration process, while asynchronous media characteristics impede it. The synchronicity of the medium was varied by manipulating parallelism and the immediacy of feedback within real‐time, text‐based computer‐mediated communication. A Conversational Games Analysis (CGA) was performed in order to investigate the functional purposes of the task‐oriented contributions. All groups successfully solved the problem. However, groups interacting in the asynchronous communication mode produced significantly more functional contributions for the purpose of mutual task‐oriented understanding and clarification, compared to the synchronous groups. Moreover, members of asynchronous groups repeated unshared pieces of information more often. These differences are interpreted as communicative efforts that balance the hindering influence of asynchronous media characteristics on the process of information integration. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Young children's spontaneous use of geometry in maps

Two experiments tested whether 4-year-old children extract and use geometric information in simple maps without task instruction or feedback. Children saw maps depicting an arrangement of three containers and were asked to place an object into a container designated on the map. In Experiment 1, one of the three locations on the map and the array was distinct and therefore served as a landmark; in Experiment 2, only angle, distance and sense information specified the target container. Children in both experiments used information for distance and angle, but not sense, showing signature error patterns found in adults. Children thus show early, spontaneously developing abilities to detect geometric correspondences between three-dimensional layouts and two-dimensional maps, and they use these correspondences to guide navigation. These findings begin to chart the nature and limits of the use of core geometry in a uniquely human, symbolic task.     

Flexibility of cue use in the fox squirrel (Sciurus niger)

Recent work on captive flying squirrels has demonstrated a novel degree of flexibility in the use of different orientation cues. In the present study, we examine to what extent this flexibility is present in a free-ranging population of another tree squirrel species, the fox squirrel. We trained squirrels to a rewarded location within a square array of four feeders and then tested them on transformations of the array that either pitted two cue types against one cue type, the majority tests, or all cue types against each other, the forced-hierarchy test. In Experiment 1, squirrels reoriented to the two-cue-type location in all majority tests and to the location indicated by the visual features of the feeders in the forced-hierarchy test. This preference for visual features runs contrary to previous studies that report the use of spatial cues over visual features in food-storing species. In Experiments 2-5 we tested squirrels with different trial orders (Experiments 2 and 3), a different apparatus (Experiment 4) and at different times of the year (Experiment 5) to determine why these squirrels had chosen to orient using visual features in the first experiment. Like captive flying squirrels, free-ranging fox squirrels showed a large degree of flexibility in their use of cues. Furthermore, their cue use appeared to be sensitive both to changes in the test apparatus and the season in which we tested. Altogether our results suggest that the study of free-ranging animals over a variety of conditions is necessary for understanding spatial cognition.     

The combined effect of gaze direction and facial expression on cueing spatial attention

Empirical evidence shows an effect of gaze direction on cueing spatial attention, regardless of the emotional expression shown by a face, whereas a combined effect of gaze direction and facial expression has been observed on individuals' evaluative judgments. In 2 experiments, the authors investigated whether gaze direction and facial expression affect spatial attention depending upon the presence of an evaluative goal. Disgusted, fearful, happy, or neutral faces gazing left or right were followed by positive or negative target words presented either at the spatial location looked at by the face or at the opposite spatial location. Participants responded to target words based on affective valence (i.e., positive/negative) in Experiment 1 and on letter case (lowercase/uppercase) in Experiment 2. Results showed that participants responded much faster to targets presented at the spatial location looked at by disgusted or fearful faces but only in Experiment 1, when an evaluative task was used. The present findings clearly show that negative facial expressions enhance the attentional shifts due to eye-gaze direction, provided that there was an explicit evaluative goal present.     

HMS: A MATLAB simulator of the Harris model of associative learning

Harris (2006) recently proposed a new elemental model of the processes involved in associative learning. Although Harris explicated all relevant mathematical and conceptual details of the model in his article, implementing a computer simulation of his model requires considerable programming expertise and work. We therefore present the Harris model simulator (HMS), a MATLAB simulator of Harris's model. HMS provides a graphical user interface for manipulating all essential parameter values and for controlling the simulation process, the graphical visualization of the simulation course, and the numerical results. HMS is available free of charge from www.staff.uni-marburg.de/(tilde)lachnit/harris/. HMS allows researchers to easily derive and evaluate predictions for the Harris model, and it will therefore facilitate insights into the mechanisms of associative learning.