Judgments and definitions of sexual harassment by high school students

This study considers how high school students perceive incidents of possible sexual harassment toward students and how they define sexual harassment. Thirty-five male and 38 female high school seniors (44% Asian-American; 40% white, non-Hispanic; 6% Indian-American; 4% African-American; 3% Hispanic; and 3% other ethnic groups) evaluated scenarios that varied the type of sexual harassment, the status of the initiator (either teacher or student), and the gender composition of the dyad (either male toward female or female toward male). As predicted, type of harassment influenced ratings of severity. Compared to male respondents, female respondents rated the scenarios as more severe. Teachers were judged more critically than students. Differences in status were more apparent at less severe levels of harassment. In defining harassment, students relied on four factors: the behavior itself, the target's reaction to the behavior, the perpetrator's intentions, and the relationship that existed between the two people. Overall, the findings underline the importance of examining high schools as a locale for harassment.This study was originally conducted by the first author as a Westinghouse Science project at Stuyvesant High School, with the guidance of the second and third authors.     

Session helpfulness and session evaluation in short‐term counselling

The relationship between perceived session helpfulness and session evaluation was examined in 11 dyads during eight sessions of short‐term counselling. Results based on the Session Evaluation Questionnaire (Stiles, 1980) showed that, for clients, while depth, arousal, and positivity correlated with perceived session helpfulness, only depth and positivity entered a stepwise regression, yielding a multiple correlation of 0.76. For counsellors, while depth and positivity correlated with session perceived helpfulness, only depth entered the stepwise regression analysis, with a correlation of 0.70. Session depth also consistently correlated with change in perceptions of helpfulness from one session to another. Clients had higher depth scores for sessions that both participants rated as helpful. They had lower depth scores for sessions rated as less helpful by both participants or for sessions where participants disagreed in their helpfulness ratings. The centrality of counselling depth in affecting experiences of counselling helpfulness is discussed.     

PREVENTION OF DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS IN SCHOOLCHILDREN:

Abstract— After teaching cognitive and social-problem-solving techniques designed to prevent depressive symptoms, we followed 69 fifth- and sixth-grade children at risk for depression for 2 years. We compared these children with 49 children in a matched no-treatment control group The prevention group re- ported fewer depressive symptoms through the 2-year follow-up, and moderate to severe symptoms were reduced by half. Surprisingly, the effects of the prevention program grew larger after the program was over. We suggest that psychological immunization against depression can occur by leaching cognitive and social skills to children as they enter puberty     

Children’s reading skills: A comparison of traditional and computerized assessment

Student’s ability to read computer text was investigated by comparing reading performance on decoding and phonetics tests of the Woodcock-Johnson (Revised) Tests of Achievement, Forms A and B. Fifty-one students completed one form of the reading tests through the traditional administration method and a second form using computer administration. Initial form and administration order were counterbalanced. Coefficients of equivalence of .91 and .86 were obtained for traditional and computer administration methods of the two tests. The results are interpreted as indicating that computer-administered reading tests can assess the same domains as traditional measures, and that they may become increasingly important in the complete assessment of functional reading skills.     

Aggressivity,inattention, hyperactivity,and impulsivity in boys at high and low risk for substance abuse

Aggressivity, inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity are cardinal dimensions of externalizing behavior problems of childhood. They are diagnostic and clinical features of childhood disorders, and are thought to be linked to the subsequent development of adult disorders such as substance abuse (SA). Little is known, however, about the convergent and discriminant validity of these four constructs. We used multiple measures to develop indices of aggressivity, inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity in a sample of 10- to 12-year-old boys (N=183) with and without a family history of SA. Data were taken from mother reports, child reports, teacher reports, and laboratory tasks. The study aims were (1) to test the convergent and discriminant validity of aggressivity, inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity; (2) to examine whether the data were consistent with a model specifying the four constructs as indicators of one superordinate factor; and (3) to differentiate boys with and without a family history of SA in construct scores. The results supported the convergent and discriminant validity of the four constructs. Although discriminable, the constructs covaried strongly and were consistent with a model specifying them as indicators of a single superordinate factor. Boys with a family history of substance abuse scored higher than control boys on aggressivity, inattention, and impulsivity scores, but the groups did not differ on hyperactivity scores. The results are discussed in terms of the role of childhood behavior problems in vulnerability to SA.This work was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse grant No. DA 05605.     

Temporal coordination of alternative and simultaneous aiming movements of constrained timing structure

Two experiments are reported addressing the preparation and initiation of movements with equal or unequal timing properties for both hands. Temporal coordination was examined in two movement tasks: one in which both hands performed the movements simultaneously (simultaneous aiming task) and one in which only one alternative of two possible movements was executed (choice aiming task). For each task a different group of subjects was used. Besides the timing relationships between both movements, the effects of preparation interval (1, 3, and 5 s), the average velocity (7, 14, 17.5, and 70 cm/s), the presence of advance information about the required velocity of the movement(s), and practice were investigated. Based on the common- and the specific-timing notions, distinct hypotheses were tested as to the effects of the variables on the temporal coordination as revealed by reaction time. A main result was that the effects of timing differences between the hands was task specific. For the choice task the data are in agreement with the common-timing notion of coordination, i. e., only one timing demand at a time can be prepared, whereas in the simultaneous task evidence was obtained for the specific-timing notion, i. e., independent preparation and initiation of different timing properties for the hands. However, it is argued that the results of the choice task probably do not reflect a general inability to prepare movements of different timing requirements for both hands, but is related to a task-specific strategy of selective preparation.     

The role of verbal ability in the processing of complex verbal information

Summary This study investigated the relation between psychometric mental-ability test scores and several reaction-time measures; a simple-reaction task, a choice-reaction task, the Posner and Mitchell (1967) letter-identification task, and a variation of the sentence-verification task. Scores on the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices and the Verbal Subtest of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SATV) were obtained. The less complex information-processing tasks replicate earlier studies in which general intelligence was only marginally related to reaction-time measures. The sentence-verification task systematically varied task complexity. Several direct and derived measures from the task were significantly correlated with psychometric mentalability measures. However, even though a number of precautions were taken to ensure that the sentence-verification task assessed purely verbal-processing efficiency, there was little evidence for an important task-specific relation between verification measures and verbal ability. Moreover, despite its relative verbal complexity, sentence verification did not reflect a greater relationship to verbal ability than other tasks did. Overall, the information-processing efficiency measures used in this study suggested a fairly general, rather than a task-specific, relationship to intellectual ability.The research presented in this paper was conducted while the first author was affiliated with the University of Georgia, U. S. A.     

Conditional Control of Fluid Consumption in an Occasion Setting Paradigm Is Independent of Pavlovian Associations

Drug states, flavors, and contextual cues were each trained as conditional discriminative stimuli to control a saccharin-LiCl association. In transfer tests, drug states transferred control over consumption to other flavored solutions and to food. Contexts and flavors transferred control only to other flavored solutions. Pavlovian control groups given direct pairings of context-LiCl or flavor-LiCl did not show reliable transfer. However, these control groups did show greater or the same aversion to the specific context or flavor predicting LiCl compared to the context or flavor discrimination groups. The dissociation of the discrimination and Pavlovian groups on transfer versus preference tests suggests that performance on the occasion setting task cannot be due to simple excitation or learning about a unique compound cue. Data from extinction procedures provide further support for the dissociation between simple excitation and occasion setting.     

CONSTRUCT ACCESSIBILITY AND THE MISATTRIBUTION OF AROUSAL:

Abstract— Schachter and Singer (1962) showed that people search the immediate environment for emotionally relevant cues to label and interpret unexplained physiological arousal We investigated how unobtrusively activated cognitions and physiological arousal interact to produce emotional experience when the immediate environment is devoid of relevant cues Subjects were primed with positive, negative, or neutral concepts They then either exercised or sat still and, either immediately or after a delay, rated their emotional state Consistent with what Schachter and Singer found, subjects in the exercise, delayed-rating condition, who lacked an obvious explanation for their arousal, made the most extreme affective self-ratings, which were consistent with the valence of the primed concepts These subjects apparently interpreted their residual arousal in terms of the primed concepts Subjects in the exercise, immediate-rating condition, who had an explanation for their arousal (i e, the exercise), were not influenced by the primes Subjects in the no-exercise condition showed typical priming effects, with prime-consistent self-ratings that decayed over time Implications for emotion formation, misattnbution of arousal, and cognition are discussed     

Menstrual-related perceptual changes in women with premenstrual syndrome: Factors to consider in treatment

The state-dependent model of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) suggests that women's perceptions of daily stressors are affected by menstrual cycle phase. Our objective was to further examine the applicability of this model to perceptions of specific kinds of daily stressors and to explore its generalizability to perceptions involving significant others. Thirty-two undergraduate women, 10 PMS and 22 asymptomatic controls, completed the Daily Stress Inventory (DSI) and the Daily Rating Form (DRF) for 35 days. Questionnaires measuring perceived social support and self-esteem were completed premenstrually and postmenstrually. Results indicated that all women perceived a greater number of stressors as being severe premenstrually as compared to postmenstrually. Furthermore, all women perceived a lesser number of signifcant others as being present in their social support network premenstrually. However, only the PMS women were less satisfied with their social support and had more negative self-esteem premenstrually as compared to postmenstrually. Results are discussed within the context of designing treatment intermentions for women with PMS.