Type a and Risk Taking in Everyday Money Matters

The purpose of the present study is to extend previous research investigating personality factors as determinants of financial risk taking in everyday money matters (e.g., personal investments and household affairs). Type A and Type B subjects were asked to make a series of everyday financial decisions that varied in degree of risk. Type A individuals took greater financial risks than Type B individuals. The results provide additional support for the influence of personality factors in everyday financial risk-taking behavior and demonstrated another area of risk taking associated with the Type A behavior pattern not previously identified.     

Relationship of Connected and Separate Knowing to Parental Style and Birth Order

A total of 249 primarily middle-class, Caucasian college students (141 females, 108 males) completed the Knowing Styles Inventory (KSI) (Knight, Elfenbein, & Messina, 1995) to measure Connected and Separate Knowing and the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ) (Buri, 1991), used to measure different parenting styles (authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive parenting). Authoritative parenting style of the mother was positively associated with Connected Knowing, while authoritative parenting style of the father was negatively related to Separate Knowing for both the female and male participants of the study. For the female participants only, permissive parenting style of the father was positively related to Separate Knowing. It was also found that first-born college students scored significantly higher on Separate Knowing than later-born students. The results suggest that family experiences may be precursors to the epistemologies of college students.     

The impact of comorbidity on the management of pathological gambling

A 30-year-old woman with severe pathological gambling and cyclothymia presented to our program with no previous history of pharmacologic or psychotherapeutic treatment. Pathological gambling is an impulse -control disorder not otherwise specified (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition) in which comorbidity is common, particularly with substance abuse, obsessive-compulsive disorder and mood disorders. As described in this case, pathological gamblers with bipolar comorbidity may be effectively treated with mood stabilizers such as lithium. After receiving 10 weeks of lithium treatment, the patient showed improvement in both gambling behavior and affective instability. The identification of specific subtypes among patients with pathological gambling may be relevant to the choice of pharmacologic treatment.     

Principle explanation and strategic schema abstraction in problem solving

This study was undertaken to examine the effects of strategic schema-acquisition tasks (problem comparison or problem construction) and the method of principle explanation (abstract or embedded principle method) on schema acquisition. Ninety-eight subjects studied a set of problems in probability, presented according to either method of principle explanation. Half the subjects in each principle-explanation group were then asked to compare analogous problems, and the rest constructed new analogous problems. To determine whether subjects generalized problem schemas, they were given new analogous problems to solve. The results showed that when the abstract principle method was used, schema acquisition was better in problem comparison; but with the embedded principle method, schema acquisition was better in problem construction. Results were discussed in relation to the importance of some fit between the presentation of problem information and the processes that will draw from or build on this information in tasks designed to allow novice problem solvers to acquire advanced problem representations.     

Asymmetric activation of number codes in bilinguals: further evidence for the encoding complex model of number processing

In two experiments, Filipino-English bilinguals were asked to verify simple addition equations that were presented either in digit, verbal-Filipino, or verbal-English formats and that included different types of sum probes. The main results show (1) faster and more accurate processing of digit and English items than of Filipino items, (2) stronger associative interference by type of probe with the digit and English items compared with the Filipino items, and (3) priming of responses from English to digit codes, and from Filipino to digit codes, but not vice versa. The results were explained by using an elaborated version of Campbell's (1994) encoding complex model with additional assumptions to address the experience of bilinguals. The additional assumptions relate to the preference among the bilingual's two verbal formats, the different strengths of activation pathways within each format, and the asymmetric activation across formats.     

Canceling updating in the comprehension of counterfactuals embedded in narratives

Participants were given counterfactual sentences--for example, "If Mary had won the lottery she would have bought a Mercedes car"--or factual sentences--for example, "Because Mary won the lottery, she bought a Mercedes car"--embedded in short narratives. Reading times showed that readers were immediately sensitive to the special status of counterfactual information (Experiment 1). In addition, probe-recognition latencies demonstrated that old information was more accessible in counterfactual than in factual stories, and new information was equally accessible in both kinds of stories (Experiment 2). However, after reading additional clauses, new information became less accessible in counterfactual than in factual stories (Experiment 3). These results suggest that counterfactual events are momentarily represented but are later suppressed and the readers' attention goes back to previous events in the story.     

Multimodal intervention program to improve attention deficits

Is it possible to learn to attend? The purpose of this article is to provide information about the development, administration, and contrast of an intervention program to improve selective and sustained attention in students from 5 to 19 years of age, all attending school, and with difficulties to learn the academic materials corresponding to their age. Two groups participated in the study: one with difficulties in selective attention and the other with difficulties in sustained attention. The group with selective attention difficulties was made up of 102 students, of whom 59 made up the experimental group and 43 the control group. The group of students with difficulties in sustained attention was made up of 106 students, of whom 58 participated as the experimental group and 48 as the control group. The results indicate that this kind of intervention (which combines visual therapy, cortical activation, and training with activity banks) is effective to improve attentional deficits, both at the level of selective attention and of sustained attention.     

Patients are not fully human: a nurse's coping response to stress

In this article, dehumanization of patients was studied as a strategy used by nurses to cope with stress. Affective organizational commitment (AOC) and affective commitment to patients (ACP) were tested as moderators. We also explored how nurses' humanity attributions to their in‐group relate to stress symptoms. Participants were nurses working in different wards of an Italian urban hospital. Findings showed that perceiving patients as not fully human was related to lower levels of stress symptoms for nurses with high AOC and ACP, but not for nurses with low AOC and ACP. Moreover, for highly committed nurses, the attribution of uniquely human traits to the in‐group was associated with increased stress symptoms. Implications of findings for the relationship between nurses and patients are discussed.     

Life Design Counseling: A study on client's operations for meaning construction

This study evaluated the adequacy of the micro-theory of client operations to explain meaning construction during Life Design Counseling. Four adolescents were interviewed about their second counseling session. Their recollections were stimulated through the replay of counseling videotapes. The resulting transcribed interviews were qualitatively analyzed. Results confirmed a sequence of client operations evolving from the symbolic representation of experience and reflexive self-examination towards making new realizations and revisioning self. Moreover, clients reported negative and positive session moments evidencing that clients' attention and activity during the session was not restricted to meaning construction operations. Practical implications for life design counseling are derived from the results and discussed.