Developing and Validating the Perceived Parental Media Mediation Scale: A Self‐Determination Perspective

The aim of this study was to develop the Perceived Parental Media Mediation Scale (PPMMS). The PPMMS measures adolescents' perceptions about how frequently their parents restrict or actively discuss their media use, and in what style (i.e., autonomy‐supportive, controlling, or inconsistent). In a first study among 761 preadolescents and early adolescents (10–14 years), we confirmed that the subscales of the PPMMS could be distinguished. In a second study, in which 499 adolescents were surveyed again, the test–retest reliability and validity of the PPMMS were established. The PPMMS met the standards of reliability, validity, and utility. Subscales correlated in the expected directions with general parenting styles, family conflict, prosocial behavior, and antisocial behavior.     

Climate action now: How to fuel a social movement

Our research develops a framework that explores how to fuel the climate movement by accelerating grassroots, community-based climate action. Drawing on insights from consumer psychology, our framework identifies the psychological mechanisms that encourage and motivate people, both individually and collectively, to take climate action, thereby contributing to our understanding of how to advance social action and propel a social movement. Our climate action framework builds on: (1) individuals we describe as climate upstanders who rise up to take climate action with like-minded others, and (2) communities of climate upstanders who engage in collective action aimed at addressing the climate crisis. Our framework expands the field of consumer psychology by redefining the role of consumers to include the practice of social action and broadening the study of consumers to include collective, community-based action. We call on consumer psychologists to research individual and collective consumer practices related to social action and contribute to making social good central to the study of consumer psychology.     

Cell phones and grades: examining mediation by perceived control and anxiety

Social Psychology of Education - Considerable evidence shows that cell phone use (CPU) is detrimental to students’ academic achievement. However, researchers have yet to consider whether or...     

Studies in the Principles of Judgments and Attitudes: I. Two Basic Principles of Judgment

The psychological test performance of 10 seven-year-old boys from an isolated, rural Guatemalan village was compared with ratings of their intelligence made by 42 adult village members. The adults' judgments were found to correlate strongly with the children's performance on the Embedded Figures, Verbal Analogies, and Memory-for-Designs Tests.     

Attention,Memory, and Language after Pediatric Ischemic Stroke

A previous study evaluating receptive language after unilateral brain damage in childhood hypothesized lateralized attention and memory deficits without direct measurement. Our study directly measured attention, memory, and language in order to evaluate empirically the severity and laterality of sequelae. The performances of 11 individuals with a unilateral ischemic-lesion (7 right and 4 left hemisphere) were compared to controls matched on age, sex, and socioeconomic status. Results suggest subtle but persistent deficits in verbal memory, functional memory, and speed of processing after a lesion to either hemisphere. Lesions sustained before two years of age were associated with the lowest IQ scores. Our findings provide support for a configural representation of language that can to some extent compensate for inefficient or damaged components (Bates, 1994), and the middle-ground lateralization position (Thal et al., 1991) that asserts initial hemispheric specialization with the potential for reorganization.     

The Five-Factor Framing of Personality and Beyond: Some Ruminations

The five-factor conceptualization of personality has been presented as all-embracing in understanding personality and has even received authoritative recommendation for understanding early development. I raise various concerns regarding this popular model. More specifically, (a) the atheoretical nature of the five-factors, their cloudy measurement, and their inappropriateness for studying early childhood are discussed; (b) the method (and morass) of factor analysis as the exclusive paradigm for conceptualizing personality is questioned and the continuing nonconsensual understandings of the five-factors is noted; (c) various unrecognized but successful efforts to specify aspects of character not subsumed by the catholic five-factors are brought forward; and (d) transformational developments in regard to inventory assessment of personality are mentioned. I conclude by suggesting that repeatedly observed higher order factors hierarchically above the proclaimed five may promise deeper biological understanding of the origins and implications of these superfactors.     

The neural bases of difficult speech comprehension and speech production: Two Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) meta-analyses

The role of speech production mechanisms in difficult speech comprehension is the subject of on-going debate in speech science. Two Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) analyses were conducted on neuroimaging studies investigating difficult speech comprehension or speech production. Meta-analysis 1 included 10 studies contrasting comprehension of less intelligible/distorted speech with more intelligible speech. Meta-analysis 2 (21 studies) identified areas associated with speech production. The results indicate that difficult comprehension involves increased reliance of cortical regions in which comprehension and production overlapped (bilateral anterior Superior Temporal Sulcus (STS) and anterior Supplementary Motor Area (pre-SMA)) and in an area associated with intelligibility processing (left posterior MTG), and second involves increased reliance on cortical areas associated with general executive processes (bilateral anterior insulae). Comprehension of distorted speech may be supported by a hybrid neural mechanism combining increased involvement of areas associated with general executive processing and areas shared between comprehension and production.