EMPIRICALLY DERIVED INJURY PREVENTION RULES

This study describes a set of empirically derived safety rules that if followed, would have prevented the occurrence of minor injuries. Epidemiologists have criticized behavioral interventions as increasing “safe” behavior but failing to demonstrate a decrease in injury. The present study documents retrospectively the link between safe behavior and injury. It demonstrates that these empirically derived rules are very similar to rules for the prevention of serious injury. The study also shows that these rules are not widely accepted and implemented by parents. Suggestions for future research in this area are advanced.     

The Influence of Contextual Factors on Afro-American and Euro-American Children's Performance: Effects of Movement Opportunity and Music

The present study sought to further establish that contextual factors informed by certain postulated cultural experiences could influence performance on a learning task. Towards this end, low income Afro-American and Euro-American children learned to pair pictures in an acquisition context that allowed for them to coordinate movement with music (High Movement Expressive [HME]) and in an acquisition context which allowed for little movement opportunity and no music (Low Movement Expressive [LME]). Children were subsequently tested for picture pair retention in a context where music was present or in a context where music was absent. The findings revealed that Afro-American children's tested performance was superior with the HME acquisition context, while Euro-American children's performance was superior with the LME context. In addition, music present at testing context seemed to have an independent enhancing effect only on Afro-American children's performance. The cultural and educational implications of these findings are discussed as are recommendations for future research.     

Physiological and nonverbal correlates of extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism during active and passive coping

Correlations of extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism with state anxiety, physiological arousal, and facial expressivity were assessed in 45 adolescents during a passive task (venipuncture) and an active coping task (speech). Task was a major determiner of the relationship between these variables. During venipuncture heart-rate increase was positively correlated with state anxiety, neuroticism, and anxiety expression and negatively correlated with extraversion. However, during the speech, HR change was negatively correlated with state anxiety and nonverbal indices of anxiety, but was positively correlated with extraversion and positive nonverbal expression. Skin conductance change findings were weaker but, when occurring, were in the same direction as the HR findings. Extraversion was highly associated with all nonverbal expressivity measures: inversely correlating with venipuncture and speech anxiety expression and positively correlating with venipuncture and speech positive expression. Neuroticism was positively correlated with nonverbal expression of anxiety during venipuncture but not speech. Psychoticism correlated positively with nonverbal positive expression during both venipuncture and speech.     

What are the Marital Problems of Happy Couples? A Multimethod,Two-Sample Investigation

How couples handle marital conflict may depend on what issues they are facing, as some issues may be more difficult to resolve than others. What is unclear, however, is what issues happy couples face and how these issues may be different for couples depending on their developmental stage. To explore this possibility, the current study used both self-reports and observations drawn from two separate samples of happily married couples—one early in middle adulthood (N = 57 couples; average marital duration = 9 years) and one in older adulthood (N = 64 couples; average marital duration = 42 years). Results indicated that all issues were relatively minor, but early middle-aged couples reported more significant problems than did older couples. As to determining the most salient topic for happy couples, it depended on the spouses’ gender, developmental stage, and how salience was assessed (i.e., highest rated issue vs. most discussed issue). Only moderate links were found between what happy couples said was their most serious concern and what they actually tried to resolve during observations of marital problem-solving, but there were differences in how spouses behaved based on the proportion of their time discussing certain topics. Findings suggest that more attention should be devoted to understanding what marital issues happy couples discuss and why, as doing so may reveal how couples maintain their marital happiness.     

Bridging the idiographic-nomothetic divide: a follow-up study

In a replication and extension of Grice (2004), participants in the current study rated themselves and other known individuals on scales constructed from their own personal constructs and on marker items for the Big Five model personality traits. Confirmatory components analyses revealed excellent fit for the Big Five Model when applied to aggregate trait ratings but highly variable fit when applied to participants' individual ratings. Comparisons of the personal construct and trait ratings indicated an approximate average overlap of only 51%, and additional analyses revealed several factors that contributed to the uniqueness of the personal constructs. These findings were discussed in the context of the idiographic-nomothetic distinction drawn in personality psychology.     

The development of children's rule use on the balance scale task

Cognitive development can be characterized by a sequence of increasingly complex rules or strategies for solving problems. Our work focuses on the development of children's proportional reasoning, assessed by the balance scale task using Siegler's (1976, 1981) rule assessment methodology. We studied whether children use rules, whether children of different ages use qualitatively different rules, and whether rules are used consistently. Nonverbal balance scale problems were administered to 805 participants between 5 and 19 years of age. Latent class analyses indicate that children use rules, that children of different ages use different rules, and that both consistent and inconsistent use of rules occurs. A model for the development of reasoning about the balance scale task is proposed. The model is a restricted form of the overlapping waves model (Siegler, 1996) and predicts both discontinuous and gradual transitions between rules.     

Variability in the anatomy of the planum temporale and posterior ascending ramus: do right- and left handers differ?

The anatomy of the planum temporale (PT) and posterior ascending ramus (PAR) was studied in vivo in 67 healthy right- and left-handed adults using MRI-based morphometry. The left PT was significantly larger than the right, and there was a weakly significant effect of the right PAR larger than the left. A leftward PT asymmetry was found in 72%, and a rightward PAR asymmetry was found in 64% of the sample. The "typical" configuration of a larger left PT and larger right PAR co-occurred in 56% of the subjects studied, which was only slightly more often than predicted by chance. Eight of 67 subjects had "reversed" PT and PAR asymmetries, with consistent left and mixed handers over-represented in this group. Right PAR size was the only variable that predicted writing hand, and left PT size was the only measure that differed by sex. The left PT was expanded relative to the left PAR in 93% of the sample, suggesting that this configuration may be developmentally regulated and may be a critical substrate for the development of language. These findings demonstrate that important relationships exist between hand preference, and the anatomy of posterior cortical language areas.     

Maternal self‐perceptions and reactions to infant crying among intrusive and withdrawn depressed mothers

This study compared intrusive (N =15) and withdrawn (N = 10) mothers' ratings of their own interaction styles with their infants and the behaviors of videotaped models of intrusive and withdrawn mothers. Withdrawn mothers rated themselves as less withdrawn than the model withdrawn mother. Intrusive mothers viewed themselves as more intrusive than the model intrusive mother. Both groups viewed their own infants as more outgoing than the infants of the model intrusive and withdrawn mothers. The withdrawn mothers reported feeling more distressed when they observed an infant (of an intrusive or withdrawn mother) crying, suggesting that they feel more empathy than the intrusive mothers. © 2001 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Peer group membership and a sense of belonging: their relationship to adolescent behavior problems

This study explored three aspects of peer group membership in adolescence: peer group affiliation, the importance of group membership, and a sense of peer group belonging. Each is considered in relationship to adolescents' behavior problems as measured by the Achenbach Youth Self-Report. Participants included an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of 733 adolescents ranging in age from 11 to 18 years. Girls reported more internalizing problems and boys reported more externalizing problems. Girls also reported a higher sense of peer group belonging than boys. When controlling for adolescent age, gender, ethnicity, parent's educational level, and family structure, a sense of peer group belonging was negatively related to internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Adolescents who viewed peer group membership as very important to them and had a positive sense of peer group belonging had significantly fewer behavior problems than those who viewed peer group membership as very important but did not have a positive sense of peer group belonging.     

SOCIAL COMPARISONS AND CONTENTMENT Exploring the Psychological Costs of the Gender Wage Gapi

This study explored the role of social comparison processes in fostering contentment among those who are objectively disadvantaged. We focus on how comparisons can produce gender differences in personal entitlement, perceptions of one's own performance, and pay satisfaction. We hypothesized that individuals would base judgments of entitlement, performance, and pay satisfaction more on comparisons with ingroup (same-sex) than outgroup (cross-sex) others, even when both types of comparison information were equally available, unavoidable, and made clear the disadvantaged status of the ingroup. As predicted, the amount students felt they were entitled to be paid, how well they thought they had performed (women only), and how satisfied they were with their pay were all influenced more by same-sex than cross-sex comparison information. The implications of these results for the tolerance of injustice among disadvantaged groups are discussed.