Communal versus individual learning of a math-estimation task: African American children and the culture of learning contexts

The authors compared the performance of 78 African American 5th-grade students who studied a math-estimation task in one of two learning contexts. Learning contexts differed in the degree to which they afforded the expression of communalism. ANCOVA confirmed that posttest performance was best for students who studied in the high communal-learning context. The findings support A. W. Boykin's (1994) contention that the cultural context of learning can be a critical mediator of children's performance.     

Pain modulation during drives through cold and hot virtual environments.

Evidence exists that virtual worlds reduce pain perception by providing distraction. However, there is no experimental study to show that the type of world used in virtual reality (VR) distraction influences pain perception. Therefore, we investigated whether pain triggered by heat or cold stimuli is modulated by "warm "or "cold " virtual environments and whether virtual worlds reduce pain perception more than does static picture presentation. We expected that cold worlds would reduce pain perception from heat stimuli, while warm environments would reduce pain perception from cold stimuli. Additionally, both virtual worlds should reduce pain perception in general. Heat and cold pain stimuli thresholds were assessed outside VR in 48 volunteers in a balanced crossover design. Participants completed three 4-minute assessment periods: virtual "walks " through (1) a winter and (2) an autumn landscape and static exposure to (3) a neutral landscape. During each period, five heat stimuli or three cold stimuli were delivered via a thermode on the participant's arm, and affective and sensory pain perceptions were rated. Then the thermode was changed to the other arm, and the procedure was repeated with the opposite pain stimuli (heat or cold). We found that both warm and cold virtual environments reduced pain intensity and unpleasantness for heat and cold pain stimuli when compared to the control condition. Since participants wore a head-mounted display (HMD) in both the control condition and VR, we concluded that the distracting value of virtual environments is not explained solely by excluding perception of the real world. Although VR reduced pain unpleasantness, we found no difference in efficacy between the types of virtual world used for each pain stimulus.     

Historical origins of schizophrenia: two early madmen and their illness

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness with a remarkably short recorded history. Unlike depression and mania, which are recognizable in ancient texts, schizophrenia-like disorder appeared rather suddenly in the psychiatric literature of the early nineteenth century. This could mean that the illness is a recent disease that was largely unknown in earlier times. But perhaps schizophrenia existed, embedded and disguised within more general concepts of madness and within the arcane languages and cultures of remote times. Both possibilities present major challenges to historical and psychiatric scholarship. These challenges are explored in this paper by presenting two "new" cases of schizophrenia, one from the eighteenth and one from the fourteenth century. The cases suggest that the illness may have existed as early as the medieval period. However, establishing the population prevalence of schizophrenia in earlier times--and therefore resolving the permanence-recency debate--may not be a feasible enterprise.     

Personality and Church Attendance Among Artists

A sample of 157 adult artists completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire together with information about the frequency of church attendance. The data confirmed that church attendance is significantly associated with psychoticism scores, but independent of both extraversion and neuroticism.     

Engagement in Behavioral Parent Training: Review of the Literature and Implications for Practice

Engagement in behavioral parent training (BPT), including enrollment, attrition, attendance, within-session engagement, and homework completion, has long been a critical issue in the literature. Several estimates of various aspects of engagement have been suggested in the literature, but a systematic review of the available literature has never been accomplished. This review examines engagement data across 262 studies of BPT. Recruitment attrition, program attrition, attendance, and within-session engagement are examined across studies, with particular emphasis on the impact that SES, study purpose (efficacy vs. effectiveness), treatment format (individual vs. group), and age of child may have on those rates. Results of this review suggest that the significant amount of attrition occurs prior to enrollment in BPT, with at least 25 % of those identified as appropriate for BPT not enrolling in such programs. An additional 26 % begin, but drop out before completing treatment. Still the combined dropout rate of at least 51 % leaves at best half of identified parents completing treatment. While SES status had a small effect on attrition, other variables were not found to meaningfully impact engagement. Information on within-session engagement (homework and ratings of participation) was not often reported in studies. Key issues in this literature (e.g., varying definitions of engagement, limited attention to reporting key aspects of engagement) are discussed, and recommendations are made to further improve this important area of research and clinical practice.     

The role of race and teachers’ cultural awareness in predicting low-income,Black and Hispanic students’ perceptions of educational attainment

Demographic shifts in the United States have resulted in similar demographic shifts between K-12 teachers and their students, resulting in important implications for the educational outcomes of traditionally marginalized students and educators’ cultural awareness required in teaching diverse classrooms. Using data from the Three-City Teacher Study, this study examined students’ (N = 207; 55 % female; 52 % non-Hispanic Black, 48 % non-White Hispanic; mean age = 16.70 years, SD = 1.67) and teachers’ (N = 202; 71.5 % female; 64.3 % white; mean years of experience = 13.80 years, SD = 10.83) agreement on the potential educational attainment of the student. Specifically, we explored the probability that teachers had lower, matched, or higher perceptions of educational attainment compared to their low-income Black and Hispanic students’ perceptions of attainment while accounting for teachers’ and students’ reports of school connectedness, teachers’ cultural awareness, and moderating effects of students’ race. Results from multinomial logistic regressions found that teachers were more likely to have lower perceptions of educational attainment for Hispanic students compared to Black students. Teachers were also more likely to have lower perceptions when they perceived students to have low school connectedness. For Black students, teachers’ cultural awareness attenuated this association; that is, teachers were more likely to have higher perceptions of educational attainment for Black students when they reported higher cultural awareness. The reverse was true for Hispanic students. These results enhance our understanding of how teacher and student perceptions shape expectations of educational attainment with implications for teacher education and professional development domestically and internationally.     

Perfectionism and the pursuit of personal goals: A self-determination theory analysis

Previous studies have shown that self-critical and personal standards forms of perfectionism are associated with progress on personal goals in opposite ways. The present study used a 5-wave prospective longitudinal design to examine what motivational factors account for the finding that self-critical perfectionism has been reliably associated with poor goal progress whereas personal standard perfectionism has been associated with good progress. Specifically, we adopted a self-determination theory perspective to examine the role of autonomy in mediating the effects of perfectionism. Our results replicated previous findings linking the two forms of perfectionism with opposite patterns of goal progress. Importantly, the results suggested that the negative goal effects of self-critical perfectionism are mediated by lower levels of autonomous goal motivation. The results also demonstrated links from personal standards perfectionism to greater autonomous goal motivation. Interestingly, the effects of self-critical perfectionism on goal progress appeared to be dynamic over time and implicated affective mechanisms. The results of the investigation point to the value of adopting a self-determination theory perspective to understand perfectionism.     

How is the serial order of a verbal sequence coded? Some comparisons between models

Current models of verbal short-term memory (STM) propose various mechanisms for serial order. These include a gradient of activation over items, associations between items, and associations between items and their positions relative to the start or end of a sequence. We compared models using a variant of Hebb's procedure in which immediate serial recall of a sequence improves if the sequence is presented more than once. However, instead of repeating a complete sequence, we repeated different aspects of serial order information common to training lists and a subsequent test list. In Experiment 1, training lists repeated all the item-item pairings in the test list, with or without the position-item pairings in the test list. Substantial learning relative to a control condition was observed only when training lists repeated item-item pairs with position-item pairs, and position was defined relative to the start rather than end of a sequence. Experiment 2 attempted to analyse the basis of this learning effect further by repeating fragments of the test list during training, where fragments consisted of either isolated position-item pairings or clusters of both position-item and item-item pairings. Repetition of sequence fragments led to only weak learning effects. However, where learning was observed it was for specific position-item pairings. We conclude that positional cues play an important role in the coding of serial order in memory but that the information required to learn a sequence goes beyond position-item associations. We suggest that whereas STM for a novel sequence is based on positional cues, learning a sequence involves the development of some additional representation of the sequence as a whole.     

The effect of metronome pacing on selected aerodynamic patterns of stuttered speech: Some preliminary observations and interpretations

The purpose of this investigation was to provide some preliminary data regarding the effects of metronome pacing on physiological aspects of speech during stuttering. Five aerodynamic measures were chosen as dependent variables: (a) peak intraoral air pressure, (2) intraoral air pressure onset duration, (3) intraoral air pressure offset duration, (4) total intraoral air pressure duration, and (5) peak air flow rate. Five adult stutterers and five adult nonstutterers read a prose passage containing 12 English consonants, each in three syllable-initial stressed positions, during a control condition and experimental condition. In the experimental condition the subjects read the passage while synchronizing one word per beat at 60 beats per minute. The results demonstrated that both stutterers and normals evidenced lower peak pressures and greater pressure durations during metronome pacing. Air flow rates increased for normal subjects and decreased for stutterers in the experimental condition. Dysfluencies recorded during the control condition were observed to have much more rapid intraoral air pressure onsets when compared with fluent counterparts in the experimental reading. These results were interpreted with reference to Wingate's (1969) modified vocalization hypothesis and Van Riper's (1971) altered timing concept.     

Licensed Practical Nurses' Sex Role Stereotypes

Thirty-two licensed practical nurses rated the concepts an adult male patient and an adult female patient on a set of semantic differential scales prior to listening to and rating one of four simulated patients. The simulated patients were two males and two females, with the characteristics of the females matched exactly to the males. Within each sex, the simulated patients differed according to emotional style (calm vs. excited); the diagnosis ascribed to the patients also was manipulated. The results suggest that not only were there significant traditional sex-role differences in the perceptions and evaluations of typical adult male and adult female patients, but these stereotypical attitudes were reflected in ratings of specific patients. Although the female simulated patients were exact matches of the males, the latter were consistently evaluated more positively and were more likely to be seen as possessing traditional male traits. These sex-role stereotypes were not attenuated by individual patient characteristics (emotionality or diagnosis) nor by the subjects' own attitudes toward women.