The role of ethnic identity and self-construal in coping among African American and Caucasian American seventh graders: an exploratory analysis of within-group variance

Much coping research has been conducted comparing members of different ethnic groups using discrete racial classifications. However, the past two decades have seen the construct of ethnicity evolve into a complex variable that must be assessed in a more comprehensive way. This study explored how ethnicity, a discrete variable, and the continuous variables of a person's ethnic identity and self-construal contribute to the use of particular coping strategies across various situations. One hundred twelve seventh graders (67 African Americans and 45 Caucasian Americans) from three suburban middle schools completed questionnaires assessing ethnic identity, self-construal, and coping strategies for medical, test, and social criticism stressors. Results supported the hypothesis that ethnicity as a discrete variable is not associated with coping, but that ethnic identity and self-construal are. It was also found that high scores on the ethnic identity and self-construal scales were indicative of more positive psychological adjustment. Implications for future research and methodological considerations are discussed.     

Implementing Realistic Job Previews and Expectation-Lowering Procedures: A Field Experiment

A field experiment was conducted to assess the effects of preemployment interventions on newly hired telemarketers. The procedures used were a realistic job preview (RJP), an expectation-lowering procedure (ELP), a combination (RJP & ELP), and the control condition (minimal socialization). While we know these procedures enhance the integration of newcomers to an organization, we do not know the optimal combination of RJP and ELP in the employee socialization process. The three procedures yielded relatively lower expectations than did the control group. Participants in the experimental conditions (ELP, RJP, and ELP & RJP) reported significantly lower expectations than did the control group. The lowered expectations, however, did not result in higher retention rates in all of the conditions. The RJP & ELP combination resulted in the largest number of days worked, the major criterion of interest in this study. There was no significant difference in number of days worked between the control group and the RJP group. The current study indicates that a non-job-specific ELP in combination with an RJP may exceed the benefits of an RJP or an ELP used alone. Furthermore, organizational implications regarding the different procedures are discussed.     

Depressive symptoms and lymphocyte proliferation in older adults

In an 18-month prospective study, community-dwelling older adults, including both spousal caregivers of dementia patients and noncaregiving controls, were examined. Participants were selected on the basis of the presence or absence of chronic depressive symptoms that exceeded a cutoff score for clinically relevant depressive symptoms on a self-report symptom measure. Compared with nondepressed older adults, those with chronic, mild depressive symptoms had poorer T cell responses to 2 mitogens from baseline to follow-up. Additionally, among individuals with depressive symptoms, older age was associated with the poorest blastogenic response to the mitogens at follow-up. These findings extend the association between depression and immune function to community-dwelling older adults with chronic, mild depressive symptoms.     

Sea lions and equivalence: expanding classes by exclusion

Experiments have shown that human and nonhuman subjects are capable of performing new arbitrary stimulus-stimulus relations without error. When subjects that are experienced with matching-to-sample procedures are presented with a novel sample, a novel comparison, and a familiar comparison, most respond by correctly selecting the novel comparison in the presence of the new sample. This exclusion paradigm was expanded with two California sea lions that had previously formed two 10-member equivalence classes in a matching-to-sample procedure. Rather than being presented with a novel sample on a given trial, the sea lions were presented with a randomly selected familiar member of one class as the sample. One of the comparisons was a randomly selected familiar member of the alternative class, and the other was a novel stimulus. When required to choose which comparison matched the sample, the subjects reliably rejected the familiar comparison, and instead selected the unfamiliar one. Next, the sea lions were presented with transfer problems that could not be solved by exclusion; they immediately grouped the new stimuli into the appropriate classes. These findings show that exclusion procedures can rapidly generate new stimulus relations that can be used to expand stimulus classes.     

Discrimination of individual vocalizations by black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapilla)

The auditory perceptual abilities of male black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapilla) were examined using an operant go/no-go discrimination among 16 individual vocalizations recorded at 5 m. The birds learned to discriminate about equally well among eight male chickadee fee-bee songs and eight female zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) distance calls. These results do not indicate that chickadees have a species-specific advantage in individual recognition for conspecific over heterospecific vocalizations. We then transferred the chickadees to a discrimination of the same songs and calls rerecorded at a moderate distance. These results showed accurate transfer of discrimination from 16 vocalizations recorded at 5 m to novel versions of the same 16 songs and calls rerecorded at 25 m. That is, chickadees recognized individual songs and calls despite degradation produced by rerecording at 25 m. Identifying individual vocalizations despite their transformation by distance cues is here described as a biologically important example of perceptual constancy.     

Relative damping improves linear mass-spring models of goal-directed movements

A limitation of a simple linear mass-spring model in describing goal directed movements is that it generates rather slow movements when the parameters are kept within a realistic range. Does this imply that the control of fast movements cannot be approximated by a linear system? In servo-control theory, it has been proposed that an optimal controller should control movement velocity in addition to position. Instead of explicitly controlling the velocity, we propose to modify a simple linear mass-spring model. We replaced the damping relative to the environment (absolute damping) with damping with respect to the velocity of the equilibrium point (relative damping). This gives the limb a tendency to move as fast as the equilibrium point. We show that such extremely simple models can generate rapid single-joint movements. The resulting maximal movement velocities were almost equal to those of the equilibrium point, which provides a simple mechanism for the control of movement speed. We further show that peculiar experimental results, such as an 'N-shaped' equilibrium trajectory and the difficulties to measure damping in dynamic conditions, may result from fitting a model with absolute damping where one with relative damping would be more appropriate. Finally, we show that the model with relative damping can be used to model subtle differences between multi-joint interceptions. The model with relative damping fits the data much better than a version of the model with absolute damping.     

The length of the retention interval,forgetting, and subjective similarity

A long retention interval tends to result in the poor retention known as forgetting. A high subjective similarity between stimuli frequently produces their poor retention. Thus, a long retention interval may increase the subjective similarity between stimuli (the RIISS hypothesis), and this increase may produce forgetting. To examine this hypothesis, college students made speeded same-different discriminations between two lines or tones of different lengths or frequencies that were 400 ms or 3,300 ms apart, and they rated the similarity of these stimuli. The long interval produced poorer overall performance as expected, but also produced poorer performance on different than same stimuli, implying that it increased the subjective similarity between the initial and subsequent stimuli, and it also increased rated similarity, in support of the RIISS hypothesis. The position that stored stimuli lose less common information than distinctive information explains RIISS evidence better than does perturbation theory.     

The daily inventory of stressful events: an interview-based approach for measuring daily stressors

This study introduces the Daily Inventory of Stressful Events (DISE), an interview-based approach to the measurement of multiple aspects of daily stressors through daily telephone interviews. Using a U.S. national sample of adults aged 25 to 74 (N = 1,031), the prevalence as well as the affective and physical correlates of daily stressors are examined. Respondents had at least one daily stressor on 40 percent of the study days and multiple stressors on 11 percent of the study days. The most common class of stressors was interpersonal tension followed by work-related stressors for men and network stressors (events that occur to close others) for women. Stressors that involved danger of loss were more prevalent than stressors in which loss actually occurred. Regression analyses showed that specific types of daily stressors such as interpersonal tensions and network stressors were unique predictors of both health symptoms and mood.