The Relation of Perceived Neighborhood Danger to Childhood Aggression: A Test of Mediating Mechanisms

In the current study, two mediational mechanisms, parenting practices and children's beliefs about aggression, were hypothesized to account for the relationship between perceived neighborhood danger and childhood aggression. Using structural equation modeling, data were analyzed from an inner-city school-based sample of 732 predominantly African American 5th graders. Results suggested that perceived neighborhood danger was associated with strong positive beliefs about aggression, which in turn was associated with high levels of aggression. The hypothesized mediating role of parenting practices (restrictive discipline, parental monitoring, and parental involvement) on the relation between perceived neighborhood danger and child aggression was not supported. However, the current findings suggest that children's positive beliefs about aggression mediated the relationship between restrictive discipline and aggression. Directions for future research are discussed.     

The odd-even effect in multiplication: Parity rule or familiarity with even numbers?

This study questions the evidence that a parity rule is used during the verification of multiplication. Previous studies reported that products are rejected faster when they violate the expected parity, which was attributed to the use of a rule (Krueger, 1986; Lemaire & Fayol, 1995). This experiment tested an alternative explanation of this effect: the familiarity hypothesis. Fifty subjects participated in a verification task with contrasting types of problems (even x even, odd x odd, mixed). Some aspects of our results constitute evidence against the use of the parity rule: False even answers were rejected slowly, even when the two operands were odd. We suggest that the odd-even effect in verification of multiplication could not be due to the use of the parity rule, but rather to a familiarity with even numbers (three quarters of products are indeed even).     

Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race

Racialized science seeks to explain human population differences in health, intelligence, education, and wealth as the consequence of immutable, biologically based differences between "racial" groups. Recent advances in the sequencing of the human genome and in an understanding of biological correlates of behavior have fueled racialized science, despite evidence that racial groups are not genetically discrete, reliably measured, or scientifically meaningful. Yet even these counterarguments often fail to take into account the origin and history of the idea of race. This article reviews the origins of the concept of race, placing the contemporary discussion of racial differences in an anthropological and historical context.     

Psychiatric correlates of childhood shyness in a nationally representative sample

Relations between adult anxiety and mood disorders and retrospective reports of excessive childhood shyness were investigated in the US National Comorbidity, Survey (n=5877). Results indicated that 26% of women and 19% of men described themselves as 'very shy' when they were growing up. Of these shy individuals, 53% of women and 40% of men met criteria for a lifetime diagnosis of one or more anxiety or mood disorders. Relations between excessive shyness and each of the anxiety and mood disorders were examined after adjusting for elevated neuroticism, self-criticism, and low maternal care. The largest odds ratios were found for social phobia in both men and women, particularly for the complex subtype of this disorder. Significant associations also emerged for posttraumatic stress disorder in women and for major depressive disorder in men. Childhood shyness remained significantly associated with a lifetime history of social phobia when individuals with current (past year) social phobia were excluded from the analysis. The results of this study suggest that childhood shyness is strongly related to the complex subtype of social phobia in the general population. Excessive shyness does not appear to be strongly associated with other anxiety and mood disorders when related psychosocial and developmental dimensions are statistically controlled. Finally, many individuals who report excessive childhood shyness do not meet criteria for any anxiety or mood disorder. In a similar fashion, approximately 50% of individuals with a lifetime history of complex social phobia did not view themselves as very shy when growing up.     

A multilevel examination of the relationships among training outcomes, mediating regulatory processes, and adaptive performance

This study examined whether cognitive, affective-motivational, and behavioral training outcomes relate to posttraining regulatory processes and adaptive performance similarly at the individual and team levels of analysis. Longitudinal data were collected from 156 individuals composing 78 teams who were trained on and then performed a simulated flight task. Results showed that posttraining regulation processes related similarly to adaptive performance across levels. Also, regulation processes fully mediated the influences of self- and collective efficacy beliefs on individual and team adaptive performance. Finally, knowledge and skill more strongly and directly related to adaptive performance at the individual than the team level of analysis. Implications to theory and practice, limitations, and future directions are discussed.     

The relative contribution of trait and social influences to the links among perceived social support, affect, and self-esteem

Although perceived support is influenced by both the personality traits of support recipients as well as various social factors, it is unknown to what extent these two types of influences account for perceived support's link to mental health. We investigated these relations using multivariate generalizability analyses. In three samples, both the trait and social influence components of perceived support were related to favorable affect and to self-esteem. The magnitude of the correlations between perceived support and mental health was similar for both the trait and social influence components. Similar findings were obtained for social conflict, although the links between conflict and mental health varied somewhat depending upon the level of analysis. These findings suggest that social support theories and interventions should include both trait and social mechanisms to explain and modify perceived support and mental health.     

The career of metaphor

A central question in metaphor research is how metaphors establish mappings between concepts from different domains. The authors propose an evolutionary path based on structure-mapping theory. This hypothesis--the career of metaphor--postulates a shift in mode of mapping from comparison to categorization as metaphors are conventionalized. Moreover, as demonstrated by 3 experiments, this processing shift is reflected in the very language that people use to make figurative assertions. The career of metaphor hypothesis offers a unified theoretical framework that can resolve the debate between comparison and categorization models of metaphor. This account further suggests that whether metaphors are processed directly or indirectly, and whether they operate at the level of individual concepts or entire conceptual domains, will depend both on their degree of conventionality and on their linguistic form.     

What you see is what you set: sustained inattentional blindness and the capture of awareness

This article reports a theoretical and experimental attempt to relate and contrast 2 traditionally separate research programs: inattentional blindness and attention capture. Inattentional blindness refers to failures to notice unexpected objects and events when attention is otherwise engaged. Attention capture research has traditionally used implicit indices (e.g., response times) to investigate automatic shifts of attention. Because attention capture usually measures performance whereas inattentional blindness measures awareness, the 2 fields have existed side by side with no shared theoretical framework. Here, the authors propose a theoretical unification, adapting several important effects from the attention capture literature to the context of sustained inattentional blindness. Although some stimulus properties can influence noticing of unexpected objects, the most influential factor affecting noticing is a person's own attentional goals. The authors conclude that many--but not all--aspects of attention capture apply to inattentional blindness but that these 2 classes of phenomena remain importantly distinct.     

Influence of multiple categories on the prediction of unknown properties

Knowing an item's category helps us predict its unknown properties. Previous studies suggest that when asked to evaluate the probability of an unknown property, people tend to consider only an item's most likely category, ignoring alternative categories. In the present study, property prediction took the form of either a probability rating or a speeded binary-choice judgment. In keeping with past findings, the subjects ignored alternative categories in their probability ratings. However, their binary-choice judgments were influenced by alternative categories. This novel finding suggests that the way in which category knowledge is used in prediction depends critically on the form of the prediction.