The theory of planned behavior as a model of heavy episodic drinking among college students.

This study provided a simultaneous confirmatory test of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) in predicting heavy episodic drinking (HED) among college students. It was hypothesized that past HED, drinking attitudes, subjective norms, and drinking refusal self-efficacy would predict intention, which would, in turn, predict future HED. Participants consisted of 131 college drinkers (63% women) who reported having engaged in HED in the previous 2 weeks. Participants were recruited and completed questionnaires within the context of a larger intervention study (see Collins & Carey, 2005). Latent factor structural equation modeling was used to test the ability of the TPB to predict HED. Chi-square tests and fit indices indicated good fit for the final structural models. Self-efficacy and attitudes but not subjective norms significantly predicted baseline intention, and intention and past HED predicted future HED. Contrary to hypotheses, however, a structural model excluding past HED provided a better fit than a model including it. Although further studies must be conducted before a definitive conclusion is reached, a TPB model excluding past behavior, which is arguably more parsimonious and theory driven, may predict HED among college drinkers better than a model including past behavior.     

Individual and Family Contributions to Depressive Symptoms in African American Children with Sickle Cell Disease

Depressive disorders in children with chronic illnesses have received little attention despite some evidence suggesting that these children experience increased psychological difficulties as a result of their medical condition. Most of the research on depressive disorders among children has been conducted primarily with Caucasian youth, limiting generalizability to ethnically diverse populations. Further, even less research exists on depressive disorders among African American children with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) and for African American youth from lower socioeconomic status who are at greater risk for depressive disorders. This paper is an extensive review of the major studies conducted on depression and psychosocial aspects of SCD in African American children. The Transactional Stress and Coping model is provided as a conceptual framework. Following the review, clinical and research implications are provided, as well as an illustration of a psychoeducational family intervention with an African American child who has SCD and internalizing behaviors.     

Short-term predictive effects of the looming cognitive style on anxiety disorder symptoms under restrictive methodological conditions

The looming cognitive style (LCS), an overarching cognitive vulnerability for anxiety syndromes, pertains to a tendency to construct dynamic expectations (mental scenarios, images) of negative events as progressively increasing in danger and rapidly escalating in risk. This study tested the hypothesis that the LCS has functions as a cognitive antecedent and moderator for even short-term changes over a brief time interval in anxiety syndromes (worry, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms, social anxiety, general anxiety) under restrictive methodological conditions. These included: (a) a one-week interval during which very little changes in anxiety were observed, and (b) controlling for participants' depression and intolerance of uncertainty. As hypothesized by our model, the looming cognitive style predicted short-term changes in worry and OCD symptoms over the week interval, and tended to predict changes in social (audience) anxiety. This style also functioned as a moderator and predicted changes in OCD symptoms among participants already high on this anxiety outcome. Intolerance of uncertainty predicted changes in social (audience) anxiety but not changes in OCD symptoms or worry. These findings support the looming vulnerability theory of anxiety, and encourage further attention into the possible role of the LCS as a cognitive antecedent and moderator of changes in a spectrum of anxiety syndromes.     

Comparison and representation failures both cause real-world change blindness

Change blindness (CB) occurs when people miss changes across views. Hypothetically, CB would occur if observers failed to represent information about the changing object, but CB would also occur if observers represented and failed to compare information across views, or represented only the pre- or post-change object. For a variety of reasons, previous studies have been unable to determine which of these alternatives contribute to CB in an incidental real-world setting. To address these ambiguities, we conducted two real-world experiments using stimuli that changed on only one feature and tested recognition memory for both the changing feature and a non-changing feature. Participants also provided confidence ratings on recognition responses, allowing us to test whether CB has multiple causes within a single task setting. The results suggest that, in a single real-world setting, CB can be caused by both a failure to represent and a failure to compare information across views.     

Rationally Functional Dependence

Two different types of functional dependencies are compared: dependencies that are functional due to the laws of nature and dependencies that are functional if all involved agents behave rationally. The first type of dependencies was axiomatized by Armstrong. This article gives a formal definition of the second type of functional dependencies in terms of strategic games and describes a sound and complete axiomatization of their properties. The axiomatization is significantly different from the Armstrong’s axioms.     

Investigating Perceptions of Students to a Peer-Based Academic Integrity Presentation Provided by Residence Dons

This study investigated students’ (n?=?819) perceptions following a prepared, common presentation regarding academic integrity provided by their residence dons. This peer instruction study utilized both quantitative and qualitative analyses of survey data within a pre-test post-test design. Overall, students reported gains in knowledge, as well as confidence in their knowledge of academic integrity. Notably, students reported increases in their personal value for academic integrity after participating in the presentations. Overall, the quality and content of the presentations were judged positively, and participants’ ratings of the presentation were predictive of increases in personal value of academic integrity, as well as self-reported knowledge and confidence gains. Qualitative analyses supported that the key ideas in the presentation served as the focal material for discussion, but also introduced specific topics that students wanted to explore in greater depth.     

Personality Certainty and Politics: Increasing the Predictive Utility of Individual‐Difference Inventories

Research on political psychology has benefitted from using individual‐difference measures to predict political attitudes and behavior. And, previous research has further identified a number of specific variables that enhance the predictive utility of individual‐difference scales. However, a potentially important factor that has been overlooked is the certainty with which people make their responses. The present research establishes that the certainty with which people respond to scales is associated with stability of the scale responses over time and correspondence between the scale and related outcomes. In addition, the effects of certainty in political ideological identification in predicting politically relevant outcomes hold when controlling for a number of previously established moderators. This research suggests that measuring certainty in answers to individual‐difference scales can be a useful and efficient way to increase the predictive utility of those scales within the political domain and beyond. This benefit is demonstrated with need for cognition (Study 1), need to evaluate (Study 2), and ideological identification (Studies 2 and 3).