A quasi-experimental analysis of the influence of neighborhood disadvantage on child and adolescent conduct problems

A quasi-experimental comparison of cousins differentially exposed to levels of neighborhood disadvantage (ND) was used with extensive measured covariates to test the hypothesis that neighborhood risk has independent effects on youth conduct problems (CPs). Multilevel analyses were based on mother-rated ND and both mother-reported CPs across 4-13 years (n = 7,077) and youth-reported CPs across 10-13 years (n = 4,524) from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. ND was robustly related to CPs reported by both informants when controlling for both measured risk factors that are correlated with ND and unmeasured confounds. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that ND has influence on conduct problems.     

Latent class analysis of eating disorders: relationship to mortality

The current diagnostic nomenclature for eating disorders has shortcomings. Empirical attempts to identify a new nomenclature have found numerous latent structures, but validation of this work has been largely cross-sectional, and nothing is known yet about the relationship of derived latent classes to mortality. This study examined latent diagnostic structure in 1,885 participants seeking outpatient eating disorder treatment over an 18-year period. Eating disorder symptoms were used as indicators, and the main validator was mortality as assessed using computerized linkage to the National Death Index. Six latent classes were derived; three of the six had significantly elevated standardized mortality ratios. It appeared that the latent class structure yielded better delineation of mortality risk than the existing classifications in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. These results provide support for an alternative, empirically derived diagnostic structure.     

Effects of text messaged self-monitoring on class attendance and punctuality of at-risk college student athletes

This study examined the effects of text messaging class arrival to an academic counselor on the attendance and punctuality of 4 college student athletes. Each participant had a history of class tardiness and was considered to be at risk for academic failure. Class attendance and punctuality improved for all participants.     

In perfect harmony: synchronizing the self to activated social categories

The self-concept is one of the main organizing constructs in the behavioral sciences because it influences how people interpret their environment, the choices they make, whether and how they initiate action, and the pursuit of specific goals. Because belonging to social groups and feeling interconnected is critical to human survival, the authors propose that people spontaneously change their working self-concept so that they are more similar to salient social categories. Specifically, 4 studies investigated whether activating a variety of social categories (i.e., jocks, hippies, the overweight, Blacks, and Asians) increased associations between the self and the target category. Whereas Studies 1 and 2 focused on associations between stereotypic traits and the self, Studies 3 and 4 examined self-perceptions and self-categorizations, respectively. The results provide consistent evidence that following social category priming, people synchronized the self to the activated category. Furthermore, the findings indicate that factors that influence category activation, such as social goals, and factors that induce a focus on the interconnectedness of the self, such as an interdependent vs. independent self-construal, can impact this process. The implications of changes to the working self-concept for intergroup relations are discussed.     

Learning new meanings for old words: effects of semantic relatedness

Changes to our everyday activities mean that adult language users need to learn new meanings for previously unambiguous words. For example, we need to learn that a "tweet" is not only the sound a bird makes, but also a short message on a social networking site. In these experiments, adult participants learned new fictional meanings for words with a single dominant meaning (e.g., "ant") by reading paragraphs that described these novel meanings. Explicit recall of these meanings was significantly better when there was a strong semantic relationship between the novel meaning and the existing meaning. This relatedness effect emerged after relatively brief exposure to the meanings (Experiment 1), but it persisted when training was extended across 7?days (Experiment 2) and when semantically demanding tasks were used during this extended training (Experiment 3). A lexical decision task was used to assess the impact of learning on online recognition. In Experiment 3, participants responded more quickly to words whose new meaning was semantically related than to those with an unrelated meaning. This result is consistent with earlier studies showing an effect of meaning relatedness on lexical decision, and it indicates that these newly acquired meanings become integrated with participants' preexisting knowledge about the meanings of words.     

Negative effects of item repetition on source memory

In the present study, we explored how item repetition affects source memory for new item-feature associations (picture-location or picture-color). We presented line drawings varying numbers of times in Phase 1. In Phase 2, each drawing was presented once with a critical new feature. In Phase 3, we tested memory for the new source feature of each item from Phase 2. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated and replicated the negative effects of item repetition on incidental source memory. Prior item repetition also had a negative effect on source memory when different source dimensions were used in Phases 1 and 2 (Experiment 3) and when participants were explicitly instructed to learn source information in Phase 2 (Experiments 4 and 5). Importantly, when the order between Phases 1 and 2 was reversed, such that item repetition occurred after the encoding of critical item-source combinations, item repetition no longer affected source memory (Experiment 6). Overall, our findings did not support predictions based on item predifferentiation, within-dimension source interference, or general interference from multiple traces of an item. Rather, the findings were consistent with the idea that prior item repetition reduces attention to subsequent presentations of the item, decreasing the likelihood that critical item-source associations will be encoded.     

The Gender Marketing of Toys: An Analysis of Color and Type of Toy on the Disney Store Website

The purpose of this study was to examine 1) the extent to which the gender marketing of toys on the Internet replicates findings of previous studies of the gendering of toys, and 2) the extent to which toys for “both boys and girls”, a previously overlooked category of toys, share characteristics, such as color and type of toy, with toys marketed for “boys only” or for “girls only”. The sample consisted of the 410 toys listed for boys and the 208 toys listed for girls, including 91 toys that appeared on both lists, on the English language U.S. Disney Store website. The marketing of toys on the Disney Store website is important not only because of the growth in e-commerce, but also because of this company’s global domination of the children’s entertainment industry. Tabular analysis and chi-square revealed that bold colored toys, predominantly red, black, brown, or gray toys, and those that were action figures, building toys, weapons, or small vehicles typified toys for “boys only” on this U.S. website. Pastel colored toys, predominantly pink or purple toys, and those that were dolls, beauty, cosmetics, jewelry, or domestic-oriented typified toys for “girls only”. A majority of toys for “both boys and girls” were mostly “gender-neutral” in type, but they resembled toys for “boys only” in terms of their color palette, presumably to appeal to boys, who are less likely to cross gender lines than girls. The potential impact of the gendering of toys on individuals as well as limitations of this research and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Sport stacking activities in school children's motor skill development

This study examined the impact of a 12-wk. sport stacking intervention on reaction time (RT), manual dexterity, and hand-eye coordination in elementary school-aged children. 80 Grade 2 students participated in a 15-min. sport stacking practice session every school day for 12 wk., and were tested on psychomotor performance improvement. Tests for choice RT, manual dexterity, and photoelectric rotary pursuit tracking were conducted pre- and post-intervention for both experimental group (n = 36) and the controls (n = 44) who did no sport stacking. Students who had the intervention showed a greater improvement in two-choice RT. No other group difference was found. Such sport stacking activities may facilitate children's central processing and perceptual-motor integration.