Women Engineering Students: Competence Perceptions and Achievement Goals in the Freshman Engineering Course

Research suggests that women engineering students in the United States typically have lower competence perceptions than their male classmates. According to achievement goal theory, low competence perceptions are associated with avoidance achievement goals which involve a preoccupation with avoiding failure rather than a focus on approaching success. The current study was conducted to see if women in a freshmen engineering course would rate their competence lower than their male classmates and if they would be more likely to adopt avoidance achievement goals. Further, would lower competence perceptions (i.e., perceived ability, self-efficacy) and avoidance goals have negative effects on grades and interest in the freshman engineering course? A sample of 117 first-semester engineering students from a U.S. Midwestern University completed surveys several times during the semester. Data were also collected from a sample of 82 first-semester students enrolled in an introductory psychology course for comparison purposes. Women in the freshman engineering course reported lower competence perceptions and higher levels of avoidance achievement goals than did men in the engineering course and than men and women in the psychology course. However, there were no significant gender differences in course grades or interest in the engineering course. Further analyses revealed indirect effects of gender on grades and interest in the engineering course through the competence perceptions. The indirect effects were negative suggesting lower values for women in engineering. The avoidance achievement goals were not influential in the indirect effects. The implications of these finding for the persistence of women in engineering are discussed.     

Sales Success as Predicted by A Process Measure of Adaptability

Previous studies of sales performance have not used process measures to evaluate the sales interaction as it occurred. The purposes of this paper are to propose the use of a process measure of adaptability and to determine whether observed adaptability behaviors could predict sales success. Salespeople's observed adaptability was positively related to two measures of sales success in a sample of telemarketing sales representatives.

A process measure of adaptability could be used to facilitate the selection of sales trainees by encouraging marketers to hire people who exhibit more adaptability during interactions. Sales training could also be used to teach current salespeople to adjust their dominance levels in order to project more adaptability in sales interactions.     

Quality-of-life after penile prosthesis placed at radical prostatectomy

Abstract

The clinical and psychosocial effects of immediate penile prosthesis implantation at the time of radical prostatectomy (RP) were investigated in 97 consecutive patients and 68 partners. Prosthesis recipients reported more frequent sexual contact, fewer marital problems and slightly fewer sexual functioning problems than the RP-alone patients. There were no group differences on any sociodemographic characteristics, on disease recurrence, on physical and psychosocial functioning, or on reported depression. Patients who chose the prosthesis did, however, evidence less of a link between depression and functional limitations and between depression and marital problems. They also had lower levels of agreement with their partners in reporting their own depression, as compared to the patients who opted for RP surgery alone. We conclude that the penile prosthesis was associated with an increased frequency of sexual contact, a reduction in reported marital problems, and stylistic differences between the two patient groups in dealing with affect.     

The role of perfectionism in cognitive behaviour therapy outcomes for clinically anxious children

The main aim of this study was to determine whether pre-treatment levels of child perfectionism impacted on anxiety treatment outcomes for school-aged children. In addition, it was investigated whether child perfectionism decreased following treatment for anxiety. Participants were sixty-seven clinically anxious children aged 6–13 years (female = 34; majority Caucasian) who were enrolled in a group-based cognitive behaviour therapy program, and their parents. They completed self-report questionnaires on anxiety and depressive symptoms and were administered a diagnostic interview to determine the type and clinician rated severity of anxiety and related disorders pre- and post-treatment and at 6-month follow-up. Self- and parent-rated perfectionism were also measured pre-treatment, while a subset of children completed perfectionism measures post-treatment as well. Self-Oriented Perfectionism, but not Socially Prescribed Perfectionism, predicted poorer self-reported treatment outcome (higher levels of anxiety symptoms) immediately following treatment and at 6-month follow-up when using a multi-informant approach. Additionally, both Self-Oriented and Socially Prescribed child perfectionism significantly reduced immediately following treatment. Despite reductions in child perfectionism following anxiety treatment, higher Self-Oriented Perfectionism may impact negatively on child anxiety treatment outcome.     

Relationship Quality as a Moderator of Anxiety in Siblings of Children Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders or Down Syndrome

The purpose of this study was to examine typically-developing adolescents’ perceived relationship quality with their developmentally-disabled sibling, specifically siblings diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or Down syndrome (DS). The 119 eleven through seventeen-year-old adolescent participants (M = 13.32, SD = 1.90) completed an online survey that assessed demographics, sibling relationship quality, and anxiety. Results showed that siblings of children with DS have a greater overall sibling relationship quality than do siblings of children with an ASD. Results further indicated that reporting more negative interchanges within the sibling relationship was related to higher levels of anxiety regardless of sibling disability type. Lastly, sibling relationship quality moderated the relation between sibling disability type and anxiety. These findings promote greater understanding of the sibling dynamic in families with children with developmental disabilities and suggest the need for establishing more research and greater clinical evaluation in this area. Furthermore, the current study suggests that therapeutic intervention to address the sibling relationship quality within children diagnosed with ASDs and their typically-developing siblings would be beneficial in order to increase social support within the relationship as well as decrease the amount of negative interchanges within the sibling relationship. Results also suggested that decreasing the amount of negative interchanges within the sibling relationship may decrease the level of anxiety the typically-developing sibling reports.     

Construing a “Perfect Knight”: A Personal Construct Investigation of Mass Murder

We report three studies in which we examined the structure of interpersonal construct systems. We attempted to identify (a) the degree to which individuals' differentiation in the constructs they used to construe themselves paralleled the differentiation in the constructs they used to construe other and (b) the differences and similarities in the content of constructs used by subjects to construe themselves, liked peers, and disliked peers. In addition, we compared the content of the liked- and disliked-peer constructs with those used by employees construing co-workers in a previous study. Findings indicated that Ziller, Martell, and Morrison's (1977) checklist measure of self differentiation was weakly correlated in the first sample and uncorrelated in the second sample with Crockett's (1965) Role Category Questionnaire (RCQ), a measure of other differentiation. Differentiation scores from the other and self versions of the RCQ were moderately correlated. Content analyses revealed that self constructs were drawn largely from the same pool as those used in describing liked and disliked peers; they were more similar to the liked-peer constructs than the disliked-peer ones, but also drew heavily on the disliked-peer construct pool. Constructs used to describe liked and disliked peers were very similar to those used to describe co-workers but were clearly influenced by context. To account for the findings, we suggest that constructs become meaningful and thus prominent in a particular domain because of their usefulness for the particular construal tasks encountered in that domain.     

Mechanisms for the Relationship between Traditional Masculine Ideologies and Rape Myth Acceptance Among College Men

We explored mechanisms for the relationship between traditional masculine ideologies and rape myth acceptance. We hypothesized that locus of control would serve as a mediator for victim precipitation rape myths, and negative attitudes toward women would serve as a mediator for victim masochism and victim fabrication rape myths. Using a sample of 100 male college students, the results indicated that negative attitudes toward women mediated the relationship between traditional masculine ideologies and all 3 types of rape myths, but locus of control did not serve as a mediator for any. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

The Representation of Left-Right Orientation: A Dissociation Between Imagery and Perceptual Recognition

Eight experiments were conducted to determine whether visual mental imagery preserves left-right orientation in conditions where recognition memory apparently does not. Such a dissociation would suggest that information in memory preserves left-right orientation, but the process that matches input to such representations does not respect this distinction. In the experiments reported here, participants were asked to use one of two methods to indicate which way Abraham Lincoln faces on a US penny: Either they selected the correct profile from two sketches, or they formed a mental image and then specified the direction. If participants had just viewed pennies and were asked to visualize a particular one, they performed far better than chance; in contrast, if imagery was discouraged, they performed poorly when recognizing the profiles perceptually. However, unless actively discouraged from doing so, most participants reported spontaneously visualizing pennies prior to perceptual recognition if they had recently seen pennies.     

Short- and Long-Term Implicit Memory in Aging and Alzheimer's Disease

ABSTRACT

Implicit memory processes were investigated via picture naming in healthy young and older adults and in persons with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). Repetition priming in picture-naming was intact in all groups over the course of a short retention interval (seconds), and only the AD group revealed a deficit over a longer interval (72 hours). In addition, the AD group showed impaired procedural memory, with no benefit of practice on picture-naming. Impaired long-term priming was related to severity of AD. Both theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.