A cross-cultural investigation of cognitions and depressive symptoms in adolescents

Adolescents (N=2,272) from Hong Kong and the United States provided information regarding their depressive symptoms, cognitions (self-efficacy, negative cognitive errors, and hopelessness), and stressful events between 2 surveys 6 months apart. Depressive symptoms and hopelessness were higher, and self-efficacy and negative cognitive errors were lower in Hong Kong than in the United States. Cognitions were associated with concurrent depressive symptoms and predicted depressive symptoms 6 months later in both cultures. The "reverse" model was also supported with more variance predicted by depressive symptoms to later cognitions than from cognitions to depressive symptoms. There was some support for the hypothesis that self-efficacy is less salient in collective compared with individualistic cultures. These findings extend cognitive theories of depression to a non-Western culture.     

Eyeblink conditioning deficits indicate timing and cerebellar abnormalities in schizophrenia

Accumulating evidence indicates that individuals with schizophrenia manifest abnormalities in structures (cerebellum and basal ganglia) and neurotransmitter systems (dopamine) linked to internal-timing processes. A single-cue tone delay eyeblink conditioning paradigm comprised of 100 learning and 50 extinction trials was used to examine cerebellar timing circuits in 13 medicated patients with schizophrenia and 13 age- and sex-matched controls. Patients with schizophrenia showed impaired learning of the conditioned response compared to controls and also greater within-subject variability in the timing of their responses. These findings are consistent with models of schizophrenia in which timing deficits underlie information-processing abnormalities and clinical features of the disorder.     

Applicant attraction to organizations and job choice: a meta-analytic review of the correlates of recruiting outcomes

Attracting high-performing applicants is a critical component of personnel selection and overall organizational success. In this study, the authors meta-analyzed 667 coefficients from 71 studies examining relationships between various predictors with job-organization attraction, job pursuit intentions, acceptance intentions, and job choice. The moderating effects of applicant gender, race, and applicant versus nonapplicant status were also examined. Results showed that applicant attraction outcomes were predicted by job-organization characteristics, recruiter behaviors, perceptions of the recruiting process, perceived fit, and hiring expectancies, but not recruiter demographics or perceived alternatives. Path analyses showed that applicant attitudes and intentions mediated the predictor-job choice relationships. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for recruiting theory, research, and practice.     

The effect of text coherence and modality on metamemory judgements

This study examined the effects of text coherence and modality on the metamemory judgements of Ease of Learning (EOL) and Judgement of Learning (JOL), and on the object-level measure of recall. Previous work found that sentence material set in a coherent, ordered text context was not judged as more memorable than that presented in a context of sentences in a disordered sequence, even though an ordered sequence helped recall (Shaddock & Carroll, 1997). The current study modified Shaddock and Carroll's design by changing the texts used from expository to narrative text. The metamemory judgements and recall were now found to be significantly more sensitive to material learned in an ordered sequence than to material learned in a disordered sequence. Also, JOLs and recall were more sensitive to material that was originally learned in an auditory mode (spoken presentation) than in a visual mode (verbal presentation). The results are discussed in terms of a cue-utilisation approach to metamemory judgements.     

Adolescents' relationships to siblings and mothers: a multivariate genetic analysis.

Research has consistently demonstrated that children's behavior toward their siblings tends to resemble interactions occurring in the parent-child relationship. This study examined the relative contributions of genetic and environmental influences to the covariation between sibling relationships and mother-adolescent relationships. Reported and observed family interactions were assessed for 719 same-sex sibling pairs of varying degrees of genetic relatedness. The covariance between mother-adolescent and sibling interactions was decomposed into genetic, shared, and nonshared environmental components. The overlapping effects of shared environment on the two relationship subsystems explained most of the covariance. Smaller but significant genetic and nonshared environmental effects were also found. The consistency of these findings with family processes, such as modeling, is discussed.     

GENDER-RELATED PATTERNS OF HELPING AMONG FRIENDS

In this study, the social role theory of gender and helping (Eagly & Crowley, 1986) was applied to understand gender differences in helping behavior. Relationships among criterion variables of time spent helping and help quality; and key predictors of problem severity, empathic tendency, anger, sympathy, closeness, causal controllability, coping, and self-efficacy were applied. Participants from a large community sample ( N = 1,004) described situations in which they helped a friend and completed questionnaires describing factors that influenced their actions. Recipients of the help also filled out similar questionnaires. It was found that across many problem settings women spend more time helping, give higher quality help, and feel more empathy and sympathy in response to their friends' problems. Further, the presence of anger toward a friend is associated with more time spent helping but a lower quality of help. In contrast, men rate their friends' problems as more controllable/blameworthy and experience more anger. Further, controllability has a greater influence on a number of help-related variables. For both men and women, self-efficacy and perception of problem severity are the greatest direct predictors of helping.     

Individual differences in visual imaging and the voluntary control of heart rate.

The role of visual imagery in the bidirectional control of heart rate (HR) was explored in 24 subjects. While voluntary HR increases were reliably demonstrated with and without HR feedback, appropriate HR decreases were modest and inconsistent. Changes in respiration rate (RR) generally paralleled the alterations in HR. Eighteen of the subjects reported conventionally using visual imagery to effect HR changes. For these subjects, vividness of visual imagery scores and the extent of HR change showed indications of a direct relationship in the HR increase condition. However, in the HR decrease condition, it was concomitant RR changes which were associated with the vividness and the control of imagery production. The remaining six subjects, who reported not employing visual imagery, demonstrated superior HR acceleration to the imaging subjects. Further, while the imaging subjects did not benefit from the introduction of feedback, the six non-imaging subjects showed reliably greater HR acceleration as a result of feedback introduction.     

Self-report and physiological changes accompanying repeated imagining of a phobic scene.

Twenty female subjects were selected from a larger subject pool on the basis of their scores to the ‘snakes’ item on the Geer (1965) Fear Survey Schedule. Ten of the subjects were selected as phobic; the other ten were non-phobic controls. Heart rate, skin conductance and self-reports of fear and imagery vividness were continuously monitored while subjects repeatedly imagined a prescribed snake scene for a total of 15 trials. The phobic group reported more overall fear to the images. Further, while the nonphobic subjects reported progressively less fear over trials, the phobic subjects reported progressively more fear. The groups did not differ in rated imagery vividness. However, heart rate responses to the image differentiated the two groups. The non-phobic subjects showed a progression from cardiac acceleration in the early trials to a biphasic response pattern, deceleration preceding acceleration, in the later trials. In contrast, the phobic subjects demonstrated sustained acceleration in the later trials. The groups did not differ in skin conductance response amplitude.     

Creating names for things

Ten subjects rendered names for each of 168 novel entities. The entities were quite varied. Naming strategies in this task situation were assessed with several dependent measures: (1) the structural form of the name expression (compound noun, lexically modified noun, etc.), (2) the content analysis of the name (i.e., into morphological patterns that directly convey content properties of referents), (3) statistical measures (number of syllables), and (4) comments and ratings elicited from participants. Several general strategies were induced.This is a shortened version of Carroll (1979a).