Children's predictions of consistency in people's actions

Past research suggests that young children are often reluctant to generalize about people's behavior. Three experiments involving 102 4-5-year-olds, 84 7-8-year-olds, and 107 adults explored the conditions under which inductive inferences about people are made. There was an age-based increase in propensity to predict consistency in psychological/intentional causal relations. Children often predicted change; people would behave differently in the future than they did in the past. Younger children limited predictions of consistency to non-psychological contexts. Older children showed some appreciation of stable motivations (e.g. traits, preferences). The results are consistent with the hypothesis that children's theories of mind emphasize situational influences, with personal influences appearing in middle-childhood.     

The effects of a public address system on the off-task behavior of elementary physical education students

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of teacher feedback delivered via a public address system on the off-task behavior of elementary-school physical education students. A multiple baseline design across three classes was used in this investigation. Results indicated a consistent decline in off-task behavior when the public address feedback system was used.     

Effects of power on perceived and objective group variability: evidence that more powerful groups are more variable

The perception of group variability is affected by social power and status. Three different mechanisms may be responsible for these effects: (a) the power of the perceiver affects perceived group variability; (b) the power of the perceived group affects its perceived variability; and (c) the power of the group affects its actual variability. Two studies are reported to tease apart these three mechanisms and provide support for the third. In the first study, high- and low-power groups interacted and subsequently judged each other. In the second study, participants observed and rated the Study 1 groups, either knowing their power relationship or not. Results suggest that members of high-power groups manifest greater interpersonal variability than members of low-power groups.     

Racial bias in decisions made by mock jurors evaluating a case of sexual harassment

White (N = 161) and Black (N = 152) college students served as mock jurors in a simulated civil case in which a female plaintiff accused a male defendant of sexual harassment. The authors experimentally manipulated the race (Black or White) of the litigants and asked the mock jurors to decide whether the defendant was guilty; to rate the certainty of their belief in the defendant's guilt; and, when they judged the defendant guilty, to recommend an award to the plaintiff. Mock jurors of both races tended to favor litigants of their own race and their own gender. Racial bias was highest among White male jurors and lowest among White female jurors.     

The impact of communal-mastery versus self-mastery on emotional outcomes during stressful conditions: a prospective study of Native American women

Past research has examined the stress resiliency of individuals high in sense of personal-mastery. However, it has been theorized that within more collectivist cultures, a sense of shared efficacy, which we call communal-mastery, may be more central to people's resiliency in the face of challenging life circumstances. We compared the impact of sense of self-mastery (i.e., I am the key to my success) to that of communal-mastery (i.e., I am successful by virtue of my social attachments) in a prospective study among a group of rural 103 Native American women residing on Indian Reservations in Montana. We found that women high in communal-mastery experienced less increase in depressive mood and anger, especially when faced with high stress circumstances, than women who were low in communal-mastery. In addition, the beneficial impact of communal-mastery was found to be more effective than self-mastery for these women.     

Interparental conflict and risk behaviors among Mexican American adolescents: a cognitive-emotional model

This study used a cognitive-emotional model to examine the relations between multiple dimensions of interparental conflict and health risk behaviors among young adolescents. Participants were 151 Mexican American adolescents and their parents. At initial individual interviews, parents reported on conflict with their spouses, and adolescents reported on their parents' conflict, their appraisals of the conflict, their emotional distress, and their acculturation level. At 6-month follow-ups, adolescents reported on their risk behaviors, including substance use and sexual activity. In general, adolescents' acculturation level was not related to their risk behaviors. More frequent conflict, more conflict about the adolescent, more adolescent involvement in the conflict, and poor conflict resolution were related to greater emotional distress. More conflict about the adolescent, mothers being more demanding/dominating during conflict, and more adolescent involvement in the conflict were related to greater risk behaviors. Adolescents' cognitions mediated the link between two dimensions of parental conflict, frequency and resolution, and emotional distress. Adolescents' emotional distress mediated the association between adolescent involvement in parental conflict and adolescents' risk behaviors.     

The police officer's dilemma: using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals

Using a simple videogame, the effect of ethnicity on shoot/don't shoot decisions was examined. African American or White targets, holding guns or other objects, appeared in complex backgrounds. Participants were told to "shoot" armed targets and to "not shoot" unarmed targets. In Study 1, White participants made the correct decision to shoot an armed target more quickly if the target was African American than if he was White, but decided to "not shoot" an unarmed target more quickly if he was White. Study 2 used a shorter time window, forcing this effect into error rates. Study 3 replicated Study 1's effects and showed that the magnitude of bias varied with perceptions of the cultural stereotype and with levels of contact, but not with personal racial prejudice. Study 4 revealed equivalent levels of bias among both African American and White participants in a community sample. Implications and potential underlying mechanisms are discussed.     

Tactile "capture" of audition

Previous research has demonstrated that the localization of auditory or tactile stimuli can be biased by the simultaneous presentation of a visual stimulus from a different spatial position. We investigated whether auditory localization judgments could also be affected by the presentation of spatially displaced tactile stimuli, using a procedure designed to reveal perceptual interactions across modalities. Participants made left-right discrimination responses regarding the perceived location of sounds, which were presented either in isolation or together with tactile stimulation to the fingertips. The results demonstrate that the apparent location of a sound can be biased toward tactile stimulation when it is synchronous, but not when it is asynchronous, with the auditory event. Directing attention to the tactile modality did not increase the bias of sound localization toward synchronous tactile stimulation. These results provide the first demonstration of the tactile capture of audition.     

Reaction time slowing in adults with HIV: results of a meta-analysis using brinley plots

A meta-analysis in the form of Brinley plots was conducted on the mean reaction times of HIV+ and HIV- groups. HIV+ reaction times were regressed on HIV- reaction times across 122 task conditions from 29 studies, producing a highly linear function (r(2) = .94), with a slope b = 1.039, which was not significantly different than b = 1.00. Asymptomatic and symptomatic HIV+ reaction times were also separately regressed on HIV- reaction times across 67 task conditions from 13 studies. Both functions were highly linear (r(2) = .97 and.90 respectively), with slopes of 1.034 and 1.117 respectively. Only the slope for symptomatic HIV+ groups was significantly larger than b = 1.00, suggesting a modest generalized slowing of cognition in these adults.     

Differential functioning of the Beck depression inventory in late-life patients: use of item response theory

The present analyses examined age-related measurement bias in responses to items on the revised Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) in depressed late-life patients versus midlife patients. Item response theory (IRT) models were used to equate the scale and to differentiate true-group differences from bias in measurement in the 2 samples. Baseline BDI data (218 late life and 613 midlife) were used for the present analysis. IRT results indicated that late-life patients tended to report fewer cognitive symptoms, especially at low to average levels of depression. Conversely, they tended to report more somatic symptoms, especially at higher levels of depression. Adjusted cutoff scores in the late-life group are provided, and possible reasons for age-related differences in the performance of the BDI are discussed.