Applying the interpersonal circumplex to children's behavior: parent-child interactions and risk behaviors

This article examined the applicability of the interpersonal circumplex (IC) to the observable social behaviors of children during parent-child interactions. In Study 1, the observational ratings of behaviors of 117 children (mean age = 9.88 years) were examined. Randomization tests of hypothesized order relations found that these behaviors tended to occur in the circular pattern predicted by the IC. To illustrate the applicability of the IC to children's behavior, Study 2 (n = 94) used the circular structure of children's behavior to longitudinally examine children's participation in two risk behaviors, smoking cigarettes and consuming alcohol. Results indicated that children who behaved in an arrogant-calculating manner were at risk for smoking cigarettes and children who behaved in an assured-dominate manner were at risk for drinking alcohol 1 year later. Implications of these results are discussed in terms of their relevance for helping researchers better understand and categorize children's interpersonal behaviors.     

Acquired distinctiveness and equivalence in human discrimination learning: Evidence for an attentional process

In a first stage of training, participants learned to associate four visual cues (two different colors and two different shapes) with verbal labels. For Group S, one label was applied to both colors and another to both shapes; for Group D, one label was applied to one color and one shape, and the other label to the other cues. When subsequently required to learn a task in which a given motor response was required to one of the colors and one of the shapes, and a different response to the other color and the other shape, Group D learned more readily than Group S. The task was designed so that the associations formed during the first stage of training could not generate differential transfer to the second stage. The results are consistent, however, with the proposal that training in which similar cues are followed by different outcomes will engage a learning process that boosts the attention paid to features that distinguish these cues.     

Mental multiplication: Nothing but the facts?

Current models of adult arithmetic performance assume that representation includes only facts and procedures. However, other kinds of representations such as an analog scale or sets of number multiples might be useful in a variety of multiplication-related tasks. Introducing the practice transfer paradigm, we demonstrate that associations between distinct representational structures can be detected via cross-task transfer, provided that initial performance is retrieval based. Results support the predictions of the integrated-structures model of multiplication knowledge. Implications for well-established item differences such as the problem-size effect are addressed, and the question of how integration occurs is considered.     

Stepfamilies Doing Family: A Meta‐Ethnography

The present review examines how stepfamily members without a shared history co‐construct a shared family identity and what family processes are relevant in this stepfamily formation. Three databases (Web of Science, PsycInfo, and ProQuest) were systematically searched, resulting in 20 included qualitative studies. The meta‐ethnography approach of Noblit and Hare allowed synthesizing these qualitative studies and constructing a comprehensive framework of stepfamilies doing family. Three interdependent family tasks were identified: (a) honoring the past, (b) marking the present, and (c) investing in the future. Stepfamily members’ experiences of these family tasks are strongly affected by the dominant societal perspectives and characterized by an underlying dialectical tension between wanting to be like a first‐time family and feeling the differences in their family structure at the same time. These findings clearly demonstrate the family work that all stepfamily members undertake and provide a broader context for interpreting stepfamilies’ co‐construction of a new family identity.     

Controlling for Prior Attainment Reduces the Positive Influence that Single-Gender Classroom Initiatives Exert on High School Students’ Scholastic Achievements

Research points to the positive impact that gender-segregated schooling and classroom initiatives exert on academic attainment. An evaluation of these studies which reveal positive effects highlights, however, that students are typically selectively assigned to single- or mixed-gender instructional settings, presenting a methodological confound. The current study controls for students’ prior attainment to appraise the efficacy of a single-gender classroom initiative implemented in a co-educational high school in the United Kingdom. Secondary data analysis (using archived data) was performed on 266 middle-ability, 11–12 year-old students’ standardized test scores in Languages (English, foreign language), STEM-related (Mathematics, Science, Information and Communication Technology), and Non-STEM subjects (art, music, drama). Ninety-eight students (54, 55% female) were taught in single-gender and 168 (69, 41% female) in mixed-gender classrooms. Students undertook identical tests irrespective of classroom type, which were graded in accordance with U.K national curriculum guidelines. Controlling for students’ prior attainment, findings indicate that students do not appear to benefit from being taught in single-gender relative to mixed-gender classrooms in Language and STEM-related subjects. Young women benefitted from being taught in mixed-gender relative to single-gender classes for Non-STEM subjects. However, when prior ability is not controlled for, the intervention appears to be effective for all school subjects, highlighting the confounding influence of selective admissions. These findings suggest that gender-segregated classroom initiatives may not bolster students’ grades. It is argued that studies that do not control for selection effects may tell us little about the effectiveness of such interventions on scholastic achievement.     

Specificity in rehabilitation of word production: a meta-analysis and a case study

Speech production impairment is a frequent deficit observed in aphasic patients and rehabilitation programs have been extensively developed. Nevertheless, there is still no agreement on the type of rehabilitation that yields the most successful outcomes. Here, we ran a detailed meta-analysis of 39 studies of word production rehabilitation involving 124 patients. We used a model-driven approach for analyzing each rehabilitation task by identifying which levels of our model each task tapped into. We found that (1) all rehabilitation tasks are not equally efficient and the most efficient ones involved the activation of the two levels of the word production system: the phonological output lexicon and the phonological output, and (2) the activation of the speech perception system as it occurs in many tasks used in rehabilitation is not successful in rehabilitating word production. In this meta-analysis, the effect of the activation of the phonological output lexicon and the phonological output cannot be assessed separately. We further conducted a rehabilitation study with DPI, a patient who suffers from a damage of the phonological output lexicon. Our results confirm that rehabilitation is more efficient, in terms of time and performance, when specifically addressing the impaired level of word production.     

International Migration and Religious Selection

Migrants are selected by several characteristics (age, education, skill, health, and family migration experience). Often less examined is religious selection. Using Guatemalan data, this research note tests whether religious affiliation is significantly associated with migration to the United States, net of other competing factors. Results are robust, demonstrating that Protestants are more likely than other religious groups to migrate. Additionally, mediating factors (social networks, cultural norms, and ideological links) are tested to identify social mechanisms behind the Protestant effect. The research note concludes with implications of religious selection and how religious selection can be further examined in migration and religion studies.