The Development of the Motivational Style Profile for Children (MSP-C)

The Motivational Style Profile for Children (MSP-C) was designed to measure the dominances, orientations and saliences of motivational states in children. The results of reliability testing and factor analysis followed by parallel analysis of the 50-item, 25-paired, and 15-paired versions for cultural samples suggests the MSP-C may be a viable and reliable instrument for the measurement of motivational characteristics of children between 9 and 15 years of age. Significant cultural differences in motivational characteristics were found, in that Hong Kong children were more telic-, arousal avoiding-, and mastery-dominant compared to the British and French children, suggesting the predominant influence of the Chinese Confucian values. Future research is recommended to test the psychometric properties of the 15-paired version of the measure for different cultural samples.     

‘It's not that we hate you’: Understanding children's gender attitudes and expectancies about peer relationships

Widespread gender segregation, evident throughout elementary school, seems to imply that girls and boys have negative feelings and thoughts about one another, and classic theories of inter‐group processes support this idea. However, research has generally overlooked children's feelings and perceptions about gender‐related interpersonal interactions. This paper investigates the nature of children's attitudes about same‐ and other‐gender peers, and explores how those attitudes relate to the expectancies and beliefs children hold about same‐ and other‐gender peer interactions. Children (N= 98 fifth graders) completed questionnaires assessing their global liking of own‐ and other‐gender peers ( Yee & Brown, 1994 ), positive and negative attitudes about own‐ and other‐gender peers, and outcome expectancies related to interacting with own‐ and other‐gender peers. Results indicated that rather than being characterized by out‐group negativity, children's inter‐group gender attitudes are best characterized by an in‐group positivity bias. Children's positive and negative affective attitudes were also significantly associated with outcome expectancies. In contrast, global liking of own‐ and other‐gender peers was less predictive of outcome expectancies. Thus, the greater specificity of the affective attitude measures appeared to be a more predictive and potentially fruitful gauge of children's feelings about own‐ and other‐gender peers. Results are discussed in terms of the need for finer grained and more extensive studies of children's gender‐related feelings and cognitions about own‐ and other‐gender peers.     

Effects of Native American Race, Intoxication, and Crime Severity on Judgments of Guilt

The effects of Native American race, crime severity, and intoxication on 293 college students' judgments of guilt were investigated. Participants read vignettes of a robbery or a robbery resulting in murder committed by a male defendant with a Native American or a White European surname. The defendant was described as highly intoxicated in half of the conditions. A 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA revealed a marginally significant 3-way interaction. In the robbery–murder condition, the intoxicated Native American defendant was judged as guiltier than the Native American defendant with no intoxication information. We labeled this a stereotypical drunken-Indian bias. The results suggested that judgments given by lower and higher prejudiced participants canceled each other out.     

Eye color as an indicator of behavior: revisiting Worthy and Scott

Phenotypic eye color has been suggested as an indicator of genetic predisposition toward certain behaviors both in humans and in animals. Previous research has yielded mixed results. Phototaxic and ethological behaviors were examined in 14 different strains of Drosophila melanogaster. No significant correlation between phenotypic eye coloration and behavior was found, although significant genotypical behavioral differences were noted even among subjects with similar eye colors. An analysis of cellular defects associated with eye color in D. melanogaster pointed to significant behavioral differences among cell-defect groups, indicating that the cell defect which causes eye color, rather than eye color itself, may serve as a crude indicator of behavior.     

Teaching complex verbal operants to children with autism and establishing generalization using the peak curriculum

The present study evaluated the feasibility of the PEAK Relational Training System's Generalization Module (Dixon, 2014b) to teach and establish generalization of autoclitic mands, distorted tacts, and creative path finding in three children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Using a multiple‐baseline design across behaviors, each participant was provided with differential reinforcement and a least‐to‐most prompting hierarchy for correct responses to a subset of stimuli, and responses to other similar stimulus sets were probed for emergent generalization. Following training, each participant successfully acquired the directly trained behaviors and demonstrated generalization to the nonreinforced test exemplars. These data support the utility of Skinner's (1957) analysis to teach complex forms of verbal operants, and suggest that a manualized curriculum such as PEAK may have utility for promoting skill development and generalization for front line staff and caregivers of children with autism.     

“When I’d Dealt with My Issues,I Was Ready to Give Back”: Peer Leader’s Perspectives of Support Groups for Women Abused by Intimate Partners

The serious nature of the abuse of women by intimate partners has garnered worldwide concern. Victims are often assisted through support groups; however, little is known about how the groups work or how leaders perceive the group process and the women’s response to the intervention. This qualitative process evaluation presents the perspectives of 14 trained peers who led weekly Growth Circle groups to provide support to abused women. The article describes the leader’s backgrounds, perceptions of the group process, and coleadership, in addition to reflections on the value and challenges in offering the program. Implications for community agencies and group leaders are offered.     

Antecedents of flourishing at work in a fast-moving consumer goods company

The aims of this study were to investigate antecedents of flourishing in the workplace. A cross-sectional survey design was used with a stratified random sample of 779 employees in a fast-moving consumer goods company in South Africa (females = 40.4%, blacks = 33.4%). The participants responded to the Flourishing-at-Work Scale -Short Form, Job Demands-Resources Scale, one subscale of the Survey Work-Home Interaction – Nijmegen, and Authentic Leadership Questionnaire. The results showed that advancement, negative work-home interaction (inverse), and authentic leadership predicted flourishing at work. Workload, job insecurity, and compensation did not predict workplace flourishing or languishing. The study confirms the relevance of the Job Demands-Resources model for understanding flourishing in the workplace.     

Random number generation deficit in early schizophrenia

Random number generation with a written response mode provides a potentially appealing marker for executive processes. Impaired performance on written random number generation tasks has been reported in chronic schizophrenic patients. However, no study has investigated whether such a deficit occurs in early schizophrenia and whether its profile and severity are similar to those in patients with chronic illness. This study investigated the ability to generate random numbers in patients with early schizophrenia (n = 44) and a healthy control group (n = 48). Patients were less able to maintain several production strategies and generated more stereotyped response sequences, whereas their abilities to identify randomness with an even-handed treatment of digits and to monitor the equality of occurrence of single digits appeared to remain intact. These results provide evidence that some aspects of the deficits in random number generation among chronic schizophrenic patients are also present at early psychotic episode, while some other aspects are relatively less affected in the early years.