Patterns of interactive behavior in a multicultural school context

This paper is an empirical research based on observational methodology. It is an idiographic research with a mixed observational design of low intervention, of the following type: monitoring/nomothetical/multidimensional. We used a tool created in situ for the systematic multidimensional register of the complex occurrence of several types of behavioural events in real time, which combines the format of field investigation with the system of categories. The reliability of the observation tool is obtained through the researcher-observer's agreement with him- or herself. Our aim is to study the social relationships between first-grade peer students in a multicultural context. We present some structures of seeking social closeness, help and cooperation among children of similar and different cultures, which were discovered through the detection and analysis of temporal patterns of the interactive situation of boys and girls who were observed during their academic and leisure activities in the natural context of their school.     

When Social Situations Take a Turn for the Worse: Situational and Interpersonal Risk Factors for Sexual Aggression

This study conducted an up-to-date assessment of situational and interpersonal risk factors for sexual aggression. Two hundred undergraduate women from a medium sized college on the US west coast completed the Sexual Experiences Survey (SES) and a questionnaire developed by the authors. Participants who reported sexual victimization on the SES answered a series of questions about their most severe experience, as well as a representative, nonaggressive date. Participants who reported no sexual victimization answered questions only about a representative date. Risk factors were identified by comparing victimized participants’ sexually aggressive dates to nonvictimized participants’ dates, and victimized participants’ non-sexually aggressive dates to nonvictimized participants’ dates. Results revealed distinct situational and interpersonal differences between sexually aggressive and nonaggressive social interactions.     

Relational learning in children with deafness and cochlear implants

This four-experiment series sought to evaluate the potential of children with neurosensory deafness and cochlear implants to exhibit auditory-visual and visual-visual stimulus equivalence relations within a matching-to-sample format. Twelve children who became deaf prior to acquiring language (prelingual) and four who became deaf afterwards (postlingual) were studied. All children learned auditory-visual conditional discriminations and nearly all showed emergent equivalence relations. Naming tests, conducted with a subset of the children, showed no consistent relationship to the equivalence-test outcomes. This study makes several contributions to the literature on stimulus equivalence. First, it demonstrates that both pre- and postlingually deaf children can acquire auditory-visual equivalence relations after cochlear implantation, thus demonstrating symbolic functioning. Second, it directs attention to a population that may be especially interesting for researchers seeking to analyze the relationship between speaker and listener repertoires. Third, it demonstrates the feasibility of conducting experimental studies of stimulus control processes within the limitations of a hospital, which these children must visit routinely for the maintenance of their cochlear implants.     

Social support group attendance is related to blood pressure, health behaviours, and quality of life in the Multicenter Lifestyle Demonstration Project

Changes in coronary risk factors, health behaviours, and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) were examined by tertiles of social support group attendance in 440 patients (21% females) with coronary artery disease. All patients participated in the Multicenter Lifestyle Demonstration Project (MLDP; eight hospital sites in the USA), an insurance-covered multi-component cardiac prevention program including dietary changes, stress management, exercise and group support for 1 year. Significant improvements in coronary risk factors, health behaviours, and HRQOL were noted at 1 year. Several of these improvements (i.e. systolic blood pressure, health behaviours, HRQOL) were related to social support group attendance, favoring those who attended more sessions. The associations between support group attendance to systolic blood pressure and to four HRQOL subscales (bodily pain, social functioning, mental health, and the mental health summary score) remained significant when controlling for changes in health behaviours, but dropped to a non-significant level for the HRQOL subscales 'physical functioning', 'general health' and 'role-emotional'. These results suggest an independent relationship of social support group attendance to systolic blood pressure while improvements in quality of life may be in part due to improved health behaviours facilitated by increased social support group attendance.     

Applying Pregroups to Italian Statements and Questions

We know from the literature in theoretical linguistics that interrogative constructions in Italian have particular syntactic properties, due to the liberal word order and the rich inflectional system. In this paper we show that the calculus of pregroups represents a flexible and efficient computational device for the analysis and derivation of Italian sentences and questions. In this context the distinction between direct vs. indirect statements and questions is explored. Special Issue Categorial Grammars and Pregroups Edited by Wojciech Buszkowski and Anne Preller     

Sleep's function in the spontaneous recovery and consolidation of memories

Building on 2 previous studies (B. R. Ekstrand, 1967; B. R. Ekstrand, M. J. Sullivan, D. F. Parker, & J. N. West, 1971), the authors present 2 experiments that were aimed at characterizing the role of retroactive interference in sleep-associated declarative memory consolidation. Using an A-B, A-C paradigm with lists of word pairs in Experiment 1, the authors showed that sleep provides recovery from retroactive interference induced at encoding, whereas no such recovery was seen in several wake control conditions. Noninterfering word-pair lists were used in Experiment 2 (A-B, C-D). Sleeping after learning, in comparison with waking after learning, enhanced retention of both lists to a similar extent when encoding was less intense because of less list repetition and briefer word-pair presentations. With intense encoding, sleep-associated improvements were not seen for either list. In combination, the results indicate that the benefit of sleep for declarative memory consolidation is greater for weaker associations, regardless of whether weak associations result from retroactive interference or poor encoding.     

Implicit attitudes towards romantic partners predict well‐being in stressful life conditions: Evidence from the antenatal maternity ward

An idiographic variant of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998 ) was used to investigate how implicit attitudes towards romantic partners are related to explicit attitudes, relationship‐related variables such as adult attachment and relationship satisfaction, and psychological well‐being as a potential outcome of relationship quality. The validity of the Partner‐IAT was investigated using a known group approach that contrasted abused women currently living in a refuge (N = 22), women who had recently fallen in love (N = 19), women who were currently hospitalized due to pregnancy complications (N = 48), and a control group of female students (N = 52). Across the whole sample, the Partner‐IAT showed satisfactory internal consistency (α  =  .83). As expected, the analysis of group differences revealed that abused women living in a refuge showed more negative implicit and explicit attitudes toward (ex‐)partners than women belonging to the other three groups. Women in love showed the most positive partner attitudes, but the difference to the control group reached significance only for explicit but not implicit attitudes. Implicit attitudes toward partners correlated significantly with explicit attitudes, secure attachment, and psychological well‐being. To investigate whether implicit and explicit partner attitudes can predict important relationship outcomes, psychological well‐being was regressed on both variables in group‐wise hierarchical multiple regression analyses. Explicit partner attitudes were significantly related to psychological well‐being in student controls and hospitalized pregnant women. However, only in hospitalized pregnant women did implicit attitudes account for variance in well‐being over and above explicit attitudes. This pattern of results is compatible with the notion that positive implicit representations of the romantic partner can function as a genuine coping resource that effectively buffers against major stressful life circumstances.     

Manipulating establishing operations to verify and establish stimulus control during mand training

Acquisition of verbal behavior is a major goal of interventions for children with developmental disabilities. We evaluated the effectiveness of manipulation of an establishing operation for functional discriminated mands. Four individuals with developmental disabilities participated in a training procedure designed to teach two separate mands for two separate preferred items. Participants were taught to mand using picture cards. Following training, the manipulation of the establishing operation was used to assess and establish discriminated manding. This manipulation involved providing free access to one of the preferred items, such that there should be no motivation to ask for it, while motivation to ask for the other item remained in place. Three of the 4 participants acquired discriminated manding using topographically similar responses (picture cards). One participant did not acquire a discriminated mand until topographically distinct mands were taught (vocal and picture card). Results suggest that discrimination training is not necessarily sufficient to teach discriminated manding when more than one picture card showing preferred items is used. In addition, manipulation of the establishing operation served as an appropriate assessment tool for the verification of discriminated manding as well as a possible training tool to establish discriminated manding.     

The impact of misleading questions on eyewitness memory in children and adults

The study examined developmental patterns of the negative effect of misleading post‐event information in two different kinds of eyewitness interviews. A total of 284 subjects aged between five and 64 years were shown a short video about a theft and three weeks as well as four weeks later questioned about it. The social pressure in the interview after three weeks was manipulated by asking half of the subjects suggestive and misleading questions. The other half was asked open‐ended and unbiased questions. In the neutral interview four weeks later, all subjects were asked the same set of recognition questions about the event. The results revealed that preschoolers in particular had problems with the interplay between cognitive and social factors (social pressure induced through the wording of the misleading questions) in the interview setting after three weeks. In the neutral recognition test, all age groups were shown to suffer from prior misinformation to about the same extent. However, with an exception in the group of 6‐year‐old children the negative effect of prior misinformation on the accuracy of recognition proved to be due to items that were peripheral to the observed event. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.