Assessment feedback counselling and individual differences: An exploratory study

The demand for assessment feedback counselling, and individual differences in feedback seeking, were investigated in a group of fifty managers who had been through a psychometric assessment procedure. Results suggest that there is a substantial demand for such feedback counselling and that those who seek it are, in some respects, more intellectually able and more interpersonally positive than those who do not. Some advice is offered on the handling of assessment feedback counselling sessions.     

The effects of fear arousal,fear position,fear exposure,and sidedness on compliance with dietary instructions

Investigated the effects of fear arousal and sidedness variables on compliance with a dietary regimen. Experiments involved 202 women volunteers who were 10 per cent or more overweight, and aged 20-60 years. Experiment 1 involved a 3 (low, medium, high fear) × 2 (single, multiple exposure to fear message) × 2 (one-, two-sided communication) design. The fear levels involved discussing the health hazards of obesity. Experiment 2 manipulated the fear-message position relative to the recommendations (fear-recommendations, recommendations-fear, fear-delay-recommendations). Persuasive impact was measured via follow-up weight checks at 2, 4, 8, and 16 weeks. Results indicate nonsignificant effects from sidedness and pre-standardised fear levels. Using subjects' fear arousal ratings medium fear is significantly better (p < .025), supporting Janis's curvilinear hypothesis. A single exposure to the fear message is superior (p < .025) to multiple exposures, the interaction with time being highly significant (p < .001). Experiment 2 results indicate the optimum position for the fear message as immediately prior to recommendations (p < .025). Results support both cognitive and fear-reduction hypotheses, but the latter is favoured.     

Sex role perceptions and social anxiety in opposite-sex and same-sex situations

The relationship between perceived sex role characteristics and self-rated anxiety and self-efficacy in both opposite-sex and same-sex interactions was evaluated. Forty-five male and 45 female undergraduates were administered the Bem Sex Role Inventory, and male or female versions of the Survey of Heterosexual Interactions, the Interpersonal Interaction Survey, and a Same Sex Interaction Inventory developed for the study. For both male and female subjects, reported discomfort in both opposite-sex and same-sex situations was significantly negatively related to masculinity, and unrelated to femininity. Congruently, self-efficacy ratings were positively related to masculinity and unrelated to femininity. Androgynous and masculine subjects did not differ in reported social discomfort or self-efficacy in either type of situation. These results suggest that social difficulties are associated with a deficit in some of the characteristics associated with the masculine sex role and add to a growing body of literature finding that only masculinity is associated with mental health and adjustment. Ratings in opposite-sex and in same-sex situations were strongly correlated with each other for both male and female subjects, suggesting that dating anxiety may be part of a broader pattern of social difficulty for both men and women.This report is based on part of a doctoral dissertation submitted by the author to the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The author gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the members of the dissertation committee: Marvin Goldfried, Ruth Hamill, Marcia Johnson, and John M. Neale, and the assistance of Cory Newman and Mike Peters in data collection.     

Sociomoral reasoning,perceptions of parenting and self‐reported delinquency in adolescents

This study considers the relationships between perceived parenting, sociomoral reasoning, and self‐reported delinquency in a sample of high school adolescents. Correlational analysis revealed that moral reasoning was associated with a consistent disciplinary style. Self‐reported delinquency was positively related to a number of the parenting variables but negatively correlated with moral reasoning. Separate analysis for males and females showed similar patterns for self‐reported delinquency, with the exception that moral reasoning was negatively correlated with attachment and supervision among females. The most significant predictors of delinquency scores were parenting variables, with moral reasoning also playing a role for males. A factor analysis of the perceived parenting measure revealed two factors. The first factor reflected a warm, inductive and involved style of parenting with the second reflecting a parenting style characterized by physical punishment. Self‐reported delinquency was negatively significantly associated with Factor 1, and positively related to Factor 2. There were also differences in the self‐reported delinquency scores of the top and bottom quartiles of Factor 1 scores. These support the conclusion that a parental style that is perceived to be warm, involved and inductive is associated with lower levels of delinquency in adolescence. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Overtraining and the complexities of coaches’ decision-making: managing elite athletes on the training cusp

In many elite sport performance contexts, overtraining is a critical issue for coaches to understand, recognise and respond to. While the indicators and effects of overtraining have attracted considerable research interest, there are no diagnostic tests that reliably predict impending overtraining. This study explores the practices and beliefs of three highly successful professional elite rowing coaches as they predict and manage the risk of athlete overtraining during crucial periods of intensive training. These coaches took part in a series of semi-structured interviews that explored their practices, philosophies and experiences. The research draws on sociological perspectives pertinent to coaching pedagogy and, more specifically, the tenets of naturalistic decision-making in exploring how the coaches define and make decisions about overtraining. In doing so it recognizes that coaching involves decision-making in complex and demanding situations. The coaches were found to monitor the fatigue of their rowers through observation, communication and measures of training pace. In general, the intuitions and cues that were used by coaches had little in common with overtraining markers or indicators that are promoted in the sport science literature. Coaches’ decision-making was based largely on subjective information and processes that were influenced by a range of stressors unique to their positions. We contend that the research provides an important new perspective on coaches’ definitions and management of overtraining and enables management of overtraining to be better understood as a key element of coaching pedagogy in elite performance settings. In this article we argue successful coaches have unique insights into this topical area and this is worthy of future exploration.     

Redintegration and the benefits of long-term knowledge in verbal short-term memory: an evaluation of Schweickert's (1993) multinomial processing tree model

The impact of four long-term knowledge variables on serial recall accuracy was investigated. Serial recall was tested for high and low frequency words and high and low phonotactic frequency nonwords in 2 groups: monolingual English speakers and French-English bilinguals. For both groups the recall advantage for words over nonwords reflected more fully correct recalls with fewer recall attempts that consisted of fragments of the target memory items (one or two of the three target phonemes recalled correctly); completely incorrect recalls were equivalent for the 2 list types. However, word frequency (for both groups), nonword phonotactic frequency (for the monolingual group), and language familiarity all influenced the proportions of completely incorrect recalls that were made. These results are not consistent with the view that long-term knowledge influences on immediate recall accuracy can be exclusively attributed to a redintegration process of the type specified in multinomial processing tree model of immediate recall. The finding of a differential influence on completely incorrect recalls of these four long-term knowledge variables suggests instead that the beneficial effects of long-term knowledge on short-term recall accuracy are mediated by more than one mechanism.     

Social-cognitive processing and depressive symptoms in children: A comparison of measures

We assessed aspects of the reliability and validity of three measures of socialcognitive processing in children that have been developed to investigate the relations of such processes to childhood depression: the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ), the Children's Negative Cognitive Error Questionnaire (CNCEQ), and the Common Beliefs Inventory for Students (CBIS). In an unselected sample of 61 children, aged 8 to 12, the internal consistencies of the total scores on the CNCEQ and the CBIS were good; for the CASQ, it was only moderate. Internal consistencies of all subscale scores were inadequate. Despite this, several subscale and total scores were significantly associated with depressive symptoms, and the measures were generally correlated with each other. Although these data are encouraging concerning the role of social-cognitive processing in childhood depression, the field needs to develop psychometrically stronger measures and to test the role of social cognition in prospective studies of depression.This study was supported in part by a grant from the Spencer Foundation Awards to Young Scholars Program to the first author. The authors would like to express their thanks to Deborah Long for secretarial assistance, and to W. Edward Craighead, John Curry, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft of this article.