Gender role identity from an ego developmental perspective

This study, designed to respond to current limitations in gender role identity measurement, presents a conceptual and empirical approach to gender role identity that relies on ego developmental theory. To begin the process of construct validation of this approach to gender role identity, gender role identity was examined in relation to ego development, gender, and marital status. Gender role identity was measured via an interview adapted from Waterman and by the Bem Sex Role Inventory. Ego development was assessed via Loevinger's Sentence Completion Test of Ego Development. The sample consisted of 107 young adult men and women, married and single. In support of construct validity, the gender role interview was found to be correlated with the ego development measure. In support of discriminant validity, different patterns of correlates by gender were found between the gender role interview and the Bem Sex Role Inventory.     

Individual differences in preschool children's knowledge of superordinate categories

The present study assesses intensional knowledge of superordinate categories in preschool children. This assessment is part of a larger programmatic research effort aimed at the development of a cognitive preschool screening test to detect learning problems prior to their manifestation in school failure. Necessary prerequisites for including intensional superordinate category knowledge as a potential component of this screening test are addressed: (a) Are there substantial variations in this knowledge across preschool children? (b) Can the knowledge be measured reliably using game-like picture tasks? (c) Do individual differences in this knowledge relate to the child's current level of intellectual functioning? An underlying assumption for the development of this screening test is that assessing gradually emerging abstract knowledge that develops through active, ongoing processing is more likely to predict learning problems than assessing knowledge that develops through rote associative learning. Consistent with this approach was the prediction that one component of intension, knowledge of differences, would be a better predictor of current functioning than knowledge of similarities. The data support this contention. Although both knowledge of similarities and differences was stable within an individual, variable among individuals and highly correlated with each other, only knowledge of differences related to the child's concurrent level of intellectual functioning.     

The Role of Emotion Dysregulation in the Links Between Sibling Victimization and Internalizing Symptoms in Middle Childhood

Despite sibling victimization being a relatively common occurrence, there is a dearth of research examining the outcomes associated with this interpersonal stressor, including internalizing symptoms. The current study sought to advance the literature by longitudinally examining the links from sibling victimization to depression and anxiety symptoms while also considering peer victimization in a sample of elementary school-age youth (51.8% boys, M age?=?8.72) who were initially in 3rd and 4th grade. Further, emotion dysregulation was examined as a mediator of these associations. Youth provided self-reports at three separate time points approximately 6 months apart. Path analysis models indicated that emotion dysregulation mediated the association between sibling, but not peer, victimization and increased depression symptoms. However, neither sibling nor peer victimization were associated with anxiety symptoms over time. Results suggest the importance of attending to sibling victimization for the prevention of emotion dysregulation difficulties and ultimately early symptoms of depression. Youth assessments need to include questions about both sibling and peer victimization, and sibling victimization needs to be included as a target of prevention and intervention for subsequent internalizing difficulties.

     

Guided Search: The Effects of Learning

The previous report (Efron & Yund, 1996) offered an interpretation of the results of a number of search experiments within the theoretical context of the guided search model of Cave and Wolfe (1990) and Wolfe (1994). The present report extends this interpretation to the effects of extended practice when subjects search for a target defined by its orientation in the presence of a number of heterogeneous distractor items having differing orientations. Three experiments are described: The first revealed that over the course of 21 experimental sessions extending for a period of 6 weeks there were marked decreases in the magnitude of the reaction time gradient (RTG) and the right visual field superiority observed in the previous experiments. This learning persisted for more than 3 years. The second experiment revealed an interference in the capacity to learn to detect a target of one orientation when subjects had previously learned to detect a target of a different orientation at the same locations. The third experiment revealed that the learning was restricted to the area of the visual field where the target had been presented and that subjects could learn to detect two different targets concurrently. The results of these experiments indicate that the learning is orientation-specific and location-specific and is consistent with a localized increase in the selectivity of the top-down selection mechanism of the guided search model.     

Stress, health and illness: four challenges for the future

The concept of stress has a long and perhaps foundational history in health psychology. However, it is also not without its detractors, who point out imprecise and simplistic use of the concept. Four challenges for stress research in health psychology delineate the nuanced and contextualised future. First, 'stress' can be located in the environment, in appraisal or in response (e.g., emotions or physiology). Careful conceptualisation and assessment can differentiate among these locales, as well as reveal interactions among them. Second, coping refers to the transaction between stress and the affected person. Understanding exactly why coping moderates the effects of stress is a major challenge for coping research. Third, stress happens to different people with different personalities and temperaments and at different stages of their lives. People may even be different from themselves at different life stages. These individual differences can impact all manner of stress and coping. Fourth, stress is dynamic. Minor events come and go, and major events create a cascade of changes in the individual's life. Understanding how stress, coping and health change over time within individuals (i.e., in a multi-level framework) will be a major advance for the field.     

Parental Psychological Control and Adjustment Among Detained Youth: Does Perceived Containment Matter?

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Parental psychological control is linked to adjustment difficulties, but the links to specific adjustment outcomes and factors that contribute to these links...     

Asymmetrical access to color and location in visual working memory

Models of visual working memory (VWM) have benefitted greatly from the use of the delayed-matching paradigm. However, in this task, the ability to recall a probed feature is confounded with the ability to maintain the proper binding between the feature that is to be reported and the feature (typically location) that is used to cue a particular item for report. Given that location is typically used as a cue-feature, we used the delayed-estimation paradigm to compare memory for location to memory for color, rotating which feature was used as a cue and which was reported. Our results revealed several novel findings: 1) the likelihood of reporting a probed object’s feature was superior when reporting location with a color cue than when reporting color with a location cue; 2) location report errors were composed entirely of swap errors, with little to no random location reports; and 3) both colour and location reports greatly benefitted from the presence of nonprobed items at test. This last finding suggests that it is uncertainty over the bindings between locations and colors at memory retrieval that drive swap errors, not at encoding. We interpret our findings as consistent with a representational architecture that nests remembered object features within remembered locations.     

The Existential Function of Intrinsic Religiousness: Moderation of Effects of Priming Religion on Intercultural Tolerance and Afterlife Anxiety

Managing existential concerns is theorized to be a key function of religion. We posit that priming religion should be related to greater existential security for those high in intrinsic religiosity. In Experiment 1, priming religion increased intercultural tolerance among individuals who were highly intrinsically religious but decreased it for those low in intrinsic religiousness. In Experiment 2, intrinsic religiousness again moderated the effects of the prime, suggesting that priming religion resulted in attenuated afterlife anxiety for intrinsically religious individuals but greater anxiety for individuals low in intrinsic religiousness. Religious reminders appeared to provide existential security—evidenced by tolerance and reduced death anxiety—only to those high in intrinsic religiousness and can be threatening to those low in intrinsic religiousness. Existential outcomes are a specific case in which intrinsic religiousness can moderate the effects of religious primes, suggesting that religion plays a different existential role for different people.