Implicit gender-science stereotypes and college-major intentions of italian adolescents

Social Psychology of Education - Gender stereotypes are often viewed as one of the root causes of the gender gap in STEM. According to Eccles’ model, they would indirectly influence major...     

The premotor theory of attention as an account for the Simon effect

The Simon effect refers to the phenomenon that responses are faster when the irrelevant location of a stimulus corresponds with the response location than when these locations do not correspond. In the current paper we examined the viability of an updated version of the premotor theory of attention (PMTA) as an account for the Simon effect. Two predictions were evaluated. First, in the case of focused attention at the relevant target position a strong reduction of the Simon effect should be observed as the Simon effect according to PMTA crucially depends on attentional orienting. Secondly, if attention is directed towards a location then this orienting by itself should already be sufficient for producing a Simon effect, as stimulus presence is not required. Our data confirmed these predictions thereby supporting the relevance of the PMTA for the Simon effect.     

Rumination mediates the relationship between impaired cognitive control for emotional information and depressive symptoms: A prospective study in remitted depressed adults

Impaired cognitive control may be an important vulnerability factor for depression. Moreover, impairments in cognitive control have been proposed as a crucial process underlying ruminative thinking. The present study investigates the influence of impaired cognitive control for emotional information on rumination and depressive symptoms in a prospective design with a 1 year follow up in a clinical sample. Thirty remitted depressed adults completed the Internal Shift Task (IST), a measure of cognitive control of emotional information, at baseline. Moreover, questionnaires measuring rumination (RRS) and depressive symptoms (BDI-II) were administered. One year later participants were contacted again and asked to complete the BDI-II and RRS. Mediation analyses showed a significant influence of impaired cognitive control for emotional information at baseline on depressive symptoms one year later, which was fully mediated by rumination. These findings underscore the importance of cognitive control abilities as a process underlying rumination and as a vulnerability factor for depression. They can stimulate translational research to improve the effectiveness of interventions that aim to decrease vulnerability by targeting cognitive control.     

Unconscious semantic activation depends on feature-specific attention allocation

We examined whether semantic activation by subliminally presented stimuli is dependent upon the extent to which participants assign attention to specific semantic stimulus features and stimulus dimensions. Participants pronounced visible target words that were preceded by briefly presented, masked prime words. Both affective and non-affective semantic congruence of the prime-target pairs were manipulated under conditions that either promoted selective attention for affective stimulus information or selective attention for non-affective semantic stimulus information. In line with our predictions, results showed that affective congruence had a clear impact on word pronunciation latencies only if participants were encouraged to assign attention to the affective stimulus dimension. In contrast, non-affective semantic relatedness of the prime-target pairs produced no priming at all. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that unconscious activation of (affective) semantic information is modulated by feature-specific attention allocation.     

Mortality salience and morality: thinking about death makes people less utilitarian

According to the dual-process model of moral judgment, utilitarian responses to moral conflict draw on limited cognitive resources. Terror Management Theory, in parallel, postulates that mortality salience mobilizes these resources to suppress thoughts of death out of focal attention. Consequently, we predicted that individuals under mortality salience would be less likely to give utilitarian responses to moral conflicts. Two experiments corroborated this hypothesis. Experiment 1 showed that utilitarian responses to non-lethal harm conflicts were less frequent when participants were reminded of their mortality. Experiment 2 showed that the detrimental effect of mortality salience on utilitarian conflict judgments was comparable to that of an extreme concurrent cognitive load. These findings raise the question of whether private judgment and public debate about controversial moral issues might be shaped by mortality salience effects, since these issues (e.g., assisted suicide) often involve matters of life and death.     

Child, family, and childcare predictors of delayed school entry and kindergarten retention among linguistically and ethnically diverse children

Concern about kindergarten retention is on the rise within the current climate of high-stakes testing and escalating kindergarten expectations. Kindergarten retention has been linked in previous research to various risk factors such as poverty, low maternal education, single parent status, minority status, English language learner (ELL) status, and male gender. However, these factors are also associated with poor school readiness and low kindergarten performance--the very reasons children are retained in the 1st place. This study teases apart unique and combined predictors of delayed entry into kindergarten and kindergarten retention with a large (n = 13,191) ethnically diverse, at-risk sample of children. Delayed kindergarten entry was rare for this sample but more likely among boys, native English speakers, those with poorer school readiness, less maternal education, and greater resources, and those who attended childcare rather than public school prekindergarten (pre-K) at age 4 years. Boys were more likely to be retained in kindergarten, but only because of their poorer school readiness. After strong effects for age 4 school readiness were controlled, only poverty, ELL status, and preschool program attendance predicted retention. ELL students were less likely to be retained than were native speakers, and those who attended public school pre-K programs were less likely to be retained, compared with those in childcare at age 4 years. After controlling for children's actual performance in kindergarten their 1st time, Caucasian children and children with lower language and social skills at age 4 years were more likely to repeat kindergarten.     

Parameter estimation of multiple item response profile model

Multiple item response profile (MIRP) models are models with crossed fixed and random effects. At least one between-person factor is crossed with at least one within-person factor, and the persons nested within the levels of the between-person factor are crossed with the items within levels of the within-person factor. Maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) of models for binary data with crossed random effects is challenging. This is because the marginal likelihood does not have a closed form, so that MLE requires numerical or Monte Carlo integration. In addition, the multidimensional structure of MIRPs makes the estimation complex. In this paper, three different estimation methods to meet these challenges are described: the Laplace approximation to the integrand; hierarchical Bayesian analysis, a simulation-based method; and an alternating imputation posterior with adaptive quadrature as the approximation to the integral. In addition, this paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of these three estimation methods for MIRPs. The three algorithms are compared in a real data application and a simulation study was also done to compare their behaviour.     

The analysis of zero-inflated count data: beyond zero-inflated Poisson regression

Infrequent count data in psychological research are commonly modelled using zero-inflated Poisson regression. This model can be viewed as a latent mixture of an "always-zero" component and a Poisson component. Hurdle models are an alternative class of two-component models that are seldom used in psychological research, but clearly separate the zero counts and the non-zero counts by using a left-truncated count model for the latter. In this tutorial we revisit both classes of models, and discuss model comparisons and the interpretation of their parameters. As illustrated with an example from relational psychology, both types of models can easily be fitted using the R-package pscl.     

The Pedagogy of Self-Fashioning: A Foucaultian Study of Montaigne’s “On Educating Children”

In this paper I interpret Montaigne??s essay, ??On Educating Children??, as a pedagogical text through its performance of a distinct epistolary function, one that addresses the letter-recipient for the purpose of shaping the ideas, actions, and beliefs of that individual. At the same time, I also read ??On Educating Children?? within the context of the wider project of Montaigne??s Essays, which, as I suggest, is an ethical-aesthetic project of self-fashioning and self-cultivation. The net result is an interpretation of teaching as an ethical-aesthetic practice of the self, one that is in concert with the interpretation of Montaigne??s writing of the Essays as a similar practice of the self. In order to build this case, I employ Michel Foucault??s fourfold schema of ethical subjectivity, mapping that schema onto ??On Educating Children??, so as to reveal a unique pedagogy of self-formation??a pedagogy that works as much upon the self of the teacher as it does the self of the student.     

Predicting Transitions in Low and High Levels of Risk Behavior from Early to Middle Adolescence: The TRAILS Study

The present study examined the joint development of substance use and externalizing problems in early and middle adolescence. First, it was tested whether the relevant groups found in previous studies i.e., those with an early onset, a late onset, and no onset or low levels of risk behavior could be identified, while using a developmental model of a single, underlying construct of risk behavior. Second, departing from Moffitt's taxonomy of antisocial behavior, it was tested if early, but not late, onset risk behavior is predicted by a problematic risk profile in childhood. Data were used from TRAILS, a population based cohort study, starting at age 11 with two follow-ups at mean ages of 13.6 and 16.3 years. Latent transition analyses demonstrated that, both in early and middle adolescence, a single underlying construct of risk behavior, consisting of two classes (labeled as low and high risk behavior), adequately represented the data. Respondents could be clearly classified into four possible transition patterns from early to middle adolescence, with a transition from high to low being almost non-existent (2.5 %), low to low (39.4 %) and low to high (41.8 %) being the most prevalent, and high to high (16.2 %) substantial. As hypothesized, only the high-high group was characterized by a clear adverse predictor profile in late childhood, while the low-high group was not. This study demonstrates that the development of substance use is correlated with externalizing problems and underscores the theory that etiologies of early and later onset risk behavior are different.