Quality and Correlates of Parental Attachment Among Late Adolescents

The value of attachment theory (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) in describing parental relationships of late adolescents (N = 139) in trade and technical school programs was explored. Overall, students described positive attachments to parents, viewing them both as facilitating their autonomy and as being available as a source of emotional support. Male students who were attending schools farther away from their parents' homes described their parental attachments more positively than did students who attended schools closer to their parents' homes. Parental facilitation of autonomy was associated with self-reports of assertion for female students.     

The effects of feedback consistency and feedback favorability on self-perceived task competence and perceived feedback accuracy

The present study, employing a 2 × 2 true-experimental design and regression analyses assessed the main and interactive effects of feedback consistency (consistent vs inconsistent), and feedback favorability (acceptable vs superior), for feedback given at two time periods on measures of perceived feedback accuracy and self-perceived task competence. Among the study's findings were that (a) the perceived accuracy of feedback at the second period was a function of the favorability of feedback received at the first time period, (b) the self-perceived task competence levels of subjects were jointly determined by the favorability of feedback received at both time periods, and (c) the perceived accuracy of feedback was a function of its consistency. Organizational implications of the study's results are offered.     

Early selective-attention effect on evoked potential reinterpreted

In a dichotic listening situation stimuli were presented one at a time and at random to either ear of the subject at constant inter-stimulus intervals of 800 msec. The subject's task was to detect and count occasional slightly different stimuli in one ear. In Experiment 1, these ‘signal’ stimuli were slightly louder, and in Experiment 2 they had a slightly higher pitch, than the much more frequent, ‘standard’, stimuli. In both experiments signals occured randomly at either ear. Separate evoked potentials from three different locations were recorded for each of the four kinds of stimuli (attended signals, unattended signals, attended standards, unattended standards). Contrary to Hillyard et al. (1973), no early (N₁ component) evoked-potential enhancement was observed to stimuli to the attended ear as compared with those to the unattended ear, but there was a later negative shift superimposed on potentials elicited by the former stimuli. This negative shift was considered identical to the N₁ enhancement of Hillyard and his colleagues which in the present study was forced, by the longer inter-stimulus interval used, to demonstrate temporal dissociation with the N₁ component. The ‘Hillyard effect’ was, consequently, explained as being caused by a superimposition of a CNV kind of negative shift on the evoked potential to the attended stimuli rather than by a growth of the ‘real’ N₁ component of the evoked potential.     

Structural models for the mediation of salience effects on attribution

Previous research has demonstrated that salient information is overrepresented in causal attributions. Two experiments were conducted to investigate potential mediators for this effect and to make a case for the use of structural models in explanations of process. Two mediators were considered: enhanced visual recall of salient stimuli and exaggerated schema-relevant recall of salient stimuli. Although analyses of variance supported the visual recall model, structural analyses demonstrated its implausibility. Analyses of variance and structural models revealed that schema-relevant recall, that is, information seen as representative of causal influence, is a plausible mediator; this was particularly true of relevant visual information. Results suggest that salience effects (S. E. Taylor & S. T. Fiske in L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 11). New York: Academic Press, 1978) are due to: (a) the attentional advantage of inherently salient visual events and (b) the influence of stored visual and nonvisual schema-relevant information on causal judgments.     

Motivation as a function of success frequency

Motivation and Emotion - It is well-established that intermediate challenge is optimally motivating. We tested whether this can be quantified into an inverted-U relationship between motivation and...     

Effects of ritanserin on offense and defense in male mice

Effects of ritanserin on agonistic behavior of isolated mice exhibiting aggressive or nonaggressive behavioral strategies were studied in pair-wise encounters with group-housed opponents. An ethological approach to behavioral scoring is adopted, which allows for examination of the profiles of individual subjects. Although the data generally support the view that ritanser in has little effect on offense or defense in male mice, the stimulation of pre-aggressive behavior (threats, alerts, tail rattles) was detected in some nonaggressive mice. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Representational momentum and related displacements in spatial memory: A review of the findings

Memory for the final location of a moving target is often displaced in the direction of target motion, and this has been referred to asrepresentational momentum. Characteristics of the target (e.g., velocity, size, direction, and identity), display (e.g., target format, retention interval, and response method), context (landmarks, expectations, and attribution of motion source), and observer (e.g., allocation of attention, eye movements, and psychopathology) that influence the direction and magnitude of displacement are reviewed. Specific conclusions regarding numerous variables that influence displacement (e.g., presence of landmarks or surrounding context), as well as broad-based conclusions regarding displacement in general (e.g., displacement does not reflect objective physical principles, may reflect aspects of naive physics, does not solely reflect eye movements, may involve some modular processing, and reflects high-level processes) are drawn. A possible computational theory of displacement is suggested in which displacement (1) helps bridge the gap between perception and action and (2) plays a critical part in localizing stimuli in the environment.     

The effects of yoga on the attention and behavior of boys with Attention-Deficit/ hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Boys diagnosed with ADHD by specialist pediatricians and stabilized on medication were randomly assigned to a 20-session yoga group (n = 11) or a control group (cooperative activities; n = 8). Boys were assessed pre- and post-intervention on the Conners' Parent and Teacher Rating Scales-Revised: Long (CPRS-R:L & CTRS-R:L; Conners, 1997), the Test of Variables of Attention (TOVA; Greenberg, Cormna, & Kindschi, 1997), and the Motion Logger Actigraph. Data were analyzed using one-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). Significant improvements from pre-test to post-test were found for the yoga, but not for the control group on five subscales of the Conners' Parents Rating Scales (CPRS): Oppositional, Global Index Emotional Lability, Global Index Total, Global Index Restless/Impulsive and ADHD Index. Significant improvements from pre-test to post-test were found for the control group, but not the yoga group on three CPRS subscales: Hyperactivity, Anxious/Shy, and Social Problems. Both groups improved significantly on CPRS Perfectionism, DSM-IV Hyperactive/ Impulsive, and DSM-IV Total. For the yoga group, positive change from pre- to post-test on the Conners' Teacher Rating Scales (CTRS) was associated with the number of sessions attended on the DSM-IV Hyperactive-Impulsive subscale and with a trend on DSM-IV Inattentive subscale. Those in the yoga group who engaged in more home practice showed a significant improvement on TOVA Response Time Variability with a trend on the ADHD score, and greater improvements on the CTRS Global Emotional Lability subscale. Results from the Motion Logger Actigraph were inconclusive. Although these data do not provide strong support for the use of yoga for ADHD, partly because the study was under-powered, they do suggest that yoga may have merit as a complementary treatment for boys with ADHD already stabilized on medication, particularly for its evening effect when medication effects are absent. Yoga remains an investigational treatment, but this study supports further research into its possible uses for this population. These findings need to be replicated on larger groups with a more intensive supervised practice program.