Self‐ambivalence and reactions to success versus failure

People differ in the extent to which their self‐evaluations fluctuate in response to positive and negative events. This research tests whether self‐ambivalence predicts this self‐evaluative reactivity. Participants first completed measures of self‐ambivalence and baseline self‐esteem. Next, they were induced a success or failure experience in a cognitive task and finally rated their cognitive self‐evaluations (task‐specific ability, state self‐esteem) and affective reactions (self‐feelings, mood). Self‐ambivalence was associated with stronger effects of the success/failure manipulation on cognitive self‐evaluations but not on affective reactions, with baseline self‐esteem controlled. Possible underlying mechanisms are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How predictable is spelling? Developing and testing metrics of phoneme-grapheme contingency

Prior research has purported to show that words with infrequent phoneme-grapheme correspondences are more difficult to spell than words with frequent phoneme-grapheme correspondences. Defining exactly what a phoneme-grapheme relationship is, however, is not necessarily straightforward. There are a number of different assumptions that can be made. In this study, we developed four metrics of sound-spelling contingency based on all monosyllabic English words, including those with complex morphology. These metrics differed in the extent to which they included assumptions about spelling. The psychological reality of these different metrics was evaluated against data from a large-scale study of skilled adult spelling and a nonword spelling experiment. The results suggest that when spelling, people are sensitive to positional information, morphological status, vowel type, and a number of more idiosyncratic constraints.     

Distraction intervention for preschoolers undergoing intramuscular injections and subcutaneous port access.

This study evaluated a distraction intervention designed to reduce the distress of preschool children undergoing repeated chemotherapy injections. Twenty-nine children aged 2-5 years were randomly assigned either to distraction by a developmentally appropriate electronic toy or to a wait-list control. Children who received the distraction intervention demonstrated lower overt behavioral distress and were rated by parents and nurses as less anxious than children in the control condition. The improvements were maintained over the 8-week intervention. The results suggest that a developmentally appropriate, multisensory, variable-distracting activity that requires active cognitive processing and active motor responses may be a viable cost-effective alternative to more time-intensive parent-training programs for preschool-age children.     

Protection Motivation Theory and Adolescents' Perceptions of Exercise1

Coping strategies endorsed by adolescents in dealing with a potential threat to their health were assessed in a study which investigated components of protection motivation theory. Year 9 and 10 high school students were presented with information about cardiovascular disease risk and the role of exercise in maintaining cardiorespiratory fitness. Three components specified by the theory were manipulated: response efficacy (effectiveness of exercise in preventing cardiovascular disease), response costs (costs associated with taking up a regular program of exercise) and self-efficacy (belief in ability to carry out a program of exercise) in a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design with two levels (high vs. low) of each variable. It was hypothesized that such information would affect participants' perceptions of response efficacy, response costs, self-efficacy, and their selection of coping strategies. Six dependent variables were investigated: two adaptive coping strategies (behavioral intention to exercise, rational problem solving) and four maladaptive strategies (avoidance, wishful thinking, hopelessness, arid fatalism). Manipulation checks found significant differences between the high and low conditions of each independent variable. Adaptive strategies were strongly endorsed, whereas endorsement of the maladaptive strategies ranged from minimal to complete disagreement. Participants in the high self-efficacy condition indicated stronger intentions to exercise. Students in the low response efficacy condition demonstrated more endorsement of hopelessness and fatalism than did students in the high response efficacy condition. When exercising status was included as a fourth independent variable, it was found that active adolescents endorsed the adaptive coping strategies more strongly than did inactive adolescents. The cognitive coping strategies adopted by adolescents when dealing with perceived threats to their health may be influenced by information on the efficacy of relevant behavior, by perceptions of their ability to perform such behavior, and by their actual involvement with the behavior of concern.     

Social and Situational Factors Associated With Contraceptive Switching: Implications for Practitioners1

This study was an investigation of contraceptive switching in the context of a 5-wave panel design of diaphragm and pill users from the New York City metropolitan area. The respondents were 525 women between the ages of 14 and 46, who came to one of 10 family planning clinics to obtain birth control, Results indicated a hazard function for switching in which the hazard rate increased in the initial weeks and then gradually declined over time. Clinic experiences on the part of the women were found to alter survivorship trends. Implications of the data for service providers were developed.     

Discrimination of picture requests for missing items among young children with developmental disabilities

Two experiments were conducted to assess discrimination of picture requests for missing items among young children with developmental disabilities. In Experiment 1, three children were first taught to request one object when it was missing from a set of two related leisure items. In Experiment 2, two children were taught to request one object belonging to a set of three leisure items. In both studies the requesting response consisted of pointing to a photograph of the missing item. After acquisition of the initial request, discrimination of picture requests was assessed when the second item (Experiment 1) and second or third item (Experiment 2) was missing. Requests for the untrained items emerged in the presence of natural maintaining contingencies and in the absence of instructional prompts for all but the third child in Experiment 1. This child required continued intervention on the initial request. The results suggest that for some children a sequence of intervention and the programming of natural maintaining contingencies may prove effective in promoting the discrimination of picture requests for missing items among young children with developmental disabilities.     

In Memoriam

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Predicting Health Behaviors From Attitudes and Subjective Norms: Between-Subjects and Within-Subjects Analyses

Much previous research (Trafimow & Fishbein, 1994a, 1994b) indicates that some behaviors are mostly under attitudinal control and some are mostly under normative control. Further, other research (Trafimow & Finlay, 1996) demonstrates that people, as well as behaviors, can be generally under attitudinal or normative control. The present research applies these ideas to the domain of health behaviors. Analyses conducted between-subjects for each behavior, and within-subjects across all of the behaviors, demonstrate that both behaviors and people can be under attitudinal or normative control when responding to items pertaining to health.     

Media Effects on Women's Body Esteem: Social and Individual Difference Factors

This study examined individual difference and social factors in moderating the effects of media images on women's body satisfaction. Participants heard a conversation wherein 2 people either were judgmental about a mutual friend's weight gain or discussed their friend's recent move. Participants then viewed slides which were either neutral or depicted "ideal" images of women. Results underscored the importance of individual differences. When exposed to ideal images, thinner women more positively evaluated their sexual attractiveness, while heavier women reported more negative self-evaluations. Compared to low self-monitors, high self-monitors who were exposed to ideal images were more positive about their physical condition. The findings demonstrate that media images do not similarly affect all women's body esteem.     

A mere exposure effect for transformed three-dimensional objects: Effects of reflection, size, or color changes on affect and recognition

If the mere exposure effect is based on implicit memory, recognition and affect judgments should be dissociated by experimental variables in the same manner as other explicit and implicit measures. Consistent with results from recognition and picture naming or object decision priming tasks (e.g., Biederman & E. E. Cooper, 1991, 1992; L. A. Cooper, Schacter, Ballesteros, & Moore, 1992), the present research showed that recognition memory but not affective preference was impaired by reflection or size transformations of three-dimensional objects between study and test. Stimulus color transformations had no effect on either measure. These results indicate that representations that support recognition memory code spatial information about an object’s left-right orientation and size, whereas representations that underlie affective preference do not. Insensitivity to surface feature changes that do not alter object form appears to be a general characteristic of implicit memory measures, including the affective preference task.