Information processing abilities in twins reared apart

A battery of information processing measures and psychometric tests of specific and general cognitive abilities was administered to a sample of 105 individuals which included 34 monozygotic and 13 dizygotic reared apart twin pairs or triplets. Correlations between information processing parameters and psychometric abilities as well as twin resemblances for the information processing parameters were examined. In a principal components analysis of the information processing parameters, three components were identified which accounted for 67% of the total variation; Overall Speed of Response (OSR), Speed of Information Processing (SIP), and Speed of Spatial Processing (SSP). OSR was significantly correlated with WAIS IQ, and psychometric measures of verbal reasoning, spatial ability, and perceptual speed and accuracy. SIP was significantly correlated with WAIS IQ, measures of verbal reasoning, and one of the perceptual speed and accuracy measures. SSP was significantly correlated with measures of both spatial ability and perceptual speed and accuracy. Due to the small size of the dizygotic twin sample, no strong conclusions could be drawn regarding the magnitude of their resemblance. The correlation between component scores of reared apart monozygotic twins was significant for OSR, but not for SIP or SSP.     

Proactive interference plays a role in the word-length effect

The word-length effect is the advantage that lists of short words show over lists of long words in immediate recall. Typically, the word-length effect is used as strong support for decay-based theories of immediate retention. However, the present two experiments show that the traditional word-length effect emerges only after several trials in an experimental session, a result reminiscent of earlier findings in distractor-based short-term forgetting experiments. These results suggest that any complete account of the word-length effect will need to consider a role for proactive interference.     

Regional cerebral glucose metabolism in aphemia: A case report

Local cerebral metabolism was determined in a patient suffering aphemia following cerebral infarction using the 18FDG-PET technique. The syndrome was characterized by profound ictal nonfluency with sparing of other language functions. Speech subsequently improved so that content and grammar were appropriate but mild dysprosody persisted. Conventional CT showed no lesion of the left hemisphere while PET revealed a discrete focus of hypometabolism on the left which partially resolved on serial studies. The metabolic lesion could be localized to the region of the inferior precentral gyrus and the adjacent subcortical space.     

Hyperactivity in boys with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): the association between deficient behavioral inhibition, attentional processes, and objectively measured activity

Contemporary models of ADHD hypothesize that hyperactivity reflects a byproduct of inhibition deficits. The current study investigated the relationship between children's motor activity and behavioral inhibition by experimentally manipulating demands placed on the limited-resource inhibition system. Twenty-two boys (ADHD = 11, TD = 11) between the ages of 8 and 12 years completed a conventional stop-signal task, two choice-task variants (no-tone, ignore-tone), and control tasks while their motor activity was measured objectively by actigraphs placed on their nondominant wrist and ankles. All children exhibited significantly higher activity rates under all three experimental tasks relative to control conditions, and children with ADHD moved significantly more than typically developing children across conditions. No differences in activity level were observed between the inhibition and noninhibition experimental tasks for either group, indicating that activity level was primarily associated with basic attentional rather than behavioral inhibition processes.     

Learning new meanings for old words: effects of semantic relatedness

Changes to our everyday activities mean that adult language users need to learn new meanings for previously unambiguous words. For example, we need to learn that a "tweet" is not only the sound a bird makes, but also a short message on a social networking site. In these experiments, adult participants learned new fictional meanings for words with a single dominant meaning (e.g., "ant") by reading paragraphs that described these novel meanings. Explicit recall of these meanings was significantly better when there was a strong semantic relationship between the novel meaning and the existing meaning. This relatedness effect emerged after relatively brief exposure to the meanings (Experiment 1), but it persisted when training was extended across 7?days (Experiment 2) and when semantically demanding tasks were used during this extended training (Experiment 3). A lexical decision task was used to assess the impact of learning on online recognition. In Experiment 3, participants responded more quickly to words whose new meaning was semantically related than to those with an unrelated meaning. This result is consistent with earlier studies showing an effect of meaning relatedness on lexical decision, and it indicates that these newly acquired meanings become integrated with participants' preexisting knowledge about the meanings of words.     

Vicarious Peer Victimization and Adolescent Violence: Unpacking the Effects of Social Learning,General Strain,and Peer Group Selection

This study examines how the victimization of a close friend, or vicarious peer victimization, affects adolescent violence. Competing processes linking vicarious peer victimization and violence are empirically evaluated including social learning theory, general stain theory, and peer group selection models. The analyses use peer-network data from three waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Regression models demonstrate that the association between vicarious peer victimization and violence is attributed primarily to peer-group selection and social learning mechanisms. These findings indicate that victimization affects not only the immediate victims of violence, but permeates throughout adolescent social networks.     

The Creation of the Workplace Social Courage Scale (WSCS): An Investigation of Internal Consistency,Psychometric Properties,Validity, and Utility

Purpose

The current article reviews extant knowledge on courage and identifies a dimension of courage relevant to modern organizations, social courage, which is an (a) intentional, (b) deliberate, and (c) altruistic behavior that (d) may damage the actor’s esteem in the eyes of others. Through a multiple-study process, quantitative inferences are derived about social courage, and the Workplace Social Courage Scale (WSCS) is created.

Design

Four studies using seven samples analyze the WSCS’s psychometric properties, internal consistency, method effects, discriminant validity, convergent validity, concurrent validity, and utility. Many of these are investigated or replicated in largely working adult samples.

Findings

Each aspect of the WSCS approaches or meets specified guidelines. Also, social courage is significantly related to organizational citizenship behaviors, and the construct may relate to many other important workplace outcomes.

Implications

The current study is among the first to quantitatively demonstrate the existence of courage as a construct, and the discovered relationships are the first statistical inferences about social courage. Future research and practice can now apply the WSCS to better understand the impact of social courage within the workplace.

Originality

Despite many attempts, no author has created a satisfactory measure of courage, and the current article presents the first successful measure through focusing on a particular courage dimension—social courage. Future research should take interest in the created measure, the WSCS, as its application can derive future inferences about courage and social courage.

     

Perceptions of the parent-adolescent relationship: a longitudinal investigation

A self-report measure of conflict and aspects of warmth in the parent-child relationship was completed by 1,330 11-year-old twins, 1,176 of whom completed the inventory again 3 years later. On average, adolescents' perceptions of the quality of the parent-child relationship declined consistently and moderately between age 11 and age 14. Conflict with parents increased, whereas all aspects of warmth decreased; changes were significantly greater for girls than boys. Variances increased with age, primarily because of increases in the magnitude of genetic effects. Heritability estimates ranged from .09 to .31 at intake and .35 to .45 at follow-up and tended to be higher for boys than girls. Changes in the parent-child relationship are interpreted as reflecting genotype-environment correlation processes whereby adolescents increasingly influence their relationships with their parents.     

Multiply controlled verbal operants: an analysis and extension to the picture exchange communication system

This paper presents Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior as a framework for understanding language acquisition in children with autism. We describe Skinner's analysis of pure and impure verbal operants and illustrate how this analysis may be applied to the design of communication training programs. The picture exchange communication system (PECS) is a training program influenced by Skinner's framework. We describe the training sequence associated with PECS and illustrate how this sequence may establish multiply controlled verbal behavior in children with autism. We conclude with an examination of how Skinner's framework may apply to other communication modalities and training strategies.     

Hostility and facial affect recognition: effects of a cold pressor stressor on accuracy and cardiovascular reactivity

The effects of hostility and a cold pressor stressor on the accuracy of facial affect perception were examined in the present experiment. A mechanism whereby physiological arousal level is mediated by systems which also mediate accuracy of an individual’s interpretation of affective cues is described. Right-handed participants were classified as high hostile (N=28) or low hostile (N=28) using the Cook Medley Hostility Scale. The high-hostile group met joint selection criteria. Only high-hostile participants who showed cardiovascular reactivity to the cold pressor, with systolic BP change exceeding the group mean were included. Groups were further subdivided into cold pressor and non-cold pressor test conditions. It was predicted that high-hostile men, relative to low-hostile men, would show decreased perceptual accuracy when presented with happy, angry, and neutral facial configurations within the left visual field (LVF). Results indicated that high-hostile men were less accurate than low-hostile men in the LVF. Further, pre-stress accuracy scores in the high-hostile men were similar to the post-stress accuracy scores of the low-hostile men. The lateralization of affective function and the role of physiological arousal in affective facial perception are discussed.