Effects of External and Internal Motivation to Control Prejudice on Implicit Prejudice: The Mediating Role of Efforts to Control Prejudiced Responses

We examined the effects of internal and external motivation to control prejudice on implicit prejudice, focusing on identifying a mediator of the relation between external motivation and implicit prejudice. White participants completed internal and external motivation to control prejudice measures several weeks before completing the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Participants who were more internally motivated showed less implicit prejudice, whereas those who were more externally motivated displayed more implicit prejudice. Consistent with an ironic processes explanation, the effect of external motivation on increased implicit prejudice was mediated by efforts to control prejudiced responses.     

CONCEPTUAL MODELS OF LECTURE LEARNING: GUIDING METAPHORS AND MODEL-APPROPRIATE NOTETAKING PRACTICES

The metaphors that college students use to describe lecture learning may reflect conceptual models that direct, organize, and constrain the nature of the notetaking practices they prefer to use. Specific notetaking practices that would be dictated by the metaphors of "Sponge," "Tape Recorder," "Stenographer," "Code Breaker," "Reporter," and "Explorer" were rated as to frequency of use by 84 college students in an introductory psychology class. Subsequent ratings of the adequacy of each metaphor by these students were used to predict preferences for metaphor-appropriate notetaking practices in individual stepwise regression analyses. The perceived quality of a notetaking metaphor was predictive of the metaphor-appropriate notetaking practices reported by students for every metaphor except the Explorer metaphor. The discussion focuses on the role that students' conceptual models of lecture learning might play in facilitating or hindering efforts to improve their notetaking practices. The importance of assessing conceptual models as well as specific behavioral practices in the diagnosis of lecture-learning difficulties and the evaluation of training interventions is also considered.     

Issues of Reliability in Measuring Intimate Partner Violence during Courtship

The current paper focuses on problems in conceptualizing and establishing reliability when using self-administered measures of intimate partner violence to assess dating violence. Establishing reliability is an important step in the development of dating violence assessment instruments. However, the nature of dating violence can make it difficult to establish reliability. Most notably, measures of intimate partner violence in courtship yield data that are positively skewed, with almost no one reporting high levels of violence. This could have implications for the calculation of several forms of reliability that assume normality (e.g., Pearson correlations, intraclass correlations). In addition, there are other characteristics of dating violence that could impact reliability. For example, partner violence perpetrators do not necessarily use multiple acts (internal consistency reliability) or repeat specific acts (test-retest reliability). And, gender differences in the perception of partner violence may influence intra-couple reliability in heterosexual couples. Finally, statistical interdependence within couples makes current intra-couple reliability assessment suspect. Research is reviewed and recommendations are made concerning the establishment of test-retest reliability, intra-couple reliability, and internal consistency reliability for measures of dating violence.     

Regional cortical volume and cognitive functioning following traumatic brain injury

There has been limited examination of the effect of brain pathology on subsequent function. The current study examined the relationships between regional variation in grey matter volume, age and cognitive impairment using a semi-automated image analysis tool. This study included 69 individuals with mild-to-severe TBI, 41 of whom also completed neuropsychological tests of attention, working memory, processing speed, memory and executive functions. A widespread reduction in grey matter volume was associated with increasing age. Regional volumes that were affected also related to the severity of injury, whereby the most severe TBI participants displayed the most significant pathology. Poorer retention of newly learned material was associated with reduced cortical volume in frontal, parietal, and occipital brain regions. In addition, poorer working memory and executive control performance was found for individuals with lower cortical volume in temporal, parietal, and occipital regions. These findings are largely in line with previous literature, which suggests that frontal, temporal, and parietal regions are integral for the encoding of memories into long-term storage, memory retrieval, and working memory. The present study suggests that automated image analysis methods may be used to explore the relationships between regional variation in grey matter volume and cognitive function following TBI.     

The 1-2-3 Magic Program: Implementation Outcomes of an Australian Pilot Evaluation With School-Aged Children

No abstract available for this article.     

The detection and influence of problematic item content in ability tests: An examination of sensitivity review practices for personnel selection test development

In organizational and educational practices, sensitivity reviews are commonly advocated techniques for reducing test bias and enhancing fairness. In the present paper, results from two studies are reported which investigate how effective individuals are at detecting problematic test content and the influence such content has on important testing outcomes. In Study 1, signal detection analyses are used to examine the role of individual differences in the identification of insensitive test items, while Study 2 investigates the extent to which insensitivity differentially influences item performance and reactions. Results revealed small but significant differences in the overall accuracy and response tendencies of student test reviewers on the basis of demographics and key individual differences variables. Contrary to predictions however, problematic items did not exhibit differential item functioning across sex nor did their presence engender negative test taker reactions. Implications and suggestions for future research and sensitivity review practices are discussed.     

Research on calling: What have we learned and where are we going?

Work as a calling is an emerging concept for scholars across a variety of psychological disciplines. In the current paper, the extant literature on calling is reviewed, showcasing its salience among college student and adult populations and highlighting consistent links between perceiving a calling and heightened levels of career maturity, career commitment, work meaning, job satisfaction, life meaning, and life satisfaction. These links appear most robust when individuals are actually living out their calling at work. Seven suggestions are proposed for future researchers to better understand what it means to have and live a calling: developing a stronger conceptual understanding, collecting more longitudinal data, studying more diverse cultural groups, focusing on behavioral outcomes, examining the dark side of a calling, building theory, and testing interventions. It is hoped that the promising research base and vast areas of potential growth will continue to make the study of calling attractive to scholars across psychological disciplines.     

Tabloid Brand Medicine Chests: Selling Health and Hygiene for the British Tropical Colonies

During the late Victorian and early Edwardian period a surge of commodities went on display and were advertised throughout the empire. One such commodity was the Burroughs Wellcome & Co. (BWC) Tabloid brand medicine chest. The marketing of the chest was intimately related to BWC's economic and political interests in empire, contributing to a discourse of tropicality and belief in western progress and white European superiority in Britain's tropical colonies. BWC used their scientific and medical authority to further differentiate and fix western culture and the identity of white Europeans, in opposition to the tropics and their inhabitants. Despite BWC's claims to the medical and scientific superiority of these chests, the majority of their contents were in use for hundreds, if not thousands of years, often deriving from the very contexts white Europeans were supposedly civilising with their aid. BWC's advertisement and promotion of their chests, in this case, reveals processes of hybridisation between supposedly distinct cultures. The selling of Tabloid brand medicine chests contributed to a belief in western and white European superiority, but closer investigation of their contents demonstrates how such claims were, in the end, inherently problematic and unstable. Such an analysis shows that the ultimate medical value of the chests did not derive from unbiased and empirical processes, but from academic, state and industrial authority in relation to Britain's imperial ambitions.     

Knowledge of Memory Aging Across the Lifespan

ABSTRACT. The authors examined knowledge of normal and pathological memory aging in a lifespan sample of 198 individuals who ranged in age from 13 to 88 years. Participants completed the Knowledge of Memory Aging Questionnaire (Cherry, Brigman, Hawley, & Reese, 2003). The authors hypothesized that high school students would be less knowledgeable about memory aging issues than college students, middle-aged, and community-dwelling older adults. Consistent with this hypothesis, response accuracy was lower for high school students compared to their older counterparts. Follow-up analyses revealed that high school students’ responses to a subset of questions that tap ageist views of adult cognition were less accurate than the other age groups, implying a response bias toward stereotypical images of memory aging. Implications for research and the design of instructional materials to increase people's knowledge about normative changes in adult cognition are discussed.