Religiousness,religious coping methods,and cognitive test anxiety among African-American college students

This study explored the roles of religiousness and religious coping methods in predicting cognitive test anxiety. A convenience sample of 121 African-American students (97 females and 24 males) ranging in age from 18 to 39 (M_age?=?20.16), attending a historically Black university completed an online questionnaire assessing demographic information, religiousness, religious coping methods, and cognitive test anxiety. Results showed that negative religious coping methods were significant factors in predicting cognitive test anxiety. These relationships may be pertinent for understanding salient factors that influence cognitive test anxiety in African-American college students.     

Anger in lineup identification and creation

As an approach-oriented emotion, anger appears to affect behavioral thresholds in a range of contexts. The current work consists of three experiments examining this in the context of eyewitness identification procedures. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the relationship between a witness' anger and identification reliability, and Experiment 3 examined the relationship between a lineup creator's anger and the quality of selected lineup fillers. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that anger during an identification procedure is associated with increased risk of false identifications and reduced confidence-accuracy calibration. Experiment 3 showed that anger is associated with lower quality of fillers selected by lineup creators. Together, these experiments suggest that anger may undermine the quality of eyewitness evidence, even when the witnesses themselves are not the ones experiencing anger and even when anger is not directed at the perpetrator or suspect.     

Resurrecting Logical Probability

The logical interpretation of probability, or ``objective Bayesianism'– the theory that (some) probabilitiesare strictly logical degrees of partial implication – is defended.The main argument against it is that it requires the assignment ofprior probabilities, and that any attempt to determine them by symmetryvia a ``principle of insufficient reason' inevitably leads to paradox.Three replies are advanced: that priors are imprecise or of little weight, sothat disagreement about them does not matter, within limits; thatit is possible to distinguish reasonable from unreasonable priorson logical grounds; and that in real cases disagreement about priorscan usually be explained by differences in the background information.It is argued also that proponents of alternative conceptions ofprobability, such as frequentists, Bayesians and Popperians, areunable to avoid committing themselves to the basic principles oflogical probability.     

Structural Priming as Implicit Learning: A Comparison of Models of Sentence Production

Structural priming reflects a tendency to generalize recently spoken or heard syntactic structures to different utterances. We propose that it is a form of implicit learning. To explore this hypothesis, we developed and tested a connectionist model of language production that incorporated mechanisms previously used to simulate implicit learning. In the model, the mechanism that learned to produce structured sequences of phrases from messages also exhibited structural priming. The ability of the model to account for structural priming depended on representational assumptions about the nature of messages and the relationship between comprehension and production. Modeling experiments showed that comprehension-based representations were important for the model's generalizations in production and that nonatomic message representations allowed a better fit to existing data on structural priming than traditional thematic-role representations.     

Reduction of feces smearing in a profoundly retarded resident through contingent behavior-specific restraint and reduced attention

A 20-year-old profoundly retarded male resident of a state institution with a 12-year history of faces smearing (FS) was treated using an A-B design employing response contingent elbow restraint and reduced-attention. The rate of FS dropped sharply after the first week of treatment and then declined steadily until stabilizing at a relatively low rate. Incidental behaviors indicated that aversive effects of the treatment procedure were both mild and behavior specific. Procedures and results are compared with other behavioral approaches to treatment of self-injurious behavior.     

Problem-Solving Appraisal and the Prediction of Depression During Pregnancy and in the Postpartum Period

Based on the presumed mood-regulatory properties of the problem orientation component delineated in the social problem-solving model, a positive problem orientation was predicted to influence ongoing levels of positive and negative affect during pregnancy. Higher levels of positive affect and lower levels of negative affect would then in turn predict depression during pregnancy and in the postpartum period. This hypothesis was tested in 100 women. Path analyses supported the predicted relation of the problem orientation components to trait affectivity, and indirectly to peripartum and postpartum depression. Trait negative and positive affectivity was also associated with peripartum depression, and indirectly with postpartum depression, as expected. Implications for the integrated social problem-solving model are discussed. Recommendations for assessment and counseling interventions with expectant women are offered.     

Motivation to manage among college business students: A reassessment

The present study reassesses trends in motivation to manage among college business students (N = 216). Motivation to manage scores are compared with J. B. Miner's (Personnel Psychology, 1974, 27, 605–613) results for three periods since the early 1960s, across two types of universities—public and private, and between males and females. Results indicate that the downward trend in motivation to manage scores appears to be reversing; business students at the private university scored higher on motivation to manage than those at the public university, and males scored higher than females. Implications for vocational research are discussed.     

Bilingual speech: Bilateral control?

Forty bilinguals from several language backgrounds were contrasted to a group of English-speaking monolinguals on a verbal-manual interference paradigm. For the monolinguals, concurrent finger-tapping rate during speech output tasks was disrupted only for the right hand, indicating left-hemisphere language dominance. Bilingual laterality patterns were a function of language used: native (L1) versus second acquired (L2), and age of L2 acquisition. Early bilinguals (L1 + L2 acquisition prior to age 6) revealed left-hemisphere dominance for both languages, whereas late bilinguals (L2 acquired beyond age 6) revealed left-hemisphere dominance only for L1 and symmetrical hemispheric involvement for L2.     

Validity of the Fear Survey Schedule in phobia research: A laboratory test

The Fear Survey Schedule III, developed by Wolpe and Lang (1969, 1977), is used frequently to classify subjects as phobic or nonphobic. Subjects selected for their intense-fear scores on blood, fire, bat, and snake items did not significantly differ from no-fear subjects on an objective behavioral assessment test. Analyses of subject verbal reports suggest several possibilities for the inability to discriminate between fearful and nonfearful subjects. Researchers are cautioned about the use of the Fear Survey Schedule for selecting phobic subjects without supporting evidence.