The Accuracy of Behavioral Intention Versus Behavioral Expectation for Predicting Behavioral Goals

Researchers have largely overlooked the distinction between behavioral intention and behavioral expectation as predictors of one's own behavior. Moreover, the distinction between purely volitional behavior and behavioral goals, the latter of which may be impeded by such nonvolitional factors as lack of ability, lack of opportunity, habit, and environmental impediments, has also been blurred in the literature. Behavioral expectation is theorized to be based on a cognitive appraisal of one's behavioral intention and all other behavioral determinants of which one is aware. The present study argues and gives evidence that, although behavioral expectation and behavioral intention may have similar predictive accuracy for volitional behaviors, behavioral expectation is adequate, but behavioral intention may be inadequate for prediction of the accomplishment of behavioral goals.     

Getting out of the life: Crime desistance by female street offenders

Although increased attention is being paid to gender variations in the nature and extent of crime, little has been done to describe the termination of criminal careers by female offenders. This paper describes how 30 women with long histories of criminal involvement changed their perspectives toward life and criminal behavior. Changes in criminal behavior occurred as a result of a three‐stage process: building resolve or discovering motivation to stop (i.e., socially disjunctive experiences), making and publicly disclosing the decision to stop, and maintaining new behaviors and integration into new social networks. Desistance appears to be a process as complex and lengthy as the processes of initial involvement. Overall, the social processes and turning points described by the women in the present research are quite similar to those reported by men in previous studies.     

The effects of two methods of training and sequencing on structuring and relationship skills of family therapists

Abstract

This study was an attempt to evaluate two methods of training family therapists (n = 26). Specifically, this research evaluated the relative effectiveness of observation-feedback (OF) and skill-based (SB) training methods, as well as OF-SB and SB-OF sequences of training on the acquisition of structuring and relationship skills. The only significant finding was that the OF-SB sequence resulted in significant gains in the acquisition of relationship skills. Implications are discussed for the training of family therapists.     

Understanding Autism Implications for Psychoanalysis

Several lines of evidence inform current psychoanalytic thinking about infantile autism. Although early psychoanalytic interest in autism centered around the notion that experience might play a role in pathogenesis a large body of data suggest this is not the case; rather the condition appears to be the result of genetic and other neurobiological factors. Studies of children with autism do, however, suggest basic problems in capacities for object relations and other aspects of ego development which must be understood in the context of autistic social dysfunction. The study of normally developing infants raises considerable questions about the validity of notions such as a normal autistic phase; rather than for the normally developing child interest in the social world appears to be an innate capacity and one which has considerable importance for our understanding of the nature of early ego development and capacities for self-object differentiation.     

Relationship of Job Performance to Job Perceptions of Salespersons

Abstract

Comparative perceptions of salespersons and sales managers with respect to dimensions of the formers' job were examined. It was shown that the two groups have similar perceptions regarding several dimensions, but that these perceptions relate only somewhat to subordinates' job performance and not at all to supervisors' performance.     

Diagnosing Autism using ICD-10 criteria: A comparison of neural networks and standard multivariate procedures

In a sample of 976 consecutive cases derived from the recent world-wide Field Trial of Autism and other Pervasive Developmental Disorders, we tested the accuracy of the 15 ICD-10 criteria for the diagnosis of Autism, by comparing neural network models (NN) to more conventional multivariate competitors, namely, linear and quadratic discriminant function analyses and logistic regression. NNs were less accurate than competitors, both in terms of cross-validation results as well as in levels of shrinkage from training to test conditions. The clinical research implications of these results are discussed.     

Remembering the Street Names of One's Childhood Neighbourhood: A Study of Very Long-term Retention

Life-span retention of street names was studied in a sample of former students of a Dutch elementary school. Participants were requested to recall the street names of their childhood neighbourhood and indicate their position on a map. In addition, information was gathered concerning (a) the extensiveness of the original learning experience, (b) its elaborateness, and (c) the amount of interference from similar materials occurring between original learning experience and time of recall. Retention intervals varied from 0 to 71 years. Amount of exposure, elaborateness of learning, and retroactive interference all contributed to the memorability of names. In addition, the forgetting curve showed a permastore effect (Bahrick, 1984), suggesting that memory for non-schematic, incidentally learned material is subject to processes of forgetting similar to those that affect intentionally learned material, such as subject-matter acquired in school.     

Eye movements during visual mental imagery

It has long been debated whether eye movements play a functional role in visual mental imagery. A recent paper by Laeng and Teodorescu presents new evidence that eye movements are stored as a spatial index that is used to arrange the component parts correctly when mental images are generated.     

Alexithymia and aspects of dreaming: Differential associations of alexithymia facets with dream variables

Research on aspects of dreaming associated with alexithymia has yielded mixed results. The present study recruited a young adult online sample of 577 participants who completed validated indices of alexithymia, emotion suppression, negative moods, and eight aspects of dreaming, with a focus on evaluating a counterintuitive previous finding that alexithymia and two of its core facets were associated with greater self-reported typical emotional intensity of dreams. Total alexithymia and facet scores showed differential relationships to aspects of dreaming including dream recall frequency, emotionality, meaningfulness, nightmare frequency, nightmare distress, usefulness of dreams in problem-solving and creativity, and learning about oneself through dreams. Planned hierarchical regression controlling for demographics, alcohol use, and dream recall frequency indicated that the difficulties identifying feelings (DIF) facet of alexithymia was a significant positive predictor of dream emotionality, whereas the externally oriented thinking (EOT) facet was a significant negative predictor. Stress, but not emotion suppression, mediated the positive relationship between DIF and dream emotionality. The likely role of dream emotionality in higher ratings of nightmare distress, dream meaningfulness, and learning about oneself through dreams among those with higher DIF scores is noted, along with other findings and the strengths and limitations of the study.     

Motor Processes in Children's Mental Rotation

Previous studies with adult human participants revealed that motor activities can influence mental rotation of body parts and abstract shapes. In this study, we investigated the influence of a rotational hand movement on mental rotation performance from a developmental perspective. Children at the age of 5, 8, and 11 years and adults performed a mental rotation task while simultaneously rotating their hand (guided by a handle). The direction of the manual rotation was either compatible or incompatible with the direction of the mental rotation. Response times increased with increasing stimulus orientation angles, indicating that participants of all age groups used mental rotation to perform the task. A differential effect of the compatibility of manual rotation and mental rotation was found for 5-year-olds and 8-year-olds, but not for 11-year-olds and adults. The results of this study suggest that the ability to dissociate motor from visual cognitive processes increases with age.