The reliability and stability of the turner and Engle working memory task

The present study explored the psychometric properties of Turner and Engle’s (1989) operation span task, a widely used measure of working memory capacity. We administered the task three times to 33 college students, using equivalent test materials. The interval between the first and second administrations was 3 weeks, with 6–7 weeks between the second and third administrations. Alpha coefficients were all .75 or more. Recall accuracy decreased as operation set size increased. Raw test-retest correlations ranged from .67 to .81, the corrected reliability was .88, and stability scores ranged from .76 to .92. Performance improved from the first to the second test. Relative to reported reliabilities of other tasks used to assess individual differences in working memory capacity, the operation span task appears to have several statistical advantages.     

Hyperactive boys in their classroom: Assessment of teacher and peer perceptions,interactions, and classroom behaviors

Teacher ratings, peer perceptions, peer interactions, and classroom behaviors of 17 hyperactive and 17 active elementary school-age boys, nominated by their teachers, were compared using multivariate analyses and planned comparisons in order to better describe and assess hyperactivity in its most probable setting —the classroom. Hyperactive boys were found to be significantly different from actives on measures from all data sources in that they were perceived and interacted more negatively. Cluster analyses of teacher ratings of 90 hyperactives from a clinical sample and 17 hyperactives from the current sample were used to discriminate among different types of hyperactives. Four types were named anxious, conduct problem, inattentive, and low problem hyperactives. The fact that six conduct problem hyperactives were found to be more disruptive and have higher activity level ratings than six inattentive hyperactives, when observed in their classrooms, points to the need to study and treat hyperactives as heterogeneous groups.This study is based in part on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Psychology Department, Indiana University, by the first author. Thanks are expressed to the students and teachers of the Monroe County School System who took part in the study. The authors also wish to thank Prof. Robert Sprague of the University of Illinois for providing the Conners Rating Scales on 90 hyperactive children.     

Visual dominance in the pigeon

In Experiment 1, three pigeons were trained to obtain grain by depressing one foot treadle in the presence of a 746-Hertz tone stimulus and by depressing a second foot treadle in the presence of a red light stimulus. Intertrial stimuli included white light and the absence of tone. The latencies to respond on auditory element trials were as fast, or faster, than on visual element trials, but pigeons always responded on the visual treadle when presented with a compound stimulus composed of the auditory and visual elements. In Experiment 2, pigeons were trained on the auditory-visual discrimination task using as trial stimuli increases in the intensity of auditory or visual intertrial stimuli. Again, pigeons showed visual dominance on subsequent compound stimulus test trials. In Experiment 3, on compound test trials, the onset of the visual stimulus was delayed relative to the onset of the auditory stimulus. Visual treadle responses generally occurred with delay intervals of less than 500 milliseconds, and auditory treadle responses generally occurred with delay intervals of greater than 500 milliseconds. The results are discussed in terms of Posner, Nissen, and Klein's (1976) theory of visual dominance in humans.     

The relationship between vocational interests and job satisfaction: Reconciliation of divergent results

It was hypothesized that congruency of vocational interests with present occupation would be positively related to job satisfaction for long job-tenured employees, and would be unrelated to satisfaction for short job-tenured employees. In two samples of 54 and 47 middle managers, the hypothesis was supported for satisfaction with work and supervision. This differential pattern of correlations may help explain the inconsistent relationship between vocational interests and job satisfaction obtained in past studies.     

Peer victimization and social anxiety in adolescence: a prospective study

This study reports a one‐year prospective investigation of the relations between overt and relational victimization and social anxiety and phobia in a sample of adolescents. The Social Experience Questionnaire—Self Report Form (SEQ‐S), Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS‐A), and Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory for Children (SPAI‐C) were administered to 144 ninth grade adolescents. A follow‐up assessment with the SEQ‐S, SAS‐A, and SPAI‐C was conducted one year later. Results indicated that relational victimization predicted symptoms of social phobia but not general social anxiety and avoidance one year later. Overt victimization was not a significant predictor of social anxiety and phobia one year later. Social anxiety and phobia did not predict peer victimization one year later. However, increases in social anxiety and social phobia symptoms (for boys) over time were positively associated with increases in relational victimization over time. Implications of these findings for peer victimization and social anxiety in the development of social phobia and negative peer experiences are discussed. Aggr. Behav. 00:1–16, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Splitting Heirs: Patterns of Inheritance among Barcelona's Jews

In the later thirteenth century, patterns of inheritance shifted among Barcelonese Jews away from a preference for holding inherited land in common toward dividing the estate on the death of the testator. An early example of this practice is the Hebrew will of Astrug de Tolosa. By situating this will in the context of other Jewish wills from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as well as comparing it to those of contemporary Christians, one may see how ideas about the family in this important Jewish community evolved. This article focuses on provisions for wives and daughters and the designation of heirs and concludes that Jews and Christians shared a view of dowry and inheritance as components of a single system for transferring property to the next generation. However, unlike Christians, Jews resisted favoring a single heir with the bulk of the estate. Examining the provisions of inheritance makes it possible to argue that despite differing legal frameworks, Jewish and Christian practice bespeak common cultural contexts – yet ones whose parallels were not always complete.     

An ideal solution to disputes about multiply realized kinds

Multiply realizable kinds are scientifically problematic, for it appears that we should not expect discoveries about them to hold of other members of that kind. As such, it looks like MR kinds should have no place in the ontology of the special sciences. Many resist this conclusion, however, because we lack a positive account of the role that certain realization-unrestricted terms play in special science explanations. I argue that many such terms actually pick out idealizing models. Idealizing explanation has many of the features normally associated with explanation by MR kinds. As idealized models are usually mere possibilia, such explanations do not run afoul of the metaphysical problems that plague MR kinds.

Ordinal judgments of symbolic stimuli by capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta): the effects of differential and nondifferential reward

Ordinal learning was investigated in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). In Experiment 1, both species were presented with pairings of the Arabic numerals 0 to 9. Some monkeys were given food rewards equal to the value of the numeral selected and some were rewarded with a single pellet only for choosing the higher numeral within the pair. Both species learned to select the larger numeral, but only rhesus monkeys that were differentially rewarded performed above chance levels when presented with novel probe pairings. In Experiment 2, the monkeys were first presented with arrays of 5 familiar numerals (from the range 0 to 9) and then arrays of 5 novel letters (from the range A to J) with the same reward outcomes in place as in Experiment 1. Both species performed better with the numerals, suggesting that an ordinal sequence of all stimuli had been learned during Experiment 1, rather than a matrix of two-choice discriminations.     

On finding negative priming from distractors

Negative priming from distractors has attracted considerable interest because it appears to reveal a fundamental mechanism of selective attention. Recently, the phenomenon has become muddled because it can be explained in far too many ways. This may partly be because the empirical foundation for the phenomenon has been handicapped by an overreliance on a simplistic comparison of a single experimental condition with control. A sounder approach requires that we collect data that can rule out alternatives to the hypothesis we might favor or test. Regardless of the paradigm used, we propose collecting data from a much fuller set of conditions than is typical. Despite the variety of underlying explanations, we show that the various theories that attribute negative priming to ignoring the distractor predict a common pattern of results across the full set of related conditions. Theories, such as inhibition of return, that do not attribute the cost in performance to ignoring the distractor do not predict this pattern.