Does home internet use influence the academic performance of low-income children?

HomeNetToo is a longitudinal field study designed to examine the antecedents and consequences of home Internet use in low-income families (http://www.HomeNetToo.org). The study was done between December 2000 and June 2002. Among the consequences considered was children's academic performance. Participants were 140 children, mostly African American (83%), mostly boys (58%), and most living in single-parent households (75%) in which the median annual income was 15,000 (U.S. dollars) or less. Average age was 13.8 years. Ages ranged between 10 and 18 years, Internet use was continuously recorded, and multiple measures of academic performance were obtained during the 16-month trial. Findings indicated that children who used the Internet more had higher scores on standardized tests of reading achievement and higher grade point averages 6 months, 1 year, and 16 months later than did children who used it less. Older children used the Internet more than did younger children, but age had no effect on the nature or the academic performance benefits of Internet use. Implications for the digital "use" divide are discussed.     

Effectiveness of an empirically supported treatment for social phobia in the field

This study examined the effectiveness of individual exposure combined with cognitive restructuring for social phobia in a clinical setting as well as the influence of sample restriction criteria on the effect size. Participants were 217 unselected patients with a primary diagnosis of social phobia who were treated by 57 therapists in four outpatient clinics of the Christoph-Dornier-Foundation of Clinical Psychology in Germany. Results 6 weeks after the end of therapy showed highly significant reductions in social phobic fears and avoidance as well as in general anxiety and symptoms of depression. However, patients who dropped out during therapy reported a significantly higher degree of depression. Results did not differ between the four outpatient clinics and are comparable with the average effect-sizes reported by meta-analytic studies of controlled efficacy research, using selected patients. Also, restricting the sample according to the selection criteria often applied in research settings did not result in higher effect sizes for the applied outcome measures. We conclude that individual cognitive behavioural therapy for social phobia can be transported from research settings to the field of mental health.     

Required pecking alters judgments of the passage of time by pigeons

There is evidence that how humans perceive time is affected by the activity in which they are engaged when they are judging time. In humans, typically, the more demanding the task, the faster time seems to pass. We asked whether a similar effect could be found in pigeons. Pigeons were trained to discriminate between a short-(2-sec) and a long-(10-sec) duration stimulus. Depending on the color of the stimulus (white or blue), the pigeons were required to peck (at least once per second or the trial was aborted) or to refrain from pecking (pecks aborted the trial). Once these tasks had been acquired to a high degree, probe trials involving white and blue stimuli were presented at durations between 2 and 10 sec. On trials in which the pigeons were required to peck, the point of subjective equality (i.e., the point at which pigeons are equally likely to choose the stimulus associated with long stimuli as the stimulus associated with short stimuli) was almost 1 sec longer than on trials in which the pigeons were required to refrain from pecking. In other words, on trials that required pecking, more time passed before the pigeons indicated that the probe duration was at the subjective midpoint between 2 and 10 sec than on trials that did not require pecking. This result suggests that like humans, the pigeons underestimated the passage of time when they were active or when attention to time-related cues had to be shared with attention to satisfying the response rate requirement.     

"That is bloody revolting!" Inhibitory control of thoughts better left unsaid

An experiment explored the hypothesis that inhibitory ability helps people stop themselves from engaging in socially inappropriate behavior. All participants completed a Stroop color-naming task, after which half of the participants were asked to remember an eight-digit number (inducing divided attention). Participants were then offered an unfamiliar and visually unappetizing food product (a chicken foot) under conditions of either low or high social pressure to pretend that it was appealing. Participants who had full attention available and were under pressure to pretend the food was appealing were least likely to emit a negative response, and performance on the Stroop task predicted the degree to which they successfully restrained negative responses. These results suggest that the cognitive ability to inhibit unwanted information facilitates socially appropriate behavior.     

The role of the inferior frontal junction area in cognitive control

Cognitive control processes refer to our ability to coordinate thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals. In the fronto-lateral cortex such processes have been primarily related to mid-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (mid-DLPFC). However, recent brain-imaging and meta-analytic studies suggest that a region located more posterior in the fronto-lateral cortex plays a pivotal role in cognitive control as well. This region has been termed the inferior frontal junction area and can be functionally and structurally distinguished from mid-DLPFC.     

Coping with stereotype threat: denial as an impression management strategy

Four experiments tested the hypothesis that people who are concerned with impression management cope with stereotype threat through denial. Consistent with this hypothesis, temporary employees threatened by a stereotype of incompetence (Study 1) and hostel-dwelling older adults (Study 2) were more likely to deny incompetence if they were high in impression management. African Americans (Study 3) showed a similar pattern of denying cognitive incompetence, which emerged primarily when they were interviewed by a White experimenter and had attended a predominantly Black high school. In Study 4, White students who expected to take an IQ test and were threatened by a stereotype of being less intelligent than Asians were more likely to deny that intelligence is important if they were high in impression management.     

The Future of Research on Intimate Partner Violence: Person-Oriented and Variable-Oriented Perspectives

This article uses the distinction between the person and the variable orientations as a frame for structuring (1) research on IPV, (2) results of this research, and (3) an agenda for future research. The main tenet of this agenda is that causes, processes, and effects of IPV are person and context specific; therefore, results that relate variables to each other are of limited value if it can be shown that the processes that take place, the meaning of the variables, the profile of the transgressors and the women who experience IPV depend on time, environment, and research design. Examples of valuable variable-oriented research are given; examples of the growing contribution made by person-oriented research are given as well. Sample theories are sketched out, for the variable-oriented, the person-oriented, and the theoretical research arenas, the need for future research is derived from inconsistencies and shortcomings in both current research and theory. Sample research questions are proposed. The contributions made by the authors of this Special Section are embedded within the discussion of research and theory of IPV. It is shown that each of the contributions is valuable within a particular segment of the research landscape.     

The Influence of Community Violence on the Functioning of Women Experiencing Domestic Violence

The relationships among women’s experiences of domestic violence, community violence, and their mental health functioning were explored (N = 94). Social contagion theory was used to argue for the link between community violence and family violence. Results revealed that women’s experiences of domestic violence were not related to community violence. Furthermore, women’s mental health functioning was solely associated with their experiences of domestic violence, not with community violence. Results are discussed in terms of an ecological model of domestic violence and future directions for exploring linkages between neighborhood characteristics and individual experiences.     

Attentional blink differences between adolescent dyslexic and normal readers

The goal of this study was to evaluate the possibility that dyslexic individuals require more working memory resources than normal readers to shift attention from stimulus to stimulus. To test this hypothesis, normal and dyslexic adolescents participated in a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation experiment (Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992). Surprisingly, the result showed that the participants with dyslexia produced a shallower attentional blink than normal controls. This result may be interpreted as showing differences in the way the two groups encode information in episodic memory. They also fit in a cascade-effect perspective of developmental dyslexia.     

The influence of verbal labeling on the perception of odors: evidence for olfactory illusions?

Using the definition that an illusion is observed when a stimulus is invariant but context alters its perception, we examined whether verbal context could produce olfactory illusions. To test this effect, we chose five odors with minimally fixed sources and that could be interpreted with various hedonic connotations. The odors were violet leaf, patchouli, pine oil, menthol, and a 1:1 mixture of isovaleric and butyric acids. Subjects individually sniffed each odor at two different sessions separated by one week. At each session an odor was given a different verbal label (either positive or negative) and subjects rated the odors on several hedonic scales and provided perceptual and interpretative responses to them. Results showed that the perception of an odor could be significantly influenced by the label provided for it. We propose that the cases where verbal labels inverted odor perception are the first empirical demonstrations of olfactory illusions.