Personality in adulthood: a six-year longitudinal study of self-reports and spouse ratings on the NEO Personality Inventory

Previous longitudinal studies of personality in adulthood have been limited in the range of traits examined, have chiefly made use of self-reports, and have frequently included only men. In this study, self-reports (N = 983) and spouse ratings (N = 167) were gathered on the NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1985b), which measures all five of the major dimensions of normal personality. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses on data from men and women aged 21 to 96 years showed evidence of small declines in Activity, Positive Emotions, and openness to Actions that might be attributed to maturation, but none of these effects was replicated in sequential analyses. The 20 other scales examined showed no consistent pattern of maturational effects. In contrast, retest stability was quite high for all five dimensions in self-reports and for the three dimensions measured at both times in spouse ratings. Comparable levels of stability were seen for men and women and for younger and older subjects. The data support the position that personality is stable after age 30.     

Spontaneous covariations of movement parameters in 5- to 7-year-old boys

The kinematic parameters of to and fro forearm movements in the horizontal plane were investigated in 5- to 7-year-old boys. In one condition, the period of the movements was induced by an acoustic stimulus, while the amplitude was left free. In a second condition, the amplitude of the swing was suggested by a visual frame, but the movement was self-paced. In both conditions, the unconstrained variable (amplitude and period, respectively) was found to covary spontaneously with the constrained variable. The results suggest that, within the age range considered here, motor control processes do not conceive of amplitude and velocity as two independent variables.     

Specific forms of facial EMG response index emotions during an interview: from Darwin to the continuous flow hypothesis affect-laden information processing

Previous research has demonstrated that mild negative emotional imagery and unpleasant sensory stimuli lead to greater electromyographic activity over the brow muscle region than mild positive imagery and stimuli, even in the absence of significant changes in visceral and general facial EMG activity. Previous research has not addressed whether electromyographic responses over the brow region are a sensitive and specific index of emotions, however, since a multiplicity of events lead to changes in brow activity. In this research, facial electromyographic and audiovisual recordings were obtained while individuals were interviewed about themselves. Afterwards, individuals were asked to describe what they had been thinking of during specific segments of the interview marked by distinctive electromyographic responses over the brow region in the context of ongoing but stable levels of activity elsewhere in the face. The results are interpreted in terms of a continuous flow hypothesis of affect-laden information processing.     

Major life events, hassles, and adaptation in adolescence: confounding in the conceptualization and measurement of life stress and adjustment revisited

Prior work has suggested that methodological and conceptual confounding may play a role in the associations obtained between stressful life events, social resources, and adaptive outcome. Of particular concern in our work were (a) the source and method of assessment; (b) conceptual overlap between life stress and resource items and symptoms of disorder; and (c) induced response bias through the instructional sets of the stress measures. A second goal was to extend our understanding of the life stress-adjustment linkage in groups for whom little data of this type exist. By using multi-trait-multimethod procedures we found that both distal major life events and proximal daily stressors had important degrees of unique and shared variance with adaptive functioning, whereas the effects for social support were inconclusive. Further, the importance of considering possible sources of potential confounding in producing quite different levels of association between life stress and adaptation was underscored by the results.     

Finding the face in the crowd: an anger superiority effect

Facial gestures have been given an increasingly critical role in models of emotion. The biological significance of interindividual transmission of emotional signals is a pivotal assumption for placing the face in a central position in these models. This assumption invited a logical corollary, examined in this article: Face-processing should be highly efficient. Three experiments documented an asymmetry in the processing of emotionally discrepant faces embedded in crowds. The results suggested that threatening faces pop out of crowds, perhaps as a result of a preattentive, parallel search for signals of direct threat.     

Perceptual sensitivity to dimensional and similarity relations in free and rule-governed classifications

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the perceptual primacy of dimensional and similarity relations in the stimulus classifications of younger and older subjects. In Experiment 1, 4- and 10-year-olds were given free classifications in which they could group stimuli according to overall similarity or identities in size, color, or orientation. Both age groups classified stimuli most frequently according to identities on separate dimensions. In Experiment 2, 4-year-olds and adults were given free classifications followed by rule-governed classifications which required them to group stimuli according to specific relations. In the free classifications, a majority of subjects in both age groups classified the stimuli most frequently according to identities on separate dimensions. In the rule-governed classifications, both age groups were more accurate when a single separate relation was required for solution than when overall similarity was required. These results support a differential-sensitivity view of perceptual development, which asserts that individuals at all ages primarily perceive and use separate relations.     

Children's perception of certain musical properties: scale and contour

Children's perception of scale and contour in melodies was investigated in five studies. Experimental tasks included judging transposed renditions of melodies (Studies 1 and 3), discriminating between transposed renditions of a melody (Study 2), judging contour-preserving transformations of melodies (Study 4), and judging similarity to a familiar target melody of transformations preserving rhythm or rhythm and contour (Study 5). The first and second studies showed that young children detect key transposition changes even in familiar melodies and they perceive similarity over key transpositions even in unfamiliar melodies. Young children also are sensitive to melodic contour over transformations that preserve it (Study 5), yet they distinguish spontaneously between melodies with the same contour and different intervals (Study 4). The key distance effect reported in the literature did not occur in the tasks of this investigation (Studies 1 and 3), and it may be apparent only for melodies shorter or more impoverished than those used here.     

The functional role of preschoolers' verbalizations in the generalization of self-instructional training

We examined the functional role of verbalizations in the generalization of self-instructional training with preschoolers. Children learned to overtly self-instruct during classroom work periods prior to covert training. Data were collected on children's acquisition of verbal regulation during training and on overt use of self-instructions in the classroom generalization setting. Results of a multiple baseline design across subjects indicated that treatment effects were evident in the training setting but did not generalize to the classroom until children were emitting overt self-instructions in the classroom itself. The production of self-verbalizations in the generalization setting was related to changes in correct responding, on-task behavior, and efficiency in completing academic work.     

A Well-Kept Secret: What Counseling Psychology Can Offer Social Psychology1

Although social psychology has increasingly influenced counseling psychology, the impact that counseling psychology has had or could have on social psychology is less well developed. This paper considers factors that have limited counseling's influence on social psychology. In addition, contributions that counseling can make to social psychology are presented. It is argued that both disciplines have evolved to investigate the behavior of “normal” individuals in social contexts. It is concluded that there is much to be gained by both specialties in a fuller and more comprehensive integration and understanding of the findings and methods of the other.