Associations of teacher credibility and teacher affinity with learning outcomes in health classrooms

In the present study (N = 633), we examine the role of teacher credibility and teacher affinity in classrooms. We explore the relations among these two characteristics and student gains in knowledge and valuing of learning about HIV and pregnancy prevention across high school classrooms. Results marshaled support for the notion that teacher characteristics are associated with classroom-level gains in learning outcomes. Above and beyond student-level predictors, teacher credibility (aggregated to the classroom level) was positively related to increases in knowledge across classrooms, whereas aggregated teacher affinity was positively related to an increased valuing of learning about HIV and pregnancy prevention across classrooms. Future directions and implications for practice are discussed.     

Making Thinking Real Enough to Make It Better: Using Posters to Develop Skills for Constructing Disciplinary Arguments

How does one teach critical thinking, the procedures of an academic discipline, and the composition of plausible interpretations and arguments to students who are more facile with visual than with written modes of expression? How does one make real to students the construction of meaning in that unfamiliar epistemological space between brute fact and mere opinion? The “argument poster,” a pedagogical strategy that helps students translate their skills for critical thinking from a visual frame to a written frame, results in better quality historical essays and research papers.     

Enhancing social relationships through positive psychology activities: a randomised controlled trial

Despite the robust relationship between well-being and social relationships, the latter has received little examination within positive psychology activities (PPAs). This study aimed to test whether kindness- and gratitude-based PPAs, through positive social interaction with peers, enhanced relationship satisfaction. Using a longitudinal randomised controlled design, 225 participants were assigned to one of three conditions (relationship-focused, self-focused or control) and completed measures of relationship satisfaction, social support and happiness on three occasions (baseline, post-intervention and six weeks). The experimental PPAs were relationship-focused (involving social interaction) or self-focused (no social interaction). Those who completed relationship-focused PPAs had greater increases in relationship satisfaction than the self-focused and active control activities at six-week follow-up. Additionally, only those in the relationship-focused condition felt their existing friendships had improved at intervention cessation. Regardless of participants’ initial levels of social support, the intervention effects remained. In conclusion, PPAs fostering social kindness and gratitude significantly strengthened relationship satisfaction.     

Adolescent suicidal behavior and popular self-report instruments of depression, social desirability, and anxiety

Popular self-report inventories of depression, hopelessness, social desirability, and anxiety, along with the Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire, were completed by 150 college students. Tanaka-Matsumi and Kameoka (1986) had questioned the use of popular depression instruments in the assessment of this population, due to the high correlation between depression, anxiety, and social desirability scales. The present experiment also found significant correlations between the self-report instruments and suicidal behaviors. These findings may be due to the fact that anxiety and depression are often found together in clinical settings, and that the content of depression and anxiety scales is not specific to those constructs.     

Consistency and inconsistency in infant emotional and social interactive behavior across contexts and caregivers

This study examined consistency in infant emotional and social interactive behavior in stressful and nonstressful situations with mothers and fathers. Infants were seen at 12 and 13 months, once with each parent. Emotion was assessed during free play and the Strange Situation. Strange Situation social interactive behaviors were also examined. Results demonstrated that (a) proximity seeking and contact maintaining are consistent cross-parent, (b) emotion is more consistent from free play to the Strange Situation with the father than with the mother, and (c) emotion is primarily consistent cross-parent within the Strange Situation, not in free play. These results suggest both infant- and relationship-based determinants of behavior within the Strange Situation. The greater cross-context consistency in infant emotion with the father is interpreted as supportive of the view that infant—father interactions reflect primarily affiliative, rather than attachment, relationships.     

Childhood Healthcare Experience,Healthcare Attitudes,and Optimism as Predictors of Adolescents’ Healthcare Behavior

Late adolescence and early adulthood is a time when people establish many of their life-style behaviors. Thus, in order to promote optimal health, it is important to identify factors predictive of young adults’ healthcare behavior. This study evaluated the relationship between measures of childhood healthcare experience, healthcare attitudes, and optimism with young adults’ healthcare behavior in a sample of college students (n = 100). Results suggested that prior healthcare experience, attitudes about healthcare, and optimism are associated with current healthcare behavior. In addition, the relation between childhood healthcare experience and current healthcare behavior was moderated by optimism, such that those who reported both more negative childhood healthcare experiences and low levels of optimism reported the least adaptive healthcare behaviors and those who reported the most positive childhood healthcare experience and the highest levels of optimism reported the most adaptive healthcare behavior.     

Is a bear white in the woods? Parallel representation of implied object color during language comprehension

Color is undeniably important to object representations, but so too is the ability of context to alter the color of an object. The present study examined how implied perceptual information about typical and atypical colors is represented during language comprehension. Participants read sentences that implied a (typical or atypical) color for a target object and then performed a modified Stroop task in which they named the ink color of the target word (typical, atypical, or unrelated). Results showed that color naming was facilitated both when ink color was typical for that object (e.g., bear in brown ink) and when it matched the color implied by the previous sentence (e.g., bear in white ink following Joe was excited to see a bear at the North Pole). These findings suggest that unusual contexts cause people to represent in parallel both typical and scenario-specific perceptual information, and these types of information are discussed in relation to the specialization of perceptual simulations.     

Not strange but not true: self-reported interest in a topic increases false memory

People are more likely to recall both true and false information that is consistent with their pre-existing stereotypes, schemata and desires. In addition, experts in a particular field are more likely to experience false memory in relation to their area of expertise. Here, we investigate whether level of interest, as distinct from level of knowledge, and in the absence of self-professed expertise, is associated with increased false memory. 489 participants were asked to rank 7 topics from most to least interesting. They were then asked if they remembered the events described in four news items related to the topic they selected as the most interesting and four items related to the topic selected as least interesting. In each case, three of the events depicted had really happened and one was fictional. A high level of interest in a topic increased true memories for the topic and doubled the frequency of false memories, even after controlling for level of knowledge. We interpret the results in the context of the source-monitoring framework and suggest that false memories arise as a result of interference from existing information stored in domain-related schemata.     

CORE-OM mental health norms of students attending university counselling services benchmarked against an age-matched primary care sample

Whilst concern has been expressed at the increasing severity of the mental health of students, there has been very little research on this growing population outside of small, single institution studies. The aims of this paper are to provide CORE Outcome Measure (CORE-OM) norms for the psychological health of students across multiple sites receiving university counselling, and benchmark these against an age-matched sample of people receiving treatment in NHS primary care settings. Results indicate that students using university counselling services show severity levels only marginally lower than young people presenting in primary care, with the differences being at a functional/relationship rather than a symptomatic level and with levels of risk to self being similar. This suggests that university counselling services deliver a service to people who closely resemble NHS primary care clients in terms of severity and risk to self.     

Growth mixture modelling in developmental psychology: overview and demonstration of heterogeneity in developmental trajectories of adolescent antisocial behaviour

Recent advances in statistical techniques for longitudinal data analysis have provided increased capabilities for elucidating individual differences in trajectories of change in child behaviours and abilities. However, most techniques still assume that there is a single underlying distribution with respect to changes over time, about which children are normally distributed. If there are multiple subgroups of youth following distinct developmental trajectories with unique predictors, however, the results of these statistical techniques may provide an incomplete analysis of the data. A newer class of statistical techniques, latent growth mixture modelling, provides a robust framework for examining heterogeneity in patterns of development. This paper illustrates the use of latent growth mixture modelling for examining heterogeneity in developmental trajectories of adolescent antisocial behaviour. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.