Perceptual speed and short term retention of visual stimuli in preschool children

Ninety children aged 26 to 69 months were tested individually on two tasks. The first required the identification of tachistoscopically presented visual stimuli. Presentation times were shortened after every fourth stimulus until a child no longer made three correct identifications out of a series of four. The second task required that similar identifications be delayed by intervals of 10, 20, and 40 seconds following presentation. The presentation time required for correct identification of the stimuli declined significantly across the age range examined while the maximum delay interval after which a correct response could be obtained increased. In addition, the two measures were statistically independent of each other although both were related to the age of the child. The results indicate that some of the perceptual processes which have been shown to be instrumental in the acquisition of reading skills exhibit a marked developmental change during the preschool years.     

Test performance and social comparison choices of high school men and women

The present research was designed to investigate whether anticipated publicity of performance would adversely affect the performance of high school girls to a greater extent than high school boys. If ambivalence about success is intensified for girls towards the end of high school, they would be expected to do better when test results were anticipated to be private rather than public. These results were confirmed only for girls of average ability. Average-ability girls also chose same-sex comparisons and showed less interest in comparison with standard setters. Performance data and social comparison choices suggest that the pattern of achievement for average-ability girls may be well established by sixth grade. Further clarification of the period when incompatibilities arise between the female role and academic achievement is required.Portions of this article were presented as a paper at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago 1977, and formed part of the first author's research for her master's thesis, submitted to Indiana University, 1976.     

Second Victims: Aftermath of Gun Violence and Faith-Based Responses

Journal of Religion and Health - In the aftermath of gun violence, those impacted and left to mourn are regarded as second victims. These individuals experience and are often burdened by mental and...     

Situation-Specific Scripts for Threat in Blood Fearful and Nonfearful Individuals

Self-schemata for threatening situations were examined in blood fearful and nonfearful individuals. In the context of 5 scenarios involving blood, injections, hospitals, or injury, participants listed events that they typically experience in these situations or events that occur when they witness another individual in these situations. Blood fearful and nonfearful individuals generally listed sequences of events corresponding to a similar macrostructure. However, blood fearful individuals included more negative emotional and physiological events than nonfearful individuals, and several of their sequences reflected higher levels of fear and lower levels of positive affect. These results suggest that the self-schemata of blood fearful individuals for situations involving harm or threat consist of both normal and maladaptive elements.     

Reduced autobiographical memory specificity and posttraumatic stress: exploring the contributions of impaired executive control and affect regulation

Reduced specificity of autobiographical memories retrieved to word cues on the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) is associated with increased posttraumatic stress in traumatized samples. Theoretical debates concerning the dominant influences on this effect have focused on affect regulation, whereby specific personal information is avoided more by those experiencing greater distress, versus compromised executive control, whereby increased distress is associated with an inability to set aside inappropriately general responses on the AMT. The present study compared these 2 views in a correlational design using a reversed version of the AMT (the AMT-R) for which trauma-exposed participants (N=36) had to generate general memories from the past and avoid specific memories. An emphasis on the role of affect regulation would predict that distress would be associated with reduced specificity (as in the standard AMT), whereas emphasis on the role of executive control would predict that this relationship would be reversed. The data supported the affect regulation account, with greater posttraumatic stress being associated with reduced memory specificity.     

The Positive Illusory Bias: Do Inflated Self-Perceptions in Children with ADHD Generalize to Perceptions of Others?

This study examined whether children with symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) demonstrate positive illusory perceptions of their own competence and others' competence. Participants (67 children with ADHD symptoms; 40 non-ADHD children) completed the Self-Perception Profile for Children and rated actors' competence in videos clips where inconsistent cues of performance had to be integrated in order to determine the actor's competence. Teachers completed the Teacher Rating Scale of Child's Actual Behavior. Children with ADHD symptoms overestimated their own competence relative to teachers' estimates in all domains significantly more than non-ADHD children. There were no significant group differences in perceptions of others' competence. Findings suggest that positive illusions are exclusive to perceptions of self and do not extend to perceptions of others.     

Reduced specificity of autobiographical memory and depression: the role of executive control

It has been widely established that depressed mood states and clinical depression, as well as a range of other psychiatric disorders, are associated with a relative difficulty in accessing specific autobiographical information in response to emotion-related cue words on an Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT; J. M. G. Williams & K. Broadbent, 1986). In 8 studies the authors examined the extent to which this relationship is a function of impaired executive control associated with these mood states and clinical disorders. Studies 1-4 demonstrated that performance on the AMT is associated with performance on measures of executive control, independent of depressed mood. Furthermore, Study 1 showed that executive control (as measured by verbal fluency) mediated the relationship between both depressed mood and a clinical diagnosis of eating disorder and AMT performance. Using a stratified sample in Study 5, the authors confirmed the positive association between depressed mood and impaired performance on the AMT. Studies 6-8 involved experimental manipulations of the parameters of the AMT designed to further indicate that reduced executive control is to a significant extent driving the relationship between depressed mood and AMT performance. The potential role of executive control in accounting for other aspects of the AMT literature is discussed.     

aPRIDIT Unsupervised Classification with Asymmetric Valuation of Variable Discriminatory Worth

Abstract

Sometimes one needs to classify individuals into groups, but there is no available grouping information due to social desirability bias in reporting behavior like unethical or dishonest intentions or unlawful actions. Assessing hard-to-detect behaviors is useful; however it is methodologically difficult because people are unlikely to self-disclose bad actions. This paper presents an unsupervised classification methodology utilizing ordinal categorical predictor variables. It allows for classification, individual respondent ranking, and grouping without access to a dependent group indicator variable. The methodology also measures predictor variable worth (for determining target behavior group membership) at a predictor variable category-by-category level, so different variable response categories can contain different amounts of information about classification. It is asymmetric in that a “0” on a binary predictor does not have a similar impact toward signaling “membership in the target group” as a “1” has for signaling “membership in the non-target group.” The methodology is illustrated by identifying Spanish consumers filing fraudulent insurance claims. A second illustration classifies Portuguese high school student’s propensity to alcohol abuse. Results show the methodology is useful when it is difficult to get dependent variable information, and is useful for deciding which predictor variables and categorical response options are most important.     

A Developmental Neural Model of Visual Word Perception

A neurally plausible model of how the process of visually perceiving a letter in the context of a word is learned, and how such processing occurs in adults is proposed. The model consists of a collection of abstract letter feature detector neurons and their interconnections. The model also includes a learning rule that specifies how these interconnections evolve with experience. The interconnections between neurons can be interpreted as representing the spatially redundant, sequentially redundant, and transgraphemic information in letter string displays. Anderson, Silverstein, Ritz, and Jones's (1977) “Brain-State-in-a-Box” (BSB) neural mechanism is then used to implement the proposed model. The resulting system makes explicit qualitative predictions using both letter recognition accuracy and reaction time as dependent measures. In particular, the model offers an integrated explanation of some experiments involving manipulations of orthographic regularity, masking, case alternations, and experience with words. The similarities and differences between the model and models proposed by Adams (1979) and McClelland and Rumelhart (1981) are also discussed.     

Religiosity and Healthy Lifestyle Behaviours in Malaysian Muslims: The Mediating Role of Subjective Well-Being and Self-Regulation

Past research on healthy lifestyle behaviours has been primarily conducted within Western or Judeo–Christian contexts, while non-Western or Muslim contexts remain under-represented. This study examined predictors of healthy lifestyle behaviours (religiosity, goal-setting, impulse control, and subjective well-being) in Malaysian Muslims and explored the mechanisms underlying the relationship between religiosity and healthy lifestyle behaviours. Self-report survey responses from 183 healthy adults (M _age = 28.63 years, 18–50 years) were analysed using regression and multiple mediation analyses. The results indicated that subjective well-being emerged as the strongest predictor, followed by goal-setting. Furthermore, subjective well-being and goal-setting mediated the religiosity–healthy lifestyle behaviour relationship. The findings provide guidance for future health-promoting interventions.