A comparison of a self-control and a contract procedure for weight control

A self-control procedure involving the use of behavior modification techniques was compared with a contract system and an attention-placebo control group. One study revealed significant losses for both treatments after 12 weeks with the contract group losing more; however, a ten month follow-up revealed that the weight loss was not permanent. A second study found no differences between a self-control group and a control group after 16 weeks. Reasons for the poor long-term results of these and other weight-control programs were discussed.     

The relationship between inflated personal responsibility and exaggerated danger expectancies in obsessive-compulsive concerns

The association between responsibility for a negative outcome, perceived severity of the outcome and perceived likelihood of the outcome was examined in a sample of 70 undergraduate students. Participants were asked to rate the likelihood and severity of 10 negative outcomes, five related to contamination and five related to checking. Thirty-eight participants completed a version of the questionnaire that presented the subject as responsible for the action that may lead to a negative outcome ('personally responsible' group). The remaining 32 completed a version of the questionnaire that presented someone else performing the actions that may lead to a negative outcome ('other responsible' group). Significant differences emerged between the personally responsible and other responsible groups for severity of outcome ratings but not for likelihood of outcome ratings. Specifically, for both washing and checking concerns, participants in the personally responsible group rated the severity of the potential negative outcome as greater than did those in the other responsible group. The results support the claimed general tendency for individuals to regard an outcome as more aversive if they are personally responsible for that outcome, rather than someone else being responsible. The results suggest that, in general, increasing perceptions of personal responsibility will increase cost or severity estimates in subjective danger calculations, and that responsibility may influence OCD phenomena in this way. Finally, the results suggest that attempts to manipulate responsibility in the laboratory may be confounded by necessarily impacting on cost estimates, and therefore on danger expectancies.     

In Cinderella's slippers? Story comprehension from the protagonist's point of view

Research on text comprehension shows that readers construct a model of the situation described in a narrative. A major factor in constructing a situational model is the perspective from which the action of the narrative is imagined. J. B. Black, T. J. Turner, and G. H. Bower (1979) found that adults recall a deictic verb of motion more accurately if it is spatially consistent with the point of view of the main protagonist. Recall is more accurate for the verbs come and bring if they describe a movement toward the protagonist; recall is more accurate for go and take if they describe a movement away from the protagonist. Thus, adults interpret movements in a narrative from the perspective of the protagonist. This study indicates that 3- and 4-year-old children show the same pattern of recall. They accurately recall verbs of motion that are consistent with the protagonist's perspective but make substitution errors on verbs inconsistent with that perspective.     

Socialization, personality development, and the child's environments: comment on Vandell (2000)

Although many socialization agents influence children's behavior (D. L. Vandell, 2000), the evidence (e.g., from intervention studies) indicates that each exerts its influence only within its own domain. Context effects and genetic effects are among the confounding factors that make it impossible, given current data, to reject the null hypothesis of zero long-term effects of parenting on child outcomes. Problems with the prevailing view of development cannot be solved by invoking within-home environmental differences or gene- environment interactions. Group socialization theory can account for findings that do not fit the prevailing view. The theory attributes outside-the-home socialization to identification with a peer group and assimilation of group norms, but attributes nongenetic variation in personality to differentiation within the group. The latter proposition is still largely untested but other aspects of the theory are well supported by evidence.     

Counterfactual syllogistic reasoning in normal 4-year-olds, children with learning disabilities, and children with autism

Instruction encouraging imagery improves logical reasoning with counterfactual premises by normal preschool children. In contrast, children with autism have been reported to reason accurately with counterfactual premises in the absence of such instruction (F. J. Scott, S. Baron-Cohen, & A. M. Leslie, 1999). To investigate this pattern of findings, we compared the performance of children with autism, children with learning disabilities, and normally developing 4-year-olds, who were given reasoning problems both with and without instruction in two separate testing sessions 2 to 3 weeks apart. Overall, instruction to use imagery led to persistent logical performance. However, children with autism displayed a distinctive pattern of responding, performing around chance levels, showing a simple response bias, and rarely justifying their responses by elaborating on the premises. We propose that instruction boosts logical performance by clarifying the experimenter's intention that a false proposition be accepted as a basis for reasoning and that children with autism have difficulty grasping this intention.     

Contextual control over conditioned responding in a latent inhibition paradigm

We used 1-, 2-, and 3-context designs to study the control exerted by contexts over freezing in rats exposed to a conditioned stimulus (CS) in advance of its pairing with a shock unconditioned stimulus. The latent inhibition observed when preexposure, conditioning, and testing occurred in the same context was attenuated if preexposure occurred in a different context to conditioning and testing. Latent inhibition (i.e., attenuated performance) was restored in a CS-specific manner if preexposure and testing occurred in the same context and conditioning in a different one. Latent inhibition was also reduced by a long retention interval but remained specific for a particular context-CS relation. Finally, CS preexposure resulted in contextual control over the expression of excitatory conditioned performance. The results are discussed in terms of memory, associative, and associative-performance models of CS-preexposure effects.     

Cultural orientation, family cohesion, and family support in suicide ideation and depression among African American college students

This study extends previous research by examining the role of communalism, family cohesion, and family support in suicide ideation and depression in African American college students. Participants were 188 African American introductory psychology students (126 female, 61 male) from a historically black college. (1) Results showed that communalism, family cohesion, and family support were positively associated with each other. Higher levels of family cohesion and family support were associated with lower levels of suicide ideation and depression. Linear regression analyses showed a main effect for communalism and family support. Having strong communal values was positively related to suicide ideation and depression. Having strong family support was associated with fewer experiences of suicide ideation and depression. Stepwise regression analyses indicated that family support explained more variance in suicide ideation and depression than family cohesion. Implications of these results for future research and practice are discussed.     

Taking offense: effects of personality and teasing history on behavioral and emotional reactions to teasing

This study investigated how global personality traits and teasing history are related to participants' emotional and behavioral reactions to an actual teasing event. College undergraduates (N = 108) worked on a task with a same-sex confederate. While interacting, the confederate either teased participants about how slowly they were working on the task or made a benign comment about the nature of the task. Analyses revealed that even mild teasing can generate negativity towards the teaser and interaction. More interestingly, however, personality moderated reactions to teasing, as teasing condition interacted with each of the Big Five personality domains in theoretically meaningful ways. Childhood teasing history also moderated reactions to teasing, as frequent victims and frequent teasers responded in different ways.