The Verbal Summator and a Method for the Study of Latent Speech

Three age groups of children (7-8-, 10-11-, and 13-14-years) were administered a questionnaire dealing with their smoking experiences and attitudes and beliefs about cigarette smoking. The results indicated that the vast majority of children recognized the harmfulness of smoking and most strongly disapproved of smoking. However, experimentation with smoking was found to increase with age, and older children expressed less negative attitudes about smoking. The effects of age were due largely to the differences between the preadolescent groups, on the one hand, and the adolescent group, on the other. In addition, a similar percentage of children in all three age groups perceived strong parental pressure against smoking; however, with increasing age, less opposition from their teachers and friends was perceived. Theories of social influence and moral development are considered in explaining the results.     

Elaborating the relationship between age and adolescent cigarette smoking

Previous research has found that the relationship between variables derived from a social control model of deviant behavior are conditional on the age of adolescents. We examine whether the observed age effect on adolescent cigarette use may be due to a cohort or period effect by using multiple cross‐sections from several cohorts of adolescents. We find that basing conclusions about some social control variables on cross‐sectional results may lead to erroneous interpretations concerning the age‐conditional effects of some of the variables in our model.     

Children's emotions and coping with interpersonal stress as correlates of social competence

Identifying correlates of children's emotional reactions and coping can provide information about developmental processes and identify useful strategies for improving children's adaptation to stress. We investigated associations of social competence with children's responses to standardised, controllable interpersonal stressors. The stressors included bullying, arguing with a parent, and not being picked for a team sport. We expected greater competence to be associated with certain coping responses, and expected that coping would be better explained by also considering emotional reactions. Children (N = 230, Grades 3 to 7) reacted to three videotaped stressors, and children and parents completed questionnaires. Children rated as more competent used active and challenge coping strategies, such as problem solving and support seeking, more than other children, and they also responded with more sadness. Children's competence was associated with fear, but only in bivariate correlations, and was not associated with angry responses. In a structural equation model, emotions were associated with more coping responses, and the emotional reaction of sadness accounted for the link between children's social competence and adaptive (i.e., challenge) coping. Findings suggest that competent children use more adaptive coping, and this is accounted for by their greater feelings of sadness when dealing with controllable interpersonal stressors.     

Forced-choice and conventional personality assessment: Each may have unique value in pre-employment testing

Forced-choice (FC) personality scales are purported to predict criteria such as counterproductive work behavior (CWB) incrementally beyond conventional personality measures in pre-employment testing situations. Unfortunately, the research upon which FC tests’ claims of superiority are founded, relies upon undergraduate participants in highly artificial scenarios. Moreover, the possible predictive advantages of FC personality scales with regards to important contextual performance (CP; Borman & Motowidlo, 1993) criteria have not been investigated. We used a sample of call center employees to investigate the incremental validity of a FC personality scale over a conventional personality scale (and vice versa) with CP measures, and CWB, as criteria. Our FC and conventional personality measures were highly correlated, but each still offered unique predictive value with regards to CP or CWB. Thus, contrary to past research with student samples, in field settings FC personality scales may not be clearly superior to conventional personality scales. Moreover, contrary to widespread concern that FC measures’ predictiveness is attributable to their overlap with general mental ability, the unique predictive value of our FC measure remained even when variance due to general mental ability was statistically controlled.     

Impact of anxiety and depression on the physical status and daily routines of cancer patients during chemotherapy

The evolution of symptoms, emotional state and daily routines in patients with breast cancer and lung cancer during treatment with intravenous chemotherapy (CT) is described and the influence of anxiety and depression on these variables is analyzed. 66 patients, 29 with breast cancer and 37 with lung cancer, were evaluated before starting treatment, and after completing the first, second and last cycle of CT using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), rating scales and interview. Less than 30% of the patients showed clinical anxiety or depression according to the HADS. Throughout the treatment, tiredness, fatigue and nausea increased significantly and work and leisure activity decreased. Concern about the future of relatives and insomnia increased significantly over time in patients with breast cancer whereas they decreased in patients with lung cancer. By introducing the HADS scores as covariates, it was found that most differences are due to the time factor and the type of cancer. During treatment with CT, emotional disturbances do not seem to have significant impact on the symptoms and changes in daily life reported by cancer patients.     

Improving Generalization of Academic Skills: Commentary on the Special Issue

Behavior analysts have long been interested in developing and promoting the use of effective generalization strategies for behavioral interventions. Perhaps because research on academic performance has lagged behind in the field of applied behavior analysis, far less research on this topic has been conducted for academic performance problems. The purpose of this article is to comment on the six reports of experimental studies that make up this special issue. The methods investigated by the authors in this special issue are innovative and raise many intriguing questions that should fuel further research and development of strategies for improving generalized academic skills. The article concludes with thoughts about what we know as a field, and what has yet to be examined through future research.     

Recruiting Teen Smokers in Shopping Malls to a Smoking-Cessation Program Using the Foot-in-the-Door Technique

Persuading teen smokers to volunteer for smoking-cessation programs is a challenging yet understudied problem. As a method of dealing with this problem, we used and tested a foot-in-the-door (FITD) approach. Teen smokers were intercepted at malls and were assigned randomly to request compliance with a small behavior request of either (a) answering a few questions (light FITD) or (b) answering the same questions and a few additional ones, plus watching a short video about the effects of nicotine (heavy FITD). Participants were then called back by telephone several weeks later and asked to comply with a large behavior request of joining a cessation program that involved the use of self-help materials and telephone counseling. Although no differences were found in responses from the light and heavy groups, consent to enter the program was obtained from 12% of the pooled qualified intercepts and their parents (for those under 18 years). This recruitment rate was considered good, given that this is one of the only reported studies that recruited teen smokers from the general population to cessation programs.     

Migrant Well-Being is a Multilevel, Dynamic, Value Dependent Phenomenon

Research demonstrates that the well-being of migrants is a multilevel, dynamic, and value dependent phenomenon. It is multilevel because risk and protective factors are present at various ecological planes, from the individual to the social sphere. It is dynamic because objective and subjective risk and protective factors interact across ecological levels, creating favorable or unfavorable conditions for migrants to adjust to the new surroundings. Finally, it is value dependent because access to resources is conditioned by norms of justice prevalent in the host society. Findings from this special section on acculturation are combined with previous literature to support the three claims advanced in this article.     

Improving sixth-grade students perceptions of high-effort assignments by assigning more work: Interaction of additive interspersal and assignment effort on assignment choice

Sixth-grade students were exposed to two pairs of mathematics assignments. Assignment Pair A included a high-effort and a moderate-effort assignment, each containing 18 three-digit by two-digit (3×2) problems. Assignment Pair B was similar except the high-effort assignment contained six additional one-digit by one-digit (1×1) problems interspersed following every third 3×2 problem. After exposure to each pair of assignments, students ranked assignments and chose a new assignment for homework. Analysis of Assignment Pair A data showed students preferred the moderate-effort assignment. Analysis of interactions showed that interspersing the additional brief problems to the high-effort assignment caused significantly more students to choose the high-effort assignment for homework and rank it as requiring less effort and time to complete and as being less difficult than the moderate-effort assignment. Results support the hypothesis that a discrete task is a reinforcer and suggest that educators can increase the probability of students engaging in more challenging assignments that require more effort to complete by interspersing additional brief tasks. Applied and theoretical implications are discussed along with future research.