Is dependence on phonological information in children's reading a product of instructional approach?

Eight-year-old British children were found to be less accurate at rejecting pseudohomophones than ordinary nonwords in a lexical decision task, but 8-year-old New Zealand children did not show this effect. A subsequent homophone decision task showed that this difference was not due to the New Zealand children being unable to distinguish pseudohomophones from other nonwords. The New Zealand children, however, were less accurate than the British children in pronouncing the pseudohomophones they had identified. It was argued that the British children tended to sound out the items before making a choice in the lexical decision task, which gave salience to phonological rather than visual information, resulting in increased errors to the pseudohomophones. It was concluded that where the British children showed this dependency on use of phonological information it was a product of the teaching approach they had experienced.     

Cheating following success and failure in heavy and moderate social drinkers

Two groups of American undergraduates (moderate and heavy social drinkers) completed a matrix task and received either positive or negative feedback on their performance. Following this they were given a maze task, which was designed so that cheating could be detected. Heavy drinkers cheated more than moderate drinkers under success conditions (positive feedback). Heavy drinkers who received positive feedback also cheated more than heavy drinkers who received negative feedback. The results are interpreted in terms of self-handicapping theory.     

An Unwillingness to Act: Behavioral Appropriateness, Situational Constraint, and Self-Efficacy in Shyness

ABSTRACT Three reasons for the failure to demonstrate social skills were examined in an attempt to integrate social skills deficit and dysfunctional cognition approaches to self-labeled shyness To assess social skills knowledge, the willingness to demonstrate such knowledge, and self-efficacy expectations for enacting social behaviors, 40 shy and 40 nonshy adults were asked to judge the appropriateness of situated behaviors and indicate whether they characteristically enacted and felt capable of producing them Results suggested that shys may be unaware of the appropriateness of some behaviors in some situations, however, shys and nonshys more often agree on behavioral appropriateness standards Compared to nonshys, shys are less likely to enact social behaviors and tend to have low self-efficacy It was suggested that shys' self-awareness of characteristic responses and low self-efficacy expectations may contribute to failures to demonstrate social skills knowledge     

Agreeable fancy or disagreeable truth? Reconciling self-enhancement and self-verification

Three studies asked why people sometimes seek positive feedback (self-enhance) and sometimes seek subjectively accurate feedback (self-verify). Consistent with self-enhancement theory, people with low self-esteem as well as those with high self-esteem indicated that they preferred feedback pertaining to their positive rather than negative self-views. Consistent with self-verification theory, the very people who sought favorable feedback pertaining to their positive self-conceptions sought unfavorable feedback pertaining to their negative self-views, regardless of their level of global self-esteem. Apparently, although all people prefer to seek feedback regarding their positive self-views, when they seek feedback regarding their negative self-views, they seek unfavorable feedback. Whether people self-enhance or self-verify thus seems to be determined by the positivity of the relevant self-conceptions rather than their level of self-esteem or the type of person they are.     

Acupuncture and emotion: the influence of acupuncture anesthesia on the sensory and emotional components of pain

Objective indices (heart rate, perspiration quantity, finger plethysmograph curves, and facial expression) and subjective indices (sensory and emotional subject reports) were recorded for 25 young Chinese adults (16 men, 9 women) during and after the simultaneous application of a strong pain stimulus and either foot classical (alloneural points Tsusanli and Yanglingchuan) or hand classical (alloneural points Hegu and Neiguan) acupuncture. Both forms of acupuncture were equally effective, showing that stimulation of the same nerve is not essential for pain relief. Acupuncture assuaged the emotional, but not the sensory, response to the painful stimulation.     

Ask and You Shall be Given: Request Size and Donations to a Good Cause1

In an attempt to replicate the findings reported in this Journal by Weyant and Smith (1987), members or recent donors to a Canadian civil liberties organization were asked to donate money under one of three conditions: (a) In the control condition, they were simply asked for a donation; (b) in the “smaller request” condition, they were asked to make a donation, but amounts of Canadian $30 to $100 were suggested; and (c) in the “larger request” condition, amounts of $50 to $250 were suggested. Unlike the Weyant and Smith studies, we found no difference in the proportion of respondents making a donation, but significant differences in the size of the donations made by those making donations. In our study, the most effective way of getting large donations was to ask for a large amount. It was suggested that the most likely explanations for the differences in the results of the two studies were the following: First, our target population were previous donors to the organization, whereas those in the Weyant and Smith studies were not likely to have been. Previous research suggests that those who had been donors previously are influenced, positively, by requests for a specific large donation, whereas those not previously approached are, if anything, negatively influenced. Second, our “larger request” appears to be within a plausible range for donations, whereas the larger request in the Weyant and Smith study may have been seen as being outside of the plausible range. In any case, however, we would recommend caution in drawing a conclusion about the most effective request size to encourage people to donate money to charity.     

Job Satisfaction Among Type C Career Changers

Type C careerists perceive their second occupations as being more intrinsically, extrinsically, and generally satisfying than they did their initial occupations.     

Quantum mechanics as subjectivity and projective stimulus

In this paper I attempt to show that subjectivity, as an input to the creative core of physics, is a misunderstood, but crucial factor. Utilizing Rapaport's fundamental paper, Principles Underlying Projective Techniques which identifies the determinants of the projective technique as: 1. lack of organization, 2. undifferentiation, 3. closeness to the core of the personality, and 4. the meaning of the stimulus being unknown to the subject, a link is suggested to quantum mechanics. It is further suggested the revolutionary nature of quantum mechanics satisfies the projective criterion of the material being unorganized or unfamiliar so that the function of organization can become predominant (Rapaport 1942, p. 93).     

CO-WORKER IMPLEMENTED JOB TRAINING: THE USE OF COINCIDENTAL TRAINING AND QUALITY-CONTROL CHECKING ON THE FOOD PREPARATION SKILLS OF TRAINEES WITH MENTAL RETARDATION

In two studies, co-workers of persons with disabilities were taught to use coincidental training procedures while completing their own jobs. In Study 1, the effects of coincidental training on the salad-making skills of 3 trainees with mild and moderate mental retardation were evaluated. Coincidental training by co-workers resulted in improved accuracy of the salad-making skills of the trainees. In Study 2, trainees were also coincidentally taught to make quality-control checks of their salads. An alternating treatments and multiple baseline design indicated that the trainees more readily acquired the skills when taught to check the correctness of their work.