Development of prehension between 5 and 10 years of age: distance scaling, grip aperture, and sight of the hand

The authors investigated whether 5- to 10-year-old children (N = 75) differ from adults (N = 12) in the developmental course of distance scaling and the adaptations to the inability to see the hand during prehension movements. The children reached under a surface and grasped and lifted an object suspended through it. All children scaled velocity appropriately for movement distance, both with and without sight of the hand. However, 5- to 6-year-old children did not increase grip aperture with increased distance, whereas older children and adults did. The older children and adults spent longer after peak deceleration when they could not see the hand, and maximum grip aperture (MGA) was larger, providing an increased safety margin. Children aged 5 to 6 spent the same amount of time between peak deceleration and grasp, whether or not they could see the hand, and they failed to increase MGA when they could not see the hand. Prehension in the younger children differed from that of older children in two ways: The younger children did not integrate reach and grasp over different distances and did not use visual information about hand position to optimize accuracy.     

Is there a universal positivity bias in attributions? A meta-analytic review of individual, developmental, and cultural differences in the self-serving attributional bias

Researchers have suggested the presence of a self-serving attributional bias, with people making more internal, stable, and global attributions for positive events than for negative events. This study examined the magnitude, ubiquity, and adaptiveness of this bias. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of 266 studies, yielding 503 independent effect sizes. The average d was 0.96, indicating a large bias. The bias was present in nearly all samples. There were significant age differences, with children and older adults displaying the largest biases. Asian samples displayed significantly smaller biases (d = 0.30) than U.S. (d = 1.05) or Western (d = 0.70) samples. Psychopathology was associated with a significantly attenuated bias (d = 0.48) compared with samples without psychopathology (d = 1.28) and community samples (d = 1.08). The bias was smallest for samples with depression (0.21), anxiety (0.46), and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (0.55). Findings confirm that the self-serving attributional bias is pervasive in the general population but demonstrates significant variability across age, culture, and psychopathology.     

Ethnicity and body dissatisfaction among women in the United States: a meta-analysis

The prevailing view in popular culture and the psychological literature is that White women have greater body dissatisfaction than women of color. In this meta-analysis, 6 main effect sizes were obtained for differences among Asian American, Black, Hispanic, and White women with a sample of 98 studies, yielding 222 effect sizes. The average d for the White-Black comparison was 0.29, indicating that White women are more dissatisfied, but the difference is small. All other comparisons were smaller, and many were close to zero. The findings directly challenge the belief that there are large differences in dissatisfaction between White and all non-White women and suggest that body dissatisfaction may not be the golden girl problem promoted in the literature. Implications for theory and treatment are discussed.     

Acculturation, communication patterns, and self-esteem among Asian and Caucasian American adolescents

This study examined level of acculturation, openness in communication with parents, peer interaction, and self-esteem in two ethnic groups-Asian and Caucasian American adolescents who grew up in the same neighborhood. The findings provide evidence of significant ethnic differences in behavioral patterns, peer networks, family contexts, and levels of self-esteem. In general, Asian adolescents expressed more difficulty discussing problems with their parents when compared to their Caucasian counterparts. Further, self-esteem was found to be significantly lower among Asians than Caucasians. Implications for the provision of mental health services are discussed.     

The dynamics of learning and allocation of study time to a region of proximal learning

In contrast to the dominant discrepancy reduction model, which favors the most difficult items, people, given free choice, devoted most time to medium-difficulty items and studied the easiest items first. When study time was experimentally manipulated, best performance resulted when most time was given to the medium-difficulty items. Empirically determined information uptake functions revealed steep initial learning for easy items with little subsequent increase. For medium-difficulty items, initial gains were smaller but more sustained, suggesting that the strategy people had used, when given free choice, was largely appropriate. On the basis of the information uptake functions, a negative spacing effect was predicted and observed in the final experiment. Overall, the results favored the region of proximal learning framework.     

The state of psychological assessment in Asia

The collection of articles in this special section provides a much-needed examination of the state of psychological assessment in various Asian countries or societies. In particular, the contributors review and critique assessment of personality, depression and anxiety, children and adolescents, and neuropsychological evaluation. The reviews cover the use of, and research on, imported measures (Western derived) as well as indigenous measures that were developed locally. The articles make a valuable contribution toward understanding not only the state of assessment in Asia but also larger issues such as the universal applicability of assessment instruments and the cross-cultural validity of models of human behavior.     

Bioethics and the marginalization of mental illness

This paper explores why ethical issues associated with mental illness have been generally neglected in the literature and texts of the discipline of bioethics. I argue that the reasons for this are both philosophical and structural, involving the philosophical framework of principlism in bioethics, in particular the privileging of the principle of autonomy, and the institutional location and disciplinary boundaries of bioethics as a profession. Other contributing factors include developments outside of bioethics, in medicine and law and in the delivery patterns and funding sources of mental health services, and above all the pervasive stigma that attaches to mental illness. My goal is to show both how the attention bioethics could bring would benefit this neglected area of health care, and why attending to the issues surrounding mental illness would benefit bioethics in meeting its professional obligations as the public voice on matters of ethical significance in health care.     

Mood as information in making attributions to discrimination

Previous research demonstrates that people use their mood as information when making a variety of judgments. The present research examines the extent to which people use their current mood as information when making attributions to discrimination. Women were given a positive or negative mood induction and either provided with an external attribution for their current mood state or not. They then reported on discrimination occurring to themselves and other women. When an external attribution for induced mood was not provided, women in positive moods were less likely to report discrimination across three measures than were women in negative moods. When an external attribution was provided, mood had no effect. Implications for understanding the effects of context and individual differences in the perception and reporting of experiences with discrimination are discussed.