Aging and the perception of biological motion

Two experiments examined how observers' ability to perceive biological motion changes with increasing age. The observers discriminated among kinetic figures, depicting walking, jogging, and skipping. The direction, duration, and temporal correspondence of the motions were manipulated. Quantitative differences occurred between the recognition performances of younger and older observers, but these differences were often modest. The older and younger observers' performances were comparable for most conditions at stimulus durations of 400 ms. The older observers also performed well above chance at shorter durations of 240 and 120 ms. Unlike their performance on other 2- or 3-dimensional motion tasks, older observers' ability to perceive biological motion is relatively well preserved.     

Leader Positive Mood and Group Performance: The Case of Customer Service

It was hypothesized that leader positive mood would be positively associated with group performance in a service setting. Additionally, it was expected that while leader positive mood would be positively associated with both the leader's level of job satisfaction and job involvement, leader positive mood would be positively associated with group performance, controlling for both leader job satisfaction and job involvement. Leader positive mood also was expected to be positively associated with group performance controlling for group positive affective tone. Two potential antecedents of leader positive mood, the leader's level of positive affectivity and the extent to which the leader's own manager engaged in contingent reward behavior, were hypothesized to be positively associated with leader positive mood at work. These hypotheses were tested among a sample of 53 sales managers who led groups ranging in size from 4 to 9 members. All of the hypotheses were supported. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.     

Perceived social support,coping, and symptoms of distress in American and Spanish students

Abstract

The aim of this study was to test whether coping responses mediated the influence of perceived social support on symptoms of anxiety/depression, social withdrawal, and aggressive behavior in American (N=349) and Spanish students (N=437). Participants completed measures of perceived support, social stress, coping, and distress. Coping partially mediated relations between perceived support and distress, with coping mediation most evident in individuals facing high levels of social stress. Decreased use of disengagement coping by individuals with high perceived support appears to partially explain the protective value of perceived social support. Multiple group covariance structure analysis showed that models linking perceived support, coping, and distress were very similar across cultures, suggesting that the mechanisms underlying decreased risk for individuals with high perceived support may be relatively independent of cultural context, and that interventions designed to increase perceived support and decrease disengagement could be appropriate in both cultures.     

Developing an instrument to measure physical activity related self-worth in women: Rasch analysis of the Women's Physical Activity Self-Worth Inventory (WPASWI)

ObjectivesThe objective of this study is to report on the development of an instrument to assess non-physical aspects of physical activity (PA)-related self-worth (SW).MethodsThree hundred thirty five women (mean age = 36.69 ± 15.94 yrs, BMI = 24.87 ± 4.56) completed the Women's Physical Activity Self-Worth Inventory (WPASWI), General SW Scale, and a PA Questionnaire. Rasch analysis was used to evaluate the WPASWI.ResultsThree PA-related SW subscales were identified: PA Knowledge (16 items), PA Emotional (13 items), and PA Social (8 items). Rasch analysis supported construct validity, and items demonstrated acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.90, 0.87 and 0.72) and test-re-test reliability (r = 0.79, 0.70, 0.81). Women who reported regular PA participation had higher PA Knowledge, PA Emotional, PA Social, and General SW than those who reported some or no PA (p < 0.01) and correlations between Knowledge, Emotional, and Social SW subscales and General SW were 0.207, 0.130, and 0.220, respectively. PA Knowledge and PA Emotional SW had stronger correlations with PA (r = 0.344, 0.273, respectively) than did General SW (r = 0.133).ConclusionsThe WPASWI demonstrated good internal consistency, reliability, construct validity and a stronger relationship with PA than a General SW instrument.     

Surprise is predicted by event probability,outcome valence,outcome meaningfulness,and gender

The present research was designed to better understand how the magnitude of experienced surprise is affected by both individual difference variables as well as variations in surprise-eliciting stimuli. Eighty-five participants played 5 versions of a slot machine-like game. The five games only differed with respect to the probability of winning each trial—10 % (i.e., wins were highly unusual), 30, 50, 70, and 90 % (i.e., losses were highly unusual). Players were given a fictitious “bankroll” at the beginning of each game and played up to 25 trials of each game. On each trial, players selected their wager amount, “pulled” the handle, learned the outcome (win or loss), and reported their surprise level using a 1 (none) to 9 (extremely) Likert scale. Replicating past research, results revealed that self-reported surprise was inversely related to outcome probability and that wins were rated as more surprising than losses, even when wins and losses occurred at the same level of probability. Novel results include finding that larger wagers predicted greater felt surprise (regardless of outcome), and that women reported greater surprise to both wins and losses than men.     

Examining Race and Ethnicity in the Context of General Strain Theory,Depression, and Delinquency

The current study draws on general strain theory (GST) to explore the relationship between strain, race, and delinquent behavior. White, black, and Hispanic youth were examined to assess the effect of strain on nonserious and serious delinquency. Results indicate mixed support for GST in that indicators of strain to varying degrees predicted depression and youth involvement in delinquency. However, depression did not mediate the strain–delinquency relationship, and race and ethnicity were still directly related to delinquent coping. While white, black, and Hispanic youth experienced certain types of strain, these groups overall were not statistically different from one another.     

The “Sh-Ape Bias” in Non-Linguistic Categorization: Comparisons between Children and Other Apes

ABSTRACT

Children show a bias toward information about shape when labeling or determining category membership for novel objects. The body of work with human children suggests that the shape bias is not restricted to linguistic contexts but is highly contingent on task demands. Testing nonhumans could provide additional information about the salience of shape cues in the absence of linguistic relevance. In order to assess the salience of shape versus color using an identical task in children and apes, we presented two adult zoo-housed chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and 56 three–five-year-old children with a relational matching task in which samples and comparison stimuli matched on either shape or color. Whereas children of all ages performed above chance on the task, chimpanzees performed at close to chance levels overall. However, closer inspection revealed that, whereas children performed better on shape (86%) versus color trials (78.5%), chimpanzees showed the opposite pattern, performing at chance on shape trials (49%) and above chance on color trials (72%). Children also made quicker responses on shape versus color trials, whereas chimpanzees showed the opposite pattern. Whereas shape is a highly salient cue for Western children, color may be a more salient natural cue in nonhuman primates’ natural environments. Thus, the shape bias does not appear to be an evolutionarily ancient bias when assigning category membership.     

Disruptive Behaviors and Creativity in Childhood: The Importance of Affect Regulation

This study examined the role of affect regulation and negative affect expression in the relationship between disruptive behaviors and creativity. Seventy 6- to 10-year-old children completed measures to assess divergent thinking and affect expression in fantasy play. Parents completed measures of children's creativity, affect regulation, and behavioral functioning. Results indicated that higher levels of disruptive behaviors related to lower levels of creativity on divergent thinking tasks and by parent report. Affect regulation mediated the relationship. Results failed to support a relationship between negative affect expression in play and creativity, although greater levels of negative affect expression related to higher levels of disruptive behaviors. Results highlight the importance of affect regulation for both behavioral functioning and adaptive traits including creative achievement.     

Comparing the effects of static and dynamic signals during multiple schedules

The extent to which multiple schedules are an effective schedule thinning method following functional communication training (FCT) relies on the control the schedule-correlated stimuli exert over behavior. Thus, the stimuli used to signal the schedule in place (e.g., reinforcement and extinction) in a multiple schedule arrangement require special attention. To date, the majority of the research on multiple schedules has evaluated the use of different arbitrary signals as schedule-correlated stimuli (e.g., poster boards). These signals are considered static as they lack movement. More recently, some studies have successfully used dynamic signals, which include movement or animation, within multiple schedule arrangements. However, the extent to which one type of signal may result in faster stimulus control over behavior has not been evaluated. Thus, the purpose of this study was to compare the use of static and dynamic signals as schedule-correlated stimuli in multiple schedules used within the context of FCT. Four children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder participated in the study. The results suggest that no differences in discriminated manding were observed for three out of four participants. Only dynamic signals resulted in discriminated manding for one participant.