Sense of meaning and academic performance: A brief report

This study examined sense of meaning and academic performance among a sample of South African university students (n = 210, mean age = 19.49, SD = 1.99, female = 54.29%). Data on meaning were collected using the Purpose in Life Test. End of semester marks served as the academic attainment measure. Simple regression analysis with post-hoc independent-samples t-tests revealed that meaning predicts academic performance. No significant differences between genders emerged from the data. Sense of meaning is an important factor in supporting students to enhance their academic performance.     

Active engagement in a web-based tutorial to prevent obesity grounded in Fuzzy-Trace Theory predicts higher knowledge and gist comprehension

We used Sharable Knowledge Objects (SKOs) to create an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) grounded in Fuzzy-Trace Theory to teach women about obesity prevention: GistFit, getting the gist of healthy eating and exercise. The theory predicts that reliance on gist mental representations (as opposed to verbatim) is more effective in reducing health risks and improving decision making. Technical information was translated into decision-relevant gist representations and gist principles (i.e., healthy values). The SKO was hypothesized to facilitate extracting these gist representations and principles by engaging women in dialogue, “understanding” their responses, and replying appropriately to prompt additional engagement. Participants were randomly assigned to either the obesity prevention tutorial (GistFit) or a control tutorial containing different content using the same technology. Participants were administered assessments of knowledge about nutrition and exercise, gist comprehension, gist principles, behavioral intentions and self-reported behavior. An analysis of engagement in tutorial dialogues and responses to multiple-choice questions to check understanding throughout the tutorial revealed significant correlations between these conversations and scores on subsequent knowledge tests and gist comprehension. Knowledge and comprehension measures correlated with healthier behavior and greater intentions to perform healthy behavior. Differences between GistFit and control tutorials were greater for participants who engaged more fully. Thus, results are consistent with the hypothesis that active engagement with a new gist-based ITS, rather than a passive memorization of verbatim details, was associated with an array of known psychosocial mediators of preventive health decisions, such as knowledge acquisition, and gist comprehension.     

TACIT: An open-source text analysis,crawling, and interpretation tool

As human activity and interaction increasingly take place online, the digital residues of these activities provide a valuable window into a range of psychological and social processes. A great deal of progress has been made toward utilizing these opportunities; however, the complexity of managing and analyzing the quantities of data currently available has limited both the types of analysis used and the number of researchers able to make use of these data. Although fields such as computer science have developed a range of techniques and methods for handling these difficulties, making use of those tools has often required specialized knowledge and programming experience. The Text Analysis, Crawling, and Interpretation Tool (TACIT) is designed to bridge this gap by providing an intuitive tool and interface for making use of state-of-the-art methods in text analysis and large-scale data management. Furthermore, TACIT is implemented as an open, extensible, plugin-driven architecture, which will allow other researchers to extend and expand these capabilities as new methods become available.     

Reliability of the bipolar form of the profile of mood states using an alternative test protocol

The bipolar version of Profile of Mood States was completed by 124 participants (58 women and 66 men, M age 26.5, SD=3.9 yr.) on two occasions--once when the measure was self-administered according to that test protocol and once when POMS-BI items were projected onto a screen with participants being asked to provide oral responses to items. Data from both modes of administration provided similar support for the internal consistency of the measure (alpha values ranged from .78 to .90).     

Coping sense of humor reduces effects of stereotype threat on women's math performance

Two studies demonstrated that coping sense of humor buffered women against the effects of stereotype threat on math performance. Using a correlational design, Study 1 demonstrated that women low in coping sense of humor assessed their performance on standardized math tests lower than did men and lower than did women high in coping sense of humor. Using an experimental design, Study 2 showed that coping sense of humor was positively related to women's performance on a math test taken under conditions of stereotype threat but not under conditions of no stereotype threat. Mediation analyses suggest that in the stereotype-threat condition, state anxiety mediated the relationship between coping sense of humor and test performance. Women higher in coping sense of humor performed better because they felt less anxiety while taking the test.     

Personality disorder and future-directed thinking in parasuicide

Parasuicide patients have been found to lack positive expectations for the future. The aim of the present study was to look at variations in this lack of positive future-thinking as a function of personality status. A sample (N = 442) of repeat parasuicide patients was assessed on positive and negative future-thinking and the presence of personality disorder or personality difficulty. Those with a Cluster B personality disorder (borderline or dissocial) were significantly lower in positive future-thinking than those with no Cluster B symptoms or those with Cluster B personality difficulty. Neither Cluster A nor Cluster C symptomatology was related to positive future-thinking. Negative future-thinking was not significantly related to any type of personality disorder or difficulty. The results are interpreted as evidence of the importance of personality status in influencing positive future-thinking and gives some indications of why those with Cluster B personality disorder have such high rates of recurrent self-harm.     

Mind the gap: interhemispheric communication about emotional faces

This study tested the hypothesis that interhemispheric communication about emotional stimuli is influenced by situational factors that alter emotional relevance. Under evaluative or nonevaluative conditions, participants matched angry and happy faces within a single visual field or across opposite visual fields. An overall across-field advantage (AFA) reflected the benefit of sharing information between the hemispheres. The AFA was greater for angry than for happy faces in the evaluation condition but did not differ for angry and happy faces in the no-evaluation condition. Examination of individual differences indicated that high trait evaluation levels of worry were associated with poorer interhemispheric communication of angry faces, supporting a threat-avoidance conception of worry. Thus, both situational factors and individual differences affected interhemispheric communication about emotional faces.     

MMPI-2 and MCMI-III characteristics of parental competency examinees

The MMPI-2 (Butcher et al., 2001) and the MCMI-III (Millon, Davis, & Millon, 1997) may contribute to understanding psychological functioning in parental competency examinees. In this study, we sought to identify MMPI-2 and MCMI-III characteristics of this population. We collected data regarding 127 individuals who underwent court-ordered parental competency evaluations. Although test results were generally consistent with findings from the child custody literature, MMPI-2 results indicated the highest Validity scale elevation on the L scale in contrast to the K scale elevations that have often been reported in the custody literature.     

CS-dependent response probability in an auditory masked-detection task: considerations based on models of Pavlovian conditioning.

Experimental studies were performed using a Pavlovian-conditioned eyeblink response to measure detection of a variable-sound-level tone (T) in a fixed-sound-level masking noise (N) in rabbits. Results showed an increase in the asymptotic probability of conditioned responses (CRs) to the reinforced TN trials and a decrease in the asymptotic rate of eyeblink responses to the non-reinforced N presentations as a function of the sound level of the T. These observations are consistent with expected behaviour in an auditory masked detection task, but they are not consistent with predictions from a traditional application of the Rescorla-Wagner or Pearce models of associative learning. To implement these models, one typically considers only the actual stimuli and reinforcement on each trial. We found that by considering perceptual interactions and concepts from signal detection theory, these models could predict the CS dependence on the sound level of the T. In these alternative implementations, the animals response probabilities were used as a guide in making assumptions about the "effective stimuli".