Hispanics in Ivy: Assessing identity and perceived threat

Membership in social groups is an important aspect of the self-concept, as a number of theorists such as Tajfel (1981) have recognized, and ethnic identity is a major exemplar of such groupings. In the present research, we focus on the particular case of Hispanic identity and the degree to which that identity may be threatened for first-year Hispanic students who enter a predominantly Anglo university. Forty-five Hispanic students (17 female, 28 male) at two Ivy League universities were interviewed early in their first year to assess Hispanic identity, collective self-esteem (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1988), and perceived threats to Hispanic identity. In addition, we considered the degree to which strength of cultural background relates to self-esteem and to perceptions of threat. The majority of students claimed Hispanic as an important identity. Strength of cultural background generally acted as a buffer to perceived threat, particularly for men. Cultural background was also related to collective self-esteem for men but not for women, even though Hispanic identity was more important for women than men. The results attest to the importance of both gender and ethnicity to self-definition and self-esteem, as well as to the complexity of the relationships among these variables.We thank Tracey Revenson as well as the members of the Identity Research Seminar at the CUNY Graduate Center for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Divorced mothers' gender role ideology,locus of control,and disciplinary patterns

This study examined gender role ideology, locus of control, and disciplinary patterns of divorced mothers. Data were gathered from 135 divorced mothers and their elementary school-aged children. Eighty-five percent of the subjects were white and 15% were nonwhite (African American, Hispanic, and Native American). Stepwise regression analyses were used to determine variations in child-rearing patterns explained by locus of control and gender ideology. Child-rearing patterns included four parental attitudes. The basic hypothesis that gender role ideology and locus of control are personal resources that influence child-rearing patterns of divorced mothers received clear support. These findings suggest that the relation between single parenthood and child socialization patterns are complex and that sociocognitive beliefs play an important role in single mothers' child-rearing choices.     

A longitudinal study of student-teacher relationship quality, difficult temperament, and risky behavior from childhood to early adolescence

This study examines the mediating role of student-teacher relationship quality (conflict and closeness) in grades 4, 5, and 6 on the relation between background characteristics, difficult temperament at age 4½ and risky behavior in 6th grade. The longitudinal sample of participants (N = 1156) was from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate paths from (a) background characteristics to student-teacher relationship quality and risky behavior, (b) temperament to student-teacher relationship quality and risky behavior, and (c) student-teacher relationship quality to risky behavior. Findings indicate that students' family income, gender, receipt of special services, and more difficult temperament were associated with risky behavior. In addition, student-teacher conflict was a mediator. Students with more difficult temperaments were more likely to report risky behavior and to have conflict in their relationships with teachers. More conflict predicted more risky behavior. Closer student-teacher relationships were associated with less risky behavior. Results suggest negative relationships, specifically student-teacher relationships, may increase the risk that certain adolescents will engage in risky behavior.     

True or false: do 5-year-olds understand belief?

In 3 studies (N = 188) we tested the hypothesis that children use a perceptual access approach to reason about mental states before they understand beliefs. The perceptual access hypothesis predicts a U-shaped developmental pattern of performance in true belief tasks, in which 3-year-olds who reason about reality should succeed, 4- to 5-year-olds who use perceptual access reasoning should fail, and older children who use belief reasoning should succeed. The results of Study 1 revealed the predicted pattern in 2 different true belief tasks. The results of Study 2 disconfirmed several alternate explanations based on possible pragmatic and inhibitory demands of the true belief tasks. In Study 3, we compared 2 methods of classifying individuals according to which 1 of the 3 reasoning strategies (reality reasoning, perceptual access reasoning, belief reasoning) they used. The 2 methods gave converging results. Both methods indicated that the majority of children used the same approach across tasks and that it was not until after 6 years of age that most children reasoned about beliefs. We conclude that because most prior studies have failed to detect young children's use of perceptual access reasoning, they have overestimated their understanding of false beliefs. We outline several theoretical implications that follow from the perceptual access hypothesis.     

Letter transpositions within and across morphemic boundaries: Is there a cross-language difference?

Research on the impact of letter transpositions that arise across morpheme boundaries has yielded conflicting results. These results have led to the suggestion that a cross-linguistic difference may exist in the recognition of Spanish and English words. In two masked-priming experiments run on separate groups of Spanish and English speakers, we tested this hypothesis by comparing the impacts of primes with letter transpositions that arose within morphemes or across morpheme boundaries on the recognition of identical or near-identical Spanish–English cognate targets. The results showed transposed-letter benefits in both Spanish and English that were not modulated by the position of the transposed letter in the prime stimulus. Our findings therefore add to the growing body of literature suggesting that the transposed-letter benefit is not affected by the position of the transposed letters relative to the morpheme boundary, and they dispel previous suggestions that there might be a genuine difference in orthographic coding across the Spanish and English writing systems.     

Inhibition in Goal Systems: A Retrieval-Induced Forgetting Account

In social psychological models of goals, particular means or goals that receive more activation are pursued while their counterparts are “inhibited.” To account for inhibition, these theories emphasize structural distribution of resources and the consequences of goal or means choices. Absent are alternate accounts of inhibition based on memory processes that rely on retrieval or recall of items. We propose that the act of recalling means or goals from memory entails inhibition of competing alternatives. Two experiments using repeated retrieval paradigms present evidence that recalling one means associated with a particular goal inhibits competing means. Moreover, this inhibitory mechanism is sensitive to the structural relationship of goals and means. Implications for models of inhibition in goal pursuit are discussed.     

The involvement of bottom-up saliency processing in endogenous inhibition of return

Participants are faster at detecting a visual target when it appears at a cued, as compared with an uncued, location. In general, a reversal of this cost-benefit pattern is observed after exogenous cuing when the cue-target interval exceeds approximately 250?ms (inhibition of return [IOR]), and not after endogenous cuing. We suggest that, usually, no IOR is found with endogenous cues because no bottom-up saliency-based orienting processes are claimed. Therefore, we developed an endogenous feature-based split-cue task to allow for endogenous saliency-based orienting. IOR was observed in the saliency-driven endogenous cuing condition, and not in the control condition that prevented saliency-based orienting. These results suggest that usage of saliency-based orienting processes in either endogenous or exogenous orienting warrants the appearance of IOR.     

Biases in affective forecasting and recall in individuals with depression and anxiety symptoms

The authors used experience sampling to investigate biases in affective forecasting and recall in individuals with varying levels of depression and anxiety symptoms. Participants who were higher in depression symptoms demonstrated stronger (more pessimistic) negative mood prediction biases, marginally stronger negative mood recall biases, and weaker (less optimistic) positive mood prediction and recall biases. Participants who were higher in anxiety symptoms demonstrated stronger negative mood prediction biases, but positive mood prediction biases that were on par with those who were lower in anxiety. Anxiety symptoms were not associated with mood recall biases. Neither depression symptoms nor anxiety symptoms were associated with bias in event prediction. Their findings fit well with the tripartite model of depression and anxiety. Results are also consistent with the conceptualization of anxiety as a "forward-looking" disorder, and with theories that emphasize the importance of pessimism and general negative information processing in depressive functioning.     

Distinguishing general and specific personality disorder features and implications for substance dependence comorbidity

Clinical and population-based samples show high comorbidity between Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) and Axis II Personality Disorders (PDs). However, Axis II disorders are frequently comorbid with each other, and existing research has generally failed to distinguish the extent to which SUD/PD comorbidity is general or specific with respect to both specific types of PDs and specific types of SUDs. We sought to determine whether ostensibly specific comorbid substance dependence-Axis II diagnoses (e.g., alcohol use dependence and borderline personality disorder) are reflective of more pervasive or general personality pathology or whether the comorbidity is specific to individual PDs. Face-to-face interview data from Wave 1 and Wave 2 of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions were analyzed. Participants included 34,653 adults living in households in the United States. We used hierarchical factor models to statistically partition general and specific personality disorder dimensions while simultaneously testing for specific PD-substance dependence relations. Results indicated that substance dependence-Axis II comorbidity is characterized by general (pervasive) pathology and by Cluster B PD pathology over and above the relationship to the general PD factor. Further, these relations between PD factors and substance dependence diagnoses appeared to largely account for the comorbidity among substance dependence diagnoses in the younger but not older participants. Our findings suggest that a failure to consider the general PD factor, which we interpret as reflecting interpersonal dysfunction, can lead to potential mischaracterizations of the nature of certain PD and SUD comorbidities.