Does aggregation produce spuriously high estimates of behavior stability?

A number of arguments as to why aggregation produces spurious correlations are considered and shown to be specious. A series of computer-simulated studies, claimed by H. D. Day and his colleagues to demonstrate that aggregation produces artifactually high stability coefficients, was shown to involve bizarre distributions and inappropriate conclusions. Nevertheless, their data actually indicated the potency of aggregation in detecting whatever empirical relations they built into their data. This was not true of their analyses of their unaggregated data, which, as a result of a high level of noise of measurement, failed to enable them to detect anomalies in their data. No amount of aggregation produced evidence of stability in its absence. It is concluded that aggregation provides a powerful tool for reducing error of measurement and for establishing and enhancing generality as well as stability in measurement. Although there is nothing intrinsic in aggregation that fosters spurious correlations, it like any other technique can be used wisely or foolishly. In order to achieve the former, aggregation must be guided by psychometric principles and theoretical considerations. A procedure guaranteed to achieve the latter is to simply aggregate whatever can be assigned a common label.     

The effect of family variables on child weight change

Previous research has shown that family size, the number of obese persons living at home, and parental weight influence the development of childhood obesity. Our study reports the relevance of these factors to child weight loss during a 1-year treatment period. Multiple linear regression procedures showed that the amount of relative weight change was related to initial treatment success, the number of children in the family, and the gender of the child. Children who were more successful lost more weight initially, had fewer siblings, and were female. These results suggest that family size may interact with treatment to determine weight change. The effects of family size on outcome may be operating simply by reducing the amount of time that a parent has to spend with the child in promoting behavior change. Likewise, increased family size may be operating as a stressor, reducing the effectiveness of parents in effectively managing their children.     

On the nature of neutral primes in a lexical decision task

Summary Research concerned with semantic priming has used a neutral prime as a benchmark for measuring the amount of facilitation for related targets and the amount of inhibition for unrelated targets. Recently, de Groot, Thomassen, and Hudson (1982) have reported that lexical decisions to targets are faster when preceded by the neutral prime BLANK as compared to a neutral prime consisting of a string of X's. Additionally, Antos (1979) has reported that an X neutral prime induces an inhibitory effect when the stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA) is short. The present experiment manipulated class of neutral prime, SOA, and practice. The results failed to support the observation by Antos. However, the results did support the finding by de Groot et al. at shorter SOA's (200 and 550 ms). At a longer (1000 ms) SOA the effect of the two neutral primes as well as the effect of the unrelated primes were equivalent. Practice had no differential effect on either of the neutral primes as compared to the unrelated priming conditions. These results were interpreted to mean that the difference between the two neutral primes at a brief SOA were perceptual in origin and that an unrelated word prime is neutral with respect to the target in the absence of strategic priming effects.     

Same-sex patterns and sex differences in the trust-value basis of children's friendship

Thirty-six children in fourth grade were required (a) to report the secret-sharing, secret-keeping, promise-making, and promise-keeping behaviors of classroom peers; and (b) to judge those classmates on trust and friendship. Teachers provided observations of the children's friendship interaction. Same-sex patterns were found in observed friendship, friendship ratings, trust, secrets shared, proportion of secrets kept, and promises made. These were less frequent/lower for opposite-sex peers than for same-sex peers. As expected, males tended to share fewer secrets with same-sex peers than did females. The expected associations were found among proportion of secrets kept, proportion of promises kept, trust, and rated or observed friendship in females but with one exception in males. The findings supported the conclusion that same-sex friendship patterns are maintained by same-sex trust patterns through (a) infrequent secret sharing with opposite-sex peers and (b) the perception that opposite-sex peers break secrets more frequently than same-sex peers. The findings also supported the conclusion that there are some sex differences in the intimacy/trust basis of friendship.     

Intermittent low-calorie regimen and booster sessions in the treatment of obesity

The present study investigated two new weight-control strategies: an intermittent low-calorie regimen and intermittent scheduling of booster sessions. A new approach to predicting patient weight loss, based on a pretreatment assessment with a highly-structured eating regimen, was also studied. Forty-eight obese patients were randomly assigned to either a Standard Behavioral weight-control condition or to an Intermittent Low-calorie Regimen (< 750 cal for 2 days/week) condition and to one of two maintenance schedules: a Spaced schedule in which the six booster sessions were held at monthly intervals, or a Massed schedule, in which four of the six meetings were held during the third month. Neither the intermittent low-calorie regimen nor the intermittent scheduling of booster sessions significantly affected weight loss. However, weight loss at 1 year was related to compliance to self-monitoring and to self-reported change in eating habits and exercise. In addition, weight loss at 1 year was related to weight loss during the initial pretreatment assessment period.     

Guidance for Submission: Social Control and Guidance in Schools for Black Pupils in South Africa

The use of a school guidance service to transmit the economic and cultural interests of the ruling group(s) in a country is explored through the case-study of guidance in the Republic of South Africa, and in particular the introduction of guidance as a subject in Black schools in 1981. An analysis of the syllabus for guidance in Black schools reveals a social-control strategy on the part of the power group, which is different to that used within the White guidance service. Whereas the White service emphasises cultural interests, the Black-school syllabus stresses the economic interests of the ruling group. Each service, however, reflects the tension between economic and cultural interests, and the guidance situation in South Africa demonstrates the complex relationship between these interests, as well as that between group power relations and the nature of guidance services. The case-study also comments upon the relationship between the power of the ruling group in South Africa and the degree to which its economic and cultural interests are made explicit in the syllabus of its guidance services.     

Order and serial position effects in response time with multiple-item probe recognition

We examined the order effect in item-recognition response time, that is, differences in response time for multiple-item probes containing items in the same or in the reverse order as those in the memory set. Experiment 1 used the response condition in which only one item must be positive for a positive response, Experiment 2 used homogeneous probes in which all the items are either positive or negative, and Experiment 3 used the condition in which all the items must be positive. Of particular interest were the serial position variations in order effects for probes containing items that were adjacent in the memory set. We previously found that such effects are an indication of subjective grouping of the memory set and the matching of the probe with these subgroups. The order effect in the one-positive condition was only weak in most cases, but it was strong with homogeneous probes when the memory set was objectively grouped or was ungrouped but with a constant set size. There were also strong order effects in the all-positive condition for probes with items that were nonadjacent in the memory set. Our results are interpreted in terms of a parallel match process based on a distribution over position of items in subjective or objective groups. We account for the origin of the distribution-over-position process in terms of multiple representations of the grouped memory sets. The model assumes that each subgroup is represented in memory several, and perhaps very many, times and that considerable error in item positioning can occur over the multiple representations of any group.     

Constructive thinking: a broad coping variable with specific components

The structure of constructive thinking and the development of an instrument for measuring it, the Constructive Thinking Inventory (CTI), were discussed. Scales were derived from a factor analysis of an item domain of people's everyday automatic thinking. When the CTI and other tests were factor analyzed, separate intellective and nonintellective factors were found, with the CTI loading more strongly on the nonintellective factor than any other test. Only measures of IQ loaded on the intellective factor. The global constructive thinking scale correlated significantly with success in work, love, social relationships, and in maintaining emotional and physical well-being, but not with academic achievement, the only criterion with which the measures of IQ correlated strongly. The patterns of correlations between the CTI scales and the various criteria as well as the factor analysis demonstrated that the construct of constructive thinking is differentiated as well as integrated.     

Depressed patients with dysfunctional families: description and course of illness.

Sixty-eight depressed patients were subdivided according to their family's level of family functioning into functional and dysfunctional groups. Patients from dysfunctional families did not differ from those from functional families on measures of severity of depression, chronicity of depression, depression subtypes, other nonaffective psychiatric diagnoses, history of depression, or neuroendocrine functioning. Patients from dysfunctional families did have significantly higher levels of neuroticism. A 12-month follow-up of these patients indicated that depressed patients with dysfunctional families had a significantly poorer course of illness, as manifested by higher levels of depression, lower levels of overall adjustment, and a lower proportion of recovered patients. Thus, impaired family functioning appears to be an important prognostic factor in major depression.     

Cognitive-experiential self-theory and subjective probability: further evidence for two conceptual systems.

Three experiments (N = 1,331) demonstrated that research findings on suspiciousness about coincidences (Miller, Turnbull, & McFarland, 1989) can be accounted for in terms of subjective probability, as predicted by cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST) but in contrast with the norm theory (NT) account offered by Miller et al. (1989). Ss participated in a hypothetical (Experiments 1 and 2) or real (Experiment 3) lottery game in which they chose between 2 bowls offering equivalent probabilities of winning or losing but differing with respect to absolute numbers (e.g., 1 in 10 vs. 10 in 100). Responses across 4 conditions (2 probability levels x 2 outcome types) and across the 3 experiments supported predictions derived from CEST but not those derived from NT. Results are discussed in terms of 2 conceptual systems, rational and experiential, that operate by different rules of inference.