Classroom Interactions: Gender of Teacher,Gender of Student,and Classroom Subject

An observational study investigated the effects of gender of teacher, gender of student, and classroom subject (mathematics vs. English literature/language) on teacher–student interactions. A total of 597 high school students (294 males and 303 females) and 36 teachers (28 males and 8 females) were observed in either 18 mathematics classes or 18 literature/language classes. Students and teachers were predominately Caucasian, with the majority of students from a lower- or middle-class background. Observations were coded using the interactions for sex equity in classroom teaching (INTERSECT) observational instrument. It was found that female mathematics teachers, male literature/language teachers, and female literature/language teachers tended to interact somewhat more with male students than with female students. This tendency was not the result of male students having initiated more direct verbal interactions with teachers.     

“I was and still am”: Narratives of Bisexual Marking in the #StillBisexual Campaign

This research investigated narratives of bi-erasure and bisexual marking by considering 53 video confessionals associated with the #StillBisexual campaign. #StillBisexual is a web-based campaign that targets myths about bisexuality and promotes bisexual identity visibility. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify emergent themes regarding the ways that individuals mark and make known their bisexuality. Three major themes of bisexual demarcation emerged including the enduring nature of bisexuality, defining bisexuality, and defining the self as a bisexual being. Discussion focuses on describing bisexual marking approaches by #StillBisexual participants and by analyzing the way bisexual demarcation challenges assumptions of monosexism and cisgenderism inherent to cultural conceptualizations of sexuality.     

The Associations between Perceived Maternal Psychological Control and Academic Performance and Academic Self-Concept in Chinese Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Basic Psychological Needs

This study examined the associations between perceived maternal psychological control and adolescent academic functioning in terms of academic performance and academic self-concept. The study also tested the possible mediating role of basic psychological needs to investigate how parental psychological control is related to child academic functioning. A sample of Chinese adolescents (N?=?338) completed a self-administered questionnaire on maternal psychological control, academic self-concept, academic performance and basic psychological needs satisfaction. Structural equation modeling was used for data analyses. Findings of this study revealed that Chinese adolescents’ perceptions of maternal psychological control were associated with their academic self-concept, and furthermore this association was mediated by adolescents’ basic psychological needs satisfaction on autonomy, relatedness and competence. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as future research directions were discussed.     

All role transitions are not experienced equally: Associations among self-change,emotional reactions,and self-concept clarity

Individuals experience numerous transitions across various roles during their lives. These role transitions can be disruptive to the way individuals view their identity, and thus their well-being; however, role transitions do not affect all individuals equally. Therefore, in the current work, we focused on two factors which may influence self-concept clarity and explain differential experiences following role transitions. We tested the relationship between the amount of self-change and positive emotions in reaction to a role transition predicting self-concept clarity, including both role entries (e.g. parenthood/new relationships, Studies 1–4) and role exits (e.g. divorce/job loss, Studies 3 and 4). Across several studies and all role transitions, we found that among individuals who experienced low levels of positive emotions after a role transition, greater self-change predicted reduced self-concept clarity. Among individuals who experienced higher levels of positive emotionality, this association did not emerge.     

The resolution and recovery of filler-gap dependencies in aphasia: evidence from on-line anomaly detection

This study examines the on-line processing of sentences with movement using an auditory anomaly detection task (after Borland, Tanenhaus, Garnsey, & Carlson, 1995). Eight agrammatic aphasic participants (four of whom had undergone treatment focused on comprehension and production of filler-gap sentences) and 24 young normal participants listened to sentences and pressed a button when the sentences "stopped making sense." Critical sentences contained an anomaly in object relative clauses or conjoined clauses. Results showed that both young normals and aphasic participants were able to reject anomalous sentences of both types. In addition, both groups showed evidence of filler-gap resolution on-line. Importantly, however, there was evidence of a treatment effect for the aphasic patients: those who received treatment showed better performance than those who had not. Treated patients were more successful than the untreated patients in detecting the anomaly in filler-gap conditions, rejecting the anomalous filler-gap sentences reliably more often than the non-anomalous ones, like the young normals. This effect was not noted for untreated participants, i.e., there was no statistical difference between their rejection of anomalous and non-anomalous filler gap sentences. Further, the reaction time data showed that the treated aphasic patients' rejections came before sentence's end (within 2000 ms), while the majority of responses made by untreated patients did not. These results indicate that individuals with agrammatic aphasia appear to retain some gap-filling capacity and that treatment can improve their ability to make use of this capacity.     

Magnetic stimulation studies of foveal representation

The right and left visual fields each project to the contralateral cerebral hemispheres, but the extent of the functional overlap of the two hemifields along the vertical meridian is still under debate. After presenting the spatial, temporal, and functional specifications of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), we show that TMS is particularly suitable to study the question of foveal representation as it allows one to study the effects of selective disruption of left or right hemisphere functions on the processing of centrally presented stimuli. Future strategies for the use of TMS in further tests of visual word recognition are suggested.     

Two faces of (dis)similarity in affective judgments of persons: contrast or assimilation effects revealed by morphs

The authors investigated the role of dissimilarity on context effects in person perception. Most research predicts similar people to be similarly evaluated and different people to be contrasted with each other. However, some research suggests that similarity may enhance comparison and contrast. To explain these opposite effects, the authors argue that dissimilarity may influence 2 different processes with opposite consequences. Dissimilarity may decrease common categorization and thus the likelihood of comparison, resulting in reduced contrast, whereas during comparison itself dissimilarity may increase the perceived dissimilarity of features and thereby increase contrast. To investigate this, the authors conducted 3 studies in which they manipulated dissimilarity by inserting morphs that were related or unrelated to the context and target faces before judgments were made. The results indicate that dissimilarity may affect the likelihood and the outcome of comparison, with contrasting consequences.     

Family resilience: a framework for clinical practice

This article presents an overview of a family resilience framework developed for clinical practice, and describes its advantages. Drawing together findings from studies of individual resilience and research on effective family functioning, key processes in family resilience are outlined in three domains: family belief systems, organizational patterns, and communication/problem-solving. Clinical practice applications are described briefly to suggest the broad utility of this conceptual framework for intervention and prevention efforts to strengthen families facing serious life challenges.     

Crossed categorization in common ingroup contexts

In three experiments, the authors tested the hypothesis that a common ingroup context would moderate evaluations of crossed category targets. In Experiment 1, the typical additive pattern of evaluation across artificial crossed category groups became a social inclusion pattern in a common ingroup context. In Experiment 2, the authors manipulated the importance of real crossed category targets. When the crossed groups were of low importance, the effects of imposing a common ingroup replicated those observed in Experiment 1. For important crossed groups, however, the additive pattern remained. In Experiment 3, the authors measured perceived importance of the crossed groups to social identity prior to introducing a common ingroup context. The effects of a common categorization on evaluations were again moderated by perceived importance. These findings are discussed in the context of integrating crossed categorization and common ingroup identity models of multiple categorization.     

Crosstalk between on-line and off-line processing of visual features

Three dual-task experiments were conducted to investigate the relation between immediate, on-line judgments about visual features and delayed, off-line judgments. One hypothesis (selective interference) predicted that dual-task performance would be challenged specifically within a visual dimension, as both tasks compete for the same resources. Another hypothesis (cost of switching) made the opposite prediction. In Experiment 1, participants performed either color or shape discriminations in the on-line and off-line visual tasks, with systematic variation of feature similarity between the on-line and off-line features. In Experiment 2, participants performed either color or shape discriminations in the off-line task and color discriminations in the on-line task, with no overlap between the on-line and off-line features. In Experiment 3, participants performed color discriminations in both the on-line and off-line tasks, with partially overlapping stimulus sets. Altogether, the data from the three experiments provided evidence in favor of the hypothesis of cost of switching. Stimulus–stimulus compatibility effects between features in the off-line task and those in the on-line task further underscored the perceptual nature of the crosstalk.