Observant, nonaggressive temperament predicts theory of mind development

Temperament dimensions influence children's approach to and participation in social interactive experiences which reflect and impact children's social understandings. Therefore, temperament differences might substantially impact theory of mind development in early childhood. Using longitudinal data, we report that certain early temperament characteristics (at age 3)--lack of aggressiveness, a shy-withdrawn stance to social interaction, and social-perceptual sensitivity--predict children's more advanced theory-of-mind understanding two years later. The findings contribute to our understanding of how theory of mind develops in the formative preschool period; they may also inform debates as to the evolutionary origins of theory of mind.     

Considerations for the Use of Sentence Completion Tests

Often, sentence completion tests are administered to clients without a clear sense of the clinical questions to be investigated, and, therefore, the appropriate sentence completion instrument to be used. The multitude of forms that have evolved in the last fifty years have made it difficult for clinicians to make informed decisions about which form to use and for what purpose. This article presents ten general guidelines or considerations for the effective use of this popular but sometimes misused psychological assessment method. Practitioners are urged to consider such issues as oral versus written presentation of items, item content in terms of positive or negative stimulus pull, the structure of sentence stems, the original purpose of a given test in regard to intended population and theoretical orientation of the author, and the empirical validity of tests.     

Cognitive Appraisal of Dissertation Stress Among Undergraduate Students

The Psychological Record - The present study examined changes in primary and secondary appraisal, and coping strategies utilized in the final weeks leading to dissertation submission. Sixty...     

The development and evaluation of a computer-administered measure of cognitive complexity

The present study presents and evaluates the Computer-Administered Rep Test (CART). The CART is a micro computer program that automates both the administration and scoring of a repertory grid based measure of cognitive complexity. Preliminary evaluation of the CART indicates that it provides a useful alternative to traditional paper-and-pencil administered repertory grid measures of cognitive complexity. We also examine the effect of an alternative scoring approach on the reliability of scores derived from role repertory grid measures of cognitive complexity. Results indicate that this scoring approach substantially enhances the reliability of cognitive complexity scores derived from both the paper-and-pencil and computer-administered measures.     

Educational Background,Marital Status,Moral Obligation,and the Nurse's Decision to Resign from Her Hospital1

Based on the theory of reasoned action, the present research built separate models of turnover for baccalaureate and nonbaccalaureate nurses and for married and unmarried ones. A representative sample of 755 registered nurses completed the research questionnaire. Six months later, information was obtained from their hospitals concerning whether each nurse remained or resigned. Results were supportive of the theory of reasoned action. Furthermore, significant differences emerged in the predictors for the four subgroups. Moral obligation was found to be a significant predictor for intention only for baccalaureate and unmarried nurses. Part-time versus full-time employment status was found to be a significant predictor of turnover only for unmarried nurses. These results indicate that individuals interested in understanding and reducing nurse turnover may wish to be sensitive to differences between various subgroups of nurses.     

Emotional states and memory biases: effects of cognitive priming and mood

Recent studies have shown that naturally occurring and experimentally induced affect states enhance the accessibility to retrieval of memories of life experiences that are congruent in valence with the affect state. Previous studies have suggested that this memory bias results from the influence of affective processes on memory retrieval. In our study we manipulated mood state by having subjects read statements expressing positive or negative self-evaluative ideas or describing somatic states that often accompany positive or negative mood states. The somatic and self-evaluative statements had, in general, equally strong effects on mood state. In spite of this, however, the self-evaluative statements had a stronger impact on recall latencies for life experiences than did the somatic statements. Moreover, the impact of the self-evaluative, but not the somatic, statements on recall was found to be independent of the statements' effects on mood state. This suggests that the cognitions accompanying a mood-altering experience may have a substantial effect on the capacity of the mood state to influence memory retrieval.     

Coherent probability from incoherent judgment

People often have knowledge about the chances of events but are unable to express their knowledge in the form of coherent probabilities. This study proposed to correct incoherent judgment via an optimization procedure that seeks the (coherent) probability distribution nearest to a judge's estimates of chance. This method was applied to the chances of simple and complex meteorological events, as estimated by college undergraduates. No judge responded coherently, but the optimization method found close (coherent) approximations to their estimates. Moreover, the approximations were reliably more accurate than the original estimates, as measured by the quadratic scoring rule. Methods for correcting incoherence facilitate the analysis of expected utility and allow human judgment to be more easily exploited in the construction of expert systems.     

Item method directed forgetting diminishes false memory

Directed forgetting may reduce DRM false memory illusion by interfering with meaning processing. Participants were presented with a list composed of six 10-word semantically associated sub-lists, and they were either (a) asked to remember all list items of (b) asked to remember all associates from sub-lists and to forget all associates from other sub-lists. All participants were requested to recall and recognise list items. Although directed forgetting effects have been previously reported only for true responses in the DRM paradigm with the list method, we also found directed forgetting for false responses with the item method. Such forgetting instructions reduced both verbatim and meaning processing, decreasing both the intrusion and the false alarm rate. These results are consistent with two-process explanations of DRM false memories, such as fuzzy-trace theory, and add to our understanding of false memory editing.     

Skimming the surface. Verbal overshadowing of analogical retrieval

It has become almost a maxim that "talking through" a problem is advantageous. Contrary to this wisdom, studies from numerous domains have demonstrated that describing one's thought processes or analyzing a judgment may, in some circumstances, actually impair performance. The two experiments reported here built upon prior work by examining the effect of verbalization on the retrieval of analogies. Participants read a series of 16 short stories. Later, they were presented with 8 test stories and indicated whether these stories were analogies of the stories they had read previously. Each test story shared the same deep structure with one prior story and only surface characteristics with another prior story. Half of the participants completed the test while thinking aloud, and half did not think aloud. In both experiments, participants who thought aloud were more likely to retrieve surface matches and less likely to retrieve true analogies than participants who did not verbalize their thoughts during the test.     

Divine foreknowledge and Newcomb's paradox

Conclusion Newcomb's Paradox thus serves as an illustrative vindication of the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. A proper understanding of the counterfactual conditionals involved enables us to see that the pastness of God's knowledge serves neither to make God's beliefs counterfactually closed nor to rob us of genuine freedom. It is evident that our decisions determine God's past beliefs about those decisions and do so without invoking an objectionable backward causation. It is also clear that in the context of foreknowledge, backtracking counterfactuals are entirely appropriate and that no alteration of the past occurs. With the justification of the one box strategy, the death of theological fatalism seems ensured. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A0985044 00003