Editorial

Social Psychology of Education -     

Editorial

Social Psychology of Education -     

Thinking in Picture

Abstract :  We live today in a highly visual culture. Therefore, the author asserts that the use of visual images in preaching is an appropriate response of the church to the challenge of communicating the gospel in our pervasively visualized world. In making this argument, the author reviews the uses of art in the church's historical life, sets forth three theological assumptions that can ground such practice and urges a complementarity of words and images in homiletical practice. Words alone can be used to exclude people (e.g. doubters and heretics) from the embrace of the gospel. Images alone can be so all-inclusive in their meaning that they lead to superstition and idolatry. Words and images used together can communicate a holistic gospel to holistic hearers.     

Transcendence and the Moral Self: Identity Integration, Religion, and Moral Life

Although moral reasoning is able to account for some of the variability in moral behavior, much remains unexplained. Recently, a number of components of personality have been proposed as bridging the gap between moral reasoning and moral behavior. The present study investigates the role that identity integration (the extent to which one's moral values have become integrated into identity) and religious orientation (one's motivation for engaging in religious practice) play in moral functioning. A sample of 60 undergraduates was assessed on identity integration, religious orientation, moral reasoning, and self-reported altruism. We found positive correlations among moral reasoning, identity integration, intrinsic religious orientation, and self-reported altruism. A hierarchical regression analysis, however, revealed moral reasoning to be the only significant predictor of self-reported altruistic behavior. We discuss the relationship between moral reasoning and identity integration and the extent to which the intrinsic religious orientation scale may be a measure of identity integration in the religious domain.     

Test Difficulty and Stereotype Threat on the GRE General Test1

This study investigated (a) the ability to minimize or eliminate stereotype threat by reducing the difficulty of items administered via a computer‐adaptive version of the Graduate Record Examinations General Test; and (b) the generalizability of these findings for Black students as well as women, and for verbal as well as quantitative sections of the test. Standard and easier versions of the test, and measures of stereotype threat and possible symptoms or sequelae of stereotype threat were administered to students bound for graduate school or already there. Reducing test difficulty did not have any differential effects on test performance or on explicit indexes of stereotype threat for White and Black students, and for men and women, that were statistically and practically significant. However, such effects did occur for some symptoms or sequelae, mainly for White students and women.     

Stereotype Threat,Inquiring About Test Takers' Ethnicity and Gender,and Standardized Test Performance1

Steele and Aronson (1995) found that the performance of Black research participants on ability test items portrayed as a problem‐solving task, in laboratory experiments, was affected adversely when they were asked about their ethnicity. This outcome was attributed to stereotype threat: Performance was disrupted by participants' concerns about fulfilling the negative stereotype concerning Black people's intellectual ability. The present field experiments extended that research to other ethnic groups and to males and females taking operational tests. The experiments evaluated the effects of inquiring about ethnicity and gender on the performance of students taking 2 standardized tests—the Advanced Placement Calculus AB Examination, and the Computerized Placement Tests—in actual test administrations. This inquiry did not have any effects on the test performance of Black, female, or other subgroups of students that were both statistically and practically significant.     

Population sex differences in IQ at age 11: the Scottish mental survey 1932

There is uncertainty whether the sexes differ with respect to their mean levels and variabilities in mental ability test scores. Here we describe the cognitive ability distribution in 80,000+ children—almost everyone born in Scotland in 1921—tested at age 11 in 1932. There were no significant mean differences in cognitive test scores between boys and girls, but there was a highly significant difference in their standard deviations (P<.001). Boys were over-represented at the low and high extremes of cognitive ability. These findings, the first to be presented from a whole population, might in part explain such cognitive outcomes as the slight excess of men achieving first class university degrees, and the excess of males with learning difficulties.     

Negative representations of the self/spouse and marital distress

The link between marital distress and negative representations of both the self and the spouse was examined with data from an initial sample of 538 married couples studied over the first four years of marriage (Study 1) and 98 of these couples studied in their tenth year of marriage (Study 2). Findings from Study 1 indicated that, for both husbands and wives, representations of the self and representations of the spouse accounted for unique variability in distress. Across spouses, representations of the spouse accounted for more of the variability in distress than did representations of the self. Cross–spouse effects were especially pronounced for husbands such that their distress was linked to wives’ representations. Findings from Study 2 with self/spouse measures anchored to the marital context replicated this pattern. Findings support the view that marital distress is uniquely influenced by models of both the self and the spouse, that representations of the self and the spouse are dynamic relationship schemas, that models of the self and the spouse can be meaningfully assessed within the marital context, and that negative representations of the spouse—particularly those of wives—are especially diagnostic of marital distress.     

Moderators of Parent Training for Disruptive Behaviors in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

We conducted a 6 month, randomized trial of parent training (PT) versus a parent education program (PEP) in 180 young children (158 boys, 22 girls), ages 3–7 years, with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). PT was superior to PEP in decreasing disruptive and noncompliant behaviors. In the current study, we assess moderators of treatment response in this trial. Thirteen clinical and demographic variables were evaluated as potential moderators of three outcome variables: the Aberrant Behavior Checklist-Irritability subscale (ABC-I), Home Situations Questionnaire (HSQ), and Clinical Global Impressions-Improvement Scale (CGI-I). We used an intent-to-treat model and random effects regression. Neither IQ nor ASD severity moderated outcome on the selected outcome measures. Severity of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and anxiety moderated outcomes on the ABC-I and HSQ. For instance, there was a 6.6 point difference on the ABC-I between high and low ADHD groups (p?=?.05) and a 5.3 point difference between high and low Anxiety groups (p?=?.04). Oppositional defiant disorder symptoms and household income moderated outcomes on the HSQ. None of the baseline variables moderated outcome on the CGI-I. That IQ and ASD symptom severity did not moderate outcome suggests that PT is likely to benefit a wide range of children with ASD and disruptive behavior.