Late Adolescents' Experiences With and Attitudes Toward Videogames1

A total of 229 late adolescents (a large majority 15 to 19 years of age) completed a questionnaire that assesses a broad range of videogame-relevant experiences, preferences, and attitudes. Videogame playing was found to be a more popular, and a more highly regarded, activity among males than females. Gender differences were also found in participants' ratings of their motivations for playing videogames, their evaluations of particular characteristics of videogames, and their selection of their “most favorite” videogame. The differences between frequent and infrequent videogame players appeared to be limited to differences in the extent to which videogame playing is pursued and evaluated as a positive leisure activity, rather than reflecting broad differences in interest or personality. Some relations were found between participants' self-reported personality characteristics (i.e., self-esteem, empathy, conscientiousness, and introversion) and their attitudes toward videogames.     

Positive Psychological States in the Daily Life of a Sample of Working Women

This study of a sample of working women investigated where positive experiences were derived from in everyday life, focusing on the domains of work and nonwork (leisure). It examined how aspects of the situation, in terms of principal environmental influences in work and leisure, and the person, in terms of locus of control, were associated with positive subjective states and psychological well-being. The study employed questionnaires and also the experience sampling method. The results showed that both work and leisure were important for positive psychological states and that internal locus of control was associated with greater enjoyment, interest, feelings of immediate control, intrinsic motivation, life satisfaction, and affective well-being and a number of principal environmental influences.     

THE CASE FOR THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHEMISTRY

The philosophy of chemistry has been sadly neglected by most contempory literature in the philosophy of science. This paper argues that this neglect has been unfortunate and that there is much to be learned from paying greater philosophical attention to the set of issues defined by the philosophy of chemistry. The potential contribution of this field to such current topics as reduction, laws, explanation, and supervenience is explored, as are possible applications of insights gained by such study to the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of social science.     

Enhancing Classroom Performance: A Review of Reinforcement Schedules

During the past decade the application of elementary principles of behavior have become a standard in the classroom teacher's repertoire of behavior change strategies. Unfortunately, the application of more advanced principles of behavior derived through basic behavioral research lies as an untapped resource for classroom teachers. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the use of systematic procedures to deliver reinforcers to enhance academic performance. In this paper we provide educators with information on the use of reinforcement schedules in academic settings. Various schedules of reinforcement are presented along with examples of their application in applied settings.     

Effects of learning contexts on implicit and explicit learning

Two parallel tasks involving rule learning were identified in Experiment 1A and were used to assess implicit and explicit learning. In both tasks, subjects had to input numbers in order to reach the target values of outputs. The relationship between inputs and outputs was either simple (in the simple task) or complex (in the complex task), and the way in which target values were presented could be in the form of either numbers (in the simple task) or lines (in the complex task). Experiment 1B examined the validity of the explicit measure in the complex task. Experiments 2–4 investigated the interaction between learning contexts and the simple/complex learning tasks. Verbalization and instructions to search for the rules facilitated the simple-task learning and hurt or have no effect on the complex-task learning. In the observational-learning condition, no learning occurred for the simple task, and the complex task learning was impaired. These results suggest that the complex task and simple task involve two distinct learning systems. Other implications are also discussed.     

The Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (PC-DISC v.3.0): Parents and Adolescents Suggest Reasons for Expecting Discrepant Answers

To identify reasons for discrepancies between parent and child reports of child/adolescents's psychiatric symptoms, parents and adolescents (51 pairs) were asked to guess what the other would answer to questions from the PC-DISC about the adolescent's psychiatric symptoms, and to explain why they expected disagreement when the answer they provided for the other was different from their own. Adolescents' explanations for expecting (1) parental denial of symptoms the adolescent reported were: the parent was unaware of, forgot about, assumed the adolescent could not have, or trivialized the symptom; and (2) parental report of symptoms the adolescent denied were: the parent misread or exaggerated the adolescent's symptom, had too high expectations for the adolescent's behavior, put a negative label on or did not trust the adolescent. Parents' reasons for expecting their children to (1) deny symptoms the parents reported were: the adolescent did not remember how s/he felt, lied, did not recognize or minimized the importance or frequency of the symptom; and (2) report symptoms the parents denied were: the adolescent lied, exaggerated the importance of or interpreted the symptom differently.Support for this work was provided by National Institute of Drug Abuse grant number DA-05585 (Dr. Cottler, P.I.), and National Institute of Mental Health grants numbers MH-31302 (Dr. R. C. Cloninger, P.I.) and MH-17104 (Dr. Cottler, P.I.).Address all correspondence, including reprint requests, to Michelle Bidaut-Russell, Ph.D, MPH, MPE, Department of Psychiatry, Box 8134, Washington University School of Medicine, 4940 Children's Place, St. Louis, Missouri 63110.     

The distribution postulate in Bohm's theory

On Bohm's formulation of quantum mechanics particles always have determinate positions and follow continuous trajectories. Bohm's theory, however, requires a postulate that says that particles are initially distributed in a special way: particles are randomly distributed so that the probability of their positions being represented by a point in any regionR in configuration space is equal to the square of the wave-function integrated overR. If the distribution postulate were false, then the theory would generally fail to make the right statistical predictions. Further, if it were false, then there would at least in principle be situations where a particle would approach an eigenstate of having one position but in fact always be somewhere very different. Indeed, we will see how this might happen even if the distribution postulate were true. This will help to show how loose the connection is between the wave-function and the positions of particles in Bohm's theory and what the precise role of the distribution postulate is. Finally, we will briefly consider two attempts to formulate a version of Bohm's theory without the distribution postulate.     

RESPONSE STYLE AND CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS OF RATING SCALES AMONG EAST ASIAN AND NORTH AMERICAN STUDENTS

Abstract— This report examines cross-cultural differences in response style regarding the use of rating scales Subjects were high school students 944 from Sendai (Japan), 1,357 from Taipei (Taiwan), 687 from Edmonton and Calgary (Canada), and 2,174 from the Minneapolis metropolitan area and Fairfax County, Virginia Responses to fifty-seven 7-point Likert-type scales were analyzed The Japanese and Chinese students were more likely than the two North American groups to use the midpoint on the scales, the U S subjects were more likely than the other three groups to use the extreme values Within each cultural group, endorsement of individualism was positively related to the use of extreme values and negatively related to the use of the midpoint These small, albeit statistically significant, differences in response styles generally did not alter cross-cultural comparisons of item means.     

Assessing Multicultural Counseling Competence: A Review of Instrumentation

The authors review four new instruments designed to assess multicultural counseling competence in trainees and practicing professionals. The Cross-Cultural Counseling Inventory—Revised (CCCI-R), the Multicultural Counseling Awareness Scale—Form B (MCAS:B), the Multicultural Counseling Inventory (MCI), and the Multicultural Awareness-Knowledge-and Skills Survey (MAKSS) were each critically reviewed in terms of item development, psychometric properties, and pragmatic utility. Specific research suggestions for continued empirical validation on the instruments are posited, and strong cautions regarding their current use in training are leveled.