Intensional and extensional analogy items: Differences in performance as a function of academic major and sex

Is there a relationship between academic field and ability to use different types of semantic relation? Performance on two types of analogy item in the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Test was compared. Intensional relations are inherent in the meanings of the words and are based on shared or contrasting properties (e. g. farmer:person, breeze:gale, alive: dead, beggar: poor). Extensional relations reflect empirical relations between things in the world and are based on contiguity or causality (e. g.farmer:tractor, road:sidewalk, flu:headache). Performance on the two kinds of analogy items was compared for a single administration of the GRE for English and History majors (verbal group, n = 2238) and electrical engineering, computer science, and mathematics majors (practical group, n = 2143). The verbal group did better on intensional, and the practical group did better on extensional analogies. The difference was not explained by a correlated gender difference by which women did better on intensional and men did better on extensional items. Thus differences in the ability to use intensional and extensional relations was related to academic training, although the direction of this relationship was not established.     

Effects of gender,target's gender,topic, and self-esteem on disclosure to best and midling friends

Two studies examining self-disclosure as a function of discloser's gender, target's gender, topic, class standing, and self-esteem are reported. In the first study, 172 college students were given a test containing items from a modified Jourard Self-Disclosure Questionnaire and the Culture-Free Self-Esteem Inventory, and asked to report disclosure to their best, nonromantic, same-and cross-sex friends; the second study was a replication of the first, but the 138 subjects were questioned about disclosure to midling-level friends. The expected effects were found—topic, target's gender, etc.—and self-esteem level and class standing were found to influence disclosure levels as well. The ² and correlations are reported, so that readers can see an estimate of the effects' magnitudes as well as their significance levels.     

Family therapists and family business: A view of the future

The family business is a unique entity that has recently come to the attention of business consultants and family therapists. The unique processes of family business are amendable to the applications of family systems theory, organizational development theory, and various theories that focus on individual growth and development. In this paper we review some of the basic concepts relative to understanding family businesses and briefly outline our approach to consultation with family businesses.     

Reliability and Validity of a French Translation of a Short Scale of Attitude Toward Christianity

The reliability and validity of a French translation of the 7-item short form of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity was examined among a sample of 462 female French university students. Analysis supports the reliability and validity of the scale and commends it for further use among French speaking samples.     

Female Juvenile Offenders: Defining an Early-Onset Pathway for Delinquency

We examined whether childhood factors predict age of first arrest in adolescent girls referred for placement and treatment for serious delinquency problems (N = 62). Measures included child characteristics (i.e., age of menstrual onset, childhood ADHD, and IQ), family environmental factors (i.e., severe punishment, parental transitions, and sexual abuse), biological parent criminality, and juvenile court records. Parental transitions and biological parent criminality significantly predicted the age of first arrest (M = 12.5 years), and IQ showed a trend to be a significant predictor. The final model accounted for 52% of the variance. A younger age of first arrest was related to increased health-risking sexual behaviors and to increased self-reported delinquency. Logistic regression analyses indicted that membership in an early-onset group could be reliably formed using family and child predictors, with accurate classifications for 46-90% of the girls. Family environmental and child characteristics played a strong role in predicting which girls would be arrested at an earlier age. The strong predictive utility of parental transitions and biological parent criminality, in particular, suggest two avenues for identifying girls at risk for delinquency problems.     

Religiosity, Personality, and Happiness: A Study among Israeli Male Undergraduates

A sample of 203 male Hebrew speaking undergraduate students completed the Hebrew translation of the Oxford Happiness Inventory together with the Katz–Francis Scale of Attitude toward Judaism and the short form of the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. The data demonstrate that Eysenck's dimensional model of personality provides significant prediction of individual differences in both attitude toward Judaism and happiness. After taking personality into account there is a small but statistically significant positive correlation between religiosity and happiness.     

Intervention Effects on Stage of Change Membership and Transitions among Adolescent Energy Balance Behaviors

The transition from childhood to adolescence is a crucial period for the development of healthy behaviors to be sustained later in life. With obesity a leading public health problem, the promotion of healthy behaviors has the potential to make a huge impact. The current study evaluated Stage of Change progression in a large (N = 4158) computer-delivered, Transtheoretical Model-tailored intervention focusing on physical activity and fruit and vegetable consumption (FV). Markov models were used to explore stage transitions and patterns of discrete change from sixth to ninth grade. Nested model comparisons examined the consistency of these patterns across time and intervention condition. Major findings supported models in which participants were free to transition forward and backward to any of the stages, but higher probabilities were observed for remaining in the same stage or for transitioning one or two stages forward. Participants in the intervention group had higher probabilities of transitioning toward Maintenance, with more change occurring relative to the comparison group during transitions from grades six to eight but not for grades eight to nine.     

Childhood and Adulthood Socioeconomic Statuses in Relation to Union Interest: Exploratory Surface Relationships

Using response surface methodology for exploratory data, we examined the linear and nonlinear surface relationships between no mobility and mobility in reference to union interest defined by willingness to join a labor union. Analyses were conducted on survey data collected from U.S. nonunion employees (N?=?1,010) who indicated their socioeconomic status (SES) in childhood and adulthood in reference to social class, education, and English language/literacy (e.g., language/literacy during childhood, language/literacy now). Surface relationships were mostly linear. For example, among status indicators, a linear surface was found for employees whose childhood and adulthood language/literacy were the same (no mobility): Lower status nonmobile employees showed more union interest than higher status nonmobile employees. In contrast, a nonlinear surface was found for employees whose childhood and adulthood language/literacy were not the same (mobility): Upwardly mobile employees showed less union interest than downwardly mobile employees showed more interest. Details of the surface relationships and future modeling of the relationships in terms of mediational processes are discussed.     

Linking Family-of-Origin Experiences and Perpetration of Sexual Coercion: College Males’ Sense of Entitlement

Sexual coercion on college campuses has become of major concern in recent decades. In recent years, researchers and policy makers have called for greater attention to this topic in order to reduce the sexual violence on college campuses. Recent research has examined the impact of family-of-origin experiences on the perpetration of sexual coercion. The current study examines the association between family-of-origin experiences, such as warmth and hostility between parents, inconsistent parenting, and overparenting during childhood, and the perpetration of sexual coercion among emerging adult males while examining feelings of entitlement as a possible mediator. Data from 326 male undergraduate students were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results show that warmth and hostility between parents has a significant association with parenting behaviors (i.e., overparenting and inconsistent parenting) and that hostility between parents is associated with the perpetration of sexual coercion by the offspring in young adulthood for males. Also, findings suggest that while overparenting and inconsistent parenting during childhood are not directly associated with the perpetration of sexual coercion during emerging adulthood, they are strongly related to feelings of entitlement, which in turn was found to be associated with the perpetration of sexual coercion for males. These results have important implications for family life education, including relationship and parenting education, and for future research.     

School-Aged Children’s Attachment Dismissal Prospectively Predicts Divergence of Their Behavioral and Self-Reported Anxiety

Recent studies on attachment in middle childhood suggest that dismissing children tend to underreport their psychological distress relative to physiological indices of distress. However, this has yet to be examined in the context of behavioral indicators of distress. In this longitudinal study, a community sample of children (N?=?34, M _age?=?9.59 years) completed the Child Attachment Interview at Time 1. Three years later, they returned and completed the Trier Social Stress Task for Children (TSST-C), providing ratings of their state anxiety before and after the stressor. Four raters coded children’s behavioral signs of anxiety (e.g., non-signaling gestures, eye movement, posture, facial expression) on a 7-point scale during the storytelling and arithmetic tasks in the TSST-C. Hierarchical linear regressions revealed that greater attachment dismissal was associated with greater behavioral anxiety in both the story and math tasks, but was not associated with greater increases in self-reported anxiety. Dismissal prospectively predicted increased divergence of behavioral and self-reported anxiety, such that higher dismissal was associated with higher divergence scores (i.e., underreporting of anxiety relative to behavioral indicators). We discuss these results in terms of their contribution to understanding attachment and emotion in an understudied developmental phase.