A field study of frame-of-reference effects on personality test validity

As part of a test validation study at a major U.S.-based airline, the authors tested the effects of providing an "at work" frame-of-reference on the validity of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory among a sample of customer service supervisors (N = 206). Frame-of-reference moderated the validity of the Extraversion and Openness to Experience subscales after controlling for cognitive ability. In addition, the frame-of-reference personality test showed incremental validity over cognitive ability (deltaR2 = .16), but the standard personality test did not (deltaR2 = .05). The authors' discussion focuses on implications for personality theory and research and on implications for increasing the validity of personality tests in organizational settings.     

A test of the ABC model underlying rational emotive behavior therapy

The ABC model underlying Ellis's Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy predicts that people who think more irrationally should respond to daily stressors or hassles differently than do people who think less irrationally. This study tested this aspect of the ABC model. 192 college students were administered the Survey of Personal Beliefs and the Hassles Scale to measure irrational thinking and daily hassles, respectively. Students who scored higher on overall irrational thinking reported a significantly higher frequency of hassles than did those who scored lower on overall irrational thinking, while students who scored higher on awfulizing and low frustration tolerance reported a significantly greater intensity of hassles than did those who scored lower on awfulizing and low frustration tolerance. This indicates support for the ABC model, especially Ellis's construct of irrational beliefs central to this model.     

Cerebral blood flow and anxiety in older men: an analysis of resting anterior asymmetry and prefrontal regions

Asymmetric resting blood flow in prefrontal and hemispheric regions, assessed by single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), was examined as a potential biological marker for enhanced trait and state anxiety in 30 older men (ages 55-81). Average and asymmetric perfusion in dorsolateral, medial, and orbital regions of the prefrontal lobes was also assessed. Results indicated a significant association between lower levels of resting dorsolateral blood flow and greater state anxiety responses to a series of stressful provocations (measured on a separate occasion). A significant curvilinear (U-shaped) relation between asymmetric dorsolateral perfusion and state anxiety was also identified; increased asymmetric blood flow favoring either the right or the left dorsolateral region related to higher levels of state anxiety. However, this association was attenuated by age and systolic blood pressure. Resting perfusion in the dorsolateral region may represent a more reliable biological marker for state anxiety than trait anxiety in older men.     

Developments in long-term explicit memory late in the first year of life: behavioral and electrophysiological indices

Coincident with developments in the temporal-cortical explicit memory network, long-term recall abilities are newly emergent late in the first year of human life. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in 9-month-olds as an index of the integrity of the neural substrate underlying a task thought to reflect explicit memory, namely, deferred imitation. ERP measures of recognition memory 1 week after unique laboratory experiences predicted whether and how much infants recalled of the experiences 1 month later. The findings further imply that memory storage and consolidation processes are a major source of variability in long-term recall memory late in the first year of life.     

Decoding digit symbol: speed,memory, and visual scanning

The authors evaluated the relative contributions of speed, memory, and visual scanning to Digit Symbol score in a sample of young adults (N = 87). Speed (Symbol Copy) explained 35% of Digit Symbol variance; only half of this was attributable to graphomotor speed (Name Printing), implying a role for perceptual speed. Visual-scanning tests (e.g., Symbol Scan) explained (on average) 34% of Digit Symbol variance, much of which was independent of perceptual-motor speed, establishing an important role for visual-scanning efficiency in Digit Symbol performance. By contrast, memory tests (on average) explained only 4% to 5% of Digit Symbol variance: statistically significant but clearly subsidiary, although a visual memory composite correlated more strongly with Digit Symbol. The Digit Symbol incidental learning procedures did, however, correlate moderately with other memory measures, suggesting that they are valid memory screening devices.     

Uncertainty in pigeons

Pigeons classified a display of illuminated pixels on a touchscreen as sparse or dense. Correct responses were reinforced with six food pellets; incorrect responses were unreinforced. On some trials an uncertain response option was available. Pecking it was always reinforced with an intermediate number of pellets. Like monkeys and people in related experiments, the birds chose the uncertain response most often when the stimulus presented was difficult to classify correctly, but in other respects their behavior was not functionally similar to human behavior based on conscious uncertainty or to the behavior of monkeys in comparable experiments. Our data were well described by a signal detection model that assumed that the birds were maximizing perceived reward in a consistent way across all the experimental conditions.     

Indexing individual objects in infant working memory

Currently there are disputes in the infancy literature concerning when infants are first able to individuate physical objects by their features or properties. This issue has taken on new significance following claims that individuation by feature is linked to the emergence of object kind concepts toward the end of the first year. Needham (2001, this issue) presents evidence that infants as young as 4.5 months old can individuate objects by feature. We locate this controversy within the framework of brain mechanisms that index or track individual objects, drawing upon theories of attention and working memory developed in the study of adults. We find that Needham's work contributes to two issues: categorization and the effect of object history on the individuation of objects in a complex display.     

Empathic Blushing in Friends and Strangers

Three volunteers watched a previously recorded video of one of them singing, as cheek sensors monitored their blushing. When performers watched videotapes of their performance, they blushed significantly more than strangers, but not more than their own friends, watching with them. Friends and strangers did not differ significantly in blushing, however. Skin conductance arousal responses of performers and friends, but not performers and strangers, or friends of performers and strangers, were correlated. In a second experiment, strangers who sang before watching another person sing blushed more than strangers who did not sing first, or who sang and then watched a neutral video. This suggests that performing the embarrassing act may have predisposed people to blush, perhaps empathically, later. No gender differences were seen in blushing. Embarrassability questionnaire scores did not correlate with blushing. Empathic accuracy, and associative learning, are proposed to account for the results.     

Psychosis and functioning as risk factors for later suicidal activity among schizophrenia and schizoaffective patients: a disease-based interactive model.

The present research explores the relationship of positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and posthospital functioning to subsequent suicidal behavior over a 7 1/2-year period, and examines whether these patterns vary with diagnosis. The results support a multifactor model of suicide risk. Both psychosis and poor functioning show some relationship to later suicidal activity for both schizophrenic and schizoaffective patients. Psychosis may remain a risk factor for suicidal activity for schizoaffective patients, even when functioning is partialed out. This is in contrast to the schizophrenia patients, for whom funtioning seems to mediate the effects of psychosis on later suicidality. In general, adequacy of overall posthospital functioning mediates the effects of some risk factors on suicidal activity within different diagnostic groups.