Personality Science and Self-Regulation: Personal Projects as Integrative Units

Cervone, Shadel, Smith, and Fiori (2006 ) make a strong case for enhancing theoretical coherence in the study of self-regulation by examining recent advances in personality science. I extend their line of argument, reframe their philosophical reminders and strategically shift their suggestions. My goal is to provide an augmented base from which personality science and self-regulation research and practice can derive mutual benefit. Consensus seems to be emerging that personality science can be usefully conceptualised as a multi-tier structure, each floor of which focuses on different units of analysis. I focus on Tier I (trait units) and Tier II (PAC units (personal action constructs)). I suggest that Tier II is the home of both the social cognitive theorists and social ecological theorists and that they seem to have colluded to ignore each other. I use Cervone et al.'s timely article as a stimulant to do some renovation work on this floor. Focusing on personal projects I suggest that they provide an integrative function for personality science that augments the contributions of their close neighbors doing CAPS and KAPA research. By some minor renovations we find ourselves able to speak to the narrative theorists in the loft above and even to the trait theorists below. The resulting conversational potential, I suggest, is salutary for both personality science and the study of self-regulation.     

VISUAL LITERACY AND PRINT LITERACY‐THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND POINTS OF CONTACT

The theoretical stance of visual literacy advocates is described as a multi‐sign approach that goes beyond the usual focus on print literacy but does not deal adequately with nonlinguistic signs other than the visual. Semiotics, the general theory of signs, is seen as a more cohesive basis for theory‐building in education. Five areas of overlap between visual literacy and print literacy are discussed: (1) use of graphic organizers as learning aids; (2) study of propaganda; (3) video technologies; (4) use of computers; and (5) children's drawing and writing. The authors state that the points of contact further suggest the need for a semiotic frame of reference. They describe an expansive semiotics‐based model of human experience developed by Deely, but modified by Cunningham and Luk to be a comprehensively multi‐sign model. Suhor's general model for a semiotic theory is presented as a way of depicting relationships among not only linguistic signs and visual signs, but other signs and sign systems in educational contexts     

Development and initial validation of the Brief Adolescent Life Event Scale (BALES)

We report initial validity analyses of the Brief Adolescent Life Event Scale (BALES). This instrument addresses negative and positive events pertinent to the well being of adolescent boys and girls, and is designed for use in studies utilizing an extended research protocol. Selection of items was guided by emerging perspectives on positive psychology , action theory , and personality vulnerability , as well as by new developments in statistical modeling theory. The 36 items of the scale tap negative and positive events, each of which addresses interpersonal and achievement life domains. Using a large sample of early-adolescents ( N = 895), we confirmed the hypothesized structure that includes four domain-level latent factors (i.e., negative interpersonal events, negative achievement events, positive interpersonal events, positive achievement events), and two overarching factors (negative events and positive events). Indices of positive and negative events predicted adolescent depressive symptoms in expected ways, and positive events buffered the effect of negative events on depressive symptoms. These findings encourage an informed use of the BALES and highlight considerations involved in the development of brief measures of stress and coping processes.     

Opposite effects of visual versus imagined presentation of faces on subsequent sex perception

Viewing faces of one sex changes the perception of subsequently seen ambiguous faces. Here we investigate if the mechanisms responsible for this sex aftereffect are also activated during mental imagery of faces. Participants categorized the sex of ambiguous faces after either viewing images of male or female actors' faces or imagining these same faces. As in previous studies, the ambiguous images were categorized as female more often after viewing male faces than after viewing female faces. The opposite effect was found for imagined faces, however; the ambiguous images were categorized as female more often after imagining female faces than after imagining male faces. Although our results are inconsistent with findings that imagined faces cause either no aftereffects or similar aftereffects to visually presented faces, our results are consistent with recent evidence that visual and imagined presentation of faces cause opposite adaptation effects on an early electrophysiological response associated with face processing.     

Short-term memory scanning viewed as exemplar-based categorization

Exemplar-similarity models such as the exemplar-based random walk (EBRW) model (Nosofsky & Palmeri, 1997b) were designed to provide a formal account of multidimensional classification choice probabilities and response times (RTs). At the same time, a recurring theme has been to use exemplar models to account for old-new item recognition and to explain relations between classification and recognition. However, a major gap in research is that the models have not been tested on their ability to provide a theoretical account of RTs and other aspects of performance in the classic Sternberg (1966) short-term memory-scanning paradigm, perhaps the most venerable of all recognition-RT tasks. The present research fills that gap by demonstrating that the EBRW model accounts in natural fashion for a wide variety of phenomena involving diverse forms of short-term memory scanning. The upshot is that similar cognitive operating principles may underlie the domains of multidimensional classification and short-term old-new recognition.