On the heritability of inspection time and its covariance with IQ: a twin study

Using the classical twin design, this study investigates the influence of genetic factors on the large phenotypic variance in inspection time (IT), and whether the well established IT–IQ association can be explained by a common genetic factor. Three hundred ninety pairs of twins (184 monozygotic, MZ; 206 dizygotic, DZ) with a mean age of 16 years participated, and 49 pairs returned approximately 3 months later for retesting. As in many IT studies, the pi figure stimulus was used and IT was estimated from the cumulative normal ogive. IT ranged from 39.4 to 774.1 ms (159±110.1 ms) with faster ITs (by an average of 26.9 ms) found in the retest session from which a reliability of .69 was estimated. Full-scale IQ (FIQ) was assessed by the Multidimensional Aptitude Battery (MAB) and ranged from 79 to 145 (111±13). The phenotypic association between IT and FIQ was confirmed (−.35) and bivariate results showed that a common genetic factor accounted for 36% of the variance in IT and 32% of the variance in FIQ. The maximum likelihood estimate of the genetic correlation was −.63. When performance and verbal IQ (PIQ & VIQ) were analysed with IT, a stronger phenotypic and genetic relationship was found between PIQ and IT than with VIQ. A large part of the IT variance (64%) was accounted for by a unique environmental factor. Further genetic factors were needed to explain the remaining variance in IQ with a small component of unique environmental variance present. The separability of a shared genetic factor influencing IT and IQ from the total genetic variance in IQ suggests that IT affects a specific subcomponent of intelligence rather than a generalised efficiency.     

Pregnancy in the workplace: Does pregnancy affect performance appraisal ratings?

Archival data were collected to examine bias effects in performance evaluation related to employee pregnancy. Prior survey research has suggested that many supervisors and co-workers hold negative views of pregnant employees. Performance appraisal ratings were collected before, during, and after pregnancy for employees taking maternity leave over a four year time frame. In addition, data was also collected from randomly selected control subjects, which were matched on job title and observation period. Contrary to expectations, performance appraisal ratings were found to increase during pregnancy when compared to before ratings and control group ratings. Potential explanations as well as suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Intimacy and marital depression: Interactional partners

The relationship between marital depression and lack of intimacy in a caring relationship is presented and supported with evidence from teh relevant literature. A case example is given to illustrate the therapeutic implications of this viewpoint.     

Children's interpretive understanding,moral judgments,and emotion attributions: Relations to social behaviour

The study investigated interpretive understanding, moral judgments, and emotion attributions in relation to social behaviour in a sample of 59 5‐year‐old, 123 7‐year‐old, and 130 9‐year‐old children. Interpretive understanding was assessed by two tasks measuring children's understanding of ambiguous situations. Moral judgments and emotion attributions were measured using two moral rule transgressions. Social behaviour was assessed using teachers' ratings of aggressive and prosocial behaviour. Aggressive behaviour was positively related to interpretive understanding and negatively related to moral reasoning. Prosocial behaviour was positively associated with attribution of fear. Moral judgments and emotion attributions were related, depending on age. Interpretive understanding was unrelated to moral judgments and emotion attributions. The findings are discussed in regard to the role of interpretive understanding and moral and affective knowledge in understanding children's social behaviour.     

Types of college student-to-student learning: correlated interactions

209 college men and 327 college women took a 20-item Likert survey to assess the types of education-related information students may learn from other students during their informal interactions. Students were very likely to ask other students low level questions such as which professors were good and which classes to take. They were less likely to ask other students about concepts discussed in class and how to solve problems generated in class. If students asked about test taking, these students were also likely to ask about study skills and writing skills for the class. Other research suggests these higher level help-seeking behaviors seem to be related to classroom mastery and achievement.     

Empfehlungen zur Behandlungspraxis bei psychotherapeutischen Kriseninterventionen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Regional variation of cloze probabilities for sentence contexts

In 1980, Bloom and Fischler published a paper describing a set of sentence contexts (SCs) and their cloze probabilities (CPs). This material has subsequently been employed in numerous studies of linguistic processing. We sought to define the completion words and their CPs for Bloom and Fischler’s sentences in an inner-city British population in order to establish reliable norms for subsequent studies in the U.K. One hundred and fifty incomplete SCs were presented to 73 volunteers. The CPs for each of the words used to complete the SCs were computed. We then compared the CPs from our sample with those from Bloom and Fischler. There were significant differences between CPs from each sample in 14% of the SCs analyzed (p < .01). Our data suggest that studies employing SCs and CPs may require locally defined norms if the test population differs substantially from the original one. The consequences of employing SCs and CPs to study linguistic processing without normalization are discussed.