Anger regulation in disadvantaged preschool boys: strategies, antecedents, and the development of self-control

Emotion regulation strategies observed during an age 3 1/2 frustration task were examined in relation to (a) angry affect during the frustration task, (b) child and maternal characteristics at age 1 1/2, and (c) indices of self-control at age 6 in a sample of low-income boys (Ns varied between 189 and 310, depending on the assessment). Shifting attention away from sources of frustration and seeking information about situational constraints were associated with decreased anger. Secure attachment and positive maternal control correlated positively with effective regulatory strategy use. Individual differences in strategy use predicted self-control at school entry, but in specific rather than general ways: Reliance on attention-shifting strategies corresponded with low externalizing problems and high cooperation; reliance on information gathering corresponded with high assertiveness.     

Strategic attention deployment for delay of gratification in working and waiting situations

Two studies examined whether the detrimental effects of attention to rewards on delay of gratification in waiting situations holds-or reverses-in working situations. In Study 1, preschoolers waited or worked for desired delayed rewards. Delay times increased when children worked in the presence of rewards but, as predicted, this increase was due to the distraction provided by the work itself. not because attention to rewards motivated children to sustain work. Analysis of spontaneous attention deployment showed that attending to rewards reduces delay time regardless of the working or waiting nature of the task. Fixing attention on rewards was a particularly detrimental strategy regardless of the type of task. Study 2 showed that when the work is not engaging, however, attention to rewards can motivate instrumental work and facilitate delay of gratification as long as attention deployment does not become fixed on the rewards.     

The course of anhedonia during 10 years of schizophrenic illness

Although anhedonia has been proposed to be a trait-like characteristic in schizophrenia patients, its persistence and stability have not been tested using multiple assessments over a multiyear period. Specific definitions of anhedonia vary across studies, and relationships between different types of anhedonia as well as their relationship to schizophrenic symptoms over the course of illness have not been addressed. The current research, using prospectively collected longitudinal data covering a 10-year span for 127 individuals with schizophrenic illness, found that (a) physical, but not depressive, anhedonia is a stable characteristic over a 10-year period; (b) physical anhedonia does not show strong and consistent relationships with psychotic, negative, or depressive symptoms; and (c) the relationship between some premorbid characteristics and physical anhedonia are significant even 10 years into the course of illness.     

The persistence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder into young adulthood as a function of reporting source and definition of disorder

This study examined the persistence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) into young adulthood using hyperactive (N = 147) and community control (N = 71) children evaluated at ages 19-25 years. ADHD was rare in both groups (5% vs. 0%) based on self-report but was substantially higher using parent reports (46% vs. 1.4%). Using a developmentally referenced criterion (+2 SD), prevalence remained low for self-reports (12% vs. 10%) but rose further for parent reports (66% vs. 8%). Parent reports were more strongly associated with major life activities than were self-reports. Recollections of childhood ADHD showed moderate correlations with actual parent ratings collected in childd hood, which suggests some validity for such recollections. The authors conclude that previous follow-up studies that relied on self-reports might have substantially underestimated the persistence of ADHD into adulthood.     

Commitment to legal claiming: influences of attributions,social guidance,and organizational tenure

This study investigates antecedents of individuals' commitment to the legal-claiming process. Individuals were surveyed as they entered a district office of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to file an employment discrimination claim. Respondents' attributions regarding who they blamed for their grievance, the social guidance received, their organizational tenure, and their commitment to legal claiming were assessed. Results showed that individuals who made strong external attributions had a higher commitment to legal claiming than did those who made weak external attributions. Social guidance and organizational tenure were significant moderators of the attribution-claiming relationship. Specifically, commitment to legal claiming was more strongly related to external attributions when social guidance was low and organizational tenure was high. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Locus of inhibition in the masked priming of response alternatives

Masked prime stimuli presented immediately before target stimuli in a choice reaction task give rise to behavioral costs when the primes and the target stimuli are mapped to the same response and result in benefits when they are mapped to opposite responses. Researchers assume that this negative compatibility effect reflects inhibitory processes in the control of perceptuomotor links. The authors investigated whether the inhibition operates at the level of abstract central codes or at effector-specific motor stages. In 2 experiments (N = 8 participants in each), left or right hand or foot responses were required to target stimuli that were preceded by masked arrow primes mapped to the same response side as the target stimuli in compatible trials and to the opposite response side in incompatible trials; the primes were irrelevant in neutral trials. In Experiment 1, when the masked primes determined both response side and modality, there was no transfer of negative compatibility effects across response modalities. That finding is inconsistent with a central abstract locus of inhibition and suggests that inhibition operates at effector-specific motor stages. In Experiment 2, primes conveyed only response side information but left response modality uncertain, and negative compatibility effects were elicited for both hand and foot responses, suggesting that partially informative masked primes can trigger a parallel activation and subsequent inhibition of response processes within separate effector systems.     

Self-respect and pro-relationship behavior in marital relationships

This work advances an interdependence theoretic analysis of the role of self-respect in ongoing close relationships. Self-respect is defined as the tendency to perceive the self as a principled person who is worthy of honor and high regard and is argued to rest on moral integrity. Consistent with predictions, results from a study of marital relationships revealed that individual self-respect is positively associated with both the individual's and the partner's pro-relationship behavior (accommodation, forgiveness, conciliation). Mediation analyses revealed that self-respect not only exhibits direct associations with each person's behavior, but also exhibits indirect associations with each person's behavior, via the impact of each person's actions on reciprocal pro-relationship behavior from the partner. Mediation was more reliably observed for the association of self-respect with partner behavior than for the association with individual behavior. Both individual pro-relationship behavior and partner pro-relationship behavior are positively associated with couple well-being, which in turn is positively associated with personal well-being (life satisfaction, physical health, psychological adjustment). These associations were evident in both within-participant and across-partner analyses and for both self-report and interaction-based measures of behavior. Self-respect reliably accounts for unique variance beyond variance attributable to self-esteem.     

Effects of power on perceived and objective group variability: evidence that more powerful groups are more variable

The perception of group variability is affected by social power and status. Three different mechanisms may be responsible for these effects: (a) the power of the perceiver affects perceived group variability; (b) the power of the perceived group affects its perceived variability; and (c) the power of the group affects its actual variability. Two studies are reported to tease apart these three mechanisms and provide support for the third. In the first study, high- and low-power groups interacted and subsequently judged each other. In the second study, participants observed and rated the Study 1 groups, either knowing their power relationship or not. Results suggest that members of high-power groups manifest greater interpersonal variability than members of low-power groups.     

Relating print and speech: the effects of letter names and word position on reading and spelling performance

From an early age, children can go beyond rote memorization to form links between print and speech that are based on letter names in the initial positions of words (Treiman & Rodriguez, 1999; Treiman, Sotak, & Bowman, 2001). For example, children's knowledge of the name of the letter t helps them learn that the novel word TM is pronounced as team. Four experiments were carried out to determine whether letter names at the ends of words are equally useful. Four- and five-year-olds derived little benefit from such information in reading (Experiments 1 and 3) or spelling (Experiment 2), although adults did (Experiment 4). For young children, word-final information appears to have less influence on reading and spelling performance than does word-initial information. The results help delineate the circumstances under which children can go beyond a logographic approach in learning about print.     

Choice in a variable environment: effects of blackout duration and extinction between components

Pigeons were trained in a procedure in which sessions included seven four- or 10-reinforcer components, each providing a different reinforcer ratio that ranged from 27:1 to 1:27. The components were arranged in random order, and no signals differentiated the component reinforcer ratios. Each condition lasted 50 sessions, and the data from the last 35 sessions were analyzed. Previous results using 10-s blackouts between components showed some carryover of preference from one component to the next, and this effect was investigated in Experiment 1 by varying blackout duration from 1 s to 120 s. The amount of carryover decreased monotonically as the blackout duration was lengthened. Preference also decreased between reinforcers within components, suggesting that preference change during blackout might follow the same function as preference change between reinforcers. Experiment 2 was designed to measure preference change between components more directly and to relate this to preference change during blackout. In two conditions a 60-s blackout occurred between components, and in two other conditions a 60-s period of unsignaled extinction occurred between components. Preference during the extinction period progressively fell toward indifference, and the level of preference following extinction was much the same as that following blackout. Although these results are consistent with Davison and Baum's (2000) theory of the effects of reinforcers on local preference, other findings suggest that theory is incomplete: After a sequence of reinforcers from one alternative, some residual preference remained after 60 s of extinction or blackout, indicating the possibility of an additional longer term accumulation of reinforcer effects than originally suggested.