Neuropsychological Aspects of Pediatric Sickle Cell Disease

Sickle cell disease (SCD), a class of genetic disorders characterized by abnormal, sickled red blood cells, is a chronic illness that results in progressive cerebrovascular disease. Neurocognitive sequelae of clinically apparent cerebrovascular accidents in children with SCD are characterized by pervasive impairments, including decrements in general intellectual functioning, language and verbal abilities, visual-motor and visual-spatial processing, memory, academic achievement, and processing of subtle prosodic information. In contrast, subtle neurocognitive deficits in the areas of attention and concentration, executive function, and visual-motor speed and coordination appear to be associated with silent infarcts that are not necessarily detected on physical examination. Investigation of the disease course and associated neurocognitive sequelae suggest a disease-specific model of neuropsychological impairment. Recommendations are made for clinical and research efforts in the field of pediatric neuropsychology.     

The impact of competition on intrinsic motivation and creativity: considering gender, gender segregation and gender role orientation

The present research investigated whether competition influences children's artistic creativity and intrinsic motivation toward an art activity. Study 1 tested the hypothesis that boys' creativity would be enhanced by competition, while girls' creativity would be undermined. Fifty children (aged 6–10) made paper collages in one of two conditions; half competed for prizes and half did not. Results supported our hypotheses, and further showed that when children self-segregated by gender, the impact of competition was much more pronounced. Study 2 was designed to clarify the unexpected gender-segregation finding from Study 1. The Children's Sex Role Inventory [Boldizar, J.P. (1991). Assessing sex typing and androgyny in children: the Children's Sex Role Inventory. Developmental Psychology, 27, 505–515] was administered to 143 children (aged 6–11). One week later, these children made paper collages in one of four conditions; in addition to manipulating competition, assigned seating ensured that half of children were segregated by gender and half were not. Following the collage activity, an intrinsic and extrinsic motivation questionnaire was administered. Masculine children reported higher levels of intrinsic motivation when competing and when segregated by gender; they also reported higher levels of extrinsic motivation, especially when segregated by gender. These findings demonstrate that gender role is an important factor in determining children's responses to competition.     

Designer Theology: A Feminist Perspective

This is a critical look at the question of design from a feminist theological perspective. The author analyzes James Moore's 1995 Zygon article, "Cosmology and Theology: The Reemergence of Patriarchy." Then she looks at the relationship between science and religion from a feminist perspective, focusing on the kyriarchal nature of theology itself in light of the myriad power issues at hand. Finally, she suggests that, instead of pondering the notion of design, scientists and theologians might more fruitfully look for new ground for dialogue since feminist scholars are asking very different questions, not just answering questions differently.     

On the Construct Validity of Integrity Tests: Individual and Situational Factors as Predictors of Test Performance

Although integrity tests are widely applied in screening job applicants, there is a need for research for examining the construct validity of these tests. In the present study, a theoretical model examining the causes of destructive behavior in organizational settings was used to develop background data measures of individual and situational variables that might be related to integrity test scores. Subsequently, 692 undergraduates were asked to complete these background data scales along with (a) two overt integrity tests – the Reid Report and the Personnel Selection Inventory, and (b) two personality‐based measures – the delinquency and socialization scales of the California Psychological Inventory. When scores of these measures were correlated with and regressed on the background data scales, it was found that relevant individual variables, such as narcissism and power motives, and relevant situational variables, such as alienation and exposure to negative peer groups, were related to scores on both types of integrity tests. However, a stronger pattern of validity evidence was obtained for the personality‐based measures and, in all cases, situational variables were found to be better predictors than individual variables. The implications of these findings for the validity of inferences drawn from overt and personality‐based integrity tests are discussed.     

Women and Salary Negotiation: The Costs of Self-Advocacy

Introducing the concepts of self- and other-advocacy should prove useful as a means of understanding the different contexts in which women and men can effectively and comfortably exert power and influence when making requests. In this conceptual paper, social psychological research is reviewed demonstrating that women can advocate effectively on behalf of others without incurring costs, but gender-linked stereotypes, roles, and norms constrain them from advocating as freely and effectively for themselves. It is argued that women do not frequently make requests for themselves, because they have learned that they may ultimately lose more than they gain. This gendered difference has implications for ongoing pay and promotion inequities.     

Palm Beach County Child Abuse and Neglect System Redesign: Initial Process Evaluation

For the families in Palm Beach County who entered the child abuse and neglect system as a result of having a child placed into emergency shelter, their experience was that the system was frequently intimidating, confusing, and fragmented. The reaction of the children and their families to this system was often defensiveness and resistance. To increase the system's effectiveness, it was redesigned and privatized. The redesigned system included centralized shelter placement, a comprehensive assessment, independent service coordination, and treatment service provision within a managed care model. By emphasizing family involvement and quality service provision, the goal was to increase voluntary participation and improve family outcomes. Based on initial data, it appears that the redesigned system has been successfully implemented and has made notable progress toward meeting its system flow timeframes. The initial data also indicate that high percentages of families are participating in and are satisfied with the system, that children are spending less time in shelter placements, and that only one family has reentered the system.     

Source-monitoring judgments about anagrams and their solutions: Evidence for the role of cognitive operations information in memory

Generating solutions to anagrams leads to a memory advantage for those solutions, with generated words remembered better than words simply read. However, an additional advantage is not typically found for solutions to difficult anagrams relative to solutions to easy ones, presenting a challenge for the cognitive effort explanation of the generation effect. In the present series of experiments, the effect of manipulating anagram difficulty is explored further by introducing two new source-monitoring judgments. These studies demonstrate that when attention is directed at test to the operations activated during encoding (by way of source-monitoring judgments focused on solving vs. constructing anagrams), a source advantage is observed for difficult anagrams. However, when attention is directed to the anagrams themselves, asking participants to remember the kinds of anagrams generated or solved (based on kind of rule rather than subjective impressions of difficulty), a similar source advantage is not observed. The present studies bring a new perspective to the investigation of difficulty manipulations on memory for problem solving by illustrating the impact of a shift in focus from the effort mediating cognitive operations to specifics about the cognitive operations themselves.     

Examining the efficiency of schedules of distributed retrieval practice

Given that students typically have a sizeable amount of course material to learn but a finite amount of study time, evaluating the efficiency of study schedules is important. We explored the efficiency of various schedules of distributed retrieval plus restudy. Across two experiments, 227 undergraduates were asked to learn Swahili-English vocabulary word pairs. In conventional schedule groups, all items were presented for 3 practice trials after initial study (as in most previous research). In dropout schedule groups, the number of practice trials allocated to each item varied, in that practice with a given item was discontinued after criterion performance had been reached. A dropout schedule led to levels of performance similar to those for conventional schedules (but in fewer trials), and it was particularly effective for learning initially incorrect items. However, the efficiency of the various schedules depended critically on the interval between presentations of an item. Results suggest that dropout can be a more efficient learning schedule for students than can conventional schedules of practice.     

Trade-offs between gaze and working memory use

Eye movements during natural tasks suggest that observers do not use working memory to capacity but instead use eye movements to acquire relevant information immediately before needed. Results here however, show that this strategy is sensitive to memory load and to observers' expectations about what information will be relevant. Depending upon the predictability of what object features would be needed in a brick sorting task, subjects spontaneously modulated the order in which they sampled and stored visual information using working memory more when the task was predictable and reverting to a just-in-time strategy when the task was unpredictable and the memory load was higher. This self organization was evidenced by subjects' sequence of eye movements and also their sorting decisions following missed feature changes. These results reveal that attentional selection, fixations, and use of working memory reflect a dynamic optimization with respect to a set of constraints, such as task predictablity and memory load. They also reveal that change blindness depends critically on the local task context, by virtue of its influence on the information selected for storage in working memory.