The relation between anger and antisocial beliefs in young offenders

The tendency for youth to report antisocial beliefs has been identified as a major risk factor in delinquency. Advances in emotion research suggest the importance of examining the emotional concomitants of cognitive appraisals such as antisocial beliefs. The present study examined the relation between anger and antisocial beliefs in a sample of young offenders and investigated whether scores on either variable differentiated aggressive from non-aggressive offenders. Twenty-two aggressive and 20 nonaggressive young offenders were compared on two questionnaires measuring anger and antisocial beliefs, respectively. The findings revealed a significant correlation between the two measures. In addition, it was found that the aggressive offenders, compared to their non-aggressive counterparts, scored significantly higher on anger and antisocial beliefs. These findings extended previous research on the characteristics that differentiate aggressive and non-aggressive offenders. Results also support the rationale for incorporating both cognitive and affective components in intervention programs designed for aggressive young offenders.     

Leader esteem for the least preferred co-worker score, training, and effectiveness: an experimental examination.

A laboratory experiment supported Fiedler's Contingency Model analysis of leadership training. The effect of leadership training on group performance was contingent on leadership style, that is, the leader's relation to his least preferred co-worker (LPC). Training improved the performance of high LPC leaders, but was detrimental to the performance of groups with low LPC leaders. High intelligence leaders profited more from training than low intelligence leaders, but low intelligence leaders were more productive overall. Leader LPC times Intelligence interactions indicated that follower satisfaction and interpersonal affect were highest for groups with high LPC-low intelligence leaders or low LPC-high intelligence leaders. Implications for contingency theories of leadership are discussed.     

The monaural localization of tonal stimuli

With one ear occluded, 17 listeners were asked to locate tone bursts, .25, 4, .6, .9. l.4, 2.0, 3.2, 4.8, and 7.2 kHz, generated by a loudspeaker concealed from view. The S’s response was to callout that number, from a series of numbers arranged horizontally, behind which he thought the tone bursts originated. The listeners perceived the sounds as emanating from the side of the unoccluded ear, but their judgments bore no consistent relation to the actual location of the sound source. Rather, the listeners showed a strong tendency to locate a tone burst, within the range of .9 through 7.2 kHz, in a fixed spatial relation to the next higher- and lower-pitched tone burst. Distorting the pinna of the unoccluded ear failed to modify the perceptual pattern. It was suggested that the perceived spatial relations among the various frequencies was a by-product of the tonotopic organization of the auditory nervous system.     

IMPROVING CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR IN MENTALLY RETARDED CHILDREN THROUGH CORRESPONDENCE TRAINING

Except for a few studies, most research investigating correspondence training procedures has been more analogue in nature. The purpose of the present set of studies was to examine whether a “say-do” correspondence training technique could be used with children in special education classes to improve classroom behavior. The specific behaviors targeted for change included: out-of-seat behavior (Experiment 1), sitting posture (Experiment 2), and on-task behavior (Experiment 3). The say-do procedure used in Experiment 1 resembled that of previous studies, whereas that in Experiment 2 was more elaborate in the specificity of verbal statements required from the children and the feedback given them. The training procedure in Experiment 3 used a format similar to the say-do approach, but stressed visual rather than verbal cuing because it was used with nonverbal children. All three studies used single-subject designs and examined maintenance and/or generalization questions. Experiments 2 and 3 also evaluated whether concomitant changes in performance on academic tasks occurred. The results of the three studies provide strong evidence that correspondence training can be effectively used with educationally handicapped children. Moreover, the successful modification of the “say-do” to a “show-do” procedure in Experiment 3 points out the flexibility of the correspondence training approach.     

The effects of thematic context and presentation mode on memory for sentence voice

A sentence in discourse may appear in the passive voice to emphasize the logical object rather than the logical subject when it is thematically more important. Two experiments are reported that explore the impact of this textual function of voice on sentence memory. The first experiment required subjects to listen to prose passages and then recall them. Sentences were recalled predominantly in the active voice regardless of voice or thematic focus in the prose passage, showing that the English-language bias for the active voice was a more important determinant of sentence reconstruction than was the experimental manipulation of thematic context. The second experiment required subjects to listen to or read either prose passages or lists of unrelated sentences and then to try to recognize key sentences that were either unchanged or changed lexically, semantically, or in voice. Recognition, both overall and specifically for voice, was better for sentences that were read than for those that were heard, and recognition for semantic change was consistently higher than for any other. Only when passages were read was there evidence in support of a thematic textual influence on memory for sentence voice.This research was supported in part by NIMH Grant 32063.     

Individual differences in word recognition latency

Previous studies of the effects of word characteristics on word recognition have used orthogonal combinations of word variables and have failed to consider individual differences. The present study examined word naming (Experiment 1) and lexical decision (Experiment 2) tasks using an unrestricted set of words and a correlational analysis. Individual differences were considered using a measure of the subjects’ knowledge of the English vocabulary. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that log (RT) for word naming is affected by word length, word frequency, and the number of syllables in the word; the results of Experiment 2 confirmed the effects of length and frequency but also showed that log (RT) is a function of the age at which the word is introduced to a child’s reading vocabulary. Subjects with a high vocabulary score were more rapid in Experiment 1 but were slower in Experiment 2, compared to subjects with a low vocabulary score. More importantly, high-vocabulary subjects, in both studies, were less affected by word length than the low-vocabulary subjects. The results suggest that subjects do differ in their reading strategy and that word length and word frequency may affect different stages in the word recognition process.     

Visual discrimination of shape by humans

Reaction times to tachistoscopic exposure and a card-sorting task are the two methods by which visual discrimination of shape is studied. The results of experiments using both methods tally, i.e. the order of difficulty of the following shapes was: (1) (easiest) circle vs. triangle; (2) circle vs. square; (3) square vs. triangle; (4) (most difficult) triangle vs. diamond. These results are compared with those obtained by Sutherland, using octopus, and it is concluded that it should be possible to establish to what extent the system of visual analysis in humans differs from that postulated for both octopus and rat.     

Traumatic stress, life events, and emotional support in women with metastatic breast cancer: cancer-related traumatic stress symptoms associated with past and current stressors.

This study examined levels of intrusion and avoidance symptoms and their relationships to past life stress, current emotional support, disease-related variables, and age in 125 women with metastatic breast cancer. The results indicate that a sizable proportion of these women experienced clinically significant levels of intrusion and avoidance symptoms related to their cancer, particularly those with both more stressful past life events and higher current levels of aversive emotional support. Additionally, both types of symptoms were associated with shorter time since recurrence, and avoidance symptoms were associated with smaller emotional support networks. These results indicate that metastatic breast cancer is an emotionally traumatic event for a significant proportion of women, particularly those with past life stressors and unsupportive social environments.