How Not to Apply to College

Samples of letters written by college students are excerpted to demonstrate the deterioration of students' writing skills. The relative unimportance many college students and graduates attach to the art of writing letters of inquiry is emphasized. A checklist is provided to assist students in preparing letters requesting information from colleges and universities.     

Fantasy Proneness: Developmental Antecedents

ABSTRACT Wilson and Barber (1981) identified a “personality type” characterized by an extensive and deep involvement in fantasy that they termed “fantasy prone personalities” This study investigated the developmental antecedents of fantasy proneness as part of a larger research project designed to examine the construct validity of the fantasy prone personality Fantasy prone (n= 21, upper 4% of college population), medium range (n= 20) and nonfantasy prone persons (n= 18, lower 4% of college population) were selected with the Inventory of Childhood Memories and Imaginings (Wilson and Barber, 1981) Subjects completed quantitative pencil and paper measures of early life experiences and participated in individual semi structured interviews Strong support for the construct validity of fantasy proneness and confirmation of previous findings regarding the developmental antecedents of extensive adult fantasy involvement were secured While six fantasy prones reported being severely physically abused during childhood, abuse was not reported in other groups Fantasy prones also reported greater frequency and severity of physical punishment, greater use of fantasy to block the pain of punishment, more thoughts of revenge toward the person who punished them, greater loneliness, and a preference for punishing their own children less severely than did the comparison groups, suggesting compensatory and adaptive functions of fantasy involvements     

The effect of an integration program on teacher and student attitudes to mentally-handicapped children

This study examines the effect of contact with autistic children on teacher and peer attitudes to mentally-handicapped children in general. Children were interviewed and teachers completed questionnaires about their attitudes toward mentally-handicapped children in five schools attended by autistic boys and five schools not attended by any mentally-handicapped children. Children who had contact with autistic boys had more positive and realistic attitudes. Teachers' attitudes were generally positive and did not vary across settings, but those with experience in teaching mentally-handicapped children were found to have more positive attitudes than those with no experience. The implications for the integration of mentally-handicapped children are briefly discussed.     

The effect of background music and noise on the cognitive test performance of introverts and extraverts

Previous research has found that the performance of introverts on complex cognitive tasks is more negatively affected by distracters, e.g. music and background noise, than the performance of extraverts. The present study extends previous research by examining whether or not background noise would prove to be as distracting as music. In the presence of silence, background UK garage music and background noise, 118 female secondary school students carried out three cognitive tests. It was predicted that introverts would do less well on all of the tasks than extraverts in the presence of music and noise but in silence performance would be the same. A significant interaction was found on all three of the tasks. It was also predicted that there would be a main effect of background sound: Performance would be worse in the presence of music and noise than silence. Results confirmed this prediction with one exception. This study also found a positive correlation between extraversion and intelligence, the implications of which are also discussed. The findings support the Eysenckian hypothesis of the difference in optimum cortical arousal in introverts and extraverts. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

'You can spend your life dying or you can spend your life living': identity transition in people who are HIV-positive

This article examines, through the lenses of HIV-positive people, the unique phenomenon of identity transition. This research proposes that life-changing illnesses, such as HIV, are an undesired 'possession' that people accept to varying degrees, which we refer to as 'ownership'. While illnesses, such as HIV compel individuals to undergo a transformation process that usually begins with a deep feeling of detachment, and then proceeds to acceptance of their illness, and to feeling empowered and in control of their HIV status and lives, this process is very complex and non-linear as it involves many iterative progressions in identity transition. These transitions are highly individualistic; however, the underlying theme is that the more positive trajectories were those of people who focus on their new lives, living with HIV (i.e. taking ownership of their illness), rather than focusing on what they have lost when they became HIV-positive. The findings demonstrate that identity transition is a result of the ways that individuals rework, negotiate and transform their roles, actions and behaviours through their active engagement with support mechanisms. This study suggests that it is vital to promote positive interactions with support mechanisms to ensure that those with HIV view themselves positively.     

Identity and Substance in Hume and Kant

According to Hume, the idea of a persisting, self-identical object, distinct from our impressions of it, and the idea of a duration of time, the mere passage of time without change, are mutually supporting "fictions". Each rests upon a "mistake", the commingling of "qualities of the imagination" or "impressions of reflection" with "external" impressions (perceptions), and, strictly speaking, we are conceptually and epistemically entitled to neither. Among Kant's aims in the First Critique is the securing of precisely these entitlements. Like Hume, he acknowledges the correlativity of the notions of temporal duration and persisting self-identical objects (i.e., continuant substances). Unlike Hume, however, he undertakes to establish the legitimacy or objective validity of the schematized category of substance and, correspondingly, of the representation of time as a formal unity with duration as one of its modes. This essay formulates Hume's problem and then explores Kant's complex argument for the legitimacy of our concepts of substantial identity and temporal duration, from its origins in his accounts of the forms of inner and outer sense and the transcendental unity of apperception through the Transcendental Deduction of the unschematized category of inherence and substance and its schematized counterpart, substance as permanence, in the First Analogy. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Repetition priming of words, pseudowords, and nonwords

In 5 experiments, the authors assessed repetition priming for words, pseudowords, and nonwords using a task that combines an implicit perceptual fluency measure and a recognition memory assessment for each list item. Words and pseudowords generated a consistently strong repetition effect even when there was a failure to recognize the stimulus. In 2 of the experiments, the repetition effect for nonwords was reliably above chance even when there was a failure to recognize the stimulus. The authors propose a parallel distributed processing (PDP) model based on the work of J. McClelland and D. Rumelhart (1985) as a way to understand the mechanisms potentially responsible for the pattern of findings. Although the error-driven nature of learning in the model results in a poor fit to the nonword priming data, this is not endemic to all PDP models. Using a model based on Hebbian learning, the authors instantiate a property that they believe is characteristic of implicit memory--that learning is primarily based on the strengthening of connections between units that become active during the processing of a stimulus. This model provides a far more satisfactory account of the data than does the error-driven model.