Effects of household sex composition on the salience of one's gender in the spontaneous self-concept

It was hypothesized that being a boy or a girl becomes more salient in a child's self-concept to the extent the other sex numerically predominates in the child's household. This prediction was based upon an information-processing, distinctiveness postulate that a person contemplating a complex stimulus (such as the self) selectively notices and encodes its more distinctive, information-rich aspects. The spontaneous self-concept elicited by nondirective “Tell us about yourself” interviews of 560 school children were scored for spontaneous mention of one's gender. As predicted, boys spontaneously mentioned their maleness more often when they came from households where females were in the majority; girls mentioned their femaleness more often when from households with male majorities; boys mentioned their maleness more often when from father-absent than from father-present homes. Incidental findings are that gender is more salient in the negation self-concept (“Tell us what you are not”) than in the affirmation self-concept (“Tell us about yourself”) especially for girls and that gender becomes increasingly salient as the child grows older.     

Historical comparisons: Testing psychological hypotheses with cross-era data (1)

Cross-era research, an approach which involves developing and testing social science hypotheses in terms of historical time-series data, is first discussed as regards its relationship to other comparative research approaches. Some examples of cross-era research in psychology are described. Special problems that arise in cross-era research, and proposed methods of coping with them, are discussed as regards each of the three successive phases of research: creative hypothesis formation problems; difficulties that arise in the hypothesis-testing phase; and problems that emerge during the phase of communicating and utilizing the findings.     

Depressive symptoms and lymphocyte proliferation in older adults

In an 18-month prospective study, community-dwelling older adults, including both spousal caregivers of dementia patients and noncaregiving controls, were examined. Participants were selected on the basis of the presence or absence of chronic depressive symptoms that exceeded a cutoff score for clinically relevant depressive symptoms on a self-report symptom measure. Compared with nondepressed older adults, those with chronic, mild depressive symptoms had poorer T cell responses to 2 mitogens from baseline to follow-up. Additionally, among individuals with depressive symptoms, older age was associated with the poorest blastogenic response to the mitogens at follow-up. These findings extend the association between depression and immune function to community-dwelling older adults with chronic, mild depressive symptoms.     

Sexual deviations as conditioned behaviour: A hypothesis

While it has been frequently suggested that sexual deviations are learned, the learning has usually been thought of as taking place during one traumatic experience. From a study of 45 sexual deviants, the authors believe that it is often a much more gradual process occurring during masturbation to a memory, which need not have been sexually stimulating at the time of the initial experience and which often alters with the passage of time. The hypothesis is illustrated from case histories of pedophilia, exhibitionism, homosexuality, voyeurism and transvestism. The implications for both aversive treatment of deviations and positive conditioning to normal sex are considered.     

Decision makers calibrate behavioral persistence on the basis of time-interval experience

A central question in intertemporal decision making is why people reverse their own past choices. Someone who initially prefers a long-run outcome might fail to maintain that preference for long enough to see the outcome realized. Such behavior is usually understood as reflecting preference instability or self-control failure. However, if a decision maker is unsure exactly how long an awaited outcome will be delayed, a reversal can constitute the rational, utility-maximizing course of action. In the present behavioral experiments, we placed participants in timing environments where persistence toward delayed rewards was either productive or counterproductive. Our results show that human decision makers are responsive to statistical timing cues, modulating their level of persistence according to the distribution of delay durations they encounter. We conclude that temporal expectations act as a powerful and adaptive influence on people's tendency to sustain patient decisions.     

Peer influence on event reports among adolescents and young adults

When two or more people witness an event together, the event report from one person can influence others’ reports. In the current study we examined the role of age and motivational factors on peer influence regarding event reports in adolescents and young adults. Participants (N=249) watched a short video of a robbery then answered questions with no co-witness information or with information believed to be from a co-witness. Public and private response conditions were included to explore motivations for peer influence. Co-witness information influenced participants’ responses, although the effect was equally strong in the private and the public co-witness conditions. Peer influence on event reports was steady across a large age range (11- to 25-year-olds).     

Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Sport: Relationships with Leadership,Team Cohesion,and Athlete Satisfaction

The purpose of this study was to introduce the construct of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB; Organ, 1988 Organ, D. W. 1988. Organizational citizenship behavior: The good soldier syndrome, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) into the sport psychology literature and examine its utility in sport. Based upon OCB research in the organizational literature, the Multidimensional Model of Leadership (MML; Chelladurai, 1978 Chelladurai, P. 1978. “A contingency model of leadership in athletics”. In Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Waterloo: University of Waterloo, Canada.  [Google Scholar]), the conceptual framework of team cohesion (CFC; Carron & Hausenblas, 1998 Carron, A. V. and Hausenblas, H. A. 1998. Group dynamics in sport, 2nd., Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology.  [Google Scholar]), and a model of athlete satisfaction (MAS; Chelladurai & Riemer, 1997 Chellardurai, P. and Riemer, H. A. 1997. A classification of facets of athlete satisfaction. Journal of Sport Management, 11: 133–159.  [Google Scholar]) were selected as theoretically sound antecedents to be associated with OCB in sport. A total of 193 student-athletes from a large Division I university and a smaller Division III university representing a variety of sports participated in the study. Results of the study provide preliminary evidence for OCB as a unique and meaningful construct in sport and support many of the predictions hypothesized in the MML, CFC, and MAS. Results are discussed in the context of previous literature as well as theoretical, research, and practical implications.     

The Science and Ethics of Placebo in Pediatric Psychopharmacology

Pediatric psychopharmacology is a relatively new science. Although the use of psychotropic medications in children has risen in the past decade, there are few standard treatments for serious psychiatric or developmental disorders of childhood. The relative absence of standard treatments is further complicated by the fact that many of the agents used in pediatric psychopharmacology have been adapted from other fields. Therefore, investigators have a responsibility to make incremental progress from concept through pilot studies and large-scale, multisite efficacy and safety trials. Thus, although there is a pressing need to conduct medication trials that can guide clinical practice, there are scientific and ethical considerations to bear in mind when designing clinical trials in pediatric psychopharmacology. This article reviews essential ethical and scientific issues that are relevant to designing clinical trials in children with psychiatric and developmental disorders. Using examples from recently published literature, the article describes the challenges and pitfalls of various clinical trial study designs. The application of sound ethical and scientific principles is necessary to ensure that clinical trials are properly conducted and to guard against ambiguous results that can not guide practice.     

Predictors of Differential Responding on a Sentence Completion Task in Traumatized Children

Information-processing theories posit that persons who have experienced trauma may have disturbed emotional processing and therefore exhibit an excess of negative responses to otherwise neutral cues. The role of this mechanism in traumatized children has yet to be fully investigated. This study examined the relationship of varied clinical characteristics and theoretically relevant moderating variables to increased trauma related responding on a non-idiographic sentence completion task. One hundred and eighty-nine children (ages 6–17) residing at a residential home between 1996 and 2011 who had experienced physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse were administered a sentence completion task and the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC) shortly after their admission. Three independent raters determined whether sentence completion responses were trauma related (TRR), non-trauma related, or ambiguous. Trauma related responses were then reviewed for either avoidant/denial style responding or loss related responding. The TSCC posttraumatic stress subscale (PTS) was the only subscale that was uniquely related to TRR. A significant interaction between abuse type and PTS was found with sexual abuse moderating the effect of PTS on TRR. Additionally, age at assessment was positively correlated with both TRR and loss related responding. Time since removal from home was negatively correlated with TRR. Gender differences were found for TRR and loss related responding. These findings highlight the empirical relevance of the sentence completion task in clinical research. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for research, assessment, and intervention.