And when shall a little child lead them? evidence for an altercasting theory of source credibility

In two crucial test experiments pitting altercasting against traditional source credibility theories (Hovland, Janis, & Kelley, 1953; Kelman, 1958), students received a message emphasizing either technical or protective themes attributed to a child or an expert. Traditional theories predict an expert should be more effective than a child. According to altercasting theory, credibility is a function of the privileges and responsibilities associated with positions in a role-set. A child places a message recipient into the role of protector and is most effective when arguing for protective as opposed to technical messages. An expert is most effective when arguing within a domain of expertise (technical issues) as opposed to common opinion. The results overwhelmingly support an altercasting interpretation of source credibility.     

Beyond the individual: the impact of ethnic context and classroom behavioral norms on victims' adjustment

With a sample of 1,630 sixth-grade students from 77 classrooms, the authors used hierarchical linear modeling to examine how ethnicity within context and classroom social disorder influenced the association between peer victimization and social-psychological adjustment (loneliness and social anxiety). Victimized students in classrooms where many classmates shared their ethnicity reported feeling the most loneliness and social anxiety. Additionally, classroom-level social disorder served as a moderator such that the association between victimization and anxiety was stronger in classrooms with low social disorder. Both findings were interpreted as evidence that problem behavior deviating from what is perceived as normative in a particular context heightens maladjustment. The authors discuss implications for studying ethnicity and classroom behavioral norms as context variables in peer relations.     

Knowledge about the probability of change affects change detection performance

The visual system continually selects some information for processing while bypassing the processing of other information, and as a consequence, participants often fail to notice large changes to visual stimuli. In the present studies, the authors investigated whether knowledge about the probability of particular changes occurring over time increased the likelihood that changes that were likely to occur in the real world (probable changes) would be detected. The results of two experiments showed that participants were more likely to detect probable changes. This occurred whether or not they were processing the scene in a meaningful manner or actively searching the scene for changes. Furthermore, participants were unable to accurately predict change detection performance for probable and improbable changes.     

Cue-focused and reflexive-associative processes in prospective memory retrieval

Several theories of event-based prospective memory were evaluated in 3 experiments. The results depended on the association between the target event and the intended action. For associated target-action pairs (a) preexposure of nontargets did not reduce prospective memory, (b) divided attention did not reduce prospective memory, (c) prospective memory was better than when the target event and intended action were not associated, and (d) prospective memory was characterized by retrieval of the precise intended action. These results converge on the view that retrieval is mediated by a reflexive-associative process. In contrast, for unassociated pairs (a) preexposure of nontargets reduced prospective memory, and (b) divided attention reduced prospective memory. These results implicate cue-focused retrieval processes and are most consistent with a discrepancy-plus-search model. The entire pattern implicates both cue-focused and reflexive-associative processes and more generally supports a multiprocess framework of prospective memory (M. A. McDaniel & G. O. Einstein, 2000).     

Teachers' screening for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: comparing multinational samples on teacher ratings of ADHD

This study evaluates a measurement model for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The DSM-IV divides 18 symptoms into two groups, inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive. Elementary school teachers rated 21,161 children in 4 locations: Spain, Germany, urban US, and suburban US. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that the 2-factor model (inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity) shows the best fit. A third factor, impulsivity, was too slight to stand-alone. Children with academic performance problems were distinguished by inattention, but children with behavior problems typically had elevations in inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Between-site differences were statistically significant, but so small that we conclude that same measurement model fits all 4 samples in 2 continents.     

Now you feel it, now you don't: frontal brain electrical asymmetry and individual differences in emotion regulation

Recent theoretical accounts of emotion regulation assign an important role in this process to the prefrontal cortex, yet there is little relevant data available to support this hypothesis. The current study assessed the relation between individual differences in asymmetric prefrontal activation and an objective measure of uninstructed emotion regulation. Forty-seven participants 57 to 60 years old viewed emotionally arousing and neutral visual stimuli while eyeblink startle data were collected. Startle probes were also presented after picture presentation to capture the persistence or attenuation of affect following the offset of an emotional stimulus. Subjects with greater relative left-sided anterior activation in scalp-recorded brain electrical signals displayed attenuated startle magnitude after the offset of negative stimuli. This relation between resting frontal activation and recovery following an aversive event supports the idea of a frontally mediated mechanism involved in one form of automatic emotion regulation.     

How events are reviewed matters: effects of varied focus on eyewitness suggestibility

Witnesses to a crime or an accident perceive that event only once, but they are likely to think or talk about it multiple times. The way in which they review the event may affect their later memory. In particular, some types of review may increase suggestibility if the witness has been exposed to postevent misleading information. In Experiment 1, participants viewed a videotaped crime and then received false suggestions about the event. We found that participants who were then asked to focus on specific details when reviewing the event were more suggestible on a later source memory test than participants asked to review the main points. The findings of Experiment 2 suggest that this effect was not due to a criterion shift at test. These findings indicate that the type of rehearsal engaged in after witnessing an event can have important consequences for memory and, in particular, suggestibility.     

Self as verb and the metaphor of dance: An explanation of the self discovery experience within a constructivist framework

The concept of self discovery within a constructivist framework is difficult to explain given the central assumption of constructivism that self is a created construct rather than an entity to be discovered. Two problems are identified as impediments to constructivist accounts of the self discovery experience: first, their failure to adequately account for the embodied experience of self, and second, the difficulties inherent in using self as a noun to express a process.
It is proposed that if self is considered as a verb, as the action of a body-subject, the verbal contortionism of referring to self as a process in a language that places self as an entity may be overcome. The notion of self as verb places the individual firmly in the role of active embodied participant in the experience of self. The metaphor of "self'" as "dance" is explored to emphasize the materiality of the human animal that is argued to be central to the experience of self discovery.     

A grouping interpretation of the modality effect in immediate probed recognition

In a series of experiments on immediate probed recognition for eight 3-digit numbers, it was shown that if the target modality involved auditory components and the effect of the similarity of the modality of the probe to that of the targets was controlled, unequivocal evidence was obtained for an auditory superiority effect (modality effect) for hit rates for the final items of the list. Moreover, false-alarm rates were significantly lower following targets with an auditory component than they were following silently seen targets. It is argued that this pattern of hits and false alarms is consistent with the idea that targets that have an auditory component yield memory representations that are better grouped as units than are those for targets that are only silently seen; in particular, if a new probe has a first digit that accidentally matches the first digit of a target item, it is more likely that the subject will mistakenly identify this new probe as old (give a false alarm) if the target has only been partially encoded because it was only silently seen.