Effect of Children's Perceived Rejection on Physical Aggression

This study investigated whether the perception of self as socially rejected might contribute to increased physical aggression among elementary-school children. It was hypothesized that physically aggressive children would become more physically aggressive over time if they perceived that they were rejected and tended to blame peers for social failure experiences. Third-grade boys and girls (n = 941) were assessed in the Fall and Spring of the school year. Peer-report data on physical aggression and social preference were collected, along with self-report data on perceived rejection and attributions for social failure experiences. Results for boys were consistent with hypotheses, whereas the results for girls revealed a different pattern of relations. These results constitute prospective evidence that children's self-perceptions of social rejection can uniquely influence externalizing behavior. Results are discussed in terms of mechanisms that might mediate the relation between perceived rejection and physical aggression.     

Are dietary restraint scales valid measures of acute dietary restriction? Unobtrusive observational data suggest not

The finding that dietary restraint scales predict onset of bulimic pathology has been interpreted as suggesting that dieting causes this eating disturbance, despite the dearth of evidence that these scales are valid measures of dietary restriction. The authors conducted 4 studies that tested whether dietary restraint scales were inversely correlated with unobtrusively measured caloric intake. These studies, which varied in foods consumed, settings, and populations, indicated that common dietary restraint scales were largely uncorrelated with acute caloric intake. Results suggest that these scales are not valid measures of short-term dietary restriction and imply that it may be prudent to reinterpret findings from studies thai use these scales, including those that suggest dietary restraint is a risk factor for bulimic pathology.     

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.     

Associative change in the representations acquired during conditional discriminations: further analysis of the nature of conditional learning

Three experiments with rats investigated how the associative strengths of the representations that underlie conditional learning change when they are conditioned in compound. The results of each experiment suggest that the representation whose associative strength is most discrepant from the asymptote supported by the outcome of the trial undergoes the greatest change in associative strength. These results parallel those from simple Pavlovian conditioning (e.g., R. A. Rescorla, 2000). are inconsistent with unique-cue and configural accounts of conditional learning, and support a connectionist analysis of learning in which a "winner-takes-all" rule applies to the hidden units that can be activated and acquire associative strength at a given point in time.     

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.     

Distorted retrospective eyewitness reports as functions of feedback and delay

Participant-witnesses viewed a crime video and attempted to identify the culprit from a culprit-absent lineup. The 253 mistaken-identification eyewitnesses were randomly given confirming, disconfirming, or no feedback regarding their identifications. Feedback was immediate or delayed 48 hr, and measures were immediate or delayed 48 hr. Confirming, but not disconfirming, feedback led to distortions of eyewitnesses' recalled confidence, amount of attention paid during witnessing, goodness of view, ability to make out facial details, length of time to identification, and other measures related to the witnessing experience. Unexpectedly, neither delaying the measures nor delaying feedback for 48 hr moderated these effects. The results underscore the need for double-blind lineups and neutral assessments of eyewitnesses' certainty and other judgments prior to feedback.