The Factor Structure of the Beavers Interactional Scales Revisited

The present study addressed limitations of a recent confirmatory factor analytic study challenging the hypothesized factor structure of the Beavers Interactional Scales. That dataset (n = 97) was reanalyzed and two additional datasets (n = 95, n = 91) were explored. With all three samples, taken separately and together, the Beavers Systems Model, when operationalized in the BIS, was not supported. A body of evidence is accumulating which suggests that clinicians and researchers should be wary of the BIS.     

Why do some men misperceive women's sexual intentions more frequently than others do? An application of the confluence model

Although many researchers have documented men's tendency to misperceive women's friendliness as a sign of sexual interest, few have examined individual differences in men's attitudes and past experiences that might predict their likelihood of making these types of misjudgments. We applied an expanded version of Malamuth, Sockloskie, Koss, and Tanaka's (1991) Confluence model to predict frequency of misperception of women's sexual intent with a sample of 356 male college students. Using structural equation modeling, hostile masculinity, impersonal sex, and drinking in dating and sexual situations predicted men's frequency of misperception. Furthermore, the more risk factors men possessed, the more times they misperceived women's sexual intentions. Suggestions are made for theory development and future research incorporating situational as well as personality measures in longitudinal studies.     

When Likeness Goes with Liking: The Case of Political Preference

Three studies show that people tend to vote for politicians (i.e., either Romano Prodi or Silvio Berlusconi in Italy or George W. Bush or John Kerry in the United States) whose traits they rate as being most similar to their own. People perceived higher similarity between themselves and political figures with respect to traits that were most distinctive of each platform and their respective leaders. These findings, while corroborating the similarity-attraction relationship, further attest to the role that personal characteristics of both voters and candidates play in orienting political preference.     

Reinforcer identification and evaluation of choice within an educational setting

Current research on preference methodology and the effects of choice with children who are typically developing is limited. This study evaluated two preference methodologies for identifying reinforcers across two choice options within the classroom. These methods include a teacher-generated list of reinforcers, a student-generated list of reinforcers, student choice from both lists, and teacher choice from both lists. Four elementary aged-children with no diagnosed learning or developmental disabilities participated. Both preference methods were effective in identifying reinforcers for all participants. Moreover, both choice options resulted in increases in responding. Results are discussed with respect to reinforcement and the effects of “choice.”     

Perceived organizational structure for teacher liking: the role of peers’ perceptions of teacher liking in teacher–student relationship quality,motivation, and achievement

Previous research has identified the role of perceived peer hierarchies, or organizational structures, in affecting students’ adjustment to school (Lease et al. 2003, Journal of Early Adolescence, 23, 194–217). The purpose of this study was to examine whether middle school classrooms can be described in terms of the perceived status individual students hold for who will and will not be ‘liked’ by the teacher. Specifically we examined: (1) Do students share a mutually agreed on representation, a perceived organizational structure, for describing relative status with their teacher? (2) Are teachers perceived as systematically favoring girls or boys? (3) Are peers’ perceptions of teacher liking associated with individual students’ social and academic motivation and relationship quality with teachers? (4) Are students identified by peers as ‘not liked’ at risk for long-term teacher rejection and underachievement? And, (5) What are the underlying criteria students use to judge teacher likeability? Data for this study were drawn from peer ratings from 516 (262 boys, 254 girls) middle school students in 20 classrooms. Findings indicate multidimensional scaling techniques can be used to map the ‘teacher-liking space,’ accounting for  > 90% of the variability in peers’ ratings of teacher likeability. Additionally, findings indicate perceived status in the teacher-liking space has consequences for students’ achievement and teacher relationship quality.     

Regulation of Positive Emotions: Emotion Regulation Strategies that Promote Resilience

The regulation of emotions is essential in everyday life. In this paper, we discuss the regulation of positive emotional experiences. Our discussion focuses on strategies aimed at maintaining and increasing experiences of positive emotions. We discuss the importance of these strategies for well-being, and suggest that cultivating positive emotions may be particularly useful for building resilience to stressful events. Then, we explore possible mechanisms that link positive emotions to coping for resilient people, with a focus on the automatic activation of positive emotions while coping. We conclude by discussing alternative models and proposing future directions in the work on positive emotion regulation and resilience.     

EyeRIS: A general-purpose system for eye-movement-contingent display control

In experimental studies of visual performance, the need often emerges to modify the stimulus according to the eye movements performed by the subject. The eye-movement-contingent display (EMCD) methodology enables accurate control of the position and motion of the stimulus on the retina. EMCD procedures have been used successfully in many areas of vision science, including studies of visual attention or eye movements and physiological characterization of neuronal response properties. Unfortunately, the difficulty of real-time programming and the unavailability of flexible and economical systems that can be easily adapted to the diversity of experimental needs and laboratory setups have prevented the widespread use of EMCD control. This article describes EyeRIS, a general-purpose system for performing EMCD experiments on a Windows computer. Based on a digital signal processor with analog and digital interfaces, this integrated hardware and software system is responsible for sampling and processing oculomotor signals and subject responses and for modifying the stimulus displayed on a CRT according to a gaze-contingent procedure specified by the experimenter. EyeRIS is designed to update the stimulus with a delay of only 10 msec. To thoroughly evaluate EyeRIS's performance, this study was designed to (1) examine the response of the system in a number of EMCD procedures and computational benchmarking tests; (2) compare the accuracy of implementation of one particular EMCD procedure, retinal stabilization, with that produced by a standard tool used for this task; and (3) examine EyeRIS's performance in one of the many EMCD procedures that cannot be executed by means of any other currently available device.     

Olp: An R package for optimal linear partitions of finite sets of points on the plane

Given a set of points on the plane and an assignment of values to them, an optimal linear partition is a division of the set into two subsets which are separated by a straight line and maximally contrast with each other in the values assigned to their points. We present a method for inspecting and rating all linear partitions of a finite set, and a package of three functions in the R language for executing the computations. One function is for finding the optimal linear partitions and corresponding separating lines, another for graphically representing the results, and a third for testing how well the data comply with the linear separability condition. We illustrate the method on possible data from a psychophysical experiment (concerning the size–weight illusion) and compare its performance with that of linear discriminant analysis and multiple logistic regression, adapted to dividing linearly a set of points on the plane.