Displaced aggression is alive and well: a meta-analytic review

Content analysis of 122 social psychology textbooks confirmed that displaced aggression received a surge of attention immediately following J. Dollard, L. W. Doob, N. E. Miller, O. H. Mowrer, and R. R. Sears (1939), but subsequent interest sharply declined. Contemporary texts give it little attention. By contrast, meta-analysis of the experimental literature confirms that it is a robust effect (mean effect size = +0.54). Additionally, moderator analyses showed that: (a) The more negative the setting in which the participant and target interacted, the greater the magnitude of displaced aggression; (b) in accord with N. E. Miller's (1948) stimulus generalization principle, the more similar the provocateur and target, the more displaced aggression; and (c) consistent with the contrast effect (L. Berkowitz & D. A. Knurek, 1969), the intensity of initial provocation is inversely related to the magnitude of displaced aggression.     

The effect of segmental order on fricative labeling by children and adults

We examined whether children modify their perceptual weighting strategies for speech on the basis of the order of segments within a syllable, as adults do. To this end, fricative-vowel (FV) and vowel-fricative (VF) syllables were constructed with synthetic noises from an/[symbol: see text]/-to-/s/continuum combined with natural/a/and/u/portions with transitions appropriate for a preceding or a following /[symbol: see text]/or/s/. Stimuli were played in their original order to adults and children (ages of 7 and 5 years) in Experiment 1 and in reversed order in Experiment 2. The results for adults and, to a lesser extent, those for 7-year-olds replicated earlier results showing that adults assign different perceptual weights to acoustic properties, depending on segmental order. In contrast, results for 5-year-olds suggested that these listeners applied the same strategies during fricative labeling, regardless of segmental order. Thus, the flexibility to modify perceptual weighting strategies for speech according to segmental order apparently emerges with experience.     

Emotional Expressiveness during Peer Conflicts: A Predictor of Social Maladjustment among High-Risk Preschoolers

Preschool boys' emotional displays during conflicts with mixed-sex peers were related to individual differences in peer sociometric status and teacher ratings of disruptive behavior. Participants were 60 4- to 5-year old boys from low-income families who were videotaped with a small group of classmates in a Head Start preschool classroom. Conflicts were identified and emotional displays were coded from videotape. Results indicated that conflicts were more negative in emotional tone at the end than at the beginning of the year. Furthermore, children tended to mirror each others' emotional displays at the end but not the beginning of the preschool year. In addition, gleeful taunting, a form of emotional aggression, more strongly predicted negative peer nominations and teacher ratings than anger, suggesting that anger may be a more socially accepted form of emotional expression during conflicts among preschool-age children. Implications and directions for future research and interventions are discussed.     

Measurement error in subliminal perception experiments: simulation analyses of two regression methods

A. G. Greenwald, M. R. Klinger, and E. S. Schuh (1995) investigated subliminal perception using a regression-based test for a dissociation between direct and indirect measures of perceptual ability. Direct and indirect measures were obtained for each observer, and a regression analysis was used to predict the amount of indirect perception at the point where the direct measure showed zero sensitivity. A significant positive intercept, obtained with both standard regression and a modified regression developed by K. C. Klauer, S. C. Draine, and A. G. Greenwald (1998), was used to argue for the key dissociation. When the assumptions of these methods are not met, however, simulations indicate that significant positive intercepts can often be obtained even if there is no dissociation. Moreover, the assumptions are theoretically implausible and inconsistent with some aspects of the results. Thus, the significant positive intercept is not strong evidence of the key dissociation.     

Neurobehavioral phenotype of Klinefelter syndrome

A defined genetic syndrome with neurobehavioral components offers an unusual paradigm for the correlation of genetic defects with neurodevelopmental abnormalities. The power of the combination of detailed behavioral, neuroanatomical, and genetic studies has been demonstrated in studies of other conditions involving the sex chromosomes, such as Fragile X syndrome (Mazzocco [2000] Ment Retard Develop Disabil Res Rev. 6:96-106) and Turner syndrome (Ross [2000] Ment Retard Develop Disabil Res Rev. 6:135-141). Although the behavioral and neurologic difficulties that have been identified in Klinefelter syndrome (KS) are in most cases milder than the consequences of many other genetic syndromes, the deficits in KS cause significant morbidity, representing a more common, but poorly understood, subtype of those with learning disabilities. Both as children and as adults, KS subjects appear to offer a powerful genetic model for the study of language and language-based learning disabilities. Although it has been proposed that the language-based learning difficulties of KS boys are similar to those of nonaneuploidic dyslexics [Bender et al., 1986; Geschwind et al., 1998], this is not yet well established. The co-morbid frontal-executive dysfunction observed in KS is also a likely contributor to learning difficulties and, perhaps, social cognition, in many KS patients. It is also proposed that altered left-hemisphere functioning, whether causing, or due to, altered functional and anatomical cerebral dominance, is at the core of KS subjects' language problems. Although X chromosomal loci can provide only part of the picture, the study of KS subjects, a population with a relatively homogeneous etiology for dyslexia/dysphasia and frontal-executive dysfunction, offers many advantages over such a study in the general population, in which both dyslexia and attentional disorders are quite genetically heterogeneous [Decker and Bender, 1988; Pennington, 1990; Grigorenko et al., 1997; Geschwind et al., 1998]. Furthermore, the interaction of genetic factors and hormonal influences in the cognitive phenotypes described remains an unexplored area for future investigation. MRDD Research Reviews 2000;6:117-124.     

Enrolling decisionally incapacitated subjects in neuropsychiatric research

This paper discusses the National Bioethics Advisory Commission's (NBAC's) report on research involving persons with mental disorders that may affect decisionmaking capacity. After placing the NBAC recommendations into their historic context, the authors propose a strategy to enroll decisionally incapacitated subjects into neuropsychiatric research. The authors maintained that their proposed consensus model for research authorization, utilizing subject advocates, fosters valuable clinical research while protecting potentially vulnerable subjects.     

Backward crosstalk effects in psychological refractory period paradigms: effects of second-task response types on first-task response latencies

Three experiments using psychological refractory period (PRP) tasks documented backward crosstalk effects in which the nature of the second-task response influenced the first-task response latencies. Such effects are difficult to explain within currently popular bottleneck models, according to which second-task response selection does not begin until first-task response selection has finished. In Experiments 1 and 2, the first of the PRP tasks required a choice reaction time (RT) response, whereas the second task required a go/no-go decision. Task 1 responses were faster when the second task required a go response than when it required a no-go response. Experiment 3 showed that Task 1 RTs were also influenced by the complexity of second-task responses. These backward crosstalk effects indicate that significant second-task processing is carried out in time to influence first-task responses and thus challenge strictly serial bottleneck models.     

Belief in the inevitability of suicide: results from a national survey

To examine public opinion regarding the effectiveness of means restriction as an approach to preventing suicide we asked a national sample of 2,770 respondents a hypothetical question about what effect a suicide barrier might have had on the ultimate fate of the more than 1,000 people who have jumped to their death from the Golden Gate Bridge. Thirty-four percent of respondents believed that every single jumper would have found another way to complete suicide and an additional 40% believed that "most" would have completed suicide using other means. The strongest predictors of belief in complete substitution were firearm ownership and cigarette smoking. Belief in the inevitability of suicide may be a political impediment to adopting potentially effective suicide prevention efforts.     

An item gains and losses analysis of false memories suggests critical items receive more item-specific processing than list items

In a repeated testing paradigm, list items receiving item-specific processing are more likely to be recovered across successive tests (item gains), whereas items receiving relational processing are likely to be forgotten progressively less on successive tests. Moreover, analysis of cumulative-recall curves has shown that item-specific processing produces a slower, but steadier rate of recall than relational processing. The authors relied on these findings to determine the type of processing that both list items and critical lures receive in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory procedure. The first 2 experiments revealed that critical lures produced more item gains, but only the list items resulted in a decrease in item losses across successive tests. The critical lures also produced slower but steadier cumulative recall. In Experiments 3 and 4, the critical items were physically presented during study, which resulted in the lures producing progressively fewer losses across successive tests. The authors concluded that critical items receive more item-specific processing than list items but that unless they are presented in the list, they do not become part of participants' organized retrieval scheme.     

The reliability and validity of the panic disorder self-report: a new diagnostic screening measure of panic disorder

This study examined the Panic Disorder Self-Report (PDSR), a new self-report diagnostic measure of panic disorder based on the 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). PDSR diagnoses were compared with structured interview diagnoses of individuals with generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, and panic disorder and nonanxious controls. Receiver operating characteristic analyses revealed that the PDSR showed 100% specificity and 89% sensitivity. The PDSR also demonstrated retest reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, and kappa agreement of .93 with a structured interview. Finally, the PDSR demonstrated clinical validity. Students who were identified as having panic disorder using the PDSR did not have significantly different scores on the Panic Disorder Severity Scale--Self-Report form (P. R. Houck, D. A. Speigel, M. K. Shear, & P. Rucci, 2002) than a panic disordered community sample. However, both groups had significantly higher scores than students identified as not meeting criteria for panic disorder.