Testing the Direction of Longitudinal Paths between Victimization,Peer Rejection,and Different Types of Internalizing Problems in Adolescence

The transition to secondary school is accompanied by the fragmentation of peer groups, while adolescents are also confronted with heightened incidents of bullying and increased levels of internalizing problems. Victimization, peer rejection, and internalizing problems are known to be interrelated, but how they influence each other over time remains unclear. We tested the direction of these associations by applying a cross-lagged path model among a large sample of Finnish adolescents (N = 5645; 49.1 % boys; M age at T1 = 14.0 years) after they transitioned to secondary school (grades 7–9). Self-reported depression, anxiety, and victimization and peer-reported rejection were measured 3 times over the course of 1 year. Results showed that depression was predictive of subsequent victimization for both boys and girls, in line with a symptoms-driven model; for girls, anxiety was reciprocally related to victimization, in line with a transactional model; for boys, victimization was related to subsequent anxiety, in line with an interpersonal risk model. Peer rejection was not directly related to depression or anxiety, but among girls peer rejection was bi-directionally related to victimization. Overall, our results suggest that associations between internalizing problems and peer relations differ between depression and anxiety and between genders. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.     

Comparing the Defendant to Images of the Culprit: Interpreting Results of Mock Witness Filler‐Control Tests

Criminals are occasionally recorded on video committing a crime. At trial, jurors may be shown images of the culprit to determine if they match the defendant. However, several sources of bias may influence juror matching decisions. Also, even with clear video, the accuracy of defendant‐culprit matching can be relatively poor. To reduce these problems, we propose that defendant‐culprit matching be viewed as a type of forensic test. If conducted as a forensic test, defendant‐culprit matching can be improved by adding fillers and testing mock witnesses rather than the actual jurors. A Bayesian analysis of data from two experiments shows that a filler‐control test can be highly diagnostic, even when the decisions of mock witnesses are far from unanimous. However, when viewing conditions are poor, a filler‐control test may not provide much new information about whether the defendant matches the culprit. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mnemic neglect and self‐threat: Trait modifiability moderates self‐protection

The mnemic neglect effect is the phenomenon of disproportionately poor recall for threatening (rather than non‐threatening) feedback that refers to the self (rather than another person). Does trait modifiability moderate mnemic neglect? We hypothesized that mnemic neglect will be present for feedback on unmodifiable traits, but absent for feedback on modifiable traits. In the latter case, the feedback would be lower in threat potential because its consequences are fleeting and steps to prevent its reoccurrence are possible. Participants received mixed (threatening and non‐threatening) feedback that referred either to the self or another person. The feedback pertained to (central and peripheral) self‐conceptions that were either unmodifiable or modifiable. In support of the hypothesis, mnemic neglect emerged for feedback on unmodifiable, but not modifiable, traits. The findings illustrate the selective and strategic nature of self‐protection. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hypnosis versus relaxation: accuracy and confidence in dating international news events

This study compared participants who were administered either a hypnosis (n=50) or a relaxation (n=44) recall priming procedure in terms of the ability to estimate the dates of 20 relatively memorable (‘easy’) vs. less memorable (‘difficult’) international news events. The hypnosis and relaxation groups performed comparably in terms of the accuracy of estimates of when the events occurred, self‐reported confidence in estimates, and the memorability and emotionality of the events that were reported during hypnosis and relaxation. After these initial ratings, participants were informed that ‘at least one’ of their estimates was incorrect, and they were given the opportunity to change their estimates of the date of when one or more of the events occurred. Participants who generated their initial estimates during hypnosis were less likely to change their previous estimates of both easy and difficult events, than were participants in the relaxation condition. The measure of self‐reported confidence and a behavioural measure of willingness to change initial reports were largely dissociated from one another. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Variability and Flexibility of Gender-Typed Toy Play: A Close Look at Children's Behavioral Responses to Counterstereotypic Models

Gender differences in play behavior are well documented. However, little work has examined the issue of variability of gender-typed behaviors within individuals or within genders. We investigated whether children's gender-typed toy play behavior is (a) variable across time within individuals, and (b) variable in response to exposure to counterstereotypic models. Extensive observations (N=203) were made of 8 highly gender-typed preschool children over 4 months. Variability was assessed by examining changes in the percentage of masculine and feminine toy play across successive days in which (a) gender neutral stories were read (within-individual variability) and (b) gender counterstereotypic stories were introduced (environmental variability). Variability of gender-typed play within individuals and in response to environmental stimuli was found among girls, but not among boys.     

The Determinants of Subjective Economic Well-being: An Analysis on Italian-Silc Data

Using Italian data on Income and living conditions for the year 2005, the paper investigates the main determinants of households’ subjective economic well-being by means of a Partial Proportional Ordered Logit Model. According to a joint subjective and objective perspective of analysis, we use as dependent variable the perceived ability of households to make ends meet. Whereas, we use as explanatory variables some objective aspects of living conditions relating to housing, financial equilibrium, possession of durables and quality of residence place and some socio-demographic characteristics. The empirical results show that the financial strain is the most relevant dimension of living conditions influencing the subjective economic well-being, but its effect is attenuated depending on the level of education and the tenure status of accommodation. Actually, when the highest levels of education are coupled with the status of self-employee and house-owner households have more chances to reach a higher probability to be economically satisfied. The insights coming out from the results may call for different policy measures depending on the degree of well-being and the characteristics of households. In particular, more efficient policies would be oriented to sustain the households’ income, to encourage to buy a house and to allow young people to get the highest levels of education.     

Contrasting rule-based and similarity-based category learning: The effects of mood and prior knowledge on ambiguous categorization

This study adopts a dual-system view of category learning. The findings suggest that consumers who learn a dominant feature as a verbal rule for a product category will classify a new ambiguous product according to that feature even if it more closely resembles a different product category. The findings also demonstrate that dominant features can bias categorization toward a less prototypical category in the event that the new product breaks the rule. We refer to this phenomenon as criterial inferencing. Lastly, we offer unique empirical evidence to suggest that mood influences category learning and thus attenuates the criterial inferencing bias.     

Changes in search rate but not in the dynamics of exogenous attention in action videogame players

Many previous studies have shown that the speed of processing in attentionally demanding tasks seems enhanced following habitual action videogame play. However, using one of the diagnostic tasks for efficiency of attentional processing, a visual search task, Castel and collaborators (Castel, Pratt, & Drummond, Acta Psychologica 119:217-230, 2005) reported no difference in visual search rates, instead proposing that action gaming may change response execution time rather than the efficiency of visual selective attention per se. Here we used two hard visual search tasks, one measuring reaction time and the other accuracy, to test whether visual search rate may be changed by action videogame play. We found greater search rates in the gamer group than in the nongamer controls, consistent with increased efficiency in visual selective attention. We then asked how general the change in attentional throughput noted so far in gamers might be by testing whether exogenous attentional cues would lead to a disproportional enhancement in throughput in gamers as compared to nongamers. Interestingly, exogenous cues were found to enhance throughput equivalently between gamers and nongamers, suggesting that not all mechanisms known to enhance throughput are similarly enhanced in action videogamers.     

Mechanisms of what-where-when memory in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus): do chickadees remember "when"?

Integrated what-where-when memory, sometimes called 'episodic-like' memory, has been shown to occur in a number of animals, including food-storing birds and rodents. It is not always clear in these studies, however, what aspect of "when" is remembered. We examined memory for what, where, and when in black-capped chickadees Poecile atricapillus in a procedure designed to dissociate memory for elapsed time (how long ago) from memory for a point in time, the sense of "when" implied in most discussions of episodic or episodic-like memory. Chickadees searched for food in multiple trials that each involved a two-phase procedure. In Phase 1, birds found preferred mealworms in half the sites on one side of an aviary and less preferred sunflower seeds in half the sites on the other side of the aviary. In Phase 2, following a retention interval, birds searched in the aviary with fresh sunflower seeds placed in the sites that held seeds in Phase 1 but either fresh or degraded mealworms in the sites that held mealworms in Phase 1. Whether a site held fresh or degraded worms depended on either when during the day Phase 1 had occurred (Group When), how long ago Phase 1 had occurred (Group HLA), or both (Group When + HLA). Chickadees in all three groups were able to discriminate where and when palatable worms were to be found, but there were temporal limitations on the use of HLA and When + HLA cues that were not found for the use of When cues.