The Relations of Dispositional Regulation and Emotionality to Elders' Empathy-Related Responding and Affect While Volunteering

Researchers recently have proposed that various empathy-related reactions are differentially related to individual differences in emotional intensity and regulation. This idea was tested with a sample of elderly hospital volunteers. As predicted, dispositional sympathy was associated with high levels of both dispositional regulation and negative emotional intensity. Personal distress was linked with low regulation and high negative emotional intensity, and cognitive perspective taking was associated with high regulation. Perspective taking moderated the relation of emotional intensity to sympathy and personal distress. In addition, elders' negative affect when volunteering at a hospital was correlated with low regulation and high personal distress. In contrast, positive affect was correlated with high levels of regulation and dispositional sympathy. The results demonstrate that findings pertaining to vicarious emotional responding are generalizable to nonstudent populations engaged in planned, sustained helping behavior.     

Click monitoring revisited: An on-line study of sentence comprehension

Spoken sentence comprehension is based upon rapid and complex psychological processes, yielding a constantly fluctuating cognitive load. The aim of this study was to evaluate on-line click monitoring, a classical but poorly exploited experimental method, which should allow for an easy measurement of processing load at any chosen point of experimental sentences. In Experiments 1 and 2, we obtained longer latencies to clicks located at the boundary of reversible object relative clauses than to clicks identically located in subject relatives and to clicks located earlier within object relatives. Experiment 3 further revealed that this effect of syntactic type was specific to transposed object relatives and did not occur with normal object relatives. In Experiment 4, we observed longer latencies with semantically reversible than with irreversible sentences, but no difference between actives and passives. These results were obtained under strict control of potential lexical and phonological biases, and suggest that on-line click monitoring may be one useful tool in the study of sentence comprehension.     

Holocaust and resistance

This article deals with the following themes: (1) Nazi malevolence in selecting Jewish holidays as dates for some of their most barbarous action; (2) U.S. official observance of the Holocaust; (3) the irresponsible use of the term Holocaust and its precise use; (4) because of extermination of two-thirds of the Jews of Europe, the world Jewish population in 1979 is still 4 million less than in 1933; (5) are we “all guilty?” (6) are we “all Survivors?” (7) were we “all at Auschwitz?” (8) demystification of the Holocaust as a comprehensible event in twentieth-century history; (9) why “never to forgive?” and (10) the quality and extent of resistance.     

Effects of optical pitch on oculomotor control and the perception of target elevation

In two experiments, we used an ISCAN infrared video system to examine the influence of a pitched visual array on gaze elevation and on judgments of visually perceived eye level. In Experiment 1, subjects attempted to direct their gaze to arelaxed or to ahorizontal orientation while they were seated in a room whose walls were pitched at various angles with respect to gravity. Gaze elevation was biased in the direction in which the room was pitched. In Experiment 2, subjects looked into a small box that was pitched at various angles while they attempted simply to direct their gaze alone, or to direct their gaze and place a visual target at their apparent horizon. Both gaze elevation and target settings varied systematically with the pitch orientation of the box. Our results suggest that under these conditions, an optostatic response, of which the subject is unaware, is responsible for the changes in both gaze elevation and judgments of target elevation.     

A model for assessing student interaction with educational software

We present a simple model of generative learning that permits us to define four kinds of interactions and a system for tracing and recording how students use educational technology. We believe that this model will maintain a link between interaction and learning, thus providing one method for the assessment of a wide range of educational technology environments. Two results are presented from an evaluation of ConStatS, a program for teaching conceptual understanding of probability and statistics. The results illustrate the kinds of insight into generative learning that a detailed trace method can provide.     

Children and adolescents discharged from public psychiatric hospital: Evaluation of outcome in a continuum of care

Ninety children and adolescents admitted to two state-operated psychiatric hospitals were followed from the time of their admission through one year post discharge. Data were collected from the children and adolescents, their families and clinicians at three intervals (during hospitalization, three months post discharge, and one year post discharge) to identify demographic, clinical, and service history characteristics of the children and adolescents, as well as to track their placement and other dispositional status following discharge from the hospital. The data indicated that the children and adolescents were seriously emotionally and behaviorally disturbed, came from families which were economically disadvantaged, and did not typically live in two-parent families. While the majority of the children and adolescents received recommended aftercare services during the three months following discharge from the hospital, there was a decline in placement stability for the children at the one-year post discharge followup. The most important predictors of successful outcome at discharge were living with a family member at the time of hospitalization and the participation of the family in the treatment planning during hospitalization.     

The impact of mode of presentation on gender differences in social perception

This research investigated the conditions under which males might perceive sexuality in females in heterosexual interactions (the Abbey effect). Caucasian male and female couples participated in a brief interaction in which they were rated by observers. Interactants also rated themselves as well as their partners. These live interactions were videotaped, audiotaped, and photographed, and subsequently rated by other observers (subjects). Subjects made ratings on a variety of dimensions, including adjectives relating to the sexuality of the interactants as well as the interactants' desire for future interaction with their partners. Results indicated that males attributed more sexuality and a higher desire for future interactions to females they observed or with whom they interacted than females did. Further, the tendency to attribute sexuality was affected by way in which stimuli were presented to the raters. Photos, which had the least amount of information relative to the other methods, produced the highest sexuality and future interaction ratings, suggesting that stereotyping might play a role. Implications of the results and future research are discussed.This research was based on a master's thesis conducted by the first author under the direction of the second author. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Anthony J. Conger in the design and analysis of this research.To whom reprint requests should be addressed at Purdue University, Department of Psychological Sciences, West Lafayette, IN 47907.