Assessing Psychometric Properties of the Sex-Role Egalitarianism Scale (SRES) with African Americans

The Sex-Role Egalitarianism Scale (SRES) is an instrument reported to be both reliable and valid. SRES was normed primarily on a Caucasian population, and there is little research on its psychometric properties with other ethnic groups. SRES' abbreviated version (BB) was administered to 148 African American men and women. There were no significant differences found between the norming sample and the study's sample. However, significant differences were found between African American men and women at the .01 level with African American women having a more egalitarian attitude. Further research should administer the SRES to a larger, more heterogenous African American sample to further support the psychometric findings of this study. The SRES should also be studied with other ethnic groups.     

Enhancing Children's Spatial and Numerical Skills through a Dynamic Spatial Approach to Early Geometry Instruction: Effects of a 32-Week Intervention

This study describes the implementation and effects of a 32-week teacher-led spatial reasoning intervention in K–2 classrooms. The intervention targeted spatial visualization skills as an integrated feature of regular mathematics instruction. Compared to an active control group, children in the spatial intervention demonstrated gains in spatial language, visual-spatial reasoning, 2D mental rotation, and symbolic number comparison. Overall, the findings highlight the potential significance of attending to and developing young children's spatial thinking as part of early mathematics instruction.     

Optimal testing time for suppression of competitors during interference resolution

Interference between competing memory traces is a common cause of memory failure. Recent research has demonstrated a suppression mechanism that operates at retrieval to resolve interference. Using an adaptation of the suppression paradigm in Healey, Ngo, and Hasher [(2014). Below-baseline suppression of competitors during interference resolution by younger but not older adults. Psychological Science, 25(1), 145–151. doi:10.1177/0956797613501169], we tested whether the ability to suppress competing memory traces varies with the synchrony between optimal arousal period and time of testing. We replicate the below-baseline suppression effect for young adults tested at optimal times of day, and present novel evidence that they do not show competitor suppression during non-optimal times of day. In fact, competitors are actually strengthened at non-optimal times. Our results suggest that the ability to resolve interference by suppression varies with circadian arousal.     

Family-Focused Treatment for Childhood Depression: Model and Case Illustrations

Although the evidence base for treatment of depressive disorders in adolescents has strengthened in recent years, less is known about the treatment of depression in middle to late childhood. A family-based treatment may be optimal in addressing the interpersonal problems and symptoms frequently evident among depressed children during this developmental phase, particularly given data indicating that attributes of the family environment predict recovery versus continuing depression among depressed children. Family-Focused Treatment for Childhood Depression (FFT-CD) is designed as a 15-session family treatment with both the youth and parents targeting two putative mechanisms involved in recovery: (a) enhancing family support, specifically decreasing criticism and increasing supportive interactions; and (b) strengthening specific cognitive-behavioral skills within a family context that have been central to CBT for depression, specifically behavioral activation, communication, and problem solving. This article describes in detail the FFT-CD protocol and illustrates its implementation with three depressed children and their families. Common themes/challenges in treatment included family stressors, comorbidity, parental mental health challenges, and inclusion/integration of siblings into sessions. These three children experienced positive changes from pre- to posttreatment on assessor-rated depressive symptoms, parent- and child-rated depressive symptoms, and parent-rated internalizing and externalizing symptoms. These changes were maintained at follow-up evaluations 4 and 9 months following treatment completion.     

Gaze characteristics of elite and near-elite athletes in ice hockey defensive tactics

Traditional visual search experiments, where the researcher pre-selects video-based scenes for the participant to respond to, shows that elite players make more efficient decisions than non-elites, but disagree on how they temporally regulate their gaze. Using the vision-in-action [J.N. Vickers, J. Exp. Psychol.: Human Percept. Perform. 22 (1996) 342] approach, we tested whether the significant gaze that differentiates elite and non-elite athletes occurred either: early in the task and was of more rapid duration [A.M. Williams et al., Res. Quart. Exer. Sport 65 (1994) 127; A.M. Williams and K. Davids, Res. Quart. Exer. Sport 69 (1998) 111], or late in the task and was of longer duration [W. Helsen, J.M. Pauwels, A cognitive approach to visual search in sport, in: D. Brogan, K. Carr (Eds.), Visual Search, vol. II, Taylor and Francis, London, 1992], or whether a more complex gaze control strategy was used that consisted of both early and rapid fixations followed by a late fixation of long duration prior to the final execution. We tested this using a live defensive zone task in ice hockey. Results indicated that athletes temporally regulated their gaze using two different gaze control strategies. First, fixation/tracking (F/T) gaze early in the trial were significantly shorter than the final F/T and confirmed that the elite group fixated the tactical locations more rapidly than the non-elite on successful plays. And secondly, the final F/T prior to critical movement initiation (i.e. F/T-1) was significantly longer for both groups, averaging 30% of the final part of the phase and occurred as the athletes isolated a single object or location to end the play. The results imply that expertise in defensive tactics is defined by a cascade of F/T, which began with the athletes fixating or tracking specific locations for short durations at the beginning of the play, and concluded with a final gaze of long duration to a relatively stable target at the end. The results are discussed within the context of gaze research in open and closed skills, as well as theoretical models of long-term memory and decision making in sport.     

Using our best judgment in conducting human research

The federal regulations of human research were written to permit the use of discretion so that research can fit the circumstances under which it is conducted. For example, the researcher and institutional review board (IRB) could waive or alter some informed consent elements if they deem this the morally and scientifically best way to conduct the research. To do so, however, researchers and IRBs would first have to use mature moral and scientific judgment. They might also have to rely on empirical research to discover the most effective way to act on their moral sense (e.g., to discover how best to approach potential research participants and explain the nature and purpose of the research participation for which they are being recruited, to ensure comprehension and competent decision making). On discovering the most ethical way to proceed, they would then need to look to the federal regulations of human research to discover how to document their decision and justify it within that somewhat flexible regulatory structure. Unfortunately, many IRBs and researchers fail to take these sensible steps to solve ethical problems and proceed immediately to a default requirement of the regulations that places science at odds with the regulations and, ostensibly, with ethics. The following articles in this special issue are about the process of learning to engage in ethical problem solving and using the flexibility permitted by the federal regulations. These articles extricate researchers from the mindset that has gotten them into trouble, and, ideally, provoke them to use mature common sense and moral judgment.     

Comparisons of power for some exact multinomial significance tests

Two small-sample tests (proposed by Tate and Clelland and by Chapanis respectively) of hypotheses about the parameters of the multinomial distribution, where

$$f(x|p) = n!\prod\limits_{i = 1}^k {\frac{{p_i^{x_i } }}{{x_i !}}} $$     

Work organization, economic inequality, and depression among nursing assistants: a multilevel modeling approach

To investigate the relationships among the nursing home work environment, emotional strain, and depression in Nursing Assistants in Ohio and West Virginia, this cross-sectional study was conducted with 395 Nurse Assistants in 49 nursing homes in Ohio and West Virginia. Organizational attributes were measured independently at the individual and organizational levels. Multilevel modeling techniques were used to analyze the data. Our methods examined nursing home organizational structure (ownership type, managerial style), and work organization (emotional strain) was examined in relation to the prevalence of depression among nursing assistants. Our findings suggest workplace emotional strain and age are associated with increased odds of depression. Implications of our work include that work in nursing homes for the environment it fosters has a strong effect on emotional strain and depression among Nursing Assistants.     

Relation of religiosity with academic dishonesty in a sample of college students

This study was conducted to estimate the relationship between academic dishonesty and religiosity in a convenient sample of college students. Scores on the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire and the Academic Practices Survey were correlated for 70 undergraduate students. Overall, religiosity and academic dishonesty were not significantly related. However, follow-up analyses by sex indicated that this association was significant for women but not men. Research should be conducted to investigate whether this pattern is robust and indicates a differing role for religiosity as a standard for appropriate or inappropriate behavior.