The changing nature of the parent-adolescent relationship from early to late adolescence

This research analyzes changes in the parent-child relationship that help clarify the balance between individuation and cohesiveness over the period from age 11 to 17. Data were collected from mothers, fathers, and oldest children in 110 families whose oldest child was 11, 14 or 17. Three methods were involved: a survey of attitudes about family decision making, independence, love, understanding, and satisfaction with parenting; Loevinger's measure of ego level for parents and children; and an open-ended assessment of qualities family members admired in one another. The results provide insight into expectations and processes involved in revising the quality of parent-child relationships during early adolescence.     

Effects of punishment on response latency in extraverts

Previous findings indicate that in comparison to introverts, extraverts are prone to form responses that are resistant to interruption by punishment. Because the tendency to stop and reflect following punishment may be crucial for subsequent learning, the present study was designed to examine differences between introverts' and extraverts' reactions to punishment using response latency on the trial following punishment as the dependent variable. Sixty-six extraverted and 66 introverted male undergraduates performed a pattern-matching task in which they received noncontingent 50% success and 50% failure feedback under three incentive conditions including reward only, punishment only, or both. As predicted, a significant interaction was found in the both condition, reflecting the tendency of extraverts to respond more quickly and introverts more slowly following punishment feedback than following reward feedback. No significant effects were found in the other two conditions; however, a tendency was noted for extraverts to respond more quickly overall when only reward was given. A second experiment using reward-only and punishment-only feedback replicated this finding and yielded a significant interaction of Group X Condition. The results indicate that in contrast to introverts, extraverts are activated by the availability of reward and, paradoxically, that punishment may facilitate rather than interrupt extraverts' reward seeking behavior.     

Reaction to punishment, reflectivity, and passive avoidance learning in extraverts

Passive avoidance learning occupies a central role in accounts of disinhibited behavior, ranging from psychopaths' persistent criminality (Hare 1970) to extraverts' gregariousness (Gray, 1972). To explore the mechanism underlying passive avoidance deficits, we assessed the relation of extraversion, neuroticism, and response latency after punishment to passive avoidance learning by using two successive go/no go discrimination tasks. The tasks were designed to examine two aspects of subjects' reactions to punishment: response speed on trials immediately following punishment (Experiment 1) and time to terminate punishment feedback between successive trials (i.e., reflectivity; Experiment 2). Consistent with previous findings, the results of Experiment 1 showed that extraverts commit more passive avoidance errors than introverts do (Newman, Widom, & Nathan, 1985) and fail to pause following punished errors (Nichols & Newman, 1986). In Experiment 2, only neurotic extraverts displayed this pattern of performance differences. In both experiments, longer pausing following punishment predicted better learning from punishment for both introverts and extraverts. These results suggest that, in the presence of salient cues for reward, extraverts' characteristic reaction to punishment interferes with processing punished errors and may contribute to their more general propensity for impulsive, nonreflective action.     

Children's numerical skill and judgments of confidence in estimation

This study investigated how children's fluent use of a basic numerical skill is related to their perceptions of confidence on a task of quantitative estimation. One hundred four 10th graders (age 15.7 years) were categorized according to level of numerical fluency as assessed by timed tasks of counting in various nonunity increments. They then made estimates of large numbers of dots and rated how confident they were on each trial. The estimation task varied according to two within-subject factors of task difficulty. It was found that counting skill was related not only to accuracy in estimating, but also to the appropriateness of the children's confidence in their responses. Skillful children made judgments that corresponded with actual task difficulty. A derived calibration score corroborated ANOVA findings of the interaction of skill level and task difficulty on confidence ratings. It also revealed that while girls were less confident than boys, they were actually more realistic in their judgments. Findings are discussed in terms of (a) the effect of stimulus knowledge on awareness of task difficulty and (b) sex differences in achievement-related expectancies.