Child Effortful Control as a Mediator of Parenting Practices on Externalizing Behavior: Evidence for a Sex-Differentiated Pathway across the Transition from Preschool to School

An explanatory model for children’s development of disruptive behavior across the transition from preschool to school was tested. It was hypothesized that child effortful control would mediate the effects of parenting on children’s externalizing behavior and that child sex would moderate these relations. Participants were 241 children (123 boys) and their parents and teachers. Three dimensions of parenting, warm responsiveness, induction, and corporal punishment, were assessed via maternal report when children were 3 years old. Child effortful control at age 3 was measured using laboratory tasks and a mother-report questionnaire. Mothers and teachers contributed ratings of child externalizing behavior at age 6. Results showed that the hypothesized model fit the data well and that the pattern of associations between constructs differed for boys and girls. For boys, parental warm responsiveness and corporal punishment had significant indirect effects on children’s externalizing behavior three years later, mediated by child effortful control. Such relations were not observed for girls. These findings support a sex-differentiated pathway to externalizing behavior across the transition from preschool to school.     

Age-independent effects of pubertal status on behavioral constraint in healthy adolescents

Studies have examined age-related changes in personality traits from adolescence through young adulthood, finding that aspects of negative emotionality decrease while conscientiousness increases over time. Varied mechanisms may underlie these transitions, including puberty-driven hormonal changes. Here, healthy adolescents completed the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire-Brief Form and self-report measures of pubertal status at baseline and after two years. Independent of age, pubertal status impacted primary trait scales of the MPQ-BF Constraint factor in a sex-specific manner. Females decreased in Constraint, and particularly Control, while males increased in Constraint, and particularly Harm Avoidance, with advancing puberty. Longitudinal analyses validated these findings for Control. Findings are discussed relative to males’ versus females’ achievement of optimal levels of behavioral control in adolescence.     

Generativity,the Big Five,and Psychosocial Adaptation in Midlife Adults

ABSTRACT The study examines the extent to which 2 sets of personality variables—(1) dispositional traits (and their facets) within the Big Five taxonomy and (2) the adult developmental construct of generativity—are associated with psychosocial adaptation in midlife adults (N=128), conceived as the combination of individual well‐being and positive societal involvements. Generativity is conceived as an adult's concern for and commitment to promoting the well‐being of future generations. Multiple regression analyses showed that dispositional traits were more strongly associated with individual well‐being than was generativity, but generativity was much more strongly associated with positive societal engagement than were the traits. Correlations between dispositional traits and generativity revealed that highly generative adults were elevated on most of the facets of Extraversion and Openness. For the other 3 traits, generativity was positively related to facets of competence, achievement striving, dutifulness, altruism, and trust and negatively related to vulnerability, anxiety, depressiveness, and modesty.     

Bridging professional and mutual-help: An application of the transtheoretical model to the mutual-help organization

The authors suggest that the mental health system of the nation could benefit by more fully embracing the idea of mutual-help (i.e., self-help), and this collaboration could be facilitated by the utilization of a well-established clinical theory to elucidate the psychological processes at work within mutual-help organizations. The processes of change of the transtheoretical model is offered as one potential framework. This well-established model has been used to help psychologists better understand clinical and professional phenemonena, but, to date, has been used less frequently with non-professional interventions. This article applies the ten processes of change of the transtheoretical model to mutual-help organizations, focusing on four groups, including Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Oxford House, GROW, and Schizophrenics Anonymous. The advantages of the transtheoretical model and its potential ability to act as a common language across clinical professionals and mutual-help organizations are discussed. In addition, advantages of bolstering the present mental health system using combinations of both forms of care along the recovery continuum are described.     

Improving oral reading fluency by influencing students' choice of instructional procedures: an experimental analysis with two students with behavioral disorders

Choice as an antecedent intervention has been shown to improve student behavior in a variety of ways. This investigation examined whether students could be influenced to choose whether and how to be instructed while directly measuring effects on academic performance. Using a multiple‐probe design, the reading fluency of two middle school students with Behavioral Disorders was measured repeatedly across passages. Students could earn a tangible reward for meeting a pre‐determined performance criterion in passage reading. Prior to reading the criterion passage, each student was told that he or she could choose to be instructed or not be instructed in a similar passage with high content overlap. Both students consistently chose to be instructed (as well as how they would be instructed) and stable increases in oral reading fluency were obtained. Results are discussed in terms of how motivational variables can be used to influence students' choice of instructional procedures in ways that increase their opportunities to respond and measured learning. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Work Values and Their Effect on Work Behavior and Work Outcomes in Female and Male Managers

A longitudinal sample of over 800 MBA graduates surveyed across a 16-year period was recruited to investigate the relationship of work values to work effort, salary levels, and other work outcomes. As predicted, certain work values were related to higher salary levels and to the number of hours worked. Changing companies more often and receiving more promotions were also significantly related to work values. Work values did not differ for women and men in the sample, except that women were higher in the value of wanting to do an excellent job. Controlling for work values did not explain significantly higher salaries for men as compared to women. Implications of these data are discussed.     

The contents of visual memory are only partly under volitional control

When we look around within a visual scene, is visual information automatically placed in visual memory during each saccade, or can we control which information is retained and which is excluded? We examined this question in five experiments by requiring participants to remember sequentially presented visual shapes or faces—some of which were marked for encoding (targets) and others that were supposed to be ignored (distractors)—over a 1-sec delay. The results show that distractors were retained in visual memory, regardless of stimulus category, suggesting that it is a general phenomenon. Whether or not participants were allowed to prepare for a target or distractor did not modulate distractor intrusion. When attention coupled with eye movements could be used to select targets, distractors were no longer encoded into memory. When eye movements were constrained, distractors once again intruded into memory. These findings suggest that top-down control processes are insufficient to filter the contents of visual memory.