How Generalizable Are Adolescents' Beliefs About Pro-Drug Pressures and Resistance Self-Efficacy?1

Based on three waves of data from 1261 adolescents, this study examines the nature of resistance self-efficacy vis-a-vis different drugs and social situations, as well as its relationship to perceived pressure to use drugs. We found that both self-efficacy and perceived pressure to use drugs appear to be generalizable across substances (alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana), but adolescents do tend to distinguish between their capacity to resist drugs in different social situations. Adolescents also discriminate between how much pressure they feel and their ability to resist that pressure, but the great majority report lower levels of self-efficacy in higher pressure situations. This relationship is strongest for alcohol and weakest for marijuana. These results suggest the following implications for prevention programs: (a) adolescents can be taught to resist one or more of the commonly used drugs with a reasonable expectation that the skills will generalize to other drugs; (b) resistance self-efficacy learned in one situation can be expected to have some generalizability to other situations, but it may be important to link resistance training with a range of situations to insure the greatest effectiveness; (c) to be maximally effective, prevention programs may need to help adolescents reduce the amount of pressure experienced as well as develop resistance skills; such efforts are likely to be particularly important for situations involving alcohol.     

The effect of a supervisory development program on leadership style

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a supervisory development program on leadership style, conceptualized as the amount of consideration and structure demonstrated by supervisors. One hundred male supervisors of a government railways department were randomly selected and then assigned randomly to either receive training (n=50) or not to be trained (n=50). The program was a 22-week residential course, training participants in human relations and structuring skills. Measures of the supervisors' consideration and structure were obtained from 100 male subordinates of the supervisors 4 weeks prior to, and 2 months after, training. At pre- and post-test, supervisors in the experimental and control groups rated the amount of consideration and structure they felt they should use. Analysis of variance with significant interaction effects revealed that the training program enhanced self and subordinate-rated consideration and structure.     

Sex differences in attraction to infants: When do they occur?

Harlow (1971) observed that all-female college audiences responded to a pictured infant rhesus monkey with an “ecstasy response,” while males were “completely unresponsive,” and females in coeducational audiences “inhibited the ecstasy response,” explaining these differences in terms of innate sex differences. The present study compared college students' self-reported attraction to pictures of 15 infant and adult nonhuman primates under several conditions. Infant pictures were of two types: infants which were engaged in typical infant behaviors (Infant Behavior), and those which were not (Infant). Subjects made judgments in same- or mixed-sex groups and reported degree of attraction publicly or privately. Ratio scores were used to represent each subject's attraction to infant or infant-behavior pictures compared with his or her attraction to pictures of adults. There were no significant sex differences in attraction to infant or infant-behavior pictures, and sex did not interact with any other variable. However, situational variables significantly affected the response. Males as well as females reported greater attraction to infant and infant-behavior pictures when they viewed the pictures in same-sex compared with mixed-sex groups. Both sexes reported greater attraction to infant and infant-behavior pictures privately than publicly.     

Emotional arousal and persuasion effects in flooding

The effects of a single session of imaginal flooding were studied in female students unable to touch a harmless spider. All combinations of continuous vs. discontinuous presentation and highly arousing vs. less arousing material were used in a factorial design, to test the hypothesis that highly arousing material is beneficial only when presented under massed conditions. Results were clearly against prediction and suggested that immediate attitude change was maximal following less arousing material, irrespective of method of presentation; while behaviour change was greatest when less arousing material was presented continuously.

In a second experiment, subjects were exposed to both types of theme material in either a low-high or a high-low order. Some evidence was found for the postulated attitude changes and contrast effects, which favoured the use of a high-low order. Possible explanations for earlier contradictory evidence, and implications for clinical treatment are discussed.     

Effects of musically evoked affect on women's interpersonal attraction toward and perceptual judgments of physical attractiveness of men

In a between-subjects design, female subjects evaluated photographs of attractive and unattractive stimulus males while listening to positive affect-evoking rock music, negative affect-evoking avant-garde music, or no music at all. Consistent with previous research, subjects evaluated attractive stimulus males more positively than unattractive males on a variety of interpersonal judgment dimensions. Furthermore, subjects responded with more positive evaluations of personal character of, and attraction toward, stimulus persons in the rock music as compared to the avant-garde music condition. Finally, assessments of physical attractiveness were influenced by the music conditions, with stimulus persons judged of greater physical attractiveness in the rock as compared with the avant-garde music condition. The results are discussed in terms of extending the Byrne-Clore reinforcement-affect model of interpersonal attraction.     

Information available In brief tactile presentations

Two experiments investigated characteristics of Immediate recall for brief tactile stimuli applied to the 24 interjoint regions of the fingers of both hands (thumbs excluded) The obtained Immediate-memory span varied from 35 to 7,5 stimulus positions correct after correction for guessing, similar to the results In analogous visual studies, Properties of any hypothetical tactile short-term memory were studied by requiring subjects to report only a specified portion of the stimuli presented, and by varying the time of occurrence of the marker specifying which portion of the stimuli to report, In this partial-report condition, subjects had more stimulus information available at the time of reporting than their immediate memory spans indicated, provided that the stimulus marker occurred within 0.8 sec after stimulus termination, The data suggest that at least for the amount of training employed here, any tactile short-term memory has much less capacity than an analogous visual short-term memory.     

Predictors of physical aggression in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

The present investigation examined factors that predict physical aggression in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Stepwise, multiple regression-analyses were used to examine predictors of children's physical aggression as rated by parents at a 1-year follow-up point and by teachers at both 1- and 2-year follow-up points. Early parent and teacher ratings of verbal aggression (ie, cursing, teasing, and threatening) accounted for the greatest proportion of the variance in physical aggression ratings obtained at follow-up. None of the other predictor variables, including early ratings of physical aggression and ADHD behaviors, contributed significant additional variance beyond that accounted for by early verbal aggression ratings. Temporal and cross-informant analyses revealed that the relationship between verbal aggression and later physical aggression was situation-specific for teacher ratings but not parent ratings. Although physical aggression may emerge early in development, these data suggest that verbal aggression represents a stable, temperamental characteristic that may be of greater value than early physical aggression for predicting later physically aggressive acts.     

Longitudinal assessment of leg motor activity and sleep patterns in infants with and without Down syndrome

Whether infants with Down syndrome (DS) perform leg movements with the same frequency and quality as their typical development (TD) counterparts is equivocal. Furthermore, the relationship between these early leg movements and later onset of locomotor milestones has only been partially explored. The aims of this study were two-fold: (1) to describe the longitudinal leg activity in infants with and without DS (3-6 months), and (2) to examine sleeping patterns and leg activity during the night. In addition, the relationships between leg activities and sleep patterns with locomotor development were explored. An activity monitor was placed monthly on the infant's ankle for 48 h. Data were analyzed to separate day-night, high-low activity, and sleep fragmentation. The results indicate that infants with DS produced more low intensity activity and more fragmented sleep. These findings are discussed in relation to the influence of early motor activity on achievement of functional motor behavior.     

Is obsessive-compulsive disorder a disturbance of security motivation? Comment on Szechtman and Woody (2004)

H. Szechtman and E. Woody (2004) proposed that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is caused by a malfunctioning brain security motivation system. In the current article, the authors' review of the model suggests that it is limited in the following ways: (a) It is built on a selective review of the empirical literature, (b) it offers no explanation for many important OCD phenomena, (c) it fails to distinguish OCD from generalized anxiety disorder, (d) some of the model's predictions are ambiguous or unfalsifiable, and (e) other predictions are refuted by previously published research. Models proposing that OCD is caused by a single dysfunctional mechanism, such as the security motivation model, have difficulty explaining the complexity and heterogeneity of OCD.