The Dimensionality of Type A Behavior within a Stressful Work Simulation

The present study was conducted to examine the dimensionality of overt Type A behaviors elicited in a simulated stressful work environment. University students played a managerial role while being subjected to time and work-load pressures, and completed the Survey of Work Styles (SWS; Jackson & Gray, 1989). Eighteen behaviors, coded by two raters based on audiovisual recordings, yielded relatively high interrater reliabilities. Principal components analysis revealed four primary factors: Hurriedness, Irritability, Tension of the Lower Extremities, and Restlessness. These factors contribute to an understanding of Type A behavior in that they are the first to be derived from a purely observational approach rather than a combination of observational and self-report methods. Consistent with previous research, differential correlations between the factors and the SWS subscales supported a multi-dimensional interpretation of the Type A behavior pattern. Present findings are compared to those of previous studies of Type A dimensionality.     

The predictive validity of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth in secondary educational settings

Current developments in violence risk assessment warrant consideration for use within educational settings. Using a structured professional judgment (SPJ) model, the present study investigated the predictive validity of the Structured Assessment of Violence in Youth (SAVRY) within educational settings. The predictive accuracy of the SAVRY scales was assessed using a retrospective file review to gather data on 87 adolescents ranging in age from 12 to 18 years. Receiver-operating characteristic analyses were used to gauge the predictive accuracy. With an area under the curve of .72 (p = .001), the accuracy of the SAVRY total score in correctly identifying violent youth exceeds the accuracy of identifications based on chance predictions in this sample. Logistic regression analyses assessed the relative contribution of the SAVRY subscales, whereas the omnibus equation using all subscale scores correctly classified 82% of those adolescents who were nonviolent and 45% of those adolescents who were violent. These results build on previous research and provide support for the use of the SAVRY in educational settings for identification as well as directing intervention efforts. Practical implications and areas for future research are also discussed.     

Meritocracy and opposition to affirmative action: making concessions in the face of discrimination

Typically, people who strongly endorse the merit principle and believe that outcomes should be given to those most deserving oppose affirmative action (AA) programs that violate this principle. However, how do they respond to AA when faced with a great deal of workplace discrimination? The authors hypothesized that people who care strongly about merit should be motivated to combat discrimination because it biases the assessment of merit. Consequently, these individuals should make concessions for AA. The authors found support for their hypothesis when investigating (a) participants' preexisting perceptions of workplace discrimination and (b) experimentally induced perceptions of discrimination. They discuss the implications of these results for the psychology of meritocracy and for resistance to AA.     

Authoritarian dynamics and unethical decision making: high social dominance orientation leaders and high right-wing authoritarianism followers

When dilemmas require trade-offs between profits and ethics, do leaders high in social dominance orientation (SDO) and followers high in right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) make decisions that are more unethical than those made by others? This issue was explored in 4 studies with female participants performing managerial role-playing tasks. First, dyads comprising a person who was either low or high in SDO and a person who was either low or high in RWA negotiated for a leadership position. People high in SDO were more likely to obtain leader positions than to obtain follower positions. No other effects were significant. Second, leaders high in SDO partnered with an agreeable (confederate) follower made decisions that were more unethical than those of leaders low in SDO. Third, followers high in RWA were more acquiescent to and supportive of an unethical (confederate) leader than were followers low in RWA. Fourth, high SDO leader-high RWA follower dyads made decisions that were more unethical than those made in role-reversed dyads because leaders had more influence. Implications of these results for conceptualizing SDO, RWA, and authoritarian dynamics are discussed.     

Posttraumatic Growth in Individuals With Chronic Illness: The Role of Social Support and Meaning Making

This study aimed to assess the predictive nature of social support, meaning making (presence of meaning and search for meaning), and demographic factors on perceived posttraumatic growth (PTG) in a sample of adults living with chronic illness (N = 110). Regression analyses indicated that presence of meaning and gender served as the strongest predictors, together accounting for 22% of the variance in PTG. Presence of meaning also moderated the relationship between social support and PTG, supporting the unique contribution of meaning making on PTG.     

Trajectories of scholastic well-being: The effect of achievement emotions and instructional quality in the first year of secondary school (fifth grade)

Social Psychology of Education - Due to their connections with positive educational outcomes, the maintenance of good health and scholastic well-being are highly relevant topics. However, to date,...     

Exploring the Relations between Cattell–Horn–Carroll (CHC) Cognitive Abilities and Mathematics Achievement

As standardized measures of cognitive abilities and academic achievement continue to evolve, so do the relations between the constructs represented in these measures. A large, nationally representative sample of school‐aged children and youth between 6 and 19 years of age (N = 4,194) was used to systematically evaluate the relations between cognitive abilities and components of academic achievement in mathematics. The cognitive abilities of interest were those identified from the Cattell–Horn–Carroll model of intelligence. Specific areas of mathematics achievement included math calculation skills and math problem solving. Results suggest that fluid reasoning (Gf), comprehension‐knowledge (Gc), and processing speed (Gs) have the strongest and most consistent relations with mathematics achievement throughout the school years.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Pilot Study of Fragile X Syndrome Screening in Pregnant Women and Women Planning Pregnancy: Implementation,Acceptance, Awareness,and Geographic Factors

We report herein results of a study performed in the Balearic Islands which had the following goals: 1) Determine the proportion of pregnant or non-pregnant women planning pregnancy, who would choose to undergo a screening test for Fragile X Syndrome (FXS), if it is accompanied by the appropriate information; 2) Assess satisfaction and any increase in stress among women who participate in screening; 3) Collect epidemiological information about the incidence of the disease in our population; and 4) Collect demographic and health history data and assess participants’ awareness of the disease. Screening was performed on 3,731 pregnant and non-pregnant women of childbearing age and the results indicate: a very high voluntary rate of participation; a high level of self-reported satisfaction and low levels of stress because of the test; a very high incidence of premutation (1/106) in our population; and a low level of awareness about the existence of FXS (25 %). Additional findings indicate no significant correlation between self-reported health history and premutation detection, and the high premutation incidence does not seem to be specific to the indigenous Balearic population. Based on these results, we discuss the pros and cons of an implementation of preconception and pregnant women screening for FXS within a public health screening program.     

Recognition memory and the hippocampus: A test of the hippocampal contribution to recollection and familiarity

It has been suggested that the hippocampus selectively supports recollection and that adjacent cortex in the medial temporal lobe can support familiarity. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the hippocampus supports both recollection and familiarity. We tested these suggestions by assessing the performance of patients with hippocampal lesions on recognition memory tests that differ in the extent to which recollection and familiarity contribute to the recognition decision. When targets and foils are highly similar, prior evidence suggests that, on a forced-choice test in which targets are presented together with highly similar, corresponding foils (the FC-C format), performance is supported primarily by familiarity. By contrast, when targets are presented together with foils that are similar to other targets (the FC-NC format) or when memory is tested in a yes/no (Y/N) format, performance is based much more strongly on recollection. Accordingly, a finding that hippocampal damage impaired both Y/N recognition and FC-NC recognition but spared FC-C recognition would suggest that the hippocampus selectively supports recollection. We administered Y/N, FC-C, and FC-NC tests to five memory-impaired patients with circumscribed hippocampal lesions and 14 controls. The patients were impaired on all three types of recognition test, and there was no indication that the patients were disproportionately benefited or disproportionately impaired on any test. This pattern of performance suggests that the hippocampus supports both recollection and familiarity.The medial temporal lobe (the hippocampus plus the entorhinal, perirhinal, and parahippocampal cortices) is essential for the recognition of past experience. The capacity for recognition is widely thought to depend on two distinct processes, recollection and familiarity (Mandler 1980; Yonelinas et al. 2002; Wixted 2007). Recollection involves remembering specific details about the episode in which an item was encountered. Familiarity involves simply knowing that an item was presented, even when no additional information can be retrieved about the learning episode itself. This distinction has been prominent in recent discussions about memory, particularly in relation to its possible anatomical basis. One proposal is that recollection depends on the hippocampus and that familiarity depends on the adjacent medial temporal lobe cortex (Brown and Aggleton 2001; Mayes et al. 2002; Yonelinas et al. 2002). Alternatively, it has been suggested that the hippocampus is important for both recollection and familiarity and that the distinction between these two processes does not illuminate the functional differences between the hippocampus and adjacent cortex (Rutishauser et al. 2006; Wais et al. 2006; Squire et al. 2007; Wixted 2007).To clarify the role of the hippocampus in recognition memory, the performance of memory-impaired patients with hippocampal damage has often been compared to that of controls on tests that differ in the extent to which recollection and familiarity contribute to the recognition memory decision. One such approach involves the use of highly similar targets and foils tested using a yes/no (Y/N) format and a forced-choice corresponding (FC-C) format (Holdstock et al. 2002; Westerberg et al. 2006; Bayley et al. 2008). In the case of the Y/N format, participants see a list of targets intermixed with foils (each similar to one of the targets) and are asked to respond “yes” to the targets and “no” to the foils. In the FC-C format, participants see a target presented together with its corresponding, similar foil and are asked to identify the target. According to an idea advanced by Norman and O''Reilly (2003), familiarity can support FC-C recognition because one can make effective use of small but consistent differences between the familiarity signals triggered by the target and foil items. That is, when targets and foils are highly similar and are presented together in the FC-C format, familiarity for the target is likely to slightly and reliably exceed that of the similar foil, allowing the target to be correctly chosen on the basis of familiarity. By contrast, in the Y/N format, slight differences between the familiarity signals of target items and their corresponding foils no longer provide useful information, because the targets and their corresponding foils are not presented together at test. Accordingly, good performance with the Y/N format is more dependent on recollection than with the FC-C format.The same explanation may account for why performance on FC-C tests sometimes exceeds performance on forced-choice noncorresponding (FC-NC) tests (e.g., Hintzman 1988). In the FC-NC format, target items are presented together with a noncorresponding foil that is similar to another target item from the study list (Fig. 1). Thus, the FC-C and FC-NC tests differ only in that the similar targets and foils are presented together in the former but not in the latter. When the corresponding targets and foils are presented together (in the FC-C format), participants can make effective use of consistent differences in familiarity values (as discussed above). When the corresponding targets and foils are not presented together, participants cannot make use of the small differences that they might detect through a side-by-side comparison.Open in a separate windowFigure 1.Test format and materials for the three kinds of recognition test. For each test, 12 images, either objects (A) or silhouettes (B), were presented at study, and memory was tested in one of three ways. For the forced-choice corresponding test (FC-C), each target (a studied item) was presented together with a highly similar foil (a new item). For the forced-choice noncorresponding test (FC-NC), each target was presented together with a foil that was highly similar to a different target from the study list. Participants were asked to point to exactly the same image they had seen during study. For the yes/no test (Y/N), the 12 targets and the 12 foils (each similar to one of the targets) were intermixed and presented one at a time. Participants were asked to respond “yes” if they had seen exactly the same image before and “no” if they had not. Asterisks identify the target items.A recent study (Migo et al. 2009) provides empirical support for the suggestion that familiarity primarily contributes to the recognition decision in the FC-C format, whereas recollection contributes more strongly in the Y/N format and in the FC-NC format. In the Migo et al. (2009) study, healthy participants received FC-C, FC-NC, and Y/N tests after receiving either standard instructions to make their decisions based on familiarity or recollection or modified instructions to base their decisions on familiarity only. On the FC-NC test and on the Y/N test, performance using familiarity alone was significantly worse than under standard instructions. On the FC-C test, performance using familiarity alone was nearly as good as under standard instructions. This result supports the earlier suggestion that FC-C is primarily supported by familiarity, whereas recollection plays a larger role in FC-NC and Y/N recognition (Norman and O''Reilly 2003).If the hippocampus is critical for recollection but not for familiarity, and if good performance on the FC-C format can be achieved using familiarity alone, then patients with focal hippocampal lesions should be differentially impaired on the Y/N and FC-NC recognition test formats compared with the FC-C format. Three recent studies investigated this issue by assessing the effects of hippocampal damage (or presumed hippocampal damage) on Y/N and FC-C tests that used highly similar targets and foils (the FC-NC format was not used in these earlier studies). All three studies used black-and-white silhouette images of objects, and the FC-C test involved the target item and three similar foils (i.e., multiple-choice with four alternatives). In one study, a single patient with bilateral hippocampal damage (patient Y.R.) was impaired on the test of Y/N recognition but was unimpaired on the test of FC-C recognition (Holdstock et al. 2002). A similar result was reported in patients with a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (Westerberg et al. 2006). These findings have been taken to support the suggestion that the hippocampus selectively supports recollection. However, the study by Holdstock and colleagues (2002) involved a single patient (Y.R.), and findings from a single patient need not agree with findings obtained from a group of patients (see Discussion). In addition, the Westerberg et al. (2006) study involved individuals with a diagnosis of MCI for whom anatomical data were not available. It is therefore not clear what the status of the hippocampus was in these patients. Moreover, a standard Y/N procedure involving 12 study items and 24 test items (as opposed to the 12 study test items and 60 test items used in previous studies [Holdstock et al. 2002; Westerberg et al. 2006; Bayley et al. 2008]) might be better suited to address the question of whether Y/N recognition is selectively impaired in hippocampal patients. Bayley et al. (2008) tested five patients with circumscribed hippocampal damage using the same test materials and procedure as in Holdstock et al. (2002). When all 60 test items of the Y/N test were scored, the patients were found to be more impaired on the Y/N test than on the FC-C test. However, when only the first 24 test items of the Y/N test were scored (according to the standard Y/N procedure), the patients were found to be impaired on both the Y/N and FC-C tests to a similar degree.The earlier studies (Holdstock et al. 2002; Westerberg et al. 2006; Bayley et al. 2008) compared Y/N recognition to four-alternative FC-C recognition in which each target was presented along with three corresponding foils. None of the earlier studies investigated how patients with hippocampal lesions performed on FC-NC recognition. As Migo et al. (2009) point out, FC-C and FC-NC tests are better matched than the FC-C and Y/N tests because they are both forced-choice tests, and both use the same number of test trials. As such, they argue, it would be more useful to compare FC-C recognition performance to FC-NC recognition performance to determine whether patients with hippocampal lesions are intact or impaired on familiarity-based tests.The present study assessed Y/N, two-alternative FC-C, and two-alternative FC-NC recognition, using highly similar targets and foils. The tests were given to five patients with circumscribed hippocampal damage and 14 matched controls. The Y/N test involved an equal number of targets and foils (unlike the design used in the prior studies), and a two-alternative format was used for the forced-choice tests to make them comparable to the Y/N test (i.e., all three tests involved the same number of targets and foils). The FC-C and FC-NC tests were identical except with respect to how the targets and their corresponding foils were paired on the recognition test.To extend our findings beyond the stimuli used in prior studies, we also used color photographs of objects in addition to black-and-white silhouettes. Using these three test formats, we asked the following questions: (1) Does hippocampal damage impair Y/N recognition memory but spare, or disproportionately benefit, FC-C recognition (as suggested by the view that the hippocampus supports recollection and not familiarity)? Or does hippocampal damage impair Y/N and FC-C recognition similarly (as suggested by the view that the hippocampus supports both recollection and familiarity)? (2) Does hippocampal damage disproportionately benefit FC-C recognition relative to FC-NC recognition, or does hippocampal damage impair FC-C and FC-NC recognition similarly?