Evaluation of Two New Scales Assessing Driving Anger: The Driving Anger Expression Inventory and the Driver's Angry Thoughts Questionnaire

This study assessed the validity of the Driving Anger Expression Inventory (DAX) and Driver's Angry Thoughts Questionnaire (DATQ). Scales within the DAX and DATQ appeared to assess separate, correlated constructs. Aggressive forms of thinking and anger expression correlated positively with each other, trait driving anger, aggressive and risky behavior, some crash-related conditions, general trait anger, and general forms of anger expression. Positive, constructive forms of thinking and anger expression correlated positively with each other, but minimally or negatively with other variables. Specific aggressive forms of thinking and anger expression formed stronger links with each other than other forms of expression, supporting the discriminant validity of the DATQ and DAX. Hierarchical regressions with DATQ and DAX scales entered after other variables showed that they added explained variance above and beyond other measures, supporting the discriminant and incremental validity of these scales. It was concluded that the DAX and DATQ have utility for researchers and clinicians interested in angry drivers.     

Failure to find a syllabic effect in number naming

Experiment I replicated the number-naming studies of Eriksen, Pollack, and Montague (1970) and Klapp (1971) but failed to find consistent evidence of a syllabic effect in naming latencies. Experiment II employed a different set of numbers to investigate sources of confounding in the original stimuli. Again, no syllabic effect was obtained. Both studies provided some evidence that the decades are processed faster.     

The source of adult age differences in event-based prospective memory: a multinomial modeling approach

Event-based prospective memory involves remembering to perform an action in response to a particular future event. Normal younger and older adults performed event-based prospective memory tasks in 2 experiments. The authors applied a formal multinomial processing tree model of prospective memory (Smith & Bayen, 2004) to disentangle age differences in the prospective component (remembering that you have to do something) and the retrospective component (remembering when to perform the action) of prospective memory performance. The modeling results, as well as more traditional analyses, indicate age differences in the resource-demanding prospective component.     

Combining Employment and Breastfeeding: Utilizing a Work-Family Conflict Framework to Understand Obstacles and Solutions

Although authorities advocate breastfeeding as the ideal form of infant nutrition, breastfeeding rates remain low among employed mothers in the United States. Utilizing a work-family conflict framework, specific time-based, strain-based, and behavior-based conflicts that can occur for women combining breastfeeding and employment are explored. Research indicates that these conflicts often lead to decreased breastfeeding durations, which result in costs for employers, mothers, and infants. The review links workplace interventions (e.g. prenatal education, lactation programs, support systems, job flexibility, and child care) to the types of conflict (e.g. time, behavior, and strain-based) that each intervention can reduce. A previous version of this paper was presented in March of 2003 at the American Psychological Association’s Work, Stress, and Health Conference in Toronto, Canada.     

Low-income mothers' patterns of partnership instability and adolescents' socioemotional well-being

The present study investigated the association of family structure and maternal partnership instability patterns with adolescents' behavioral and emotional well-being among urban low-income families. Analyses employed data from the Three-City Study to track maternal partnerships over the youth's life span, linking longitudinal family structure and transition patterns to adolescent well-being (N = 2305). Families were classified into nine mutually exclusive longitudinal partnership groups based on current status at wave 3 (single, married, or cohabiting) and the longevity of that status: always (since adolescent's birth with no transitions), stable (lasting two years or more, preceded by transitions), or new (transpiring in the past 2 years). Adolescents in the always married group displayed less delinquency and externalizing problems, according to both youth and mother reports, than peers in always single-parent or newly married households. In contrast, youth in always cohabiting households had higher maternal ratings of internalizing problems and youth with newly cohabiting mothers reported higher psychological distress than peers in similar stability groups with single or married mothers. Overall, several potential explanatory processes for the family structure and stability patterns surfaced: married parent families reported less economic hardship, more family routines and father involvement, and less maternal psychological distress and parenting stress than their single and cohabiting counterparts. Policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

Correspondence in parents' and children's concepts of god: Investigating the role of parental values,religious practices and executive functioning

This study examined the extent to which children's concepts of God correspond with their parents' concepts of God. It also examined how parent-context factors and children's executive functioning relate to parent–child conceptual similarity. Parent–child dyads from varied religious and racial backgrounds participated. Dyads had the greatest conceptual similarity concerning God's mind-dependent functions. Though correspondence between parents and children was lowest concerning God's body-dependent functions, dyads were more similar about those functions when parents engaged in more frequent religious practices with their child and thought God was important. Children's concepts of God were unrelated to religious practices, and parent–child conceptual similarity was unrelated to children's age and executive functioning. Simply put, variation among parents' anthropomorphic concepts of God drove variation in parent–child conceptual similarity. Overall, these findings suggest that embodied concepts of God may be most sensitive to cultural input and that socialization practices provide greater insight into parents' anthropomorphic concepts.     

Learning From Fantasy and Real Characters in Preschool and Kindergarten

In three experiments, 3½- to 6-year-old children were presented with analogical problems in which the protagonists were either real people or fantasy characters. Children were more likely to transfer solutions from the stories about real people rather than the stories about fantasy characters. These results suggest that the use of a fantasy character might not be an effective strategy for teaching children information that is meant to be applied to the real world.     

Adult age differences in interference from a prospective-memory task: a diffusion model analysis

People often slow down their ongoing activities when they must remember an intended action, known as the cost or interference effect of prospective memory (PM). Only a few studies have examined adult age differences in PM interference, and the specific reasons underlying such differences are not well understood. The authors used a model-based approach to reveal processes underlying PM interference and age differences in these processes. Older and younger adults first performed a block of an ongoing lexical decision task alone. An embedded event-based PM task was added in a second block. Simultaneously accounting for the changes in response time distributions and error rates induced by the PM task, Ratcliff’s (Psychological Review 85:59–108, 1978) diffusion model was used to decompose the nonlinear combination of speed and accuracy into psychologically meaningful components. Remembering an intention not only reduced processing efficiency in both age groups, but also prolonged peripheral nondecision times and induced response cautiousness. Overall, the findings suggest that there are multiple, but qualitatively similar factors underlying PM task interference in both age groups.     

On being happy and gullible: Mood effects on skepticism and the detection of deception

Are we more likely to believe or disbelieve another person depending on our mood state? Based on past research on interpersonal communication and recent work on affect and social cognition, we predicted and found that negative mood increased and positive mood decreased people’s skepticism and their ability to detect deception, consistent with the more externally focused, accommodative processing style promoted by negative affect. After a mood induction using positive, neutral or negative films, participants viewed deceptive or truthful interviews with individuals who denied committing a theft. Judgments of the targets’ guilt and their truthfulness were collected. As predicted, negative mood increased judges’ skepticism towards the targets, and improved their accuracy in detecting deceptive communications, while judges in a positive mood were more trusting and gullible. The relevance of these findings for everyday judgments of trust and the detection of deception are considered, and their implications for recent affect-cognition theories are discussed.     

Attention set for number: expectation and perceptual load in inattentional blindness

Inattentional blindness is the failure to detect unexpected events when attention is otherwise engaged. Previous research indicates that inattentional blindness increases as perceptual demands intensify. The authors present 6 cuing experiments that manipulated both the perceptual demands of a primary letter-naming task and the expectations of the individual. Inattentional blindness was greatest for individuals who held a numerical expectation that was consistent with the number of primary-task items presented. Expectation also affected detection differentially at various levels of perceptual load: Detection at moderate and high perceptual load was significantly affected by expectation, whereas detection at low perceptual load was not. The authors suggest that at moderate to high levels of perceptual load, individuals whose numerical expectations are fulfilled terminate processing when the primary task is complete, at the expense of the unexpected visual event. These experiments provide compelling evidence that expectations do affect detection of an unexpected stimulus, and they are the first to demonstrate that individuals set their attention for the number of items to be detected and are vulnerable to inattentional blindness whenever their primary-task numerical expectation is fulfilled.