Teacher and parent perceptions of behavior problems among a sample of African American,Hispanic, and non-Hispanic white studients

A multiracial/multiethnic sample of middle school adolescents and their teachers was used to assess whether teacher ratings of student behavior problems varied according to teacher-student racial/ethnic differences and students' perception of teachers' attitudes toward them. No significant mean score differences were found for Hispanic or non-Hispanic white students according to the race/ethnicity of the teachers doing the ratings. However, African American students rated by Hispanic and non-Hispanic white teachers had significantly higher mean total behavior problem scores than African American students rated by African American teachers. Teacher ratings were also compared to those made by parents. The percentage of students rated as cases by teachers but not by parents differed significantly by race/ethnicity of student. Other findings indicated highly significant relationships between student-perceived teacher disparagement and the assignment of high behavior problem scores to students by teachers. This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, R01DA05912; William A. Vega, Principal Investigator. The authors express their appreciation to Superintendent Octavio Visiedo, Dr. James Mennes, Dr. Sylvia Rothfarb, and the cooperating staff and teachers of the Dade County Public Schools for their support in the conduct of this research.     

An empowerment model of memory training

The authors outline an empowerment model of memory rehabilitation. Unlike conventional cognitive rehabilitation methods, clients' plan and control the treatment process from the earliest stages of therapy. The client identifies functional goals and the therapy is geared to achieve those goals. The empowerment model also emphasizes domain-specific compensatory training. Memory strategies and prosthetic devices are chosen so as to maximize transfer of training in the workplace, training programme, or in the client's activities of daily living. Group therapy involves clients teaching their newly learned skills to other clients. The authors present research findings to document the efficacy of the empowerment model, describe its limitations, and discuss how the model can be implemented effectively.     

Self-focused attention and depression: Self-evaluation,affect, and life stress

Recent theory and research (Smith & Greenberg, 1981; Ingram & Smith, 1984) suggest an association between self-focused attention and depression. In an attempt to clarify the nature of this relationship, two studies were undertaken. Study I demonstrated that self-focused attention (i.e., private self-consciousness) was correlated with depression but was unrelated to test anxiety. Thus, self-focused attention was a correlate of depression but not emotional difficulty in general. Further, both depression and private self-consciousness were independently associated with a negative evaluation of the self. Self-focused attention was also found to be correlated with negative mood in individuals experiencing at least some symptoms of depression but not in nondepressed persons. Study II demonstrated that self-focused attention and stressful life events were independently associated with depression. Self-focused attention did not, however, moderate the relationship between stress and depression.     

Using Amazon's Mechanical Turk website to measure accuracy of body size estimation and body dissatisfaction

This study investigated Amazon.com's website Mechanical Turk (MTurk) as a research tool for measuring body size estimation and dissatisfaction. 160 U.S. participants completed the BIAS-BD figural drawing scale and demographic questions posted on the MTurk website. The BIAS-BD consists of 17 drawings of various male and female body sizes based on anthropometric data corresponding to a range of 60% below to 140% above the average U.S. adult. Respondents selected a drawing that best reflected their current size and ideal size. Results revealed that respondents overestimated their body size by 6% and desired an ideal size 9.2% smaller than their perceived size. Findings are compared with three previous studies using the BIAS-BD scale. A general correspondence in findings between the four studies was found. We conclude that the MTurk can serve as a viable method for collecting data on the perceptual and attitudinal aspects of body image quickly and inexpensively.     

Behavior Matching in Multimodal Communication Is Synchronized

A variety of theoretical frameworks predict the resemblance of behaviors between two people engaged in communication, in the form of coordination, mimicry, or alignment. However, little is known about the time course of the behavior matching, even though there is evidence that dyads synchronize oscillatory motions (e.g., postural sway). This study examined the temporal structure of nonoscillatory actions—language, facial, and gestural behaviors—produced during a route communication task. The focus was the temporal relationship between matching behaviors in the interlocutors (e.g., facial behavior in one interlocutor vs. the same facial behavior in the other interlocutor). Cross‐recurrence analysis revealed that within each category tested (language, facial, gestural), interlocutors synchronized matching behaviors, at temporal lags short enough to provide imitation of one interlocutor by the other, from one conversational turn to the next. Both social and cognitive variables predicted the degree of temporal organization. These findings suggest that the temporal structure of matching behaviors provides low‐level and low‐cost resources for human interaction.     

Disequilibrium in the mind, disharmony in the body

Although it is generally acknowledged that experiences of frustration, confusion, and anxiety are embodied phenomena, very little is known about how these processes modulate presumably unconscious, but constantly present, subtle bodily movement. We addressed this problem by tracking the low-level dynamics of body movement, using 1/f noise, pink noise, or "fractal scaling", during naturalistic experiences of affect in two studies involving deep learning and effortful problem-solving. Our results indicate that body movement fluctuations of individuals experiencing cognitive equilibrium was characteristic of correlated pink noise, but there was a whitening of the signal when participants experienced states that are diagnostic of cognitive distress such as anxiety, confusion, and frustration. We orient our findings within theories that emphasise the embodied nature of cognition and affect and with perspectives that view affective and cognitive processes as emergent products of a self-organising dynamical system (the brain) that is inextricably coupled to the body.     

Cheating more for less: Upward social comparisons motivate the poorly compensated to cheat

Intuitively, people should cheat more when cheating is more lucrative, but we find that the effect of performance-based pay-rates on dishonesty depends on how readily people can compare their pay-rate to that of others. In Experiment 1, participants were paid 5 cents or 25 cents per self-reported point in a trivia task, and half were aware that they could have received the alternative pay-rate. Lower pay-rates increased cheating when the prospect of a higher pay-rate was salient. Experiment 2 illustrates that this effect is driven by the ease with which poorly compensated participants can compare their pay to that of others who earn a higher pay-rate. Our results suggest that low pay-rates are, in and of themselves, unlikely to promote dishonesty. Instead, it is the salience of upward social comparisons that encourages the poorly compensated to cheat.     

The Role of Attributions and Fairness in Understanding Job Applicant Reactions to Selection Procedures and Decisions

Purpose

Drawing mainly upon Applicant Attribution-Reaction Theory (AART), we clarify and underscore the role of attribution dimensions (personal control, external control, and stability) in forming applicant fairness perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral reactions.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Students seeking (or about to seek) jobs (N = 264) participated in an experimental study in which procedural justice rules and outcome favorability (selected or rejected) were manipulated. Participants reported their attributions, fairness perceptions, and behavioral intentions. Hypotheses were tested through SEM and bootstrapping.

Findings

Applicant attributions were predicted by outcome favorability and the extent to which the interview process satisfied/violated procedural justice rules. In line with AART, process fairness perceptions mediated relationships between applicant attribution dimensions and both organizational perceptions and behavioral intentions.

Implications

Organizations should satisfy justice rules in employee selection processes because such rules affect applicant attributions, which in turn predict perceptions and behavioral intentions. In addition to identifying antecedents and consequences of fairness perceptions, antecedents and consequences of applicant attributions should be investigated, as both relate to important organizational outcomes.

Originality/Value

This study is one of a very few to test propositions from AART. Through an experimental design of high internal validity, we show that outcome favorability and the satisfaction/violation of justice rules predict job applicant attributions (personal control, external control, and stability). We further show that applicants’ attributions explain unique variance in their perceptions of the employing organization and in their behavioral intentions (e.g., recommend organization to others; litigate) beyond that explained by selection outcome and fairness perceptions.     

Reply to Rouder (2014): Good frequentist properties raise confidence

Established psychological results have been called into question by demonstrations that statistical significance is easy to achieve, even in the absence of an effect. One often-warned-against practice, choosing when to stop the experiment on the basis of the results, is guaranteed to produce significant results. In response to these demonstrations, Bayes factors have been proposed as an antidote to this practice, because they are invariant with respect to how an experiment was stopped. Should researchers only care about the resulting Bayes factor, without concern for how it was produced? Yu, Sprenger, Thomas, and Dougherty (2014) and Sanborn and Hills (2014) demonstrated that Bayes factors are sometimes strongly influenced by the stopping rules used. However, Rouder (2014) has provided a compelling demonstration that despite this influence, the evidence supplied by Bayes factors remains correct. Here we address why the ability to influence Bayes factors should still matter to researchers, despite the correctness of the evidence. We argue that good frequentist properties mean that results will more often agree with researchers’ statistical intuitions, and good frequentist properties control the number of studies that will later be refuted. Both help raise confidence in psychological results.