Factor structure and stability of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index in a longitudinal study of anxiety disorder patients

The past decade witnessed considerable debate over the factor structure of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI), with an eventual consensus emerging that supported a hierarchically organized factor structure. The present study attempted to replicate and examine the overall stability and utility of the hierarchical ASI factor pattern using a large sample of outpatients participating in an ongoing longitudinal study of anxiety disorders. Results supported a hierarchical factor structure for the ASI consisting of three lower-order factors measuring physical concerns, mental incapacitation concerns, and social concerns, all of which loaded significantly on a single second-order factor. Correlational analyses show good test-retest reliability and consistent patterns of intercorrelation for these factor-derived subscales across a 10-month time frame. Additional analyses provide support for the discriminant validity of the ASI subscales with regard to individuals with specific anxiety disorders. The theoretical implications of these findings for future evaluations of anxiety sensitivity are discussed.     

Meta-analysis of coefficient alpha

The meta-analysis of coefficient alpha across many studies is becoming more common in psychology by a methodology labeled reliability generalization. Existing reliability generalization studies have not used the sampling distribution of coefficient alpha for precision weighting and other common meta-analytic procedures. A framework is provided for a statistically grounded meta-analysis of coefficient alpha using its sampling distribution. Two empirical examples are offered to illustrate these methods, and limitations of reliability generalization are described.     

Everyday magical powers: the role of apparent mental causation in the overestimation of personal influence

These studies examined whether having thoughts related to an event before it occurs leads people to infer that they caused the event--even when such causation might otherwise seem magical. In Study 1, people perceived that they had harmed another person via a voodoo hex. These perceptions were more likely among those who had first been induced to harbor evil thoughts about their victim. In Study 2, spectators of a peer's basketball-shooting performance were more likely to perceive that they had influenced his success if they had first generated positive visualizations consistent with that success. Observers privy to those spectators' visualizations made similar attributions about the spectators' influence. Finally, additional studies suggested that these results occur even when the thought-about outcome is viewed as unwanted by the thinker and even in field settings where the relevant outcome is occurring as part of a live athletic competition.     

Delay of gratification: impulsive choices and problem behaviors in early and late adolescence

High school students were offered a monetary incentive for participating in research. They were given a choice between a smaller fee immediately or a larger fee one week later. Compared to students who delayed gratification, those who chose the immediate fee showed more self-regulatory deficits. They showed greater involvement with cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana, had a poorer self-concept and underperformed academically. A replication study with middle-school students and different reward parameters yielded equivalent results. Younger adolescents who chose the immediate monetary incentive showed a similar pattern of problem behaviors as the high school students. The findings indicate that this simple choice-delay procedure yields an unobtrusive behavioral measure of self-regulation and offers a developmentally appropriate extension of the delay-of-gratification paradigm for use with older children and adolescents.     

Single-trial learning of "what" and "who" information in a gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla): implications for episodic memory

Single-trial learning and long-term memory of "what" and "who" information were examined in an adult gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla). We presented the gorilla with a to-be-remembered food item at the time of study. In Experiment 1, following a retention interval of either approximately 7 min or 24 h, the gorilla responded with one of five cards, each corresponding to a particular food. The gorilla was accurate on 70% of the short retention-interval trials and on 82% of the long retention-interval trials. In Experiment 2, the food stimulus was provided by one of two experimenters, each of whom was represented by a card. The gorilla identified the food (55% of the time) and the experimenter (82% of the time) on the short retention-interval trials. On the long retention-interval trials, the gorilla was accurate for the food (73%) and for the person (87%). The results are interpreted in light of theories of episodic memory. Electronic Publication     

Development of the Multidimensional Acculturative Stress Inventory for adults of Mexican origin

The Multidimensional Acculturative Stress Inventory (MASI), a 36-item stress measure that was developed to assess acculturative stress among persons of Mexican origin living in the United States, was tested on a community sample of 174 adults (117 women, 57 men). Principal-components analyses yielded 4 stable and internally consistent factors: Spanish Competency Pressures (7 items), English Competency Pressures (7 items), Pressure to Acculturate (7 items), and Pressure Against Acculturation (4 items). These 4 factors accounted for 64.4% of the variance and correlated in the expected directions with criterion measures of acculturation and/or psychological adjustment. Further reliability and validity testing of the MASI is discussed as well as the utility of this measure in assessing acculturative stress among adults of Mexican origin.     

The role of strategic attention deployment in development of self-regulation: predicting preschoolers' delay of gratification from mother-toddler interactions

Toddlers' use of effective attention deployment strategies to cope with separation from the mother and with maternal behavior predicted the use of effective delay-of-gratification strategies at age 5, even though the contexts, measures, and manifest behaviors were different. Toddlers who used distraction strategies during a brief separation from the mother were able, at age 5, to delay immediate gratification longer for more valued rewards. Toddlers who explored at a distance from a controlling mother when she tried to engage the child also delayed longer and used more effective delay strategies at age 5, compared with toddlers who did not distance themselves. Toddlers whose mothers were not controlling showed the opposite pattern: Those who did not distance themselves from the mother's bids had longer preschool delay times and more effective strategies. Strategic attention deployment was shown to be an enduring self-regulatory skill visible in early development across domains, measures, and over time.     

On the Importance of Family,Morality, Masculine,and Feminine Honor for Theory and Research

This paper presents an approach to honor as multifaceted. In this approach, honor is defined as having four different facets, or honor codes: morality‐based honor, family honor, masculine honor, and feminine honor. The honor‐as‐multifaceted approach has generated much psychological research examining the importance of each honor code across different cultural and social groups. An overview of this research shows that that the different honor codes exert a powerful influence on a variety of group processes, including collective action, in‐group identification, the definition of gendered roles within the family, in‐group responses to threats to collective honor, intergroup attitudes, and value change within groups. The paper discusses how defining and measuring honor as multifaceted ‐rather than as an unitary construct‐ provides a fuller understanding of honor's role in group life.     

Sibling Teenage Pregnancy and Clinic-Referred Girls’ Condom Use: The Protective Role of Maternal Monitoring

Younger sisters of teenage parents have elevated rates of engaging in unprotected sex. This may result from changes in parenting behavior after a sibling becomes pregnant or impregnates a partner, and be particularly pronounced for girls seeking mental health treatment. The current study examines condom use over time in 211 African-American girls recruited from outpatient psychiatric clinics. Findings indicate that having a sibling with a teenage pregnancy history predicts less consistent condom use 2 years later. After accounting for earlier condom use and mental health problems, maternal monitoring moderates condom use such that for girls with a sibling with a pregnancy history, more vigilant maternal monitoring is associated with increased condom use, while for girls with no sibling pregnancy history, maternal monitoring is unrelated to adolescents’ condom use 2 years later. Findings suggest that targeted interventions to increase maternal monitoring of high-risk teens may be beneficial for girls with a sibling history of teenage pregnancy.     

Weekly Fluctuations in Nonjudging Predict Borderline Personality Disorder Feature Expression in Women

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) features have been linked to deficits in mindfulness, or nonjudgmental attention to present-moment stimuli. However, no previous work has examined the role of fluctuations in mindfulness over time in predicting BPD features. The present study examines the impact of both between-person differences and within-person changes in mindfulness. 40 women recruited to achieve a flat distribution of BPD features completed 4 weekly assessments of mindfulness (Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire; FFMQ) and BPD features. Multilevel models predicted each outcome from both 1) a person’s average levels of each facet and 2) weekly deviations from a person’s average for each facet. Average acting with awareness, nonjudging, and nonreactivity predicted lower BPD features at the between-person level, and weekly deviations above one’s average (i.e., higher-than-usual) nonjudging predicted lower BPD feature expression at the within-person level. Within-person fluctuations in the nonjudging facet of mindfulness may be relevant to the daily expression of BPD features over and above dispositional mindfulness.