Why Do People Fail to Adopt Environmental Protective Behaviors? Toward a Taxonomy of Environmental Amotivation1

Individuals' reasons for their lack of motivation toward environmental protective behaviors were proposed: amotivation because of strategy, capacity, effort, and helplessness beliefs. Confirmatory factor analyses and correlations between the four types of amotivation and constructs related to the environment supported the validity of the constructs. A structural model in which helplessness beliefs could be predicted by the other sets of beliefs, and wherein strategy and ability beliefs resulted from effort beliefs, was tested. All estimated parameters were significant, with the exception of one link: amotivation because of effort beliefs did not display a significant relationship with helplessness beliefs. The importance of understanding why individuals may be amotivated and the strategies liable to help reduce their lack of motivation are discussed.     

Suicide attempts and ideation: adolescents evaluated on a pediatric ward

This study compared psychological, familial, and demographic data for 42 suicidal, 16 suicide ideation, and 42 control pediatric patients. Chaotic families and behavior problems, as well as depression, constriction, and lack of insight, differentiated the suicide attempt group from the control group. The suicide ideation group was similar to both the control and suicide attempt groups and seen as "intermediate" between these two. In assessing lethality of the attempt, constriction was the only predictor differentiating the serious from less serious suicide attempt.     

The effects of voluntary lateral orienting on positive manifold for lateralized cognitive tasks

As an extension of previous studies (Urbanczyk, Angel, & Kennelly, Brain and Cognition, 8, 206-226) examining the effects of unimanual tapping on lateralized cognitive tasks, lateral body orienting was added to an established dual task paradigm to generate differential hemispheric activation and shifts of attention. One hundred twenty right-handed university students retained sequences of digits or spatial locations for 20 sec either alone or during finger tapping. By turning head and eyes left or right, the hemisphere congruent with the sequences (LH for digits, RH for locations) or incongruent (vice versa) was activated. Activation had little effect on retention means but greatly affected resource composition, supporting task performance. Congruent orientation produced significantly higher positive correlations between digit and location tasks than incongruent orientation. Females showed higher sequence retention correlations than males across both orienting groups. For females, congruent activation enhanced tapping rates and tapping-retention task correlations. For males, activation affected neither of these. These results suggest that congruent attentional orienting may couple or integrate regions of the less activated hemisphere into networks of the more activated hemisphere. Greater inter- and intrahemispheric connectivity in the female cortex may produce a greater dependence upon a general attentional "resource."     

Are there different methods of lexical access for words presented in the left and right visual fields?

Visual field differences can arise from hemispheric specializations or perceptual asymmetries. Deciding which of the two is responsible for a particular visual field difference is a recurrent problem for researchers concerned with lateral asymmetries. In the present paper, the difficulties involved in interpreting visual field asymmetries are discussed as they apply to the Young and Ellis (1985) research on the interactive effects of word length and visual hemifield on the recognition of English words. We show that one of their critical results disappears when small changes are made to their experimental procedure. Our data demonstrate that the visual field differences Young and Ellis reported were the result of preceptual asymmetries rather than different methods of lexical access in the two cerebral hemispheres.     

Academic achievement and popularity in low-socioeconomic status black children

The literature suggests that popularity may have different correlates depending on the ethnic, racial, and/or socioeconomic characteristics of the peer group. This study therefore investigated the relationship between peer popularity and academic achievement in low-socioeconomic status urban black children, a population in which this relationship had not previously been examined. Two hundred ninety-six children in grades 4, 6, and 8 completed three sociometric rating scales, indicating the popularity of each of their same-sex classmates as a workmate, playmate, and best friend. These ratings were subjected to a multivariate analysis of variance in which gender and academic achievement (high vs. low achievement test scores) were factors. Consistent with previous research, high achievement was associated with greater popularity as a workmate for an academic task at all three grade levels examined. Popularity as a playmate and as a best friend, however, was inversely related to achievement among fourth graders and unrelated to achievement among eighth graders. These findings suggest that, although high achievement may be recognized for its adaptive value in a work-related context, it may actually be something of a social liability among younger children choosing partners for social and athletic activities. The results support a conceptualization of popularity as a multidimensional construct and highlight the importance of the use of multiple measures.The authors express their appreciation to the children, parents, and staff of the Orleans Parish Schools for their cooperation and participation in the study and to Rex Forehand and Ben Lahey for helpful comments on the design and analysis.     

TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONAL SKILLS TRAINING WITH SOCIALLY ISOLATED,IMPAIRED NURSING HOME RESIDENTS

We evaluated the effectiveness of a comprehensive training program for enhancing the conversational skills of socially isolated, impaired elderly nursing home residents. A multiple baseline design across behaviors was used to train four subjects (aged 87, 85, 68, and 66), on four content-related conversational components: (a) expressing common courtesies, (b) making positive self-disclosures, (c) asking questions, and (d) making interjections and acknowledgments. Training procedures included instructions, modeling, behavior rehearsal, feedback, and reinforcement. Results showed positive effects with all four subjects; in two cases, changes were significant enough to affect untrained observers' perceptions of the elders' conversational skills.     

Word and picture identification: Is representational parsimony possible?

Four experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposition that although prior exposure to a printed word facilitates identification of a corresponding picture, exposure to a picture does not facilitate subsequent word recognition (Durso & Johnson, 1979). Word identification was used, rather than naming latency, in order to avoid the range limitations in adult reading data. Word identification was facilitated by intermodal priming (prior exposure to a corresponding picture), although to a lesser extent than by intramodal (i.e., word-word) priming; the magnitude of intermodal priming was insensitive to strategy; and, as with priming from spoken to printed language, the major impact of word frequency occurred under intermodal, as distinct from intramodal, conditions. Following Scarborough, Gerard, and Cortese (1979), a fifth experiment compared word identification and episodic recognition. Intramodal performance was superior in word identification, whereas intermodal (i.e. picture-word) performance was superior in episodic recognition, a reversal which suggests that episodic recognition involves access to a distinct memory trace.     

Paralinguistic aspects of auditory comprehension in aphasia.

Eight severe aphasics were given sentences with either emotional or neutral content, presented once directly by the examiner and once via a tape recorder. Sentences with emotional content produced a greater number of responses than their neutral counterparts. Sentences spoken by the examiner also produced a significantly greater number of responses than the same items originating from a tape recorder. These results confirm the view that elements not related to the linguistic aspects of a message (and therefore referred to as paralinguistic) play a significant role in auditory comprehension.     

Unconditional-stimulus locus and interstimulus-interval shift in rabbit(Oryctolagus cuniculus) nictitating membrane conditioning

The nictitating membrane response of rabbits was conditioned at a 200 msec interstimulus interval (ISI) with either circumorbital (C) or paraorbital (P) shock as the unconditional-stimulus locus. After 3 acquisition days half of each group was shifted to a 700 msec interstimulus interval. Results indicated: (1) more rapid acquisition for Group C, (2) postshift response decrements for both groups, (3) more rapid and stable, as well as complete return to preshift performance levels for Group C. Results were discussed in terms of the response-shaping hypothesis and the contiguity-substitution hypothesis in explaining both conditional response emergence and subsequent modifications of CR topography.