Religiousness as a Predictor of Academic Performance among High-school Students

Although efforts to improve academic performance previously have focused on school reform, conditions outside school hold the key to increasing our children's academic achievement. The purposes of this study were (1) to determine the relationship between religiousness and academic achievement and (2) to develop a general model that can be generalizable across various ethnic groups. The data from the first follow-up (1990) and second follow-up (1992) of the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) were utilized in this study. Hierarchical regression and path analysis were employed. The result of the analysis shows that religiousness has a significant impact on academic achievement even though socioeconomic status is accounted for in advance in the analysis model. In the general model for various ethnic groups, student academic performance is determined by religiousness, socioeconomic status, locus of control, and strict parenting. Suggestions for future research are offered.     

Resilience to Childhood Abuse and Neglect in College Students

This study examined the prevalence of a history of childhood maltreatment in a college sample and identified the relationship between being maltreated as a child and later college adjustment in men and women. Results indicate that men who had been maltreated in childhood had more resilient outcomes in college than women who had been maltreated in childhood. Negative life events and protective factors acted as mediators in the relationship between childhood maltreatment and college adjustment for women, and protective factors acted as a moderator in the relationship between childhood maltreatment and college adjustment for men.     

Objective assessment of the functional role of spike train correlations using information measures

The functional role of correlations between neuronal spike trains remains strongly debated. This debate partly stems from the lack of a standardized analysis technique capable of accurately quantifying the role of correlations in stimulus encoding. We believe that information theoretic measures may represent an objective method for analysing the functional role of neuronal correlations. Here we show that information analysis of pairs of spike trains allows the information content present in the firing rate to be disambiguated from any extra information that may be present in the temporal relationships of the two spike trains. We validate and illustrate the method by applying it to simulated data with variable degrees of known synchrony, and by applying it to recordings from pairs of sites in the primary visual cortex of anaesthetized cats. We discuss the importance of information theoretic analysis in elucidating the neuronal mechanisms underlying object identification.     

Effects of divided attention and social categorization on the own-race bias in face recognition

Perceivers remember own-race faces more accurately than other-race faces (i.e., Own-Race Bias). In the current experiments, we manipulated participants' attentional resources and social group membership to explore their influence on own and other-race face recognition memory. In Experiment 1, Chinese participants viewed own-race and Caucasian faces, and between-subjects we manipulated whether participants attention was divided during face encoding. We found that divided attention eliminated the Own-Race Bias in memory due to a reduction of memory accuracy for own-race faces, implicating that attention allocation plays a role in creating the bias. In Experiment 2, Chinese participants completed an ostensible personality test. Some participants were informed that their personality traits were most commonly found in Caucasian (i.e., other-race) individuals, resulting in these participants sharing a group membership with other-race targets. In contrast, other participants were not told anything about the personality test, resulting in the default own-race group membership. The participants encoded the faces for a subsequent recognition memory test either with or without performing a concurrent arithmetic distracting task. Results showed that other-race group membership and reducing attention during encoding independently eliminated the typical Own-Race Bias in face memory. The implications of these findings on perceptual-expertise and social-categorization models are discussed.     

Pictorial rehearsal effects in younger and older adults

Abstract

In three studies, we examined pictorial rehearsal effects in younger and older adults. Concrete and abstract line drawings that varied in the amount of pictorial detail were presented for study under different presentation conditions. In the pictorial rehearsal condition, each picture was followed by a blank rehearsal interval where the picture was no longer presented. In all three experiments, the poststimulus interval enhanced picture recognition for both age groups, relative to a control condition where no rehearsal interval occurred. These findings suggest that older adults, like younger adults, form and maintain visual images across a blank rehearsal interval. Implications of these findings for current views on imaginal processes in older adults are discussed.     

Ecological perception affords an explanation of object permanence

In this paper I aim to present an explanation of object permanence that is derived from an ecological account of perceptually based action. In understanding why children below a certain age do not search for occluded objects, one must first understand the process by which these children perform certain intentional actions on non-occluded items; and to do this one must understand the role affordances play in eliciting retrieval behaviour. My affordance-based explanation is contrasted with Shinskey and Munakata's graded representation account; and although I do not reject totally the role representations play in initiating intentional action I nevertheless maintain that only by incorporating direct perception into an account of object permanence can a fuller understanding of this phenomenon be achieved.     

Personal and cultural differences in responding to criticism in three countries

The present study investigated whether verbal aggression, argument approach, argument avoidance or assertiveness had any effect on how participants in three countries responded to criticism. Consistent with the first hypothesis, men were significantly more aggressive, assertive, less avoidant, and approached argument more than women. However, men did not respond more assertively to criticism. As predicted in the second hypothesis, US Americans responded more assertively to criticism than did Japanese and Chinese. The third hypothesis predicted that verbal aggression, argument approach, argument avoidance and assertiveness would be associated with a more assertive response to criticism. The data obtained were only partially consistent with the third hypothesis. While only a small number of participants in this study indicated that they would respond to criticism with silence, US Americans used silence to mean anger while for Chinese silence showed personal embarrassment. Very few Japanese selected silence as an option for responding to a neighbor's criticism. The implications of these results are discussed.     

Why Koreans Are More Likely to Favor “Apology,” While Americans Are More Likely to Favor “Thank You”

Two studies investigated whether apologies or thanks are preferred in asking favors in the United States and Korea, and how this relates to perceptions of reduction in positive and negative face threats. In the first study (n = 224), participants composed an e‐mail message where a favor was asked. In the second (n = 807), participants completed questionnaires including a prototypical e‐mail for the situation described in Study 1, as well as measures of negative and positive face threats. Findings showed that (a) Koreans more frequently included apologies in favor‐asking messages, while Americans more frequently included thanks; and (b) Americans considered repeated thanks to reduce the threat to hearers' negative and positive face, but Koreans considered repeated apologies to reduce the threat to speakers' positive face.