Parental separation/divorce and adolescents: An examination of factors mediating adaptation

This study examined the relationship between differences in current adjustment as they related to a number of demographic, personal, and situational factors for 65 late adolescents/young adults who had experienced this life transition. Utilizing multiple regression analyses, several factors emerged as particularly salient mediators of the adolescents' postdivorce adjustment, including distance from home, coping style, family cohesion, conflict and organization, and the use of family members for support. The importance of clarifying the role of psychological and situational mediating factors in order to understand the consequences of parental divorce and to organize preventive and ameliorative efforts for this population is discussed.     

Context effects on the judgment of basic emotions in the face

This article reports on three experiments on the controversial topic of context effects in the judgment of emotion from the face. In Experiment 1 (N=169) subjects were shown either a happy, sad, or angry anchor face as context followed by a target slide of a neutral face. In Experiment 2 (N=119) subjects were shown an anchor of a happy or angry face as context and a sad face as target. In Experiment 3 (N=180) subjects were shown an anchor of a happy, sad, or surprised face as context and an angry face as target. All experiments used facial expressions from Ekman and Friesen'sPictures of Facial Affect (1976). Dependent measures included intensity ratings of pleasure and arousal dimensions (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974); a judgment of the intensity of six specific emotions expressed (happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgusted, and interested); and categorical judgments of emotions. Significant context effects were observed for the neutral target and, with smaller effects, for the angry and sad targets on dimensional and intensity ratings. The magnitude of the context effect depended on both the target and anchor facial expressions. Greater categorical agreement of emotion was obtained for the target when another face was provided as a context than when the target face was shown alone. These results provide an independent replication and extension of recent research (Russell, 1991; Russell & Fehr, 1987) on the relativity of facial affect judgment.This research was supported by the Faculty Development Grant from Hofstra University to the first author.     

Streaks in skilled performance

Experiments in golf putting and darts demonstrated that skilled performance is streaky. The tendency for outcome sequences to form streaks was greatest when the task difficulty was such that about half the trials were successful. Mixtures of the two activities were also streaky, even when periodic interruption made the individual components resemble a random Bernoulli process. Formal models of sequence structure revealed that waves in hit rate are associated with the appearance of streaks.     

Trust and the collection,selection, analysis and interpretation of data: A scientist’s view

Trust is a critical component of research: trust in the work of co-workers and colleagues within the scientific community; trust in the work of research scientists by the non-research community. A wide range of factors, including internally and externally generated pressures and practical and personal limitations, affect the research process. The extent to which these factors are understood and appreciated influence the development of trust in scientific research findings.     

Personality,Self-Efficacy and Functioning in Management Teams: A Contribution to Validation

The relationship between individual difference variables and the contribution to team functioning was examined in 58 members of management teams. Extraversion and self-efficacy for working in teams were related to attraction to the team, which in turn was related to a rating of team effectiveness. Extraversion was also related directly to team effectiveness. The relationship between conscientiousness and team functioning was not clear. The results are considered supportive for the validity of self-efficacy for teams and extraversion as indicators of the ability and propensity of individuals to contribute to the functioning of management teams.     

Child psychopathology and deviant family hierarchies

The association between child psychopathology and reversals in family hierarchies (where the child is seen as equal or higher in the hierarchy than the parental figures) were examined with the Madanes Family Hierarchy Test on a sample of 177 clinic-referred boys. Madanes' original findings of the association of substance use and deviant family hierarchy were replicated in this younger sample, (age 7 to 12). Boys diagnosed with Conduct Disorder reported significantly more deviant hierarchies while boys diagnosed with Overanxious Disorder reported significantly fewer deviant hierarchies. Follow-up results revealed some instability and lack of informant agreement, but the hierarchy measure was not confounded by age, race, SES, IQ, or parents' marital status.     

Testing a predicational model of cognition: Cueing predicate meanings in sentences and word triplets

Predication is a logical process in which meaning is extended from a broader context to a narrower, targeted referent independently of syntax and the passage of time. Since predicates lend meaning to their targets in cognitive processing, it follows that when unrecalled sentences are cued with their predicate-word meanings there should be greater retrieval than when these unrecalled sentences are cued with subject words. Three experiments (combinedN=164) tested this hypothesis and found data in its support (p — levels ranging from .05 to .001). A fourth experiment (N=48) removed syntax from consideration by employing triplets in which one word out of three sharing a common topic was the broadest in meaning, and hence was the expected predicate for cueing triplets when they were not initially recalled. As predicted, it was found that when the expected predicate of unrecalled triplets was used as a cue there were twice as many retrievals occurring as when the less broadly meaningful words were used as cues (p<.001). The findings are discussed in terms of logical learning theory's claim that ongoing cognition involves the continual taking of a position within a sea of opposite possibilities.