Developing a biodata measure and situational judgment inventory as predictors of college student performance

This article describes the development and validation of a biographical data (biodata) measure and situational judgment inventory (SJI) as useful predictors of broadly defined college student performance outcomes. These measures provided incremental validity when considered in combination with standardized college-entrance tests (i.e., SAT/ACT) and a measure of Big Five personality constructs. Racial subgroup mean differences were much smaller on the biodata and SJI measures than on the standardized tests and college grade point average. Female students tended to outperform male students on most predictors and outcomes with the exception of the SAT/ACT. The biodata and SJI measures show promise for student development contexts and for selecting students on a wide range of outcomes with reduced adverse impact.     

Exploring age differences in the stress-buffering function of social support

The purpose of this study is to see if there are age differences in the relationship between chronic financial strain, emotional support, and life satisfaction among people aged 65 and older. Data from a nationwide survey of older people (N = 1,518) indicate that emotional support tends to reduce the noxious effects of economic problems on life satisfaction for the sample as a whole. However, the findings further reveal that the potential benefits of emotional support arise primarily among the oldest-old. In contrast, emotional support does not offset the negative effects of financial strain on life satisfaction among the young-old.     

Assessment of infant cry: acoustic cry analysis and parental perception

Infant crying signals distress to potential caretakers who can alleviate the aversive conditions that gave rise to the cry. The cry signal results from coordination among several brain regions that control respiration and vocal cord vibration from which the cry sounds are produced. Previous work has shown a relationship between acoustic characteristics of the cry and diagnoses related to neurological damage, SIDS, prematurity, medical conditions, and substance exposure during pregnancy. Thus, assessment of infant cry provides a window into the neurological and medical status of the infant. Assessment of infant cry is brief and noninvasive and requires recording equipment and a standardized stimulus to elicit a pain cry. The typical protocol involves 30 seconds of crying from a single application of the stimulus. The recorded cry is submitted to an automated computer analysis system that digitizes the cry and either presents a digital spectrogram of the cry or calculates measures of cry characteristics. The most common interpretation of cry measures is based on deviations from typical cry characteristics. Another approach evaluates the pattern across cry characteristics suggesting arousal or under-arousal or difficult temperament. Infants with abnormal cries should be referred for a full neurological evaluation. The second function of crying--to elicit caretaking--involves parent perception of the infant's needs. Typically, parents are sensitive to deviations in cry characteristics, but their perception can be altered by factors in themselves (e.g., depression) or in the context (e.g., culture). The potential for cry assessment is largely untapped. Infant crying and parental response is the first language of the new dyadic relationship. Deviations in the signal and/or misunderstanding the message can compromise infant care, parental effectiveness, and undermine the budding relationship. (c) 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc. MRDD Research Reviews 2005;11:83-93.     

Refining the experimental analysis of academic skills deficits: Part I. An investigation of variables that affect generalized oral reading performance

Experimental analyses for improving reading fluency deficits have rarely targeted generalized increases in academic responding. As a consequence, the variables that may help students to generalize newly learned forms of academic responding like reading are not well understood. Furthermore, experimental analyses of reading fluency interventions have not systematically examined difficulty level as a variable that may affect instructional outcomes. The experiment reported in this paper expands (a) the measurement of the dependent variables to include generalized increases across tasks (reading passages) and (b) the combination of independent variables used to produce measurable generalized increases. The results demonstrate the importance of combining reward and instructional variables (including difficulty level) to produce generalized increases and how those variables can be meaningfully investigated prior to making treatment recommendations.     

The nature of change detection and online representations of scenes

This article provides evidence for implicit change detection and for the contribution of multiple memory sources to online representations. Multiple eye-movement measures distinguished original from changed scenes, even when college students had no conscious awareness for the change. Patients with amnesia showed a systematic deficit on 1 class of eye-movement measures of change detection, even though conscious awareness was not required for the effect to be observed. The authors' findings suggest that online representations of scenes are (a) built up across viewings, (b) composed of activated information from both long-term and working memory, and (c) directly compared with currently processed information regarding the external world. Subsequent online processing is influenced by these representations even when the results of the comparison are not accessible for verbal report.     

A descriptive epidemiology of lifetime trauma and the physical health status of older adults

Three issues are evaluated in this study. The 1st involves examining the relationship between exposure to trauma over the life course and physical health status in old age. The 2nd has to do with seeing whether the relationship between trauma and health varies across 3 cohorts of older adults: the young-old (ages 65-74), the old-old (ages 75-84), and the oldest old (age 85 and over). The 3rd issue involves seeing whether the age at which a trauma was encountered is related to health in late life. Data from a nationwide survey of older people (N=1,518) reveal that trauma is associated with worse health. Moreover, the young-old appear to be at greatest risk. Finally, data suggest that trauma arising between the ages of 18 and 30 years, as well as ages 31 to 64 years, has the strongest relationship with current health.     

Is it prudent to administer all items for each Child Behavior Checklist cross-informant syndrome? Evaluating the psychometric properties of the Youth Self-Report dimensions with confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory

Through surveying of children in 10 nations with parent, teacher, and Youth Self-Report (YSR) forms of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), cross-informant syndromes (CISs) were derived and cross-validated by sample-dependent methodology. Generalizing CBCL syndromes and norms to nations excluded from its normative sample is problematic. This study used confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) to test factor model fit for CISs on the YSR responses of 625 Jamaican children ages 11 to 18 years. Item response theory (IRT), a sample-independent methodology, was used to estimate the psychometric properties of individual items on each dimension. CFAs indicated poor to moderate model-to-data fit. Across all syndromes, IRT analyses revealed that more than 3/4 of the cross-informant items yielded little information. Eliminating such items could be cost effective in terms of administration time yet improve the measures discrimination across syndrome severity levels.     

In Search of the Self: A Positron Emission Tomography Study

Abstract—Previous work using positron emission tomography (PET) has shown that memory encoding processes are associated with preferential activation of left frontal regions of the brain, whereas retrieval processes are associated predominantly with right frontal activations. One possible reason for the asymmetry is that episodic retrieval necessarily involves reference to the self, and the self-concept may be represented (at least partially) in right frontal regions. Accordingly, the present study investigated the possibility that encoding of self-related material might also activate right frontal areas. Eight right-handed volunteers judged trait adjectives under four separate PET scan conditions: (a) relevance to self, (b) relevance to a well-known public figure, (c) social desirability, and (d) number of syllables. The results showed that self-related encoding yielded left frontal activations similar to those associated with other types of semantic encoding, but also specific activations in the right frontal lobe. It is concluded that the concept of self involves both general schematic structures and further specific components involved in episodic memory retrieval.     

Gender Advertisements in Magazines Aimed at African Americans: A Comparison to Their Occurrence in Magazines Aimed at Caucasians

Advertisements from magazines aimed at AfricanAmericans were compared to ads from magazines aimedpredominantly at Whites. Over 200 magazineadvertisements were analyzed according to Goffman's(1976) rubrics of licensed withdrawal, function ranking,relative size, ritualization of subordination, femininetouch, and the family. Results indicated that the adsfrom White-oriented magazines were characterized by relatively frequent displays of licensedwithdrawal and ritualization of subordination. Thoseaimed at African Americans, however, were characterizedby more frequent portrayals of the family. Almost half of each sample were classified into another category which followed none ofGoffman's rubrics. Results are discussed in terms of thedemand characteristics implicit in gender advertisements and in terms of cultural differences in genderrole expectations.