Personal goals and psychological growth: testing an intervention to enhance goal attainment and personality integration

We hypothesized that semester goal attainment provides a route to short-term psychological growth. In an attempt to enhance this process, we randomly assigned participants to either a goal-training program or to a control condition. Although there were no main effects of program participation on later goal attainment, important interactions were found. Consistent with a "prepared to benefit" model, participants already high in goal-based measures of personality integration perceived the program as most useful and benefited the most from the program in terms of goal attainment. As a result, they became even more integrated and also increased in their levels of psychosocial well-being and vitality. Implications for theories of short-term growth and positive change are discussed, as is the unanswered question of how to help less-integrated persons grow.     

Top-down processing and the suffix effect in young and older adults

The suffix effect has generally been viewed as reflecting an automatic component involving the terminal item and a component susceptible to top-down influences involving the preterminal items (Balota & Engle, 1981). Recent findings have raised questions about this widely accepted view of the suffix effect by showing that the terminal component is not insensitive to top-down influences (Bloom & Watkins, 1999). In the present study, we attempted to uncover the source of these contradictory findings by assessing whether the terminal item's susceptibility to top-down influences might depend on subjects' first-hand experience of the extent to which recall is affected by the suffix. Furthermore, we examined whether age differences in the suffix effect could be attributed to age-related declines in inhibitory processes. Our findings supported both predictions.     

Lapses of intention and performance variability reveal age-related increases in fluctuations of executive control

We examine the hypothesis that the efficiency of executive control processes is less stable over time in older than younger adults. An age-related decrease in the efficiency of executive control should result in an increase in performance variability in task conditions requiring the recruitment of executive control processes and not in task conditions requiring minimal involvement of executive control. Performance variability was similar for younger and older adults in task conditions requiring minimal executive control and greater for older than younger adults in task conditions requiring executive control. These and other data are consistent with the proposal that aging is associated with a decrease in the stability of executive control over time.     

Age differences in overlapping-task performance: evidence for efficient parallel processing in older adults

Two psychological refractory period (PRP) experiments were conducted to examine overlapping processing in younger and older adults. A shape discrimination task (triangle or rectangle) for Task 1 (T1) and a lexical-decision task (word or nonword) for Task 2 (T2) were used. PRP effects, response time for T2 increasing as stimulus onset synchrony (SOA) decreased, were obtained for both age groups. The effect of word frequency on T2 was smaller at the short SOA than at the long SOA, reflecting slack effects, which were larger for older than younger adults in both experiments. These results suggest that older adults can perform lexical access of T2 in parallel with the processing of T1 at least as efficiently as younger adults.     

Parenting and Family Stress Treatment Outcomes in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): An Empirical Analysis in the MTA Study

Parenting and family stress treatment outcomes in the MTA study were examined. Male and female (579), 7–9-year-old children with combined type Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), were recruited at six sites around the United States and Canada, and randomly assigned to one of four groups: intensive, multi-faceted behavior therapy program alone (Beh); carefully titrated and monitored medication management strategy alone (MedMgt); a well-integrated combination of the two (Comb); or a community comparison group (CC). Treatment occurred over 14 months, and assessments were taken at baseline, 3, 9, and 14 months. Parenting behavior and family stress were assessed using parent-report and child-report inventories. Results showed that Beh alone, MedMgt alone, and Comb produced significantly greater decreases in a parent-rated measure of negative parenting, Negative/Ineffective Discipline, than did standard community treatment. The three MTA treatments did not differ significantly from each other on this domain. No differences were noted among the four groups on positive parenting or on family stress variables. Results are discussed in terms of the theoretical and empirically documented importance of negative parenting in the symptoms, comorbidities and long-term outcomes of ADHD.     

The commodified self in consumer culture: a cross-cultural perspective

The author examined the premise that the pervasive consumer ideology in today's society has implications for the conceptions of self and others. She used structured interviews to assess conceptions of self and other and G. P. Moschis's (1978) questionnaire to measure consumer orientation among 76 U.S. and 62 Finnish college students. The principal hypotheses were (a) that the U.S. students would be more commodified than the Finnish students and (b) that the participants who were high in consumer orientation would be more likely than those lower in consumer orientation to see themselves and others in material terms and also to consider personal characteristics to have market values. The results supported both hypotheses.     

Immunity to functional fixedness in young children

In thecandle problem (Duncker, 1945), subjects must attach a candle to a vertical surface, using only a box of tacks and a book of matches. Subjects exhibitfunctional fixedness by failing, or being slow, to make use of one object (the tack box) as a support, rather than as a container, in their solutions. This failure to produce alternate functions is measured against improved performance when the tack box is presented empty rather than full of tacks (i.e., not preutilized as a container). Using an analogous task, we show that functional fixedness can be demonstrated in older children (6- and 7-year-olds); they are significantly slower to use a box as a support when its containment function has been demonstrated than when it has not. However, younger children (5-year-olds) are immune to this effect, showing no advantage when the standard function is not demonstrated. Moreover, their performance under conditions of preutilization is better than that of both older groups. These results are interpreted in terms of children’s developing intuitions about function and the effects of past experience on problem solving.     

Evaluating gene x psychological risk factor effects in the pathogenesis of anxiety: a new model approach

The present study evaluated the singular and interactive effects of a functional polymorphism (variation) in the serotonin transporter (5-HTT) gene and a psychological trait (anxiety sensitivity [AS], i.e., fear of arousal symptoms) in predicting subjective and physiological responses to a 35% carbon dioxide (CO2) challenge in a community sample (N = 72). Genotypes were divided into 2 groups in accord with prior research. Findings were partially supportive of the hypothesized risk model. These indicated that the Group L genotype (homozygous for the 1 allele), compared with the Group S genotype (homozygous for the s allele plus heterozygous individuals), predicted greater fearful response to the biological challenge. There was also an AS x Genotype interaction predicting heart rate variability (HRV) in response to the CO2, suggesting that high AS plus Group L status predicts decreased HRV.     

Listening to discourse in distracting settings: the effects of aging

Younger and older adults listened to discourse in quiet and in conversational noise, before answering questions concerning the material. Some questions required listeners to recall specific details; others were of a more integrative nature. When the listening situation was adjusted for individual differences in hearing, younger and older adults were equally adept at remembering the gist of the passages in both quiet and in two levels of noise. The two age groups also did not differ with respect to memory for specific details when listening in quiet or in a moderate level of noise, even when required to perform a concurrent task. Only at the loudest noise level did younger adults tend to recall more detail than older adults. However, when no adjustments were made to compensate for the poorer hearing of older adults (all participants tested under identical listening conditions), older adults could not recall as much detail as younger adults, either in quiet or in noise. The results indicate that the speech-comprehension difficulties of older adults primarily reflect declines in hearing rather than in cognitive ability.