Coping and Psychological Distress as a Function of the Bully Victim Dichotomy in Older Children

While it has been well established that bullying and being bullied have negative psychological consequences for children, the more recent literature has suggested a more complex relationship based on social cognition. A debate has arisen as to whether bullies have deficits or strengths in social cognition. In a study of 236 children (112 males and 124 females) aged between 12 and 15 years the current research explored three main aspects of social cognition, problem-solving style, perceived control and optimism in both bullies and victims. The findings suggest that the debate may hinge on whether the bullies are also victims. In this study bullies had higher scores on problem-solving control while bully victims had the lowest scores. These variations corresponded to differences in psychological distress suggesting that bullies may have developed more effective coping strategies with the reverse being true for bully victims     

The role of perceptual load in processing distractor faces

It has been established that successful ignoring of irrelevant distractors depends on the extent to which the current task loads attention. However, the previous load studies have typically employed neutral distractor stimuli (e.g., letters). In the experiments reported here, we examined whether the perception of irrelevant distractor faces would show the same effects. We manipulated attentional load in a relevant task of name search by varying the search set size and found that whereas congruency effects from meaningful nonface distractors were eliminated by higher search load, interference from distractor faces was entirely unaffected by search load. These results support the idea that face processing may be mandatory and generalize the load theory to the processing of meaningful and more complex nonface distractors.     

fMRI of developmental stuttering: a pilot study

The purpose of this investigation was to explore the feasibility of fMRI in the study of developmental stuttering. Speech contrasts (loud versus silent reading) and language contrasts (reading of semantically meaningful text versus nonsense words) of six developmental stutterers and six nonstutterers were compared using a commercial 1 Tesla MR-Scanner (Siemens Expert). Results indicate that mapping cortical function in persons who stutter is indeed feasible, even with a 1TMR-system. Compared to normals the stutterers seemed to employ different and particularly less differentiated auditory and motor feedback strategies in speech. They apparently rely on auditory processing and on cerebellar contribution as much during silent reading as during reading aloud. Moreover, they showed a greater involvement of the right hemisphere in language processing, activating not only the typical language areas on the left but also and with equal magnitude the right side homologues of these areas. In spite of the promising results, at present several practical problems such as possible movement artifacts and possible masking through scanner noise still hamper a more straightforward use of fMRI in the study of developmental stuttering.     

Diagnostic judgments as a function of client and therapist race

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine the process of differential evaluation of clients as a function of client and therapist race. It was hypothesized that race of client and therapist would interact, influencing the judgments of client psychopathology, appropriateness for therapy, verbal facility, and likelihood of treatment success despite standardization of the clinical stimuli. Graduate students in clinical psychology and with varying levels of training (i.e., 1 to 5 years) were asked to rate videotaped interviews of clients in which race of the client and level of psychopathology (i.e., normal, neurotic, and psychotic) were systematically varied. There were significant differences in ratings as a function of race of client, race of therapist, and level of psychopathology observed. Black clients were not rated differently on degree of psychopathology but were rated as less verbally skilled and less appropriate for treatment but more likely to benefit from treatment than white clients. Contrary to expectations, white therapists tended to underrate the pathology of black clients. On the other hand, black therapists tended to overrate the pathology of white clients and made mixed judgments of black clients. The implications of these findings are discussed.This study was supported in part by NIMH Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) Grant G12RR03206-2.     

What makes interruptions disruptive? A study of length,similarity, and complexity

Summary Classic work on interruptions by Zeigarnik showed that tasks that were interrupted were more likely to be recalled after a delay than tasks that were not interrupted. Much of the literature on interruptions has been devoted to examining this effect, although more recently interruptions have been used to choose between competing designs for interfaces to complex devices. However, none of this work looks at what makes some interruptions disruptive and some not. This series of experiments uses a novel computer-based adventure-game methodology to investigate the effects of the length of the interruption, the similarity of the interruption to the main task, and the complexity of processing demanded by the interruption. It is concluded that subjects make use of some form of non-articulatory memory which is not affected by the length of the interruption. It is affected by processing similar material however, and by a complex mentalarithmetic task which makes large demands on working memory.     

The psychological health of employed and unemployed recent graduates as a function cognitive appraisal and of coping

In the literature on the effects of unemployment on graduates two competing hypothesis have found support. On one hand graduates have higher expectations about status and occupational identity, hence being unemployed should be more distressing. On the other hand graduates have access to more personal and situational resources and should cope better with the stress of unemployment. In a study of 181 recent graduates it was found that those who were employed (n = 88) scored higher on both somatization and interpersonal sensitivity than those who were unemployed (n = 93). A large percentage also reported not being in the job to which they aspired and scored low on job commitment. The unemployed graduates had a more positive approach to problem-solving, higher achievement motivation, more perceived social support, were more assertive, and felt less hopeless than their employed peers. They also engaged in more constructive leisure activities than the employed group. The data provide tentative support for the hypothesis that graduates are better at coping with unemployment. However the indication is that any advantage to be gained is relative to the type of job occupied by the employed group to whom they are compared. The general conclusion is that opting for a job which does not meet expectations or aspirations may be more psychologically damaging in the short term than being unemployed and hopeful. This is a function of the individual's vulnerability or resistance to stress and highlights the need for graduates to be prepared more effectively for the path to a career.     

Scalable choice models

Two representational criteria for probabilistic choice models are studied. These criteria, called scalability and weak scalability, are shown to be characterized by behavioral axioms designated, respectively, as pairwise dependence and weak pairwise dependence. The former is shown to be equivalent to the order independence axiom of Tversky. In addition, structural conditions on the choice alternatives are established under which all axioms are equivalent.     

Inhibition, Contextual Segregation, and Subject Strategies in List Method Directed Forgetting

This experiment tested alternative explanations of list method directed forgetting effects. Two word lists were studied by 135 subjects. Between lists, subjects were instructed to remember both lists (remember group), remember both lists as well as in which list words were studied (segregate group), or to forget the first list and remember the second (forget group). All subjects took both recall and recognition tests with test order varied between subjects. Among subjects who took the recall test first, the forget group showed a directed forgetting effect (poorer performance on List 1 than List 2) with both recall accuracy, recall typing time, and recognition reaction time measures. Contextual segregation of List 1 words by forget subjects was ruled out as a sufficient cause of the effect. Limited support was obtained for a differential rehearsal explanation of the effect. Within-group comparisons and findings of release from directed forgetting support inhibitory processes as the major cause of the directed forgetting effect.     

Response Channel Activation and the Temporoparietal Junction

When we learn to make one motor response to one visual stimulus and a different motor response to another, representations of these stimulus–response associations must be maintained to efficiently transduce perception into action. When an irrelevant distractor is presented adjacent to a target stimulus, interference is observed when the two stimuli are associated with conflicting responses, presumably due to response channel activation by the incompatible information. We have explored the neural bases of these interference effects. In a previous study, patients with hemispatial neglect showed normal interference from contralesional flankers. In another study, patients with lesions of the lateral prefrontal cortex were found not to show interference from distractors presented in the contralesional hemifield. The current study provided a more anatomically detailed investigation of the effects of posterior association cortex lesions on flanker interference. Patients with chronic, unilateral lesions involving the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), two of whom had hemispatial neglect, were compared with patients with lesions of the posterior association cortex not involving the TPJ. All patients performed a color discrimination task at fixation while a congruent or incongruent colored flanker was briefly presented (16.7 ms) in the adjacent contralesional or ipsilesional hemifield. Patients with TPJ lesions showed no interference effects from the contralesional flankers. These results suggest that the TPJ, in combination with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, is involved in transducing perception into action.     

The Representation of Arithmetic Facts in Memory: Results from Retraining a Brain-Damaged Patient

This single case study was designed to gather evidence regarding whether the mental representations mediating multiplication fact retrieval make use of single or multiple codes. MC is a brain-damaged volunteer whose numerical processing impairments were limited to multiplication fact retrieval. He relearned three sets of multiplication facts. Each set was relearned in one of three input formats: Arabic, written verbal, or spoken verbal. Following training all facts were tested in all input formats. MC's posttraining performance was virtually error free and showed no effects of input format. However, reaction-time data showed fact retrieval was fastest when the training format matched the test format. Results are discussed in relation to single- and multiple-code models of multiplication fact retrieval.