Supplemental Flashcard Drill Methods for Efficiently Helping At-Risk Kindergartners Make Letter-Sound Correspondences: Does Presentation Arrangement of Words Matter?

Variations of supplemental flashcard drill and practice instructional procedures (i.e., massed practice and interspersal presentation arrangements of words) were examined for six kindergartners who struggled making letter-sound correspondences. Findings revealed that the children demonstrated the highest learning rates when the presentation arrangement of flashcards required the children to make letter-sound correspondences in a word repeatedly (massed practice condition) before they were presented with a different word for which they were required to make letter-sound correspondences. Children maintained a higher rate of letter-sound correspondences that were taught under the massed practice condition. Implications for practice, limitations, and future directions are discussed.     

Refusing to apologize can have psychological benefits (and we issue no mea culpa for this research finding)

Despite an understanding of the perception and consequences of apologies for their recipients, little is known about the consequences of interpersonal apologies, or their denial, for the offending actor. In two empirical studies, we examined the unexplored psychological consequences that follow from a harm‐doer's explicit refusal to apologize. Results showed that the act of refusing to apologize resulted in greater self‐esteem than not refusing to apologize. Moreover, apology refusal also resulted in increased feelings of power/control and value integrity, both of which mediated the effect of refusal on self‐esteem. These findings point to potential barriers to victim–offender reconciliation after an interpersonal harm, highlighting the need to better understand the psychology of harm‐doers and their defensive behavior for self‐focused motives. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multiple birth rates and racial type: a research note regarding r/K theory

Recent work in the sociobiological study of deviance has suggested a link between r-selection traits, such as probabilities of multiple births, racial type, and criminality. This theory, however, failed to present any supporting evidence regarding the multiple birth-crime relationship. This paper tests a hypothesis derived from r/K theorization, that twinning rates will correspond to differential crime rates by racial type. Further, a number of additional variables are discussed that may prove suitable for future study.     

Sifting through the Hyperbole: One Hundred Years of Marijuana Coverage in The New York Times

The contemporary media has often portrayed marijuana as a “slacker drug”; however, this portrayal is somewhat novel. Several scholars have argued in the early 1900s, especially in the 1930s, the media often associated marijuana with violence and mental illness. Another common argument was that marijuana was associated with Mexican immigrants. Conversely, other researchers have argued that these reports were overblown and media accounts of marijuana were not very common until recent years. The current study utilizes recently available on-line archives to conduct a more comprehensive test of how exactly marijuana was depicted in The New York Times from 1851–1950.     

The Broaching Attitudes and Behavior Survey (BABS): An Exploratory Assessment of Its Dimensionality

The continuum of broaching behavior is a conceptual framework explicating how counselors broach or have explicit discussions about racial, ethnic, and cultural factors with their clients during treatment ( Day‐Vines et al., 2007 ). Counselors can assume 5 particular broaching orientations: avoidant, isolating, continuing/incongruent, integrated/congruent, and infusing. The authors operationalized the continuum of broaching behavior using the Broaching Attitudes and Behavior Scale and found support for a 4‐factor model of broaching behavior. El espectro de comportamiento de abordamiento es un marco conceptual que explica cómo los consejeros abordan o tienen discusiones específicas sobre factores raciales, étnicos y culturales con sus clientes durante el tratamiento ( Day‐Vines et al., 2007 ). Los consejeros pueden asumir 5 orientaciones de abordamiento particulares: evasiva, aislante, continua/incongruente, integrada/congruente e infundida. Los autores operativizaron el espectro de comportamiento de abordamiento usando la Escala de Actitudes de Abordamiento y Comportamiento y hallaron respaldo para un modelo del comportamiento de abordamiento de 4 factores.     

Cognitive control and consistency in compliance

Abstract

The purpose of this prospective study was two-fold. First, three modes of compliance assessment were used to examine whether renal dialysis patients comply consistently across medical regimens (fluid, potassium, phosphorous, protein) and whether compliance is consistent across mode of assessment (patient self assessment, medical staff ratings, physiological data). Second. a cognitive model predicting fluid compliance was tested to see if it would generalize to predict dietary compliance and medication taking. Patients' self-control perceptions of compliance, staff assessments of compliance, and physiological data were collected prospectively for 85 end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients. Results indicated substantial consistency across medical regimen depending on the mode of assessment; staff assessment showed the most consistency, followed by patients' self-assessments and lastly by physiological data. Despite this consistency across medical regimens, the cognitive-control model only predicted fluid compliance; the model failed to explain dietary and medication compliance. Reasons and implications for these results are discussed.     

Regularity of unit length boosts statistical learning in verbal and nonverbal artificial languages

Humans have remarkable statistical learning abilities for verbal speech-like materials and for nonverbal music-like materials. Statistical learning has been shown with artificial languages (AL) that consist of the concatenation of nonsense word-like units into a continuous stream. These ALs contain no cues to unit boundaries other than the transitional probabilities between events, which are high within a unit and low between units. Most AL studies have used units of regular lengths. In the present study, the ALs were based on the same statistical structures but differed in unit length regularity (i.e., whether they were made out of units of regular vs. irregular lengths) and in materials (i.e., syllables vs. musical timbres), to allow us to investigate the influence of unit length regularity on domain-general statistical learning. In addition to better performance for verbal than for nonverbal materials, the findings revealed an effect of unit length regularity, with better performance for languages with regular- (vs. irregular-) length units. This unit length regularity effect suggests the influence of dynamic attentional processes (as proposed by the dynamic attending theory; Large & Jones (Psychological Review 106: 119–159, 1999)) on domain-general statistical learning.