Test Anxiety,Coping Strategies,and Perceived Health in a Group of High School Students: A Turkish Sample

A group of high school juniors and a group of high school seniors in Izmir, Turkey completed measures of test anxiety, coping skills, and perceived health status both before and after a major exam period. Students with high test anxiety used less effective coping mechanisms and tended to have poorer perceptions of their health. Prior to the exams, juniors displayed higher test anxiety and used less effective coping mechanisms than seniors. After the exam periods, improvements were seen for both age groups on perceived health, but scores of younger students remained significantly higher than scores of seniors on one of the key measures of test anxiety. Results of the study lend support to those of previous studies done in other cultural contexts, and findings have implications for the development of interventions designed to help students cope with stress.     

Optimizing Prediction of Attrition With the U.S. Army's Assessment of Individual Motivation (AIM)

The regression framework is often the method of choice used by psychologists for predicting organizationally relevant outcomes from test scores. However, alternatives to regression exist, and these techniques may provide better prediction of outcomes and a more effective means of classifying examinees for selection and placement. This research describes two of these alternatives—decision tree methodology and optimal appropriateness measurement (OAM)—and how they were used to optimize the prediction of attrition among a sample of first-term enlisted soldiers (N?=?22,537) using a temperament inventory called the Assessment of Individual Motivation (AIM). Results demonstrated that the OAM approach provided better differentiation between “stayers” and “leavers” after 12 months than either the traditional logistic regression or the decision tree methods.     

Measuring Collective Efficacy Among Children in Community-based Afterschool Programs: Exploring Pathways toward Prevention and Positive Youth Development

Collective efficacy refers to a perceived sense of connectedness and willingness to intervene among youth, and is a potential aspect of positive youth development (Larson in Am Psychol 55:170–183, 2000; Lerner et al. in Child Dev 71:11–20, 2000; Sampson et al. in Science 277:918–924, 1997). Theoretically, those who feel connected to a group that is empowered to positively influence the behavior of their peers may demonstrate fewer problem behaviors. Few studies, however, have measured the impact of youth perceptions of collective efficacy. As a relatively new child-related research topic, there is much to be learned. One contribution to the foundation of this research agenda begins by evaluating the reliability and validity of a measure of collective efficacy with elementary children attending community-based afterschool programs. This paper describes the internal consistency reliability and various indicators of construct and concurrent validity of the Collective Efficacy Among Children Scale. The measure was found to have high internal consistency reliability. Construct validity was tested using exploratory factor analyses of collective efficacy including the dimensions of willingness to intervene and cohesion found in previous research (Sampson et al. in Science 277:918–924, 1997). Concurrent validity assessed relations between the scale and other measures in theoretically congruent ways. Using Hierarchical Linear Models to account for children's nestedness in after-school programs, connectedness was found to be more related to emotional adjustment, particularly children’s prosocial attitudes (caring about others and sharing). Children’s perception of the willingness of the group to intervene was found to be related to less problem behavior, (i.e. smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, vandalism, and stealing). The implications suggest that future research should further explore children’s collective efficacy, and ways to foster its development in youth-serving afterschool settings.     

Attribution and building blocks: Comment on Ann Taves's Religious Experience Reconsidered

Taves nicely elaborates an attribution approach to the study of religious experience, clarifying the issues it raises and providing some guides for further research. This comment addresses two of those issues, (1) the relation of top-down and bottom-up accounts of religious experiences and (2) what Taves describes as the building block approach to their study.     

Nostalgia,Gratitude, or Optimism: The Impact of a Two-Week Intervention on Well-Being During COVID-19

Research indicates that brief 2-min positive psychology interventions (PPIs) increase well-being during COVID-19 lockdowns. The present study extended this to assess the effectiveness over two-weeks. Participants (n?=?150) were randomly allocated to one of three PPIs; nostalgia, gratitude, best possible self (BPS), or control. The interventions were slightly adapted for the lockdown and were completed three times, every seven days over two-weeks. Well-being measures were completed immediately after the first intervention (T1), after the next two interventions (T2?T3) and at one-week follow-up (T4) (but no baseline measure of well-being was taken). At T1, participants in the nostalgia, gratitude, and BPS intervention had higher self-esteem than those in the control intervention. At T1 and T2, participants in the gratitude and BPS intervention reported higher social connectedness than participants in the nostalgia and control intervention. Then at follow-up (T4), participants in the nostalgia, gratitude, and BPS intervention had lower fear of COVID-19 than those in the control intervention. Overall, the results show the benefits of nostalgia, gratitude and optimism, compared to the control, during lockdown.

     

Book Notes

The Psychological Record -     

Computerised Test Interpretation Services: Ethical and Professional Concerns Regarding U.S. Producers and Users

This article focuses on consumer issues arising from the impact of advances in computer technology on the use of psychological assessments. It describes how the widespread use of microcomputers and minicomputers and the development of software for interpreting complex diagnostic and pre-employment tests of a clinical nature, coupled with the growing demand for cost-effective clinical assessment, has led to increased use of computer-based test interpretations by health care professionals. Although these interpretations offer advantages, they also carry a potential for misuse. The authors make recommendations for professional self-regulation to strengthen the gatekeeper function of controlling access to clinical assessment tools.
Cet article s'intéresse aux préoccupations des utilisateurs nées de ľ impact des progrés de ľ informatique sur la pratique de ľévaluation psychologique. On y décrit comment ľ usage généralisé des mini- et micrc-ordinateurs ainsi que le développement des logiciels dans ľ interprétation des diagnostics complexes et des tests de sélection de nature clinique, associéà la demande croissante ď une évaluation clinique efficace au meilleur coût, a amené de plus en plus les spécialistes de la santéà exploiter les interprétations de tests par ordinateur. Cette solution présente des avantages, mais aussi des risques ď abus. Les auteurs recommandent aux spécialistes de renforcer eux-mêmes le contrôle du droit ď accés aux outils ďévaluation clinique.     

Repetition priming of face recognition

Three experiments investigating the priming of the recognition of familiar faces are reported. In Experiment 1, recognizing the face of a celebrity in an “Is this face familiar?” task was primed by exposure several minutes earlier to a different photograph of the same person, but not by exposure to the person's written name (a partial replication of Bruce and Valentine, 1985). In Experiment 2, recognizing the face of a personal acquaintance was again primed by recognizing a different photograph of their face, but not by recognizing the acquaintance from that person's body shape, clothes etc. Experiment 3 showed that maximum repetition priming is obtained from prior exposure to an identical photograph of a famous face, less from a similar photograph, and least (but still significant) from a dissimilar photograph.

We argue that repetition priming is a function of the degree of physical similarity between two stimuli and that lack of priming between different stimulus types (e.g., written names and faces, or bodies and faces) may be attributable to lack of physical similarity between prime and test stimuli. Repetition priming effects may be best explained by some form of “instance-based” model such as that proposed by McClelland and Rumelhart (1985).