A comparison of self‐report of criminal involvement and official arrest records

Self‐reports of arrests and official arrest records were compared for 250 male and 80 female participants in the ongoing Hyperactivity Follow‐Up Study of Young Adults at University of California at Berkeley. For males, kappa coefficients indicated good statistical agreement between arrest records and self‐report measures for 7 of the 12 types of crimes. Statistical agreement, however, may not be the most meaningful yardstick to judge concordance. Additional analyses reveal that for almost all of the crimes examined, one third or more of those with an arrest record for the crime failed to reveal this information on the self‐report measure. Arrests for both some high‐frequency, less serious crimes and some low‐frequency, more serious crimes were not revealed in the subjects’ self‐reports. An examination of the unique information gained from self‐reports found that the subjects most often reported committing public disorder crimes for which they were not caught (over 30%) and were least likely to self‐report crimes against people (less than 10%). Furthermore, subjects with more convictions were more likely to accurately self‐report their criminal involvement. Since both self‐report and official records each contribute unique information and reflect different sources of error, it is proposed that a combination of both types of records is the most inclusive indicator of criminal activity in adulthood. Aggr. Behav. 27:44–54, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Tracking Fluctuations in Psychological States Using Social Media Language: A Case Study of Weekly Emotion

Personality psychologists are increasingly documenting dynamic, within-person processes. Big data methodologies can augment this endeavour by allowing for the collection of naturalistic and personality-relevant digital traces from online environments. Whereas big data methods have primarily been used to catalogue static personality dimensions, here we present a case study in how they can be used to track dynamic fluctuations in psychological states. We apply a text-based, machine learning prediction model to Facebook status updates to compute weekly trajectories of emotional valence and arousal. We train this model on 2895 human-annotated Facebook statuses and apply the resulting model to 303 575 Facebook statuses posted by 640 US Facebook users who had previously self-reported their Big Five traits, yielding an average of 28 weekly estimates per user. We examine the correlations between model-predicted emotion and self-reported personality, providing a test of the robustness of these links when using weekly aggregated data, rather than momentary data as in prior work. We further present dynamic visualizations of weekly valence and arousal for every user, while making the final data set of 17 937 weeks openly available. We discuss the strengths and drawbacks of this method in the context of personality psychology's evolution into a dynamic science. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Well‐being and the accessibility of pleasant and unpleasant concepts

The trait–congruency hypothesis predicts that persons high in positive or negative trait affect more readily process pleasant or unpleasant stimuli, respectively. In two studies, participants were administered measures of personality and affect. Moreover, a yes/no lexical decision task with pleasant, unpleasant and neutral words was administered in Study 1, whereas a go/no‐go task was used in Study 2. Several methods to increase reliabilities of differences in reaction times are explored. Correlations of measures of personality and trait affect with decision times were mostly consistent with the trait–congruency hypothesis, particularly for decision times in the go/no‐go task that measured individual differences in valence‐specific decision times more reliably. The findings suggest that trait‐related concept accessibility is one source of trait congruity. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Processing of temporal and nontemporal information as predictors of psychometric intelligence: a structural-equation-modeling approach

Recent research suggests a functional link between temporal acuity and general intelligence. To better understand this relation, the present study took advantage of a large sample (N=260) and structural equation modelling to examine relations among temporal acuity, measured by various tasks, speed of information processing as measured by the Hick reaction time task, and psychometric intelligence. Temporal acuity and the Hick task showed common variance in predicting psychometric intelligence. Furthermore, timing performance was a better predictor of psychometric intelligence and mediated the relation between Hick task performance and psychometric intelligence. These findings are consistent with the idea that temporal acuity reflects a basic property of neural functioning that is relevant to intelligence-related aspects of mental activity including speed of information processing.     

Risk for injury in preschoolers: relationship to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Parental ratings of preschoolers' risk for injury, direct assessment of preschoolers' behavior thought related to risk for injury (e.g., Inattention, impulsivity) and number of documented injuries were examined in preschoolers with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and their non-ADHD peers (Control). Of preschoolers with ADHD, 58.3% exhibited behavior which placed them at-risk for physical injury (0% Control), and their performance was significantly poorer on clinic-based tests. Nonetheless, preschoolers with ADHD did not actually sustain significantly more injuries which warranted medical treatment in an emergency department. Although preschoolers with ADHD may be at increased risk for minor injuries, further research is needed to determine whether they more frequently sustain more serious injuries.     

How many voices did you hear? Natural variability disrupts identity perception from unfamiliar voices

Our voices sound different depending on the context (laughing vs. talking to a child vs. giving a speech), making within‐person variability an inherent feature of human voices. When perceiving speaker identities, listeners therefore need to not only ‘tell people apart’ (perceiving exemplars from two different speakers as separate identities) but also ‘tell people together’ (perceiving different exemplars from the same speaker as a single identity). In the current study, we investigated how such natural within‐person variability affects voice identity perception. Using voices from a popular TV show, listeners, who were either familiar or unfamiliar with this show, sorted naturally varying voice clips from two speakers into clusters to represent perceived identities. Across three independent participant samples, unfamiliar listeners perceived more identities than familiar listeners and frequently mistook exemplars from the same speaker to be different identities. These findings point towards a selective failure in ‘telling people together’. Our study highlights within‐person variability as a key feature of voices that has striking effects on (unfamiliar) voice identity perception. Our findings not only open up a new line of enquiry in the field of voice perception but also call for a re‐evaluation of theoretical models to account for natural variability during identity perception.     

Flexible voices: Identity perception from variable vocal signals

Human voices are extremely variable: The same person can sound very different depending on whether they are speaking, laughing, shouting or whispering. In order to successfully recognise someone from their voice, a listener needs to be able to generalize across these different vocal signals (‘telling people together’). However, in most studies of voice-identity processing to date, the substantial within-person variability has been eliminated through the use of highly controlled stimuli, thus focussing on how we tell people apart. We argue that this obscures our understanding of voice-identity processing by controlling away an essential feature of vocal stimuli that may include diagnostic information. In this paper, we propose that we need to extend the focus of voice-identity research to account for both “telling people together” as well as “telling people apart.” That is, we must account for whether, and to what extent, listeners can overcome within-person variability to obtain a stable percept of person identity from vocal cues. To do this, our theoretical and methodological frameworks need to be adjusted to explicitly include the study of within-person variability.

     

The German-Language Version of the Expressions of Spirituality Inventory-Revised: Adaptation and Initial Validation

This study deals with the development and initial validation of the German language version of MacDonald’s (2000) Expressions of Spirituality Inventory-Revised (ESI-R; Macdonald, D.A. (2000). The Expressions of Spirituality Inventory: Test Development, Validation and Scoring Information. Unpublished test manual. University of Detroit Mercy). Using two samples (N?=?479 and N?=?610 adults), we found the best fit for a five-factor solution that converges well with the original English language version. Correlations with subjective measures for religiosity, life satisfaction, orientations to happiness, personality, single item ratings of religious and spiritual behaviors as well as a ratings on the depiction of religious contents in the media support the validity of the German ESI-R. Overall, the findings are encouraging and the scale seems to be useful for further research in German-language countries.     

Longitudinal stability of pre‐reading skill profiles of kindergarten children: implications for early screening and theories of reading

Research suggests that early identification of developmental dyslexia is important for mitigating the negative effects of dyslexia, including reduced educational attainment and increased socioemotional difficulties. The strongest pre‐literacy predictors of dyslexia are rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological awareness (PA), letter knowledge, and verbal short‐term memory. The relationship among these constructs has been debated, and several theories have emerged to explain the unique role of each in reading ability/disability. Furthermore, the stability of identification of risk based on these measures varies widely across studies, due in part to the different cut‐offs employed to designate risk. We applied a latent profile analysis technique with a diverse sample of 1215 kindergarten and pre‐kindergarten students from 20 schools, to investigate whether PA, RAN, letter knowledge, and verbal short‐term memory measures differentiated between homogenous profiles of performance on these measures. Six profiles of performance emerged from the data: average performers, below average performers, high performers, PA risk, RAN risk, and double‐deficit risk (both PA and RAN). A latent class regression model was employed to investigate the longitudinal stability of these groups in a representative subset of children (n = 95) nearly two years later, at the end of 1st grade. Profile membership in the spring semester of pre‐kindergarten or fall semester of kindergarten was significantly predictive of later reading performance, with the specific patterns of performance on the different constructs remaining stable across the years. There was a higher frequency of PA and RAN deficits in children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. There was no evidence for the IQ–achievement discrepancy criterion traditionally used to diagnose dyslexia. Our results support the feasibility of early identification of dyslexia risk and point to the heterogeneity of risk profiles. These findings carry important implications for improving outcomes for children with dyslexia, based on more targeted interventions.     

What Determines Social Control? People's Reactions to Counternormative Behaviors in Urban Environments1

Social control refers to any reaction by which a bystander communicates to the “perpetrator” of an uncivil behavior that his or her action is not acceptable. In 3 field studies, we examined the factors that affect people's tendency to exert social control. Passersby in the streets were asked how they would react were they to witness different uncivil behaviors. They also rated their appraisal of the situation and the emotions they would feel. The results suggest that 3 factors are primary determinants of social control: the feeling of responsibility to exert it; the perceived legitimacy of social control in the situation; and the extent to which bystanders felt hostile emotions. These results have implications for how to reduce uncivil behaviors.