Is reading-aloud performance in megastudies systematically influenced by the list context?

To examine megastudy context effects, 585 critical words, each with a different orthographic rime, were placed at the beginning or end of a 2614-word megastudy of reading aloud. Sixty participants (30 participants in each condition) responded to these words. Specific predictors examined for change between beginning and end conditions were frequency, length, feedforward rime consistency, feedforward onset consistency, orthographic neighbourhood size, age of acquisition (AoA), and imageability. While it took longer to respond to items at the end of the experiment than items at the beginning of the experiment, there was very little change in the effects of the specific variables assessed. Thus, there is little evidence of list context effects influencing the estimates of the predictor variables in large-scale megastudies.     

Psychometric properties of the German version of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, Version 11 (BIS-11) for adolescents

Impulsiveness is increasingly gaining attention as a potential risk factor for various mental disorders. Until now, there have been German instruments that allowed for assessing adolescents' self-reported impulsiveness multi-dimensionally. The present study examined the German version of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11 (BIS-11) for adolescents. The instrument was completed by 659 adolescents ages 10 to 20 years; 98 were retested after 6 months. Items showed adequate psychometric properties. An exploratory factor analysis identified three factors that showed slightdifferences from the initial questionnaire proposed by Barratt. The factors showed low to moderate intercorrelations, satisfactory internal consistency (dependent on factor), and were stable over time. Convergent validity was ascertained, and the item pool showed sufficient power to discriminate adolescents with symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and those with loss of eating control from healthy adolescents. Findings suggest that the German BIS-11 is appropriate for reliable investigation of impulsiveness in adolescents. Future research should examine sensitivity as a screening tool, as well as sensitivity to change.     

Gendered Racial Identity of Black Young Women

In order to understand the experience and identity development of Black adolescents and young women, it is important to understand the intersection of race and gender, or gendered racial identity development. The study sought to unpack aspects of social identity particularly gendered racial identity from the phenomenological perspective of participants. This study included dyadic focus groups of 17 African American young women between the ages of 15?C21. Participants were asked about meaning and salience of gendered racial identity. Results suggest that gendered racial identity had greater salience for the participants as compared to the separate constructs of racial or gender identity. The participants identified with negative stereotypes and images of African American women, issues of colorism and standards of beauty. They also emphasized the importance of self-determination. Furthermore, when asked directly about the meaning of race and gender in their lives participants indicated that race and gender simultaneously influenced their perceptions of themselves. The findings that emerge from this study further the discourse regarding limitations that may occur when using single identity factor models to understand identity development among ethnic minority youth. Implications for prevention programs and areas for future research are included.     

Intact emotion-induced recognition bias in neuropsychological patients with executive control deficits

In recognition memory tasks, emotionally negative words are judged more often as "old" relative to emotionally neutral words, suggesting a shift in response bias. We wondered whether this bias shift was due to the flexible regulation of executive control during memory retrieval. To address this question, we investigated individuals with high variability in executive control functions. As expected, we observed that emotional word meaning did indeed have a strong influence on the bias toward responding "old," independent of recognition accuracy and overall response bias. However, these effects were uncorrelated with executive control, as measured by the Trail Making Test, and were fully intact, even in a sample of hospitalized neurological patients with severe executive dysfunctions, some of whom had marked damage in fronto-thalamo-striatal networks. Having concluded that the emotion-induced bias must develop on different grounds, we went on to discuss alternative explanations.     

Applied Computer Diagnostics — Theoretical Foundations and Future Perspectives

The paper reviews and discusses a number of issues relating to the use of computer technology to assist the process of assessing psychologically relevant variables — computer-assisted diagnostics. A definition of computer-assisted diagnostics is given and theoretical developments are discussed. The paper emphasizes the need to consider theoretical issues relating to a number of domains: theory of content, test theory, human—computer interaction, programming theory, instructional theory, normative theory and situation theory. The paper concludes with a view of the current situation and future perspectives, and describes some important ethical issues.     

Motivational control of motor performance by goal setting in a dual-task situation

Summary The goal-setting approach to task motivation is applied to examine the way in which subjects control their performance on two concurrently performed tasks under the guidance of different goals in a dual-task situation. The tasks were a simple auditory-manual reaction time (RT) task and a visual-manual pursuit-tracking task. The goal conditions assigned alternatively to the tasks differed with respect to goal specificity and feedback information (KR) given after the trials. It is shown that the improvement of performance in the task with hard, specific goals is achieved in both cases at the cost of the concurrently performed other task which, on the basis of a lack of feedback and a rather unspecific goal instruction, should have a lower priority. The data reveal some strategies hidden behind these overall changes of the average performance at both tasks. For the RT task, the adjustment to the different goals is mainly achieved by changes in the temporal control or preparatory processes as can be inferred from the RT distributions as well as from the analysis of some typical errors. For the tracking task, changes in the tracking accuracy within the overlapping RT intervals are the best indicators for the performance control under the different goal conditions.This research was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Kl 408/4-2)