The effectiveness of reward and punishment contingencies on response inhibition

The relative effectiveness of reward and punishment on the development of response inhibition was evaluated developmentally. Forty kindergarten and forty second-graders received response inhibition training with half of each group rewarded for inhibiting and half punished for not inhibiting. Reward involved the presentation of positive reinforcers, whereas punishment involved their removal. Punishment produced more inhibition at both age levels than did reward. Transfer of inhibition training was evaluated in two tasks. Transfer effects were observed only on one of the two tasks. Reinforcement contingencies and age did not differentially influence the magnitude of transfer.     

Semantic integration in children's reconstruction of narrative sequences

Preschool to fourth grade subjects were required to reconstruct a previously seen logical sequence by selecting old items from a set containing actually seen events and two types of new items, those consistent or inconsistent with the ordered sequence of the story. Older children were more efficient at adopting a consistent choice strategy, at rejecting inconsistent items and at retaining the end-anchor items of the story. When performance on the old anchor items was excluded, however, all grades had difficulty distinguishing the new-consistent items from the actually experienced old items. It is suggested that memory for logical narrative sequences involves the retention of the gist or theme in an integrated unified representation of the meaning rather than a series of discrete events. Further, the underlying processes of integration and inference are stable across ages.     

Mutual problem-solving skills training for premarital couples: A six-month follow-up

The purpose of the present study was to undertake a six-month follow-up of the communication and problem-solving skill level of those premarital couples trained in the Ridley, Avery, Harrell, Leslie, and Dent (in press) study. Fifty-nine percent of the original sample (14 experimental couples and 18 control couples) were given a behavioral assessment of communication and problem-solving ability six months after training. Results indicated that the experimental group, relative to the control group, had significantly higher pretest to follow-up scores on communication skills and the problem-solving steps. Discussions centered on the implications of skill maintenance over time and possible directions of future research.     

Effects of age,stimuli, and category recognition factors in children's inquiry behavior

One hundred twenty-eight children of average intellectual ability from grades K, 1, 2, and 5 (ages 6, 7, 8, and 11, respectively) were administered a 20-questions task involving the presentation of 24 stimulus pictures and a forced-choice post-test. The four-factor design included four grade levels, two stimulus conditions (basic-level and superordinate), and two instruction conditions (cueing and non-cueing) for boys and girls. Results indicated older children generated more efficient questions, all children in the Cued-instruction condition asked more constraint-seeking questions in the Basic-level condition than in the Superordinate condition on the 20-questions task, and all children in the Basic-level condition selected more efficient questions in the post-test forced-choice task than in Superordinate condition. It was concluded that even younger school-age children will generate efficient constraint-seeking questions when Basic-level stimuli are used and when children are cued.     

Need for social approval: Impression management or self-deception?

A bogus pipeline technique was employed to separate the self- and other-deceptive components in social desirability responding and need for social approval. The self- and the other-deceptive components of social desirability responding were found to be independent of each other but to be positively and independently related to individual differences in need for approval score. Self-deceptive persons demonstrated diminished recall while other-deceptive persons exhibited enhanced recall of negatively evaluative characteristics. Such differential association with repressive and sensitizing defensive styles is discussed within the context of defensive denial and impression management conception of approval motivation.     

Paths to community empowerment: Organizing at home

This study examines how low-income minority communities build on their strengths to improve material conditions and how these actions lead to further empowerment at the individual and group level, and increase engagement with civic life. Based on earlier qualitative research, low-income limited equity housing co-ops were chosen as research. Using quantitative questionnaire data, a path model was tested in which variables were organized into four levels.Level One: Attributes of the person and the context were conceptualized asexogenous variables leading to activities first at the co-op level.Level Two:co-op activities were thought to affect living conditions in the building and evaluations of co-op ownership, which comprisedLevel Three,quality of life in the building. All preceding levels were thought to influenceempowerment, as measured atLevel Four through an attitudinal measure of empowerment, and reported participation in civic activities in the broader community. The model, which emphasizes the collective and material nature of empowerment in addition to the psychological, seems justified by the data. It is especially significant that the aggregate measure of perceived participation of others predicted building quality, and that the aggregate measure of building quality went on to influence empowerment and voting behavior. Personal participation in building activities also proved a good predictor of empowerment, indicating that empowerment operates at both the individual and the group level. Furthermore, increased empowerment at the level of attitude did influence civic activities, in conjunction with personal characteristics and perceived neighborhood qualities. (Tests of causality in the opposite direction were not significant.) Our findings confirm the importance of all three components of empowerment, as articulated by Zimmerman and his colleagues (1992), that is, empowerment at the psychological, interactional, and behavioral level. It extends the conceptualization by introducing the group level of analysis. We thank the Robert F. Wagner Sr. Center for Urban Public Policy at the City University of New York Graduate School and University Center and the Fund for the City of New York for early support and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation for current support. We acknowledge the invaluable participation in the original project of Heléne Clark, Eric Glunt, Bill Roane, and April Tyler. We also thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful and extremely thorough comments and suggestions.     

The Effects of Investments in theSocial Capital of Youth on Political and Civic Behavior in Young Adulthood: A Longitudinal Analysis

This paper uses the National Education Longitudinal Study to examine whether early investments in the social capital of young people produce greater political involvement and civic virtue in young adulthood. Parental involvement in a young person's life, youth religious involvement, and voluntary association participation were some of the forms of social capital hypothesized to influence adult political behavior. Structural equations modeling was used to trace the effects of the presence of social capital as early as the 8th grade year in shaping young adult political and civic behavior. The analysis shows that early extensive connections to others, close familial relationships, religious participation, and participation in extracurricular activities in one's youth are significant predictors of greater political and civic involvement in young adulthood.