The effects of a sportsmanship curriculum intervention on generalized positive social behavior of urban elementary school students

This study evaluated the effects of an elementary physical education curriculum in which development of positive social skills, including leadership and conflict-resolution behaviors, was the primary focus. A second goal was to determine possible generalization effects beyond the primary intervention setting. Students in two urban elementary physical education classes served as subjects, with a third class used as a comparison. The effects of the curriculum intervention were evaluated in the training setting and in the students' regular education classrooms using a multiple baseline across classrooms design. Results showed (a) an immediate increase in student leadership and independent conflict-resolution behaviors, (b) an increase in percentage of class time devoted to activity participation, and (c) decreases in the frequency of student off-task behavior and percentage of class time that students devoted to organizational tasks. Similar changes in student behavior were also observed in the regular classroom settings.     

Suicidal behavior among youth with severe emotional disturbance

The purpose of this study was to replicate an investigation of risk behaviors associated with suicidal behavior in public high school students, in a population of high school age youth with severe emotional disturbance (SED). Subjects for the study were clients of the South Carolina Continuum of Care (COC) (N=83). Information on suicidal thoughts and acts, aggressive behaviors, substance use and physical recklessness was gathered using a modified version of the self-report National Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Four percent of the youth reported seriously considering suicide, 8% reported planning how they would attempt suicide, 10% reported actually attempting suicide at least once, and 6% reported attempts requiring medical treatment Of the 13 youth who reported attempting suicide, four (31%) did not report planning an attempt. All suicidal behaviors except thoughts occurred more in girls than boys with SED. Alcohol and illicit drug use were associated with suicidal behavior, with larger odds ratios for attempts than for thoughts/plans. Youth with SED who use alcohol and illicit substances are particularly at risk of suicidal behavior. A high index of suspicion is appropriate when evaluating suicidal risk in girls with SED, especially in the presence of known alcohol or substance use.Continuum of Care for Emotionally Disturbed Children Division, S. C. Office of the Governor.     

Neoclassical Economics and the Last Dogma of Positivism: Is the Normative-Positive Distinction Justified?

Neoclassical economic theory in its pretensions to scientific status is founded on one of the variants of a now discredited positivism. Neoclassical economic theory claims that there are two distinct areas of economic research: positive economics and normative economics. The former is assumed to deal with the cognitive as scientific content of economics while the later focuses on welfare or equity issues. I argue that the reliance of the whole theoretical structure of economics on the normative postulate of rationality renders neoclassical economics a normative discipline. I also argue that neoclassical economics should thus be viewed as an instance of applied ethics rather than as applied mathematics, say. Finally, it is suggested that neoclassical economics, if its scientific pretensions are to be taken seriously, should be absorbed theoretically into general anthropology.     

Moral Accountancy and Moral Worth

People do good or bad things, and get or do not get good or bad credit for their actions, depending (in part) on knowledge of their actions. I attempt to unfold some of the interconnections between these matters, and between them and the achievement of moral worth. The main conclusion is that the heights of moral worth seem to appear in the oddest places.     

Aggravated and mitigated opening utterances

Four types of aggravated opening utterances (insult, command, accusation, refusal without a reason) and four types of mitigated opening utterances (request, indication of shared responsibility, reaffirmation, and refusal with a reason) were investigated. Ordinary social actors rated each of the mitigated opening utterances higher than aggravated opening utterances on specific appropriateness, general appropriateness, and effectiveness. Hence, the type of opening employed to initiate an argumentative episode influences judgments of appropriateness and effectiveness.     

The effect of children's spontaneous cognitive sets on discrimination learning

Two experiments investigated the role of children's spontaneous cognitive “sets” in pictorial discrimination learning. Lists were constructed to highlight either perceptual or conceptual similarities among the stimuli. In each experiment age by treatment interactions revealed that in comparison to the behavior of older children (sixth graders), that of younger children (kindergartners) is governed more by the perceptible than by the conceptual attributes of stimuli—data in complete accord with Bruner's view of cognitive development.     

父母冲突与中学生应对方式的关系:教养方式和情绪安全感的链式中介作用

为了探讨父母冲突、父母教养方式、情绪安全感和应对方式的关系,研究采用量表对北京市和河南省1322名初一到高二的学生进行调查。结果表明：父母冲突直接影响中学生的应对方式,且存在三条路径：通过父母教养方式的单独中介作用影响中学生的积极应对方式和父母消极教养方式的单独中介作用影响中学生的消极应对方式;通过情绪不安全感的单独中介作用影响中学生的应对方式;通过父母消极教养方式和情绪不安全感的链式中介作用影响中学生的应对方式。因此减少和避免父母冲突,提高中学生的情绪安全感,同时给予中学生积极教养方式,减少和避免消极教养方式,有利于中学生积极应对方式的发展。     

The Analytic Truth and Falsity of Disjunctions

Disjunctive inferences are difficult. According to the theory of mental models, it is because of the alternative possibilities to which disjunctions refer. Three experiments corroborated further predictions of the mental model theory. Participants judged that disjunctions, such as Either this year is a leap year or it is a common year are true. Given a disjunction such as Either A or B, they tended to evaluate the four cases in its ‘partition’: A and B, A and not‐B, not‐A and B, not‐A and not‐B, as ‘possible’ or ‘impossible’ in ways that bore out the difference between inclusive disjunctions (‘or both’) and exclusive disjunctions (‘but not both’). Knowledge usually concerns what is true, and so when participants judge that a disjunction is false, or contingent, and evaluate the cases in its partition, they depend on inferences that yield predictable errors. They tended to judge that disjunctions, such as follows: Either the food is cold or else it is tepid, but not both, are true, though in fact they could be false. They tended to infer ‘mirror‐image’ evaluations that yield the same possibilities for false disjunctions as those for true disjunctions. The article considers the implications of these results for alternative theories based on classical logic or on the probability calculus.     

Problem Solvers Adjust Cognitive Offloading Based on Performance Goals

When incorporating the environment into mental processing (cf., cognitive offloading), one creates novel cognitive strategies that have the potential to improve task performance. Improved performance can, for example, mean faster problem solving, more accurate solutions, or even higher grades at university.¹ Although cognitive offloading has frequently been associated with improved performance, it is yet unclear how flexible problem solvers are at matching their offloading habits with their current performance goals (can people improve goal‐related instead of generic performance, e.g., when being in a hurry and aiming for a “quick and dirty” solution?). Here, we asked participants to solve a cognitive task, provided them with different goals—maximizing speed (SPD) or accuracy (ACC), respectively—and measured how frequently (Experiment 1) and how proficiently (Experiment 2) they made use of a novel external resource to support their cognitive processing. Experiment 1 showed that offloading behavior varied with goals: Participants offloaded less in the SPD than in the ACC condition. Experiment 2 showed that this differential offloading behavior was associated with high goal‐related performance: fast answers in the SPD, accurate answers in the ACC condition. Simultaneously, goal‐unrelated performance was sacrificed: inaccurate answers in the SPD, slow answers in the ACC condition. The findings support the notion of humans as canny offloaders who are able to successfully incorporate their environment in pursuit of their current cognitive goals. Future efforts should be focused on the finding's generalizability, for example, to settings without feedback or with high mental workload.