Psychometric Evidence of a Multidimensional Measure of Prosocial Behaviors for Spanish Adolescents

Prior theories and scholars rarely distinguished between distinct forms of prosocial behaviors (i.e., actions intended to benefit others) and most scholars operationalize prosocial behaviors as a global construct. Furthermore, stringent tests of psychometric properties of prosocial behavior measures are rare, especially in countries other than the United States. The present study was designed to examine the structure and functions of a multidimensional measure of prosocial behaviors in youth from Spain. Six hundred and 66 adolescents (46% girls; M age = 15.33 years, SD = 0.47 years) from Valencia, Spain, completed the Prosocial Tendencies Measure-Revised (PTM-R), measures of sympathy, perspective taking, and a global measure of prosocial behavior. Results showed that the hypothesized 6-factor structure of the PTM-R had good fit, the best fit model as compared to alternative models, and that there were several unique patterns of relations between specific forms of prosocial behaviors and sympathy, perspective taking, and the global measure of prosocial behavior. Furthermore, although there were significant gender differences in some forms of prosocial behaviors, the structure of the PTM-R was equivalent across gender. Discussion focuses on the implications for theories and measurement of prosocial behaviors.     

Learning New Letter-like Writing Patterns Explicitly and Implicitly in Children and Adults

A handwriting task was used to test the assumption that explicit learning is dependent on age and working memory, while implicit learning is not. The effect of age was examined by testing both, typically developing children (5–12 years old, n = 81) and adults (n = 27) in a counterbalanced within-subjects design. Participants were asked to repeatedly write letter-like patterns on a digitizer with a non-inking pen. Reproduction of the pattern was better after explicit learning compared to implicit learning. Age had positive effects on both explicit and implicit learning; working memory did not affect learning in either conditions. These results show that it may be more effective to learn writing new letter-like patterns explicitly and that an explicit teaching method is preferred in mainstream primary education.     

Unhappy Self-Esteem: A Meaningful Exception to the Rule

Self-esteem and well-being are often seen as closely related and sometimes even considered conceptually identical. In marked contrast to this association, the focus of this article is on experiences of a high level of self-esteem coexisting with a low level of well-being: unhappy self-esteem. Although these experiences constitute an exception to the general rule, they nevertheless have a theoretically coherent character. In this article, a framework was used in which the self was considered an organized process, and an idiographic assessment procedure—the method of self-confrontation—was called upon. The self-statements of 15 subjects in the Netherlands showing unhappy self-esteem were compared, and the phenomenon was found to clearly refer to anger and opposition.     

Formative Versus Reflective Measurement: An Illustration Using Work–Family Balance

The aim of this article is to propose the formative measurement approach that can be used in various constructs of applied psychology. To illustrate this approach, the authors will (a) discuss the distinction between commonly used principal-factor (reflective) measures in comparison to the composite (formative) latent variable model, which is often applied in other disciplines such as marketing or engineering, and (b) point out the advantages and limitations of formative specifications using the example of the work–family balance (WFB) construct. Data collected from 2 large cross-sectional field studies confirm the reliability and validity of formative WFB measures as well as its predictive value regarding criteria of WFB (i.e., job satisfaction, family satisfaction, and life satisfaction). Last, the specific informational value of each formative indicator will be demonstrated and discussed in terms of practical implications for the assessment in different psychological fields.     

In search of average growth: Describing within-year oral reading fluency growth across Grades 1–8

Measures of oral reading fluency (ORF) are perhaps the most often used assessment to monitor student progress as part of a response to intervention (RTI) model. Rates of growth in research and aim lines in practice are used to characterize student growth; in either case, growth is generally defined as linear, increasing at a constant rate. Recent research suggests ORF growth follows a nonlinear trajectory, but limitations related to the datasets used in such studies, composed of only three testing occasions, curtails their ability to examine the true functional form of ORF growth. The purpose of this study was to model within-year ORF growth using up to eight testing occasions for 1448 students in Grades 1 to 8 to assess (a) the average growth trajectory for within-year ORF growth, (b) whether students vary significantly in within-year ORF growth, and (c) the extent to which findings are consistent across grades. Results demonstrated that for Grades 1 to 7, a quadratic growth model fit better than either linear or cubic growth models, and for Grade 8, there was no substantial, stable growth. Findings suggest that the expectation for linear growth currently used in practice may be unrealistic.     

The secluded minds of violent patients

In this paper, I will present two violent patients suffering from severe Personality Disorders, illustrating the changes that can arise during the course of several years' psychoanalytic treatment in high security hospital. Progress was monitored using the Operationalised Psychodynamic Diagnostics (OPD) system. The clinical presentations will indicate how secluded these patients' minds are to themselves and to those involved in their care. The psychoanalytic treatment, as one part of the overall treatment, is described to show how the secluded parts of the patients'' minds can be approached, including references to the regular regressions that arise, provoked by ‘getting better’.     

Implicit theories of emotion shape regulation of negative affect

Implicit theories of emotion—assumptions about whether emotions are fixed (entity theory) or malleable (incremental theory)—have previously been shown to influence affective outcomes over time. We examined whether implicit theories of emotion also relate to the immediate regulation of negative affect. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that the more students endorsed an entity theory of emotion, the more discomfort they reported while watching an aversive movie clip, the more they avoided affective stimuli in this movie clip, the more negative affect they reported after the clip, and the less likely they were to watch the same clip again to learn about its ending. These findings suggest that implicit theories of emotion might produce poor affective outcomes immediately as well as over time. They also offer insight into why some people avoid negative affect while others confront it.     

I like you,I like you not: Understanding the formation of context-dependent automatic attitudes

Previous research has shown that automatic evaluations can be highly context dependent. Expanding on past research demonstrating context effects for existing attitudes toward familiar objects, the present research examined basic principles that guide the formation of context-dependent versus context-independent automatic attitudes. Results from four experiments showed that: (a) newly formed attitudes generalised to novel contexts when prior experiences with the attitude object were evaluatively homogeneous; (b) when prior experiences were evaluatively heterogeneous, automatic evaluations became context sensitive, such that they reflected the contingency between the valence of prior experiences and the context in which these experiences occurred; and (c) when prior experiences were evaluatively heterogeneous across different contexts, novel contexts elicited automatic evaluations that reflected the valence of first experiences with the attitude object. Implications for research on automatic evaluation and attitude change are discussed.     

On the dynamics of implicit emotion regulation: Counter-regulation after remembering events of high but not of low emotional intensity

Valence biases in attention allocation were assessed after remembering positive or negative personal events that were either still emotionally hot or to which the person had already adapted psychologically. Differences regarding the current state of psychological adjustment were manipulated experimentally by instructing participants to recall distant vs. recent events (Experiment 1) or affectively hot events vs. events to which the person had accommodated already (Experiment 2). Valence biases in affective processing were measured with a valence search task. Processes of emotional counter-regulation (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of opposite valence to the emotional event) were elicited by remembering affectively hot events, whereas congruency effects (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of the same valence as the emotional event) were obtained for events for which a final appraisal had already been established. The results of our study help to resolve conflicting findings from the literature regarding congruent vs. incongruent effects of remembering emotional events on affective processing. We discuss implications of our findings for the conception of emotions and for the dynamics of emotion regulation processes.