认知损伤的评估

该文介绍了作为认知损伤临床评估最优方法的必要条件。评估的一个重要目的是将关于功能区域的优势和劣势的假设公式化,并据此设定适当的康复目标,评价康复的结果。为了达到这一目的,评估应该开始于康复之前,贯穿于康复过程,并持续到康复结束以后。文中比较了两种评估方法：量表法和假设检验法。为了考察认知损伤及其引起的障碍的变化,测验应该具有信度、敏感性和效度。量表法通常不具备这三个必要条件,而假设检验法在这方面更好。该文以一例获得性失语症的词语产出损伤评估为例,介绍了假设检验法的应用     

New Directions in Measuring Reactive and Proactive Aggression: Validation of a Teacher Questionnaire

The well-known distinction between reactive and proactive aggression is theoretically important but empirically controversial. Recently, aggression researchers have argued that we should separate the form and function of aggression to make a clearer distinction between reactive and proactive aggression. This article describes the validation of a new teacher-report Instrument for Reactive and Proactive Aggression (IRPA) that assesses the form separate from the function of aggression. We demonstrated good discriminant, convergent, and construct validity of the IRPA in a sample of 427 children aged 10 to 13. Reactive and proactive functions of aggression were independent constructs (r = 0.03) which indicates excellent discriminant validity. Convergent validity was satisfactory; scores from the IRPA were moderately to highly related to scores from the widely used Teacher Rating Instrument, TRI (Dodge and Coie in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53:1146–1158, 1987). Additionally, reactive and proactive aggression showed unique correlations with most a priori hypothesized theoretically relevant variables, which indicates construct validity. (150 words)     

Levels of number knowledge during early childhood

Researchers have long disagreed about whether number concepts are essentially continuous (unchanging) or discontinuous over development. Among those who take the discontinuity position, there is disagreement about how development proceeds. The current study addressed these questions with new quantitative analyses of children’s incorrect responses on the Give-N task. Using data from 280 children, ages 2 to 4 years, this study showed that most wrong answers were simply guesses, not counting or estimation errors. Their mean was unrelated to the target number, and they were lower-bounded by the numbers children actually knew. In addition, children learned the number-word meanings one at a time and in order; they treated the number words as mutually exclusive; and once they figured out the cardinal principle of counting, they generalized this principle to the rest of their count list. Findings support the ‘discontinuity’ account of number development in general and the ‘knower-levels’ account in particular.     

Career maturity: A latent means and covariance structure analysis of Daidalos

A latent means and covariance structure analysis was conducted to assess the construct validity and construct comparability in the measuring of career maturity across boys and girls. The career maturity inventory has been coined Daidalos. The sample consisted of 2,443 high school students recruited from one county in Norway. Of these, 1,132 were males, and 1,311 were females. The mean age of the participants was 17 years of age. Goodness-of-fit statistics provided support for a five-factor first-order model in which the factor loadings, factor covariances and item intercepts were invariant across groups. Additionally, ΔS-B χ² was shown to be non-significant for the testing of invariance of the measurement model. Three significant differences in latent means were detected, with boys scoring higher on negative attitudes toward school or dropout intentions, and girls scoring higher on career uncertainty and need for world-of-work information.     

The problem of delayed causation in a video game: Constant, varied, and filled delays

A first-person shooter video game was adapted for the study of causal decision making within dynamic environments. The video game included groups of three potential targets. Participants chose which of the three targets in each group was producing distal explosions. The actual source of the explosion effect varied in the delay between the firing of its weapon and the effect (from 0 to 2 s), whether these programed average delays were constant or varied from shot to shot, and whether the delays were unfilled or filled with an auditory event. In Experiment 1, participants’ choice accuracy was highest with shorter delays, but there was no effect of filling the delay and some beneficial effect of varying the delay. These results were re-examined in Experiment 2 but with participants experiencing the same average delay for seven subsequent decisions before the next average delay was introduced. In this experiment, men showed a strong and consistent benefit of filling a delay whereas women did not. Participants’ behavior is considered within the context of a model that assumes that choice behavior is driven by experienced contiguity for the target and foils.     

Motivational clusters and performance in a real-life setting

The present research investigated whether assessing adolescent elite athletes’ motivational profiles at the beginning of the season would allow us to predict their subsequent performance over the course of a competitive season. In two studies, athletes completed the French version of the Sport Motivation Scale (Brière et al., Int J Sport Psychol 26:465–489, 1995) at the beginning of the season. Objective levels of performance were recorded for the following season, as well as for the season prior to questionnaire completion. In Study 1, the sample comprised a total of 170 French junior national tennis players (M = 13.42 years). Results revealed the presence of a four-cluster solution, reflecting different levels of autonomous and controlled motivations. Results revealed that controlling for past performance, athletes with the least self-determined motivational profile obtained lower levels of subsequent tennis performance than those in the three other (more self-determined motivational) clusters. In Study 2, there were a total of 250 French junior national fencers aged 15 years. Results revealed a three-cluster solution very similar to that of Study 1. In addition, in line with Study 1, results revealed that the least self-determined motivational profile led to the lowest level of performance. Overall, these findings suggest that cluster analysis is useful in the understanding of the complex relationship between motivation and performance in elite sport.

If you plan,then you can: How reflection helps defensive pessimists pursue their goals

This research examines how the two propensities that underlie defensive pessimism (pessimism and reflection) operate independently to influence the defensive pessimistic process. It investigates the hypothesis that the propensity to reflect, or plan, counteracts the detrimental effects of pessimism by encouraging not only planning, but also the pursuit of those plans. Consistent with these predictions, two studies revealed that the propensity to reflect helped defensive pessimists pursue their plans by (a) increasing goal importance, (b) promoting effort, (c) raising initial expectations, and (d) buffering the anticipated sting of failure. Pessimism hindered performance by increasing anxiety and lowering expectations. Thus, the propensity to reflect counteracts pessimism by not only promoting planning, but also processes that help the pursuit of those plans.

Exploring the impact of personality on performance: How time-on-task moderates the mediation by self-efficacy

Despite the widely acknowledged impact of dispositional traits on performance, little is known about how personality affects performance. We address this gap by investigating the relationships between the Big Five personality traits, self-efficacy, and academic performance in a moderated mediation model using time-on-task as the moderating variable. Results indicate that self-efficacy partially mediates the conscientiousness–performance relationship and that time-on-task moderates the mediating effect of self-efficacy. Time-on-task moderates the indirect effect of conscientiousness on course performance through self-efficacy such that the indirect effect is not significant at low levels of time-on-task, but becomes significant and stronger at higher levels of time-on-task.     

Applying self-determination theory to understand the motivational impact of cash rewards: New evidence from lab experiments

We investigated, based on self-determination theory (SDT), the impact of the functional meaning of monetary rewards on individuals' motivation and performance and further tested the role of the psychological needs as the underlying mechanism. In two experimental studies, we show that when presented in an autonomy-supportive way, rewards lead participants to experience greater intrinsic motivation, which leads them to perform better, than when monetary rewards are presented in a controlling way. This is mediated by greater psychological need satisfaction, indicating that through greater feelings of competence, autonomy, and relatedness, individuals experience greater intrinsic motivation for the task at hand. Our findings suggest that rewards can have a distinct effect on individuals' motivation and performance depending on whether they take on an autonomy-supportive or controlling meaning, thus providing empirical evidence for the theoretical and practical implications of SDT's concept of functional meaning of rewards. By highlighting the importance of this concept, this research contributes to our understanding of the effectiveness of such rewards in the workplace, suggesting that they can foster employee motivation and performance if organisations present them to employees in an autonomy-supportive way to convey an informational meaning and positively contribute to their psychological need stisfaction.