It’s Greek to me: Domain specific relationships between intellectual helplessness and academic performance

ABSTRACT

In a study of the domain specificity of intellectual learned helplessness, we collected data from 376 students in 14 classrooms. We measured feelings of intellectual helplessness for mathematics and language skills, anxiety about performance in each of these domains, and general working memory. Multilevel modeling analyses found that feelings of helplessness in language skills were negatively related to grades in language but were unrelated to grades in mathematics. Similarly, feelings of helplessness in mathematics were negatively related to grades in mathematics but were unrelated to grades in language. Controlling for anxiety or working memory did not change these relationships, nor did they vary across the age of students. The results support conceptualizations in which learned helplessness has a domain specific component.     

Physical risk taking in elementary-school children: Measurement and emotion regulation issues

Children who engage in physical risk taking experience more injuries. In the present study children 7-12 years completed laboratory tasks and standardized questionnaires to explore inter-relations between measures of risk taking and to determine if the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) is a valid index of physical risk taking. Emotion regulation skills also were assessed to determine if poorer skills are associated with greater risk taking, and what measures of risk taking show these relations. Results revealed that general measures of risk taking propensity predicted both BART performance and physical risk taking. Similarly, poorer emotion regulation skills were associated with greater risk taking scores for both the BART and physical risk taking task. Measures of physical risk taking related to one another, however, none of these scores related to performance on the BART. Implications for measuring physical risk taking and exploring emotional links to risk taking in future research are discussed.     

How context shapes category inferences and attribute preference for new ambiguous products

Extant research suggests that when marketers introduce products with functions that span multiple categories, consumers tend to generate beliefs in line with only a single category. This has been regarded as a major marketing challenge because it leads consumers to ignore key attributes from the product's supplementary category. Contrary to this prediction, the authors find that because consumers tend to classify new hybrid products by contrasting them against the competitive context, attributes from the supplementary category become more salient and thus contribute greater utility in choice. The authors pit the strength of this effect against several of the most dominant and favored category cues. The results confirm that classification inferences and attribute preference for new hybrid products are highly contextual, and as such, single category inferences need not translate directly into attribute preference.     

Developing Intuitions about How Personal and Social Properties Are Linked to the Brain and the Body

This study investigated the development of intuitions about which properties are associated with the brain and which are associated with the body. A sample of 60 children aged 6, 8, and 10 years, as well a sample of 20 adults, were told about a brain transplant between two individuals and were asked about where certain properties resided after the transplant. Adults and older children construed the characteristics associated with fine-motor behaviour, culpability, social contract and best friendships as transferring with the brain. Characteristics associated with gross-motor behaviour, physical/biological properties, ownership and familial relationships were more likely to be seen as remaining with the body. Domain-based explanations for this pattern of results are discussed.     

样例呈现方式对概念训练类别表征的影响

以往研究发现训练形式会影响类别学习的表征方式。实验采用学习-迁移范式,探究概念训练中样例的呈现方式对类别表征的影响。实验中被试通过不同呈现方式来学习类别知识,在学习3个block之后对其进行测验。实验结果表明:(1)学习单样例和同一类别比较学习的被试在测验阶段的成绩与学习阶段之间没有差异;(2)学习不同类别比较学习的被试在测验阶段的成绩大幅度下降。因此得出结论,在概念训练中,不同类别比较学习导致被试形成类别间信息的表征。     

自闭症谱系障碍的早期筛查工具

基于35项实证研究, 遵循诊断准确性研究的质量评估(QUADAS-2)的循证程序对自闭症谱系早期预警特征筛查工具开展质量评估, 包括婴儿阶段(10个筛查工具, 159388人)、幼儿阶段(14项筛查工具, 11712人), 旨在为自闭症谱系风险的早期识别提供全面的理解。结果表明：幼儿阶段的筛查工具的分类准确性要高于婴儿阶段, 在婴儿阶段达到良好水平的筛查工具有M-CHAT-R/F、PDQ-1; 在幼儿阶段达到优秀水平的筛查工具有OERA、TIDOS。其中, “改良的幼儿自闭症检查表-有修订的后续随访” (M-CHAT-R/F)是目前最具潜力的自闭症谱系风险筛查工具之一。最后, 我们探讨了应用QUADAS-2评估研究质量的局限性, 强调需要规范工具的质量评估标准与进一步验证研究的必要性。     

内隐联系测验的修正——简式内隐联系测验

简式内隐联系测验(Brief Implicit Association Test,BIAT),是对内隐联系测验(Implicit Association Test,IAT)(也称为内隐联想测验)的修正,它由两部分联合任务组成,使用传统IAT中的两类别的属性材料和两类别的概念材料以及与IAT相同的联接-反应对。在设计BIAT时,焦点类别的选定对其测量效果有着至关重要的影响,Sriram和Greenwald的研究已经初步证明BIAT方法可以成功运用于测量内隐态度,认同和刻板印象。本文回顾了内隐联系测验发展过程中的各种变式,着重介绍了简式内隐联系测验,结合Sriram的应用对其进行综合评价并建议在今后的研究中对此方法进行验证。     

儿童归纳推理中的标签作用

传统的归纳推理观主要包括特征相似性观和概念观。在基于这两种传统观点的研究过程中,研究者逐渐发现类别知识,特别是标签起到的独特作用,但目前关于不同类型标签作用的分析还缺乏系统性。该文从分析目前两大主要标签研究现状——语言标签和类别标签入手,试图明确标签作用和关系、解释混淆和误解;同时,作者就以标签为载体的研究同儿童语言发展间存在的密切联系提出了儿童归纳推理发展的语言认知模式。文章最后认为未来的研究方向应集中在对机制、技术和深层次内部关系三方面问题的探讨上。     

Situational moral adjustment and the happy victimizer

In this study we examine the possibility that the happy victimizer phenomenon (HVP), which is generally thought to be restricted to a specific period in middle childhood, also appears among adults. In contrast to other studies that explain the HVP as a lack of moral motivation or an insufficiently developed moral self, we propose to explain HVP in terms of a specific moral stage, i.e., a specific kind of moral reasoning. In particular we identify HV-typical moral reasoning with a sub-form of Kohlberg Stage 2. Adult usage of this moral stage is then explained in terms of situation-specificity. We also try to elaborate the idea of situational adjustment and to reveal the processes of activation and usage of previously acquired moral stage principles. Our empirical study shows that adults use HV-typical principles in specific situations.     

Gender differences in emotion recognition: Impact of sensory modality and emotional category

Results from studies on gender differences in emotion recognition vary, depending on the types of emotion and the sensory modalities used for stimulus presentation. This makes comparability between different studies problematic. This study investigated emotion recognition of healthy participants (N = 84; 40 males; ages 20 to 70 years), using dynamic stimuli, displayed by two genders in three different sensory modalities (auditory, visual, audio-visual) and five emotional categories. The participants were asked to categorise the stimuli on the basis of their nonverbal emotional content (happy, alluring, neutral, angry, and disgusted). Hit rates and category selection biases were analysed. Women were found to be more accurate in recognition of emotional prosody. This effect was partially mediated by hearing loss for the frequency of 8,000 Hz. Moreover, there was a gender-specific selection bias for alluring stimuli: Men, as compared to women, chose “alluring” more often when a stimulus was presented by a woman as compared to a man.