Emotional effects of startling background music during reading news reports: The moderating influence of dispositional BIS and BAS sensitivities

We examined the moderating influence of dispositional behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and behavioral activation system (BAS) sensitivities on the relationship of startling background music with emotion-related subjective and physiological responses elicited during reading news reports, and with memory performance among 26 adult men and women. Physiological parameters measured were respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), electrodermal activity (EDA), and facial electromyography (EMG). The results showed that, among high BAS individuals, news stories with startling background music were rated as more interesting and elicited higher zygomatic EMG activity and RSA than news stories with non-startling music. Among low BAS individuals, news stories with startling background music were rated as less pleasant and more arousing and prompted higher EDA. No BIS-related effects or effects on memory were found. Startling background music may have adverse (e.g., negative arousal) or beneficial effects (e.g., a positive emotional state and stronger positive engagement) depending on dispositional BAS sensitivity of an individual. Actual or potential applications of this research include the personalization of media presentations when using modern media and communications technologies.     

An outcome management program for extending advances in choice research into choice opportunities for supported workers with severe multiple disabilities

We evaluated an outcome management program for increasing choice opportunities provided by 2 job coaches for 5 supported workers with severe multiple disabilities in a community job. The program involved specifying and monitoring behavioral outcomes among workers and staff, training staff, and supportive and corrective feedback. Increased choice provision occurred for both job coaches across a 1-year period. Results indicate how outcome management can help translate advances in choice research into routine practice.     

Maturing into Boyhood: James E. Dittes on Men and Meaning

In this essay, I review the progression of James E. Dittes' books on men and men's issues, including The Male Predicament, When Work Goes Sour, Men at Work, and Driven By Hope. Dittes moves from a palpable ambivalence toward men and their attendant griefs in earlier books to an increasingly unconditional affirmation of men in more recent ones. His own professional pilgrimage models his desire that men might mature into boyhood by coming to savor their inherent sense of expectancy as sons.     

From I: A/M to “Who am I?”—Aggregation/Massification and Trauma-Based Affects and Object Relations in Groups: A Response to Earl Hopper

Hopper's portrayal of the fourth basic assumption of Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification has two components: (1) a revision of Turquet's theory of BA Oneness to incorporate the polarity of aggregation and massification stemming from annihilation anxiety; and (2) a conception of the difficult patient as having an encapsulated psychosis. Hopper's theory of the encapsulated psychosis offers an important but incomplete perspective in explaining borderline and narcissistic pathology, as well as psychological trauma. In this response to Hopper, I suggest that the fourth assumption is in fact a still more primitive state of boundary opening and closing. I also see a need to differentiate trauma as such from borderline pathology, and further hold that the relationship between Hopper's British Independent theory and trauma theories based on dissociation needs to be clarified.     

Integrity and Honesty Testing: What Do We Know? How Do We Use It?

This selective review of integrity and honesty testing addresses two primary questions: ‘What do we know about honesty testing?’ and ‘How do we use what we know?’ Up-to-date information about test reliability, validity, and construct definition from recent reviews of the research literature in the USA is presented and interpreted. Relationships to other selection devices and personality measures are discussed, as well as how integrity tests fit into a multiple assessment selection system.     

大五人格理论与人事测评中的人格结构分析

本研究以工商企业人事选拔工作中参与实际测评的成人被试为研究对象,采用因素分析方法对中国成人人格的内隐结构进行了分析,并对所获取得主要特质因素与大五人格理论模型的关系和差别进行了探讨。     

Comorbidity in schizophrenia: A prognostic study of personality disorders in recovered and non-recovered schizophrenia patients

Symptoms and outcome in schizophrenia are heterogeneous. Part of the variation in outcome might be due to the coexistence of other forms of psychopathology. In the present study the prevalence of personality disorders in a group of recovered and non-recovered schizophrenia patients was focused to examine the prognostic implications of comorbidity for the outcome of the disorder. The results showed no significant differences in prevalence of personality disorders in the two groups at first admission to the hospital, but the difference at the time of interview was close to significance. Emotional and conduct difficulties in adolescence were significantly more prevalent in the non-recovered group. Schizoid features and emotional and conduct disorders in childhood were also more often reported among the non-recovered subjects. The results confirm that comorbidity contributes to the variation in outcome for schizophrenia patients, but does not confirm its prognostic significance.     

The Curriculum as a Standard of Public Education

This contribution first searches for historical and empirical evidence for whether and how curricula act or acted as a measure of public education. The problem is explicated on account of a short history of curriculum work and distinguished in a analytical, a political, programmatical and practical discourse of curriculum work. Curriculum work always underlies premises of planning, learning and effects. Three models are finally developed and brought in touch with the different discourses. Curriculum work proves to be an attempt to make publicly acceptable the empirically impossible accountability of schools.