Using behavioral skills training to promote safe and correct staff guarding and ambulation distance of students with multiple physical disabilities

The study analyzed the effects of self-recording and behavioral skills training on guarding responses of 3 staff members while they assisted 3 students with multiple disabilities to ambulate. The intervention increased the percentage of correct posture and guarding responses and the distance that students ambulated. These effects generalized when staff taught new students.     

Informational cues and attributions based on role behavior

A recent experiment by Messick and Reeder (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1972, 18, 482–491) attempted to extend Jones, Davis, and Gergen's (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1961, 63, 302–310) classic finding that out-of-role behavior.is more informative for person perception than in-role behavior. It is argued, however, that this study confounded two variables, role performance and occupation. Evidence is presented that the occupation variable alone could have produced Messick and Reeder's results. Both variables seem to affect attributions. The importance of these findings for relating attribution theory and role theory is discussed.     

Does direction of walking impact binocular rivalry between competing patterns of optic flow?

When dissimilar monocular images are viewed simultaneously by the two eyes, stable binocular vision gives way to unstable vision characterized by alternations in dominance between the two images in a phenomenon called binocular rivalry. These alternations in perception reveal the existence of inhibitory interactions between neural representations associated with conflicting visual inputs. Binocular rivalry has been studied since the days of Wheatstone, but one recent strategy is to investigate its susceptibility to influences caused by one’s own motor activity. This paper focused on the activity of walking, which produces an expected, characteristic direction of optic flow dependent upon the direction of one’s walking. In a set of experiments, we employed virtual reality technology to present dichoptic stimuli to observers who walked forward, backward, or were sitting. Optic flow was presented to a given eye, and was sometimes congruent with the direction of walking, sometimes incongruent, and sometimes random, except when the participant was sitting. Our results indicate that, while walking had a reliable influence on rivalry dynamics, the predominance of congruent or incongruent motion did not.     

Bridging the idiographic-nomothetic divide: a follow-up study

In a replication and extension of Grice (2004), participants in the current study rated themselves and other known individuals on scales constructed from their own personal constructs and on marker items for the Big Five model personality traits. Confirmatory components analyses revealed excellent fit for the Big Five Model when applied to aggregate trait ratings but highly variable fit when applied to participants' individual ratings. Comparisons of the personal construct and trait ratings indicated an approximate average overlap of only 51%, and additional analyses revealed several factors that contributed to the uniqueness of the personal constructs. These findings were discussed in the context of the idiographic-nomothetic distinction drawn in personality psychology.     

Evidence from the eyes: Threatening postures hold attention

Efficient detection of threat provides obvious survival advantages and has resulted in a fast and accurate threat-detection system. Although beneficial under normal circumstances, this system may become hypersensitive and cause threat-processing abnormalities. Past research has shown that anxious individuals have difficulty disengaging attention from threatening faces, but it is unknown whether other forms of threatening social stimuli also influence attentional orienting. Much like faces, human body postures are salient social stimuli, because they are informative of one’s emotional state and next likely action. Additionally, postures can convey such information in situations in which another’s facial expression is not easily visible. Here we investigated whether there is a threat-specific effect for high-anxious individuals, by measuring the time that it takes the eyes to leave the attended stimulus, a task-irrelevant body posture. The results showed that relative to nonthreating postures, threat-related postures hold attention in anxious individuals, providing further evidence of an anxiety-related attentional bias for threatening information. This is the first study to demonstrate that attentional disengagement from threatening postures is affected by emotional valence in those reporting anxiety.     

The diversity of cultural diversity: Psychological consequences of different patterns of intercultural contact and mixing

Culture mixing is a critical consequence of globalization. Thus, predicting the effects of globalization on individual psychological processes requires understanding the effects of exposure to culture mixing on cognition, attitudes, and behaviors. Prior research has demonstrated that perceiving the mixing of own and foreign cultures can trigger subsequent shifts across a wide range of psychological processes. This article proposes that the psychological consequences of culture mixing can be understood through consideration of the specific form of culture mixing involved and the fundamental psychological functions that cultures (particularly heritage cultures) fulfill. Culture mixing itself is a diverse, heterogeneous phenomenon, and different forms of culture mixing (e.g., simultaneous co‐presence, superimposition, fusion) may activate different psychological outcomes. Furthermore, heritage cultures serve critical psychological functions by providing guides and normative standards for behavior, acting as markers that facilitate differentiation of ingroup members from those of outgroups and buffering against psychological threats. The frustration or disruption of these functions by culture mixing may serve as a basis for predicting psychological responses to mixing. Finally, this article suggests key areas for future study in culture mixing and how studying diverse patterns of culture mixing may be critical for enriching cognition and behavior in response to reminders of globalization.     

Individual differences in using geometric and featural cues to maintain spatial orientation: Cue quantity and cue ambiguity are more important than cue type

Two experiments explored the role of environmental cues in maintaining spatial orientation (sense of selflocation and direction) during locomotion. Of particular interest was the importance of geometric cues (provided by environmental surfaces) and featural cues (nongeometric properties provided by striped walls) in maintaining spatial orientation. Participants performed a spatial updating task within virtual environments containing geometric or featural cues that were ambiguous or unambiguous indicators of self-location and direction. Cue type (geometric or featural) did not affect performance, but the number and ambiguity of environmental cues did. Gender differences, interpreted as a proxy for individual differences in spatial ability and/or experience, highlight the interaction between cue quantity and ambiguity. When environmental cues were ambiguous, men stayed oriented with either one or two cues, whereas women stayed oriented only with two. When environmental cues were unambiguous, women stayed oriented with one cue.     

Measuring Procedural Knowledge More Simply with a Single-Response Situational Judgment Test

Purpose  This paper describes the development of a situational judgment test (SJT) based on single-response options developed directly from critical incidents and reports a study that tested the SJT’s concurrent validity against ratings of job performance. Design/Methodology/Approach  Situational judgment test items were developed from critical incidents provided by administrators of volunteer agencies. Volunteers who worked at another agency completed the SJT and a self-report personality test. Supervisors rated their job performance on three dimensions. Findings  Situational judgment test scores representing procedural knowledge about work effort were significantly correlated with ratings of work effort performance (r = .28). Conscientiousness was correlated with work effort knowledge (r = .26), but not with work effort performance (r = −.02). Implications  These results provide some preliminary evidence that a single-response SJT format based upon critical incidents can produce valid measures of procedural knowledge and might be a useful alternative to the traditional multiple-response format. Originality/Value  This paper presents a novel way to construct SJTs using single-response options that are less laborious to develop than the multiple-response options in traditional SJT formats. Results of the validity study suggest that this new single-response format can predict job performance and encourage further research on the viability of this approach.