Background and Focal Environmental Conditions of the Home and Attention in Young Children1

A conceptual distinction is drawn between two aspects of the perceptual field, focal features which the individual selectively engages and extraneous background conditions which serve as a context within which these activities occur, and a study is described which examined the relationship between these aspects of the home environment and attentional skills in young children. Ninety-four families with kindergarten age children participated in the project. Interviews and observations were conducted in the homes in order to assess background conditions (e.g., noise and activity levels) and variation and patterning of focal features (e.g., furnishings), and tasks designed to assess attentional skills were administered to the children. The results indicated that children from homes with high noise levels had longer response latencies on a visual search task and also subsequently recognized fewer incidental aspects of the task than did children from quieter homes. Furthermore, the former group appeared to be less distractible, i.e., less responsive to an auditory distractor. Neither variation nor patterning of focal features was found to be associated with task performance. In general, the findings are interpreted as indicating the adverse effects of high noise levels in the home on attentional skills in spite of apparent adaptation, i.e., lower distractibility, to these conditions.     

Two for the Price of One: Assessment Center Training to Focus on Behaviors Can Transfer to Performance Appraisals

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the training and experience of assessors to record behaviors as part of an actual organizational assessment center (AC) would transfer to another context: performance appraisals. Specifically, we examined the effects of transfer of training on managers' behavioral specificity in comments on performance evaluations. Performance appraisal comments from managers who had received training and participated as an assessor and from managers who had not were compared. Analyses revealed significant differences between managers who were trained as assessors compared with managers who were not, suggesting transfer of training effects. Results provide the first empirical evidence for an added benefit of AC assessor participation and training.     

The Social Constitution of Perceiver-Environment Reciprocity

Although animal—environment reciprocity is central to ecological psychology, one facet of this viewpoint remains underappreciated: organisms alter environments so as to better function in them. In many species this activity of “niche construction” includes coordinated actions by individuals jointly working toward common ends. Mounting paleontological and archeological evidence indicates that human evolution should be viewed in the light of such social considerations. The environment of our immediate human ancestors was marked by, among other things, group settlements, manufactured stone tools, and extensive migration. An emerging species such as ours, whose distinctive psychological qualities offered a selective advantage relative to these conditions, would flourish particularly if it could preserve the gains of prior generations even as its members continued to transform econiche features in functionally significant ways. This evolutionary perspective, with its due recognition of sociocultural processes, highlights 3 factors of importance for ecological psychology: (1) the history of person-environment reciprocity results in human environments whose natural and sociocultural factors are inextricably intertwined. (2) developing individuals enter human environments not as solitary explorers but through the guidance of more experienced persons with the result that much development takes shape through social mediation; and (3) a distinguishing and ubiquitous feature of human environments that is a product of collective human actions is places. Nearly all human activity, including most psychological research, occurs in places, and owing to their psychological significance, it would seem impossible to disentangle psychological and social processes. These 3 factors illuminate that a fully-realized ecological psychology will be one that includes recognition of the constitutive role played by social processes.     

Book Reviews

The Psychological Record -     

Does the Illness Behavior Questionnaire measure abnormal illness behavior?

Abnormal illness behavior (AIB) has been proposed as a construct measuring the inappropriate or maladaptive modes of responding to one's state of health, and the Illness Behavior Questionnaire (BQ; Pilowsky, 1975) was designed to measure this construct. Previous studies using small samples have failed to agree on the factor structure of this questionnaire. The present paper examines the factor structure of the Illness Behavior Questionnaire and critically evaluates the interpretation of its dimensions as well as the construct of AIB. A factor analysis of responses from 1,061 health care and nonhealth care seeking subjects yielded six interpretable factors which substantially replicated Pilowsky's previous results. Six scales were calculated and correlated with several personality measures. The results indicated that the Illness Behavior Questionnaire is saturated with neuroticism, a dimension known to be related to excessive medical complaints. But excessive medical complaints cannot be equated with hypochondriasis or AIB in the absence of objective medical information. In the absence of evidence for the discriminant validity of the IBQ, its use as a diagnostic device is unwarranted. Treating elevated IBQ scores as indicators of abnormal illness behavior without corroborating medical information may be more misleading than accepting patients' symptom reports at face value.     

Book reviews

The Psychological Record -