Assisting At-Risk College Students With Attributional Retraining and Effective Teaching1

Attributional retraining appears to be an effective remedial intervention for college students. However, the potential moderating effects of student and classroom characteristics have not yet been investigated systematically. In two studies, attributional retraining was provided to low- and high-risk students, followed by a videotaped lecture presented by either an ineffective or effective instructor. Attributional retraining enhanced achievement on a lecture-based achievement test only when combined with effective teaching, improving the achievement of students who had previously performed poorly (Experiment l), and of low-achieving externals (Experiment 2). The intervention provided no advantage for previously successful students and low-achieving internals. Moreover, attributional retraining induced a more internal attribution profile in students with an external locus, and increased expectations of future success in both externals and internals, but again only when students also received effective instruction. These results suggest that contextual factors related to the classroom, such as quality of instruction, and individual differences have to be considered when developing attributional retraining programs.     

Die Konstruktion der erfahrungswelt: Carnap und Husserl

Ohne ZusammenfassungDiese Untersuchung entstand im Rahmen eines Forschungsprojektes über die Geschichte der Analytischen Philosophie im Wiener Kreis, für deren Unterstützung ich der Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung danke.     

The product of the consensus Rorschach in families of male schizophrenics.

A consensus Rorschach was given to the families of 36 male schizophrenics, 13 psychiatrically hospitalized nonschizophrenic controls, and 38 normal controls with the goal of discriminating the families of schizophrenics from the other two groups of families. After the family agreed on a response, each member was asked to write the response on a separate sheet of paper. This study focused on these written responses, the product of the interaction, rather than on the process of reaching agreement. A system was developed to score the responses based on the degree of shared meaning achieved by the family. Adequate interscorer reliability was obtained. The scores significantly differentiated the three groups. More families of schizophrenics had low scores indicating lack of shared meaning than families of hospitalized and normal controls. In the normal control group, more upper-class families had high scores than lower-class families, wheras in the schizophrenic group there was a trend in the opposite direction.     

A sampling approach to biases in conditional probability judgments: beyond base rate neglect and statistical format

Conditional probability judgments of rare events are often inflated. Early accounts assumed a general deficit in using statistical base rates. More recent approaches predict improvement when problems are presented in frequency format or refer to natural categories. The present theory focuses on sampling processes. Experiment 1 showed that a seeming advantage of frequency over probability formats is due to a confounded factor, the need to mentally transform stimulus samples. An information search paradigm was used in Experiment 2. When sampling by the predictor, the probability to be estimated, p(criterion/predictor), was conserved in the samples and judgments were quite accurate. However, when sampling by the criterion, the low base-rate event was strongly overrepresented, accounting for the entire bias. Judgments were quite sensitive to the sampled data, but failed to take sampling constraints into account, as shown in Experiments 3 and 4.     

An fMRI study on conceptual, grammatical, and morpho-phonological processing

The aim of the present study was to determine whether processing of syntactic word information (lemma) is subserved by the same neural substrate as processing of conceptual or word form information (lexeme). We measured BOLD responses in 14 native speakers of German in three different decision tasks, each focussing specifically on one level of lexical processing (conceptual, syntactic, and morpho-phonological). The test parameters were natural gender, grammatical gender, and word form derivation, respectively. Discrimination between words played backwards and complex sounds served as control task. Complex contrasts revealed a functional fractionation of the left inferior frontal gyrus for each level of lexical processing.     

Negative priming effects in children engaged in nonspatial tasks: evidence for early development of an intact inhibitory mechanism

Three experiments are reported that examined conceptual negative priming effects in children 5 to 12 years of age. Experiment 1 used a negative priming variant of a flanker task requiring the naming of a central color blob flanked by irrelevant distractors. Experiment 2 used a negative priming variant of the Stroop color-word task. Experiment 3 used a same-different matching task with novel 3-D shapes. Results revealed significant and equivalent magnitudes of negative priming across the tested age groups for all 3 tasks. It is concluded that the inhibitory mechanism underlying conceptual (i.e., identity or semantic) negative priming in visual selective attention tasks is intact in young children. Because the findings and conclusions diverge from the developmental literature on negative priming, the authors attempt to reconcile the contradictions by pinning down the reasons for the discrepancies.     

The Context and Shape of Theological Education in Mozambique with Special Reference to Women

In Mozambique, a marked increase in evangelical churches was recorded in the 1980s. This brought the need for pastoral training into sharp focus, and many new Bible schools were founded in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet, the shape and context of theological education remains rather different from other African countries, as Bible schools are mostly not accredited by the government and most schools train part‐time in the evening. As of 2017, religious studies cannot be found at universities, leaving theological training firmly in the hands of the churches and mission organizations. The training of women has become increasingly important, but they also face many challenges. To shed light on these challenges, I present the results of 52 interviews with female students at various Bible schools in Mozambique, ranging from lack of family support to the fact that theological training is perceived to be only for men and full‐time/ordained ministry.     

Utilizing Benchmarking to Study the Effectiveness of Parent–Child Interaction Therapy Implemented in a Community Setting

Benchmarking is a program evaluation approach that can be used to study whether the outcomes of parents/children who participate in an evidence-based program in the community approximate the outcomes found in randomized trials. This paper presents a case illustration using benchmarking methodology to examine a community implementation of Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (CI-PCIT) utilized as a child maltreatment prevention effort. Data were collected from 83 parent–child dyads. Change scores were compared to treatment and control effect sizes aggregated from the PCIT literature. Pre-post results indicated significant positive changes in child behavior for CI-PCIT completers. Benchmarking analyses revealed that parents who completed CI-PCIT reported significantly greater positive child outcomes than the aggregate control group benchmark, and significantly less than observed in the treatment benchmark. A summary of decision points and implications for utilizing this methodology in the child maltreatment field are postulated.     

Zebra finches and Dutch adults exhibit the same cue weighting bias in vowel perception

Vocal tract resonances, called formants, are the most important parameters in human speech production and perception. They encode linguistic meaning and have been shown to be perceived by a wide range of species. Songbirds are also sensitive to different formant patterns in human speech. They can categorize words differing only in their vowels based on the formant patterns independent of speaker identity in a way comparable to humans. These results indicate that speech perception mechanisms are more similar between songbirds and humans than realized before. One of the major questions regarding formant perception concerns the weighting of different formants in the speech signal (“acoustic cue weighting”) and whether this process is unique to humans. Using an operant Go/NoGo design, we trained zebra finches to discriminate syllables, whose vowels differed in their first three formants. When subsequently tested with novel vowels, similar in either their first formant or their second and third formants to the familiar vowels, similarity in the higher formants was weighted much more strongly than similarity in the lower formant. Thus, zebra finches indeed exhibit a cue weighting bias. Interestingly, we also found that Dutch speakers when tested with the same paradigm exhibit the same cue weighting bias. This, together with earlier findings, supports the hypothesis that human speech evolution might have exploited general properties of the vertebrate auditory system.     

Distinct discrimination learning strategies and their relation with spatial memory and attentional control in 4- to 14-year-olds

Behavioral, psychophysiological, and neuropsychological studies have revealed large developmental differences in various learning paradigms where learning from positive and negative feedback is essential. The differences are possibly due to the use of distinct strategies that may be related to spatial working memory and attentional control. In this study, strategies in performing a discrimination learning task were distinguished in a cross-sectional sample of 302 children from 4 to 14 years of age. The trial-by-trial accuracy data were analyzed with mathematical learning models. The best-fitting model revealed three learning strategies: hypothesis testing, slow abrupt learning, and nonlearning. The proportion of hypothesis-testing children increased with age. Nonlearners were present only in the youngest age group. Feature preferences for the irrelevant dimension had a detrimental effect on performance in the youngest age group. The executive functions spatial working memory and attentional control significantly predicted posterior learning strategy probabilities after controlling for age.