Your search

The current study examined gender and identity status differences in late adolescents' possible selves. The intent of the study was to clarify conflicts between theory and research on gender differences in identity by investigating the content of participants' possible selves. Participants completed measures of identity and possible selves. The results indicated that there was a relationship between gender and the mean number of both feared and balanced interpersonally themed possible selves. The pattern of results is discussed in terms of prior findings regarding gender differences in both identity and possible selves. Suggestions for future research are also provided. (C) 2003 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Infants' expressions of discrete emotions were coded during the more stressful episodes (4 through 8) of the Strange Situation at 13 and 18 months. The data showed a significant decrease in full-face expressions (more complex configurations of movements) and a significant increase in component expressions (simpler and more constrained patterns of movements). The authors interpreted this trend as a developmental change toward more regulated and less intense emotions. Consistent with this view, the aggregate index of infants' full-face negative emotion expressions, interpreted as reflecting relatively unregulated intense emotions, correlated significantly with maternal ratings of difficult temperament. The authors discuss alternative interpretations of the findings in terms of changes in reactivity/arousability and the emerging capacity for self-regulation.

The present study examines the contribution of psychotherapist variables to change in depressive symptoms in a large clinical trial comparing the efficacy of the cognitive-behavioral analysis system of psychotherapy, the antidepressant nefazodone, and the combination of both in the treatment of chronic depression. Greater change on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD) was associated with greater emphasis on the therapeutic relationship, lower overall psychotherapy caseload, therapist psychodynamic orientation, and supervisory status. There was no relationship between HRSD change and therapist sex, age, or years of experience.

Previous work has demonstrated that the graded internal structure of phonetic categories is sensitive to a variety of contextual factors. One such factor is place of articulation: The best exemplars of voiceless stop consonants along auditory bilabial and velar voice onset time (VOT) continua occur over different ranges of VOT! (Volaitis & Miller, 1992). In the present study, we exploited the McGurk effect to examine whether-visual information for place of articulation also shifts the best-exemplar range for voiceless consonants, following Green and Kuhl's (1989) demonstration of effects of visual place of articulation on the location of voicing boundaries. In Experiment 1, we established that /p/ and /t/ have different best-exemplar ranges along auditory bilabial and alveolar VOT continua. We then found, in Experiment 2, a-similar shift in the best-exemplar range for /t/ relative to that for /p/ when there was a change in visual place of articulation, with auditory place of articulation held constant. These findings indicate-that the perceptual mechanisms that determine internal phonetic category structure-are sensitive to visual, as well as to Auditory, information.

Pigeons responded on a concurrent-chains schedule with two equal variable-interval (VI) schedules as initial links and delays to food of 3 and 12 s as the two terminal links. In even-numbered sessions, no other reinforcement schedule was present, and all pigeons showed a strong preference for the response key that had the shorter, 3-s terminal-link delay. In odd-numbered sessions, the initial links were interrupted at random times by one of three different types of events. When the interruptions were immediate food deliveries, the response percentages increased on the key that had the 3-s delay. When the interruptions were 30-s delays followed by food, the response percentages remained approximately unchanged. When the interruptions were 30-s delays with no food, the response percentages decreased. The results were used to compare the predictions of different mathematical models of concurrent-chains performance. The results favored models that assume that preference is determined by the relative amount of advantage that is gained when a terminal link is entered. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship between sexist discrimination and identity development in a sample of adult women. Participants completed a scale to indicate the extent to which sexist events had occurred in their lives and a measure of identity at 2 different data collection periods that spanned approximately 5 months. The results indicated that sexist events reported to occur within the last year at the first data collection period significantly predicted identity scores at the second data collection period. These findings are discussed in terms of how sexist discrimination may play a role in adult women's identity development and in terms of the additional psychometric data that supports the validity of the measure of sexist discrimination.

We divided children (N = 719, grades 3-6) into five control types based on the degree to which they reported employing prosocial (indirect, cooperative) and coercive (direct, hostile) strategies of control (prosocial controllers, coercive controllers, bistrategic controllers, noncontrollers, and typicals). We tested for differences across the five types on personal characteristics, friendship motivations, wellbeing, and social integration, expecting specific patterns according to whether control is wielded, and whether coercive or prosocial behaviour (or both) is employed. Prosocial controllers revealed positive characteristics (e. g., social skills, agreeableness), intrinsic friendship motivations, and positive wellbeing. In contrast, coercive controllers revealed negative characteristics (e. g., hostility), extrinsic friendship motivations, and ill-being. Bistrategic controllers, as expected, reported the highest control, and revealed characteristics associated with both prosocial and coercive orientations. Noncontrollers, in contrast, did not report having these characteristics and felt the least effective in the peer group. Our evolutionary perspective offers unique predictions of how prosocial and coercive children are similar in terms of their instrumental goals and the consequences of using both strategies or neither.

Savastano and Fantino (1996) reported that in concurrent-chains schedules, initial-link choice proportions remained constant as terminal-link durations increased as long as the subtractive difference between the two terminal-link schedules remained constant. Two experiments with pigeons were conducted to examine this constant-difference effect. Both experiments used equal variable-interval schedules as initial links. The terminal links were fixed delays to reinforcement in Experiment 1 and variable delays to reinforcement in Experiment 2. The durations of the terminal links were varied across conditions, but the difference between pairs of terminal links was always 10 s. In both experiments, preference for the shorter terminal link became less extreme as terminal-link, durations increased, so a constant-difference effect was not found, It is argued, however, that this choice situation does not provide clear evidence for or against delay-reduction theory versus other theories of choice.

This study was designed to investigate the predictors of social dominance, the strategies children use to control resources (prosocial and coercive), and the associations between these strategies and measures of personality, social skills, and peer regard. A total of 30 preschoolers (ages 3-6) were rated by their teachers on social dominance. Based on these ratings, dominant children were paired with multiple subordinate children (i.e., block design; Kenny, 1990) and observed in a play situation designed to elicit resource control behaviour. As hypothesised, age and the surgency facet of extraversion predicted social dominance (but openness to experience did not). Furthermore, also as expected, both prosocial behaviour and coercive behaviour were related to resource control in the play situation. Last, both resource control strategies were associated with parent-rated social competence, but only coercive control was associated with positive peer regard (i.e., Likeability). Factors of personality (e.g. agreeableness, hostility) were not associated with either of the strategies. The utility of an evolutionary perspective to resource control and social competence is discussed.

Pigeons responded on concurrent-chain schedules with variable-interval initial links and equal delays as terminal links. The terminal-link delays were 1 sec in some conditions and 20 sec in other conditions. The percentages of reinforcers delivered for responses on the left key were 10%, 30%, 70%, or 90%, and this percentage was switched every five to nine sessions. The rate of change in the pigeons' response percentages after a switch was the same whether the terminal-link delays were 1 sec or 20 sec. Analysis of the effects of individual reinforcers showed that after a response on one key had been reinforced, response percentages on that key were higher for at least the next 100 responses. Small effects of individual reinforcers were evident after eight or nine additional reinforcers had been delivered. The effects of individual reinforcers were about equally large during times of transition and during periods in which overall response percentages were relatively stable.

The choice responses of four pigeons were examined in 20 periods of transition in a concurrent-chain procedure with variable-interval schedules as initial links and fixed delays to reinforcement as terminal links. In some conditions, the delays to reinforcement were different for the two terminal links, and changes in preference were recorded after the delays for the two response keys were switched. In other conditions, the reinforcer delays were equal for the two keys, but which key delivered 80% of the reinforcers was periodically switched. Choice proportions changed more quickly after a switch in reinforcement percentages chan after a switch in the delays, thereby contradicting the hypothesis that faster changes would occur when the switch in conditions was easier to discriminate. Analyses of response sequences showed that the effects: of individual reinforcers were larger and lasted longer in conditions with changing reinforcement percentages than in conditions with changing terminal-link delays. Rates of change in choice behavior do not appear to be limited by the unpredictability of variable reinforcement schedules, because the changes in behavior were slow and gradual even when there was a large and sudden change in reinforcer delays. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights: reserved.

Three mathematical models of choice-the contextual-choice model (R. Grace, 1994), delay-reduction theory (N. Squires & E. Fantino, 1971). and a new model called the hyperbolic value-added model-were compared in their ability to predict the results from a wide variety of experiments with animal subjects. When supplied with 2 or 3 free parameters, all 3 models made fairly accurate predictions for a large set of experiments that used concurrent-chain procedures. One advantage of the hyperbolic value-added model is that it is derived from a simpler model that makes accurate predictions for many experiments using discrete-trial adjusting-delay procedures. Some results favor the hyperbolic value-added model and delay-reduction theory over the contextual-choice model, but more data are needed from choice situations For which the models make distinctly different predictions.

Two experiments with pigeons used concurrent-chain procedures with variable-interval schedules as initial links and different delays to food as terminal links. Two schedules were present in all sessions. but a 3rd schedule was alternately present and absent in successive sessions. When the 3rd schedule delivered food with no terminal-link delay, the presence of this schedule led to an increase in preference for the schedule with the shorter terminal link of the 2 unchanged schedules. When the terminal-link delay for the 3rd schedule was 30 s, the presence of this schedule led to a decrease in preference for the schedule with the shorter terminal link of the 2 unchanged schedules. These results are inconsistent with the predictions of R. Grace's (1994) contextual-choice model, but they are consistent with 2 other mathematical models-delay-reduction theory and the hyperbolic value-added model.

In Experiment I, an adjusting-delay procedure was used to measure pigeons' choices between a single delayed reinforcer and a range of different variable-time schedules. Indifference points showed an inverse relation between rate of reinforcement and delay that was well described by a hyperbolic equation. An adjusting-amount procedure was used in Experiment 2, in which pigeons chose between an adjusting amount of food delivered after a 0.5-s delay and 3 s of food delivered after a range of different delays, and the effects of delay were similar to those found in Experiment 1. The results from both experiments indicated that, for pigeons, the strength of a reinforcer decreased rapidly with increasing delay. Estimates of a decay rate parameter in the hyperbolic equation were similar to those found in other studies with pigeons, but the rates of temporal discounting were three or four times faster than those found in studies with rats, suggesting a possible species difference. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.