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The current study specified the extent to which hot and cool aspects of executive functioning predicted academic and social-emotional indicators of school readiness. It was unique in focusing on positive aspects of social-emotional readiness, rather than problem behaviors. One hundred four 3-5-year-old children completed tasks measuring executive functioning, social-emotional readiness, academic readiness, and vocabulary. As expected, age predicted executive functioning components and social-emotional readiness. Moreover, working memory and inhibitory control directly predicted academic readiness, whereas delay of gratification predicted social-emotional readiness. Working memory and inhibitory control predicted delay of gratification, consistent with the notion that simpler executive functions may set the stage for more complex executive functions. Interestingly, social-emotional readiness predicted academic readiness. These findings confirm that hot and cool aspects of executive functioning are related to social-emotional and academic school readiness.

The goal was to test whether cognitive flexibility moderates the relation between reading strategy use and reading comprehension during the elementary years. Seventy-five second- through fifth-grade students completed a think aloud task and a metacognitive questionnaire to measure reading strategies, two card-sorting tasks to measure general and reading-specific cognitive flexibility, and one standardized measure of reading comprehension, as well as measures of oral reading fluency and vocabulary. As expected, oral reading fluency and vocabulary predicted reading comprehension, as did reading-specific flexibility. Importantly, reading-specific flexibility had a significant moderating effect, over and above the other effects. Specifically, weak reading-specific flexibility skills were associated with a negative relation between reading strategy use during think aloud and reading comprehension, suggesting that children with weak flexibility skills are less adept at using reading strategies effectively.

Gay and lesbian parents are raising an increasing number of children, but little is known about how these parents are viewed by school personnel. In this study, preservice teacher attitudes toward gay and lesbian parents were assessed using implicit, explicit, behavioral, and behavioroid measures. Implicit measures indicate that participants rated same-gender targets more negatively than they rated heterosexual targets, and they rated targets of gay men more negatively than they rated lesbians; however, response patterns varied by participant sex. Furthermore, implicit measures of sexual prejudice generally correlated with explicit and behavioroid measures. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Many individuals consider themselves a fan of something (e.g. music, sports) and discuss these interests with others. However, these interactions may be risky: a positive interaction could make someone feel socially connected and valued by others, whereas a negative interaction may prompt feelings of exclusion. Thus, these interactions could impact one's basic psychological needs (e.g. belonging, self-esteem) depending upon the specific conversation dynamics. Three experiments provide data supporting these hypotheses. Specifically, individuals who recalled discussing their fan interest with either a fellow fan or a non-fan who positively reacted to their passions reported increased basic need satisfaction, whereas individuals who recalled a negative interaction with a non-fan reported lower basic need satisfaction. Participants recalled these interactions as having similar effects on their perceived relational value (i.e. how valuable, close or important others perceive them). Collectively, these studies connect fan studies research to the psychology of social inclusion and exclusion, providing directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides additional data on the measurement of children's and adolescents' appraisals of interparental conflict using the Children's Perception of Interparental Conflict (CPIC) Scale (Grych, Seid, & Fincham, 1992). Data from the original sample of early adolescents (N = 222) on which the CPIC Scale was developed and the authors' own data from late adolescents (N = 483) are compared using confirmatory factor analyses at both the item and subscale levels. The results indicate that the factor structure at the item level of analysis is similar across early and late adolescents, indicating that the nine theoretically derived subscales are separate aspects of interparental conflict for both developmental groups. In addition, the subscales are found to produce five factors for both early and late adolescents. Implications of these findings for cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of interparental conflict and child/adolescent outcomes are discussed. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)

Measures of research self-efficacy have the potential to facilitate graduate training and mentoring, but the hypothesized factor structures of these measures have not been confirmed empirically. Moreover, the underlying dimensions of research self-efficacy across multiple measures are unknown. Graduate students in psychology programs (N = 1,004) completed three research self-efficacy instruments via a Web-based survey. Confirmatory factor analyses did not support the hypothesized factor structures. An exploratory factor analysis suggested that four dimensions of research self-efficacy (data analysis, research integration, data collection, and technical writing) underlie responses to items from the three instruments. The authors present possible reasons for the differences in factor structures across instruments and suggest how the assessment of research self-efficacy may facilitate the training and career mentoring of graduate students.

Environmental commitment, the subjective experience of dependence on the natural environment, is marked by a long-term orientation and psychological attachment towards the natural environment. The current research replicates and extends previous research on temporarily increasing environmental commitment (Davis et al., 2009). We employed Davis et al.'s manipulation in two experimental studies (one laboratory, one online): we asked participants to spend time writing either about ways in which they are interdependent with the natural environment (high commitment manipulation) or unconnected with the environment (low commitment manipulation). In both studies we replicated the key finding that reflecting on one's interdependence with the environment increases commitment. We extended the previous research by finding evidence that this commitment effect was mediated by satisfaction with one's relationship to the environment. We did not replicate the original findings that the interdependence manipulation influences environmental behavioral intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors propose a theoretical model of individual psychological reactions to perceived stigma. This model suggests that 2 psychological systems may be involved in reactions to stigma across a variety of social contexts. One system is primarily reflexive, or associative, whereas the other is rule based, or reflective. This model assumes a temporal pattern of reactions to the stigmatized, such that initial reactions are governed by the reflexive system, whereas subsequent reactions or 'adjustments' are governed by the rule-based system. Support for this model was found in 2 studies. Both studies examined participants' moment-by-moment approach--avoidance reactions to the stigmatized. The 1st involved participants' reactions to persons with HIV/AIDS, and the 2nd, participants' reactions to 15 different stigmatizing conditions.

The research investigated perceivers' inferences about the morality of target persons who engaged in aggressive behavior. Across several experiments, inferences about the morality of an aggressor were based more on the perceived motives of the target than on the presence of facilitating situational forces. For example, when a target's aggression was facilitated by personal rewards for aggression (instrumental aggression), perceivers inferred more negative motives and attributed lower morality to the target than when the target's aggression was facilitated by situational provocation (reactive aggression). The results suggest that perceived motives play an important role in dispositional inference and pose a problem for models that focus primarily on perceived causality, assumptions about base rates (consensus), or diagnosticity.

It was proposed that children would exhibit more intense affective responses, less active coping strategies and less confidence in response to parent negative affect, as opposed to peer negative affect. A study of these responses indicated that children felt unable to help themselves when faced with paternal distress and would practice avoidance coping strategies.

Despite the recent increase in research on sexual harassment, most studies have examined the relevant variables in isolation, and little is known concerning the ways in which they may interact or the relative importance of their effects for individuals or organizations. Fitzgerald and her colleagues (Fitzgerald, Hulin, & Drasgow, 1995; Fitzgerald & Ormerod, 1993) proposed a model of the antecedents and outcomes of sexual harassment in organizations. The present study examines a modified version of this model using path analysis with a sample of women employed by the federal government in the late 1980s. These analyses support the basic form of the model, suggesting that sexual harassment is a joint function of the gender context of the victim's job, her relative vulnerability, and the tolerance of the organization for sexual harassment. In turn, harassment was shown to have a negative impact on work and health-related outcomes, exacerbated by assertive coping responses. The implications for organizations are discussed along with recommendations for more stringent tests of the model.

Based on the existing research, being excluded from information (i.e., being out of the loop) produces similar consequences as being ignored or excluded from activities. Consequently, one might wonder whether it is necessary to measure or study different types of exclusion in the workplace context, rather than just assessing a single type of exclusion. The current research investigated the associations between two types of workplace exclusion (i.e., being ostracized and being left out of the loop) and various workplace outcomes, with the purpose of determining whether these different types of exclusion predict unique or redundant variance in these workplace outcomes. In Study 1, we obtained a better model fit when we assigned items measuring out‐of‐the‐loop experiences at work to a different factor than items assessing experiences with ostracism at work. In Study 2, we observed that measuring employees' experiences with being out of the loop predicted unique variance in workplace outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction), above and beyond experiences with ostracism at work. Relative weight analyses suggested that both ostracism and out‐of‐the‐loop experiences were equally important predictors of these outcomes. Together, these studies indicate that being ostracized and being left out of the loop may be distinct exclusion experiences and better predictions about workplace outcomes can be made by assessing both types of exclusion. On a practical level, measuring different types of exclusion may prove useful, because organizations may need to implement different interventions for addressing distinct types of exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

College students (N=28) completed 200 paired comparisons of situations describing sexual harassment in university setting; rated degree of similarity; and rated situations on degree of severity, type of harassment, and form of coercion. Results suggest that continuum of severity model is oversimplification and that at least 2 dimensions are required to adequately account for data. (Author/NB)

The Career Indecision Profile-65 (CIP-65) is a relatively new measure of career indecision that appears to have promise for use in career counseling and research. We sought to expand the information available to those evaluating the CIP-65 for potential use by assessing its measurement equivalence in college (N = 529) and noncollege (N = 472) samples and its scores' test–retest reliability in a subset of the college–student sample (n = 107). Six-week test–retest reliability coefficients ranged from.58 (interpersonal conflicts) to.85 (choice/commitment anxiety) for the subscale scores. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the CIP-65's four-factor structure fit the data well in both the college and noncollege samples. The CIP-65 scores were configurally invariant in the two samples, but we did not find support for metric invariance. We offer explanations for these findings, discuss implications for practice, and present ideas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The current study specified the extent to which hot and cool aspects of executive functioning predicted academic and social-emotional indicators of school readiness. It was unique in focusing on positive aspects of social-emotional readiness, rather than problem behaviors. One hundred four 3-5-year-old children completed tasks measuring executive functioning, social-emotional readiness, academic readiness, and vocabulary. As expected, age predicted executive functioning components and social-emotional readiness. Moreover, working memory and inhibitory control directly predicted academic readiness, whereas delay of gratification predicted social-emotional readiness. Working memory and inhibitory control predicted delay of gratification, consistent with the notion that simpler executive functions may set the stage for more complex executive functions. Interestingly, social-emotional readiness predicted academic readiness. These findings confirm that hot and cool aspects of executive functioning are related to social-emotional and academic school readiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]