Severe difficulty in interacting with others is a defining characteristic of autism spectrum disorders. In addition, even high-functioning children with autism, such as those with Asperger Syndrome, demonstrate significant delays in Theory of Mind. Nelson and Fivush?s (2004) comprehensive model of the development of autobiographical memory assigns central importance to the child?s social interactions and emerging theory of mind. Children with Asperger Syndrome, however, have normal IQs and show no language delays. Thus, there was reason to suspect that children with Asperger Syndrome would show differences in their autobiographical memories when compared to typically developing children. A better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses in autobiographical memory found in children with Asperger Syndrome will help future intervention efforts. The present investigation examined the factors that influence the content and structure of emotional memory narratives in 7- to 13-year-old children with and without Asperger Syndrome. Children with Asperger Syndrome had a particularly difficult time self-generating negative memory narratives compared to their typically developing peers. Typically developing children infused a good deal of positive emotion in their self-generated negative memories, whereas children with Asperger syndrome did not. Children with Asperger Syndrome were also more likely to include negative emotions such as fear and anxiety in their narratives, regardless of memory type, than typically developing children. This group difference disappears when controlling for working memory, suggesting that children with higher levels of working memory are more likely to be able to bring meaning to an event for themselves. Finally, children with Asperger Syndrome provided less coherent memory narratives than their typically developing peers. Together, these findings suggest that children with Asperger Syndrome may be engaging less frequently in meaning-making activities.

Adults? use of subjective temporal distance, defined as a psychological distancing mechanism that allows individuals to maintain positive self-views by perceiving threatening events as being farther away in time and affirming events as being closer in time, has been the subject of extensive research attention in recent years. No research to date, however, has examined how children and adolescents utilize subjective temporal distance. This study investigated the extent to which older elementary and middle school students utilize subjective temporal distance as they remember positive and negative academic experiences. One hundred 4th/5th graders and 90 7th/8th graders provided ratings of their recollections and personal experiences concerning two academic events, receiving a satisfying and a disappointing grade or test score. The participants at both age levels reported that the positive event seemed closer in time than the disappointing event, an effect not explained by the reported actual time since the events. In contrast to expectations, no effects of grade or gender on subjective distance were observed. Further, contrary to prior investigations with adults, there was no relation between global self-worth and subjective distancing. Both the reported emotional intensity of the event and the amount of reported co-rumination with peers influenced subjective distancing. The findings are interpreted as indicating that subjective temporal distance in childhood reflects a different process than the internal, individual coping mechanism observed in adulthood. Further research should examine the role of interactions with adults and peers in children?s use of subjective distancing.

Although a great deal of research has focused on adults? earliest memories (see Pillemer & White, 1989 for a review), limited research has examined children?s earliest memories (see Wang, 2004; Peterson, Grant, & Boland, 2005). The purpose of the current investigation is to contribute to this limited body of research and to our understanding of age-related change in earliest memory recall across the childhood years by examining the earliest memories of children in three age groups: pre-kindergarten, first grade, and third grade. In addition, this research adds to the extant literature by scaffolding children?s understanding of what it means to remember an event. Assessing participants? ability to apply their understanding of the mental state term, remember, to scenarios about a fictional character, the present study revealed that by third grade, children have at least a nascent appreciation of the distinction between being able to remember an event and merely knowing about it. With regard to participants? earliest memories, there were no age-related differences in age at earliest memory using child estimates of age. In contrast, parental estimates of age at earliest memory revealed an age-related difference, with third grade children recalling events that occurred earliest in time and children in pre-kindergarten recalling the most recently-occurring events. In addition, whereas participants in the two youngest age groups recalled more positively valenced memories, third graders recalled both positive and negative events with equal frequency. Together the results of this investigation suggest that younger participants? recall of more recent events, based on parental age estimates, may reflect their more limited understanding of what it means to remember. By third grade, however, children?s more well-developed understanding may permit a more meaningful search of their autobiographical past to identify their earliest memories.

This study examined student-perceived teacher and classmate support, teacher- and peer-preferred social skills, and educational setting and their relation to student-perceived scholastic competence and social acceptance. Sixty children in fourth and fifth grades who were diagnosed with a learning disability (LD) in reading or written language participated in the study, as well as students' language arts teachers. Four research questions were posed. The first two questions asked whether educational setting was related to students' perceptions of teacher support and classmate support. The third question asked if student-perceived teacher support, teacher-preferred social skills, and educational setting were related to student-perceived scholastic competence. The last question asked whether student-perceived classmate support, peer-preferred social skills, and educational setting were related to student-perceived social acceptance. Two one-way ANOVAs indicated that student perceptions of teacher and classmate support were not related to educational setting. The third and fourth questions were answered using a parallel statistical procedure involving standard multiple regression analyses. Results indicated that social support and social skills were related to aspects of self-concept, and educational setting was related to self-concept. Implications of these findings regarding the role of school psychologists and the development of children with LD were discussed, emphasizing the importance of social processes within the classroom as well as how children with LD formulate their self-perceptions.

Research on task switching has focused on the relatively well known task switching cost, usually defined as an increase in RT on a trial directly following a switch. Two main issues with previous studies suggest that their results may not be applicable to real world scenarios; one, that they typically use short and arbitrary tasks in comparison to real work situations and two, that the vast majority force participants to switch rather than allowing them to do so voluntarily, as is common in the workplace. The current experiment utilized two longer lasting tasks (document proofreading and a Sudoku puzzle) to more closely resemble real world sitations and four task switching groups. One group switched voluntarily, one was forced without warning, one was forced with a cue that a switch would be coming, and one served as a no switch control group. Performance, reaction time, and mental workload (NASA-TLX) were measured. Task switch group produced no differential effects on these variables, and no task switching cost was found. Though the hypothesis were not met, these results lend support to the notion that previous lab studies may not adequately resemble real world scenarios and that micromanaging small tasks, and switching between comparatively longer lasting tasks may not be the same thing. More research on this area may help to produce a better understanding of why people task switch and what they experience cognitively when they do so.

The purpose of this study is to assess whether parental emotion beliefs include the dimensions of manipulation, contempt, and privacy and to examine the degree to which ethnic differences exist for those dimensions. Because reported ethnic differences are often due to other variables such as socio-economic status, individual as well as combined contributions of ethnicity, occupational status, and education are assessed in their relation to parental emotion beliefs. Participants included 1,108 African American, European American, and Lumbee American Indian parents of at least one child 4- to 10-years of age. Parents? beliefs about children?s use of emotion as manipulation, parents? expression of contempt toward their children, and children?s need for emotional privacy did emerge as distinct belief sets and ethnic differences were found. Although education did account for significant amounts of variance in parental beliefs and accounted for the ethnic difference between African American and European American parents for Manipulation, ethnicity was typically a significant predictor above and beyond what could be accounted for by the other predictors. This indicates that there is something unique to ethnicity such as a common set of values, beliefs, or behaviors. Additionally, the largest amounts of variance were overlapping in the three predictor variables, suggesting that ethnicity, occupational status, and education cannot be thought of separately when investigating psychological variables such as emotional beliefs.

As IT systems grow more complex and become more prevalent, understanding the collaborative nature of the relationship between humans and automation becomes more important. Several factors influence the human-automation relationship. Research has shown that trust and perceived reliability are key factors in whether a relationship will develop between humans and automation. Presenting automation reliability and automation algorithms are ways to potentially improve this relationship. To explore this question, an experiment was conducted in which an automated decision aid presented suggestions to participants while they managed a simulated city (i.e., Policity). The goal was to maximize the health of the city?s population by adding hospitals, housing, businesses, and other facilities and services. Participants were assigned to conditions where the automated decision aid performed with high or low reliability levels. Based on condition, the decision aid?s algorithm was presented to participants in a textual or graphical (diagrammatic) format. Results showed that users? perception of the decision aid?s reliability directly influenced their trust in the decision aid. Results also showed that presenting the decision aid?s algorithm, regardless of modality (i.e., textual or graphical) had a direct impact on reported trust. Both had a direct effect on human performance. Additional results and implications are discussed.

The appraisal of job performance is critical for both the practice of human resource management and organizational research. Furthermore, the most frequently used method for measuring performance is a supervisory rating. Given the prevalence of this method, it is crucial to understand the factors which influence rater behaviors. Recent research has indicated that a large portion of the variance in ratings is idiosyncratic to the rater (Scullen, Mount, & Goff, 2000). However, the nature of this idiosyncratic variance remains unclear. Previous models of appraisal have focused on either the cognitive processes involved, or more recently, the appraisal context. Although this recent focus on contextual issues has shown promise, the extent to which raters are influenced by the context in which they work is unknown. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to contribute to our understanding of supervisory ratings by incorporating a multilevel analytic approach in order to partition the variance between raters from the variance between contexts. This approach allowed for the investigation of several rater and context-level characteristics, in attempt to explain the variance associated with these two sources. More specifically, a conceptual model was proposed in order to examine rater-level variables including rater tendencies for leniency and halo, along with rater opportunities to observe performance. Contextual factors proposed for study included norms for leniency and halo, opportunities to observe performance at the context-level, and the nature of work/activity itself within various contexts. Moreover, this research incorporated a multidimensional performance criterion, in order to provide a more thorough investigation of the relationships of interest here. Results suggested that the rating context accounted for significant variance in both task and citizenship performance ratings. Furthermore, the rater tendency for leniency explained significant between-rater variation in both criteria. The rater tendency for halo was also significant, however this finding did not recur when analyzing a replication sample of data. At the context-level, the norm for leniency consistently predicted variance in citizenship performance, but was only a significant predictor of task performance in one sample. Finally, although these relationships were not consistent across samples, the nature of work/activity and the contextual norm for halo explained significant between-context variation in citizenship performance ratings. The interpretation and implications of these results are discussed, along with limitations of this research and suggestions for future research.

College students are at high risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS due to the high frequency of unprotected sexual activity (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003). Condom use research among college aged youth has primarily concentrated on individual decision making processes with some recent focus on the impact of peer norms. To further understand college students? choices regarding sexual risk behavior, the current research examines the influence of the parent-college student relationship on college students? decisions about condom use. Building on previous research in sexual risk and alcohol use literature, the current study examines the role of parent-young adult relationship variables (i.e. facilitation of independence, and affective quality) on condom use. Parental influence has been an important predictor in other areas of college student life but has not been examined in the college student sexual risk literature. Results and implications for future studies are discussed.

The coherence of individuals? narratives of negative events has been shown to have significant positive effects on a variety of indicators of adaptive functioning (Klein & Boals, 2001; Pennebaker, Mayne, & Francis, 1997). Relatively little is known, however, about the processes through which individuals form coherent narratives of important personal experiences. This research examined the role of familiarity with the event on changes over time in the measures of narrative complexity, coherence and intrusive thoughts. In addition, the relationships among three previously used measures of coherence (a count of words in relevant categories, an overall rating, and a measure of causal connections between clauses) were examined, and the association between each measure and a criterion measure, Story Grammar, was explored. Two groups of 16 children participated in either a familiar event, a soccer tournament, or an unfamiliar event, soccer tryouts for a more competitive leaguer. All participants were interviewed within one week of the event and six weeks after the first interview. In contrast to expectations, familiarity with the event did not result in higher initial levels of coherence, and the coherence of the account of the less familiar event did not increase over time. The alternative measures of coherence were related to Story Grammar as expected, but were not correlated with each other.