Archived data was utilized for the present study which examined knowledge about non-suicidal self-injury, or NSSI, in individuals who engage in various degrees of the behavior and those who do not self-injure. Knowledge about NSSI was measured in three groups of respondents: those with no history of self-injurious behavior (no NSSI group), those with more limited experience with NSSI who reported 1-30 incidences of NSSI (limited NSSI group), and those with an extensive history (extensive NSSI group) who reported over 30 incidences of NSSI. To measure knowledge, participants were asked level of agreement with myths and facts about NSSI using Jeffery and Warm’s (2002) knowledge measure. It was hypothesized that the knowledge base would be higher in individuals with more extensive histories of NSSI. Further, individuals with limited histories of NSSI were predicted to have more knowledge than those who have never self-injured. Additionally, this study also hypothesized that the individual item response will vary; depending on extent of NSSI behavior. Group mean scores on the measure were analyzed for differences using a one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) while controlling for the differing group demographic variables of age, sexual orientation, and education level. Results indicated that individuals who have more extensive histories of NSSI evidenced higher mean scores on the measure when controlling for age, sexual orientation and educational level. Individuals with limited histories of NSSI evidenced lower mean scores, and those with no history of NSSI evidenced the lowest scores. In regard to individual item response, items were correlated with seven levels of NSSI (no NSSI, one incident of NSSI, 2-4 incidences, 5-10 incidences, 11-20 incidences, 21-30 incidences and more than 30 incidences). It was found that accuracy was significantly correlated with degree of self-injurious behaviors, with the exception of one item. This item and three additional items also produced weak correlations with other items on the measure. Each item is discussed with regard to group item performance and possible deletions in order to strengthen the measure. Overall, the results of this investigation supported the reliability and validity of the Jeffery and Warm (2002) knowledge measure for use with individuals who self-injure. Results are discussed in relation to the need for accurate knowledge about NSSI, the importance of refining and strengthen the measure for this use, and additional research directions.

Research in moral psychology has focused on understanding what factors assist in the development of moral action and decision making. The purpose of this study was to address whether variability in attention relates to moral judgment development. The reason for exploring moral judgment development was to further explore the research of Thoma and Bebeau (2008) who documented that the moral development scores of college and graduate students has been declining over time, with more college-aged students scoring in the lower levels of moral reasoning. Attention was chosen as a viable topic of research, based on the writings of Carr (2008a) who suggests that technology has had an impact on the way that individuals read and process information. College students from Western Kentucky University were recruited via the Psychology Department Study Board. Participants first took the Defining Issues Test-2 (DIT2) online and then scheduled a subsequent session in the laboratory to take the Test of Everyday Attention (TEA). The DIT2 assesses three levels of moral reasoning advancing by level: Personal Interests, Maintaining Norms, and Postconventional schemas. The TEA assesses four different types of attention: divided attention, attentional switching, selective attention, and sustained attention. In a sample of 79 college students, results revealed that stronger attention abilities were related to higher postconventional reasoning. However, decreases in attention were not related to lower personal interests reasoning. Attentional switching, selective attention, and sustained attention were particularly influential where postconventional reasoning was concerned. The trends observed in this study were somewhat expected as moral judgment development is regarded and verified as a cognitive intellectual process. In light of the information provided by the results of this study, future studies are recommended to determine how efforts to facilitate improved attention might ultimately translate to improved moral judgment development. Research has shown that interventions aimed at improving attention are successful (Kerns, Eso, & Thomson, 1999). In conclusion, this study supports the notion that attention does pertain to moral judgment scores as inferred by the DIT2. The effect of the TEA scores on the DIT2 postconventional scores was strong (R2 = .237).

The purpose of this study was to determine if there existed significant relationships between 4 and 5 year old children’s attitude toward school, their classroom teacher’s perception of their attitude toward school, length of time in school, sex, or a composite of these with their achievement on the Pre-School Attainment Record. A random sample of 55 Head Start children completed three instruments. The instruments used in this study were a revised Children’s Attitude Toward School Scale (CATSS-R), (Beere, 1970) The Pre-School Attainment Record (PAR), (Doll, 1966) and the Teachers Rating of Attitude of Children Toward School (TRACTS). The results of the multiple regression analysis yielded an R of .517 between the composite variable (CATSS-R and Age) and the PAR achievement measure. This was statistically significant at the .01 level of confidence and explained 26.7% of the PAR variance. The second composite variable consisting of CATSS0R, Age and TRACTS correlated with the PAR achievement variables at .530 and was significant at the .01 level, explaining 28.13% of the PAR variance. The third variable, TRACTS, contributed only 1.3% of the total composite variance explaining PAR achievement. Time in school and sex contributed even less when included with the other variables in the composite variable. Results of the Pearson-product moment correlation of each of the variables with PAR achievement demonstrated significant correlations for only CATSS-R and Age (r .45 and r -.30) at the .01 level of confidence. However, the ­ tests between Pearson correlation coefficients of each of the variables’ correlation with the PAR achievement revealed four out of a possible 10 significant differences. The ANOVA test showed that the four year olds were superior to the five year olds on the PAR. A brief discussion was given of the implications for education in regard to the vast differences between teachers perception and students own perception of their attitude toward school.

Aging research on item- and associative-recognition memory has demonstrated that older adults are deficient in forming associations between two unrelated stimuli. Although older adult performance on tests of item-recognition is similar to younger adult performance, older adults perform worse than younger adults on tests of associative memory (Naveh-Benjamin, Hussain, Guez, & Bar-On, 2003). In addition to the idea that younger adult performance on associative-recognition tests is superior to that of older adults, research has shown that reward cues can enhance motivated learning and item memory performance of younger adults. In an fMRI study that examined the influence of reward anticipation on episodic memory formation, Adcock and colleagues (2006) examined memory performance in response to reward cues that preceded single stimuli and found that young adult participants remembered more stimuli associated with high value reward cues than those associated with low value reward cues. The aim of the current study was to examine whether reward cues that precede a stimulus pair might enhance an association between two stimuli and influence younger and older adult performance on tests of item- and associative-recognition. Our study confirms the idea that while older adult memory for individual items is intact, older adult memory for associations is impaired (Naveh-Benjamin et al., 2003). The results supported the idea that younger and older adult item-recognition is better for high versus low reward cues, but the reward cues had no influence on the associative-recognition of either age group. Therefore, the age-related associative deficit was not improved by reward cues that preceded each stimulus pair.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the structure of jobs and burnout, and to assess to what extent, if any this relationship was moderated by individual coping methods. This study was supported by the Karasek's (1998) Job Demand-Control-Support theory of work stress as well as Maslach and Leiter's (1993) theory of burnout. Coping was examined as a moderator based on the conceptualization of Lazarus and Folkman (1984). Two overall overarching questions framed this study: (a) what is the relationship between job structure, as operationalized by job title, and burnout across different occupations in support services in a large municipal school district? and (b) To what extent do individual differences in coping methods moderate this relationship? This study was a cross-sectional study of county public school bus drivers, bus aides, mechanics, and clerical workers (N = 253) at three bus depot locations within the same district using validated survey instruments for data collection. Hypotheses were tested using simultaneous regression analyses. Findings indicated that there were statistically significant and relevant relationships among the variables of interest; job demands, job control, burnout, and ways of coping. There was a relationship between job title and physical job demands. There was no evidence to support a relationship between job title and psychological demands. Furthermore, there was a relationship between physical demands, emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment; key indicators of burnout. Results showed significant correlations between individual ways of coping as a moderator between job structure, operationalized by job title, and individual employee burnout adding empirical evidence to the occupational stress literature. Based on the findings, there are implications for theory, research, and practice. For theory and research, the findings suggest the importance of incorporating transactional models in the study of occupational stress. In the area of practice, the findings highlight the importance of enriching jobs, increasing job control, and providing individual-level training related to stress reduction.

An important yet untested assumption within personality psychology is that more important person characteristics are more densely reflected in language. We investigated how ratings of importance and other term properties are associated with one another and with a term’s frequency of use. Research participants were asked to provide terms that described individuals they knew, which resulted in a set of 624 adjectives. These terms were independently rated for importance, social desirability, observability, stateness versus traitness, level of abstraction, and base rate. Terms rated as describing more important person characteristics were in fact used more often by the participants in the sample and in a large corpus of online communications (close to 500 million words). More frequently used terms and more positive terms were also rated as being more abstract, more traitlike, and more widely applicable (i.e., having a greater base rate). We discuss the implications of these findings with regard to person perception in general.

The present study examined the relationship between the cognitive skill of role-or perspective-taking and naturally occurring behavior of behaviorally disordered children. Twenty-six boys, aged five years, nine months to twelve years, two months were tested and observed at their treatment facility. It was predicted that children who could take the perspective of others would prefer peer to adult interaction, would more likely give positive attention to their peers and would be more likely to use effective language than their non perspective-taking peers. These and related hypotheses were examined by observing each participant's interactive behavior for 36 minutes distributed over three different settings, lunch, freetime and organized activity on six or more different days. To determine perspective-taking skill, two perspective taking instruments were administered in a separate room at the treatment site. One measure (the Chandler role-taking task) required a child to tell a story from a series of three cartoon pictures and then retell the story from the point of view of a late arriving bystander. The other task (the Friendship interview from the Selman Measure of Interpersonal Understanding) assessed role-taking on the basis of the child's responses to questions about a filmstrip story that depicted a common dilemma between close friends. The variety and frequency of effective words was assessed by counting the effective words used by the child when responding to the first role-taking task, the cartoon stories. A vocabulary test was administered at the same time as the other cognitive measures. Before data analysis began, such methodological concerns as reliability of the observational code, reliability of the judges' scoring of the role-taking tasks and internal consistency of the measures were addressed. Cognitive measures, use of effective language and behavioral categories were then correlated with each other. The vocabulary test was used to partial general verbal skill from the relationship of role-taking and effective language. In addition to examining relationships among the measures, the children were divided into perspective-taking and non perspective-taking groups and compared on the various behavioral and language measures.

Past research has shown that emotion affects preferential choice outcomes. The goal of the present study was to further research on emotion and preferential choice by using mathematical modeling to investigate the effects of specific dimensions of emotion on the underlying mechanisms of preferential choice. Specifically, we aimed to determine whether the concurrent effects of positive-negative valence and situational certainty on attention and information accumulation threshold, respectively, would influence the magnitude of the similarity effect, a robust phenomenon in preferential choice. Participants first underwent either an Anger (negative and certain), Fear (negative and uncertain), or no (Control) emotion manipulation. All participants then completed an apartment choice task that was designed to elicit the similarity effect. A novel framing manipulation was used to test the effects of emotional valence on attention. Both feature framing and emotion condition significantly affected choice outcomes. These results suggest differences in deliberation style between Anger and Fear participants, as well as a surprising impact of alternatives outside the choice set on choice outcomes. Future directions are discussed.

Analyzing the relationship between the visual imagery used in music videos, and the sexual cognition of viewers. Sexual cognition is the awareness of one's own sexual behavior, and its implications. The visual content of music videos was analyzed focusing only on the imagery used. The Heterosexual Script (Jhally, 2007) in particular is observed in most music videos, highlighting the sexual objectification of women and the dominant role of males. The direction of causality between the visual imagery and sexual cognitions can only be speculated using a number of theories, namely cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), cultivation theory (Gerbner et al., 1994), Objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997), Social Learning theory (Bandura, 2001; 2002), and that of semantic constructs. Significant results would suggest that music videos have the potential to alter an individual's sexual cognitions, which may lead to riskier sexual behavior and negative views of women sexually.

An ensemble representation refers to a statistical summary representation of a group of similar objects. Recent work has shown that we can form multiple ensemble representations – ensemble representations for a single feature dimension across multiple stimulus groups, ensemble representations for multiple feature dimensions in the same stimulus group, and ensemble representations across multiple sensory domains. In our study, we use hierarchical stimuli based on the Navon figures (Navon 1977) to study properties of ensemble representations across multiple spatial scales. In Experiments 1 and 3, we study properties of ensemble representations for the orientation and size feature dimension, respectively. In Experiment 2, we study properties of individual representations for the orientation feature dimension. Results indicate that it is possible to form ensemble representations across multiple spatial scales. Experiment 1 shows that the global ensemble representations may be extracted automatically (without intent) whereas the local ensemble representation is only extracted in response to task demands (with intent). Finally, in both Experiment 1 and Experiment 3, participants were more accurate at reporting the global ensemble representation than the local ensemble representation whereas in Experiment 2, performance did not differ across the levels. These results point towards global precedence in the formation of ensemble representations.