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Psychology Commons

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The University of Maine

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

2011

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Psychology

The Impact Of Category Separation On Unsupervised Categorization, Shawn W. Ell, Gregoryh F. Ashby Nov 2011

The Impact Of Category Separation On Unsupervised Categorization, Shawn W. Ell, Gregoryh F. Ashby

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Most previous research on unsupervised categorization has used unconstrained tasks in which no instructions are provided about the underlying category structure or the stimuli are not clustered into categories. Few studies have investigated constrained tasks in which the goal is to learn pre-defined stimulus clusters in the absence of feedback. These studies have generally reported good performance when the stimulus clusters could be separated by a one-dimensional rule. The present study investigated the limits of this ability. Results suggest that even when two stimulus clusters are as widely separated as in previous studies, performance is poor if within-category variance on …


Peer Acceptance And Friendship As Predictors Of Early Adolescents' Adjustment Across The Middle School Transition, Julie Newman Kingery, Cynthia A. Erdley, Katherine C. Marshall Jul 2011

Peer Acceptance And Friendship As Predictors Of Early Adolescents' Adjustment Across The Middle School Transition, Julie Newman Kingery, Cynthia A. Erdley, Katherine C. Marshall

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

This study examines several aspects of adolescents' pretransition peer relationships as predictors of their adjustment to middle school. Participants were 365 students (175 boys; 99% Caucasian) involved in the Time 1 (the spring of fifth grade) and Time 2 (the fall of sixth grade) assessments. Adolescents completed measures that assessed peer acceptance, number of friends, the quality of a specific mutual friendship, loneliness, depression, self-esteem, and involvement in school. Academic achievement and absentee data were obtained from student files. Regression analyses indicated that the pretransition peer variables predicted posttransition loneliness, self-esteem, school involvement, and academic achievement. The patterns of prediction …