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International Student Design Competition Of Two Community Elementary Schoolyards, Roger Hart, Cindi Katz, Selim Iltus, Maria Rosario Mora

Publications and Research

As part of the project for the Participatory Design of Two Community Elementary Schoolyards in Harlem, P.S. 185 and P.S. 208 (The Schoolyards Project), the Children's Environments Research Group of the City University of New York held an International Student Design Competition for the design of these schoolyards. The competition drew sixty entries from various countries. The jury met on October 10, 1990 and awarded one First Prize and five Honorable Mentions. A landscape architect was then hired to utilize the best ideas, together with the architectural program which had been produced with the school and the surrounding community.

Assessing Stress In Teachers: Depressive Symptoms Scales And Neutral Self-Reports Of The Work Environment, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

The focal interest of this chapter on teacher stress is methodologic. The chapter enumerates a number of defects in existing measures of job stress in teachers and, concomitantly, other helping professionals. Alternative ways of measuring stress in teachers are suggested and evaluated. The use of depressive symptom scales in concert with more 'objective' measures of the work environment is discussed. An application of the proposed alternative measurement strategy is described. The wider utility of the measurement strategy is briefly described.

Front Matter

Modern Psychological Studies

No abstract provided.

Glucose, Exercise, And Short-Term Memory, Brenda Davidson, Cheryle Sanders, Gwendolyn K. Murdock

Modern Psychological Studies

This investigation determined the short-term memory effects of glucose and exercise. It was hypothesized that (a) glucose enhances short-term memory and (b) intense exercise diminishes short-term memory. Subjects were middle-aged volunteers who regularly exercise. Two within-subjects variables were (a) glucose vs. no-glucose, and (b) before- vs. after exercise. A between-subjects variable was no-glucose beverage type: aspartame, saccharin, or water. Performance on Subtest IV of the Wechsler Memory Scale was the dependent variable. A glucose by exercise interaction suggested an influence of fitness level. In a second experiment, short-term memory was assessed before, and at 20-min. intervals after exercise. Weight and …

The Interaction Of Source And Post-Event Misinformation On The Accuracy Of Eyewitness Testimony, Dirk Dickens, Alice Ishigame, David Subacz, Stephanie Sponsel, Matthew Strader, Judith Foy

Modern Psychological Studies

The recall of an event such as a robbery has been shown to be affected by how closely post-event information corresponds to what the witness actually saw. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the effect of misleading information may be influenced by expertise of the source of the post-event information. Results revealed that subjects recalled less accurately when they received misleading information in the narrative than when the information corresponded with what they had viewed, whereas the accuracy of the recall was unaffected by whether the witness in the narrative was an expert or a non-expert. Subjects …

A Comparison Of Non-Verbal God Concept In United Methodists, Jill Kasserman, Jennifer L. Johnson

Modern Psychological Studies

The goal of this project was to examine how a person's perception of God changes as a function of age within a Piagetian framework. After 88 United Methodist Sunday School attenders drew a picture of God, the drawings were analyzed in terms of the themes they communicated and the effort put forth. It has been concluded that the subjects did not stay entirely within the Piagetian framework. Furthermore, differences were evident between the United Methodist's perceptions and those of the Free Methodists and Wesleyans in that the United Methodists failed to draw pictures with strong Biblical themes, or abstract ideas.

The Role Of Hair Color In The Perception Of Attractiveness, Pamela R. Hinney

Modern Psychological Studies

The concept of attractiveness pervades every aspect of society in the United States. Attractiveness is used to manipulate decisions, desires, and even needs; in turn, society allows itself to be manipulated by the same concept of attractiveness. This study was designed to determine if hair color plays a role in the perception of attractiveness. A questionnaire was administered to 36 West Virginia State College students. An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was applied to the data and a significant difference was found among blonde, brunette, and red hair color categories: F (2,99) = 14.92 p< .05. The experimental hypothesis that hair color plays a role in the perception of attractiveness was supported.

Gender And Sterotyping In The United States And Spain, Suzanne Whitmore

Modern Psychological Studies

This study investigated sex-trait stereotypes across two nations, the United States and Spain. Past research by Williams & Best (1990) examined gender-stereotyping within the same countries with children, and a more recent study by Best & Williams (D. L. Best, personal communication, November 25, 1991) surveyed 100 students from each of 25 countries. Male characteristics were found to be more socially desirable than those identified as characteristic of women and were rated higher by both males and females. Although the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) has been widely used in the United States in measuring traits considered either masculine or …

The Effect Of Field Dependence And Target Type On Search Time, Joe Buissink

Modern Psychological Studies

This study investigated search time as a function of field dependence and target type. Thirty-nine students were given the Gropp Embedded Figures Test (GEFT). Two female and two male students each were randomly selected from the first and fourth quartiles. These eight participants were given forty-five sets of background letters in which they were to locate either a specific number, a specific letter, or an any number target. The field independent participants located the embedded targets much more quickly than the field dependent participants. It was expected that the differences in scan times for target types would be significant, however, …

The Effect Of Victim Bias On Length Of Defendant Sentencing, Joanne Economou

Modern Psychological Studies

This research examined the effects of victim bias on the determination of the length of prison sentence given to perpetrators convicted of assault and battery. Three victim characteristics (gender, race, and sexual orientation) were targeted to determine whether they would evoke discrimination in sentencing. Forty subjects were asked to read nine brief crime scenarios and impose prison sentences on the convicted perpetrators of each of the crimes. Three target scenarios were intermixed within the nine crime scenarios. They depicted the crimes of assault and battery of a victim who was either black or white or homosexual. The targeted scenarios were …

Subliminal Perception And The Stroop Effect, Sandra Harvey, Shannon Keathley, Delinda Muniz, Ginger Tidmore

Modern Psychological Studies

The Stroop effect and subliminal perception are two phenomena which have been studied for years. However, the potential relation between the two has not been conclusively explored. This experiment was designed to demonstrate that a relationship between the two may exist. The procedure consisted of subliminally presenting the name of a color written in black letters simultaneously with a colored stimulus. The supraliminal colored stimulus and subliminal word stimulus were presented on a screen by use of a projector and a tachistoscope (t-scope) respectively. It was hypothesized that subliminal perception would create interference on the projected Stroop Test simulating a …

Event Frequency Estimations For Non-Semantic Items, Max Ingersoll

Modern Psychological Studies

In order to further clarify the roles of labeling and semantic processing in event frequency encoding, fifty-six undergraduate students were tested on their memory for frequency of sounds. One half of the subjects were presented with familiar sounds (i.e. a telephone ring or wind chimes) and the other half with single musical notes or tones. The use of tones was to defeat the attempts at semantic labeling of the stimuli. It was found that subjects in the familiar sounds condition displayed a significant ability at estimating event frequency. Subjects in the pure tones condition, however, displayed no such ability.

The Effects Of Modality And Stimilus Type On Memory For Frequency, Kelly Pritchard

Modern Psychological Studies

The effect of presentation modality and stimulus type on memory for frequency was examined. In Experiment 1, forty undergraduate students viewed or handled 21 three-dimensional items. Items were either (a) geometric shapes, (b) nonsense objects, or (c) familiar items and occurred either 2, 4, or 6 times, creating a randomly ordered list of 72 items. Subjects were tested in the same modality on their memory for frequency of those items. Subjects were able to distinguish between items which occurred less frequently versus those which occurred more often. The average frequency estimates for nonsense and familiar items were closest to the …

The Priming Effects Of Parental Divorce On Relationship Attitudes, Donna Wetzel, Faye D. Plascak-Craig

Modern Psychological Studies

Past findings frequently reported that children with divorced parents exhibit negative behaviors at some time following the divorce, however, data have not consistently demonstrated attitudinal effects. In this study, 70 college undergraduates, half with divorced parents and half with intact families, were administered an original survey for recording ratings of relationship attitudes and eight semantic differential scales. Although adult children of divorced parents rated their parents relationships less positively than did those from intact families, there were no differences by parental history in their relationship fears. There were semantic differences in ratings of five constructs (FAMILY, FATHER, MARRIAGE, PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP, …

Environmental And Age Differences In The Formation Of Romantic Pairs And Self-Monitoring In Adolescents, Russell I. Oelheim

Dissertations and Theses

Mark Snyder (1974) in his Self-Monitoring (SM) construct proposed there were two ways in which people might be classified: high and low self-monitors. High SM individuals attend to environmental cues and respond to the expectations of a given situation, while low SM individuals respond to their feelings, inner states and personal values. This construct has been extensively researched with adults and children, but not with adolescents.

David Elkind (1979), in his Imaginary Audience (IA) construct, suggested that upon reaching puberty, teenagers become vitally aware of how they are perceived by others. Elkind maintained that girls in early adolescence were more …

Concurrent Validity Of The Social Phobia And Anxiety Inventory, James D. Herbert, Alan S. Bellack, Debra A. Hope

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

The Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI) is a new instrument designed to assess symptoms of social phobia. Although the scale has been shown to have a good test-retest reliability, internal consistency, and construct validity, no studies have examined its concurrent validity with respect to other measures of social anxiety and avoidance. In the present study, the relationship between the SPAI and several self-report measures of social anxiety was examined in a sample of 23 patients meeting DSM-III-R criteria for social phobia. The relationship between the SPAI and other measures of psychopathology, as well as performance during a role play …

Student's Perceptions And Experiences Of Sexual Harassment At The University Of Tennessee At Chattanooga, Wendy W. Davis

Honors Theses

This research was conducted to examine students' perceptions and experiences of sexual harassment in higher education. The study was designed and administered in such a way as to address four concerns which have not been effectively handled in previous studies. These specific concerns are as follows: (a) the nonrandom selection of students, (b) the exclusion of males in samples, (c) the limited number of research methods used, and (d) the lack of a standardized definition for sexual harassment. The first three issues focus on the need to obtain representative samples of the college population.

Consumption Of Solid Food By Suckling Pigs: Individual Variation And Relation To Weight Gain, Edmond A. Pajor, David Fraser, Donald L. Kramer

Feeding Behavior Collection

Individual daily consumption of supplementary solid food ('creep feed') was measured from Day 10 to weaning at Day 28 for 39 piglets in four litters, and its relationship to body weight and weight gain up to Day 42 was investigated. Individual consumption was measured by combining the weight of the feed removed from the dispensers (monitored electronically) and a video image of piglet activity at the feeder. Creep feed consumption varied greatly, both between and within litters. On average, pigs began feeding on Day 12 (range Day 10-28), intake was relatively low (usually < 5 g day ^‒1) until Day 20 but increased …

Dysfunctional Attitudes, Life Stress And Coping Processes, Deborah Desalliers

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The findings of recent investigations earmarked chronic daily stressors as being highly related to stress levels. In addition, researchers are promoting a more integrative model of stress. The stress response is no longer thought of in strictly linear terms, i.e. an event causes stress. Rather, cognitive factors, existing within the human mind itself, strongly influence our coping processes and the chronic stress we experience.

Canonical correlation analysis was used to study how dysfunctional attitudes, a negative cognitive factor, were related to individuals' daily hassles and coping processes. An increase in dysfunctional attitudes was found to correspond to an increase in …

Ease Of Learning And The Emergence Of Equivalence Class Formation: A Comparison Of Topography-Based And Selection-Based Paradigms, Riad M. Wraikat

Dissertations

Michael (1985) identified two types of verbal behavior, topography-based (i.e., speaking or using sign language) and selection-based (i.e., symbol board). Sundberg & Sundberg (1990) and Wraikat (1991) compared these systems in terms of the ease of learning object naming (tact) and giving the correct sign or pointing to the correct symbol on hearing the object name (intraverbal). Sundberg & Sundberg (1990) also compared them for the spontaneous development of a new relation, identifying the object when hearing its name (stimulus class formation or equivalence). The results of both studies favored the topography-based system, but in each case some subjects were …

Inhibitions And Compensations: A Study Of The Effects Of Negative Sanctions In Three Pacific Cultures, Jeannette Marie Mageo

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Persuasion, Across Task Difficulties, On Self-Efficacy, Performance And Persistence A Thesis, Linda J. Kaiser

Student Work

Self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1977a, 1982, 1986) postulates that efficacy expectations can be modified by persuasion if it is perceived as being instilled by a credible source, it is realistic, and it is not in opposition to performance information. Subsequent research revealed equivocal results for the relationship between persuasion and self-efficacy. This study investigates the effects of persuasion, across task difficulties, on selfefficacy, performance, and persistence. A mathematical task was utilized. Six hypotheses were tested. Persuasion was found to be effective in a hardtask situation. Gender had a substantial impact on the results of this study; overall findings may have been …

Contrived Versus Natural Reinforcers In The Acquisition Of A Verbal Repertoire By Adult Learners, Lisa Ann Leblanc

Dissertations

Previous research suggests that by making classroom contingencies for verbal responding more like those in the natural environment, i.e., by using motivative variables to evoke verbal responses which are followed by specific actions on the part of listeners, verbal repertoires can be taught more effectively to children and language impaired individuals. The present study examines the role of specific versus generalized conditioned reinforcement following adult students' question-asking on the acquisition of a verbal repertoire in a classroom setting and on the generalization of this repertoire to a more natural verbal environment.

Subjects were 32 university students in two American Sign …

The Effects Of Negligence And Causation Information On Jurors' Determination Of Liability, David K. Blanchard

Dissertations and Theses

This study investigated the effect of arguments for and against defendant's behavior being negligent and for and against defendant's behavior being a cause of damages to the plaintiff. The findings were (a) that negligence arguments affected negligence ratings, causation ratings, and verdicts and (b) that causation arguments affected none of the measures.

Identity Formation: A Comparison Of Adolescents Adopted Through Agency Versus Private Placements, Judith Kay Bentley

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate factors which might influence the identity formation process in adopted adolescents. Specifically, this research looked at agency versus independent adoption placement as a choice reflecting the adoptive parents' preference for involvement with or distance from a possible adoptive family support network before and after placement. Subjects were also divided according to those whose family had belonged to an adoptive family support group and those who had not. The study involves a combination of descriptive and correlational research methods.

The Effects Of Self-Esteem, Performance Feedback, And Behavioral Verifiability On Self-Serving Biases, Diana C. Slatopolsky

Master's Theses

The present study examined the psychological processes underlying the self-serving bjas, the tendency to portray one's own qualities as more favorable then those of others. Subjects were asked to predict future success on a behavioral task for themselves and for the average student at their university after receiving performance feedback on the same task. It was proposed that self-enhancing predictions would be moderated by subject's self-esteem (high or low), the verifiability of task performance (high or low), and performance feedback (success or failure). The results revealed that subjects with high self-esteem displayed a self-serving bias regardless of performance verifiability or …

Utah School Counselors: Present Status, Linda J. Kuwana

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study presented data gathered from Utah school counselors about demographic information, counseling and guidance programs in Utah, certification requirements, future personnel needs, quality and appropriateness of training programs, philosophy of public schools, and needs and/or concerns. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 450 school counselors employed in the State of Utah. Utah school counselors were found to be primarily Caucasians over the age of 36 years. The majority of counselors in Utah were employed in secondary schools. Caseloads for secondary school counselors ranged from 300 to 600 students per counselor, and caseloads for elementary school counselors ranged …

Ethical Beliefs And Practices: Do Psychologists Differ From Other Health-Care Professionals, Gary Percival

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Ethical codes and principles, and laws govern the behavior of health-care professionals. Yet, the impact that ethical codes and laws have on the actual moral behaviors of health-care professionals is relatively unknown. A survey on the ethical beliefs and practices of health-care professionals was sent to the United States membership of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback. AAPB's heterogeneous membership offers a unique opportunity to compare the ethical beliefs and behaviors of professionals across various health-care professions, educational levels, licensure and certification statuses, age, years in practice, and gender. The survey examined the respondents' ethical beliefs and practices in …

Spark Without Flame: The German Library Of Information A Nazi Propaganda Agency In The United States, 1936-1941, Craig S. Olson

Theses and Dissertations

Most studies of Nazi propaganda have focused on main events inside Germany. This thesis proposes to examine German efforts in the United States in the years before American entry into the Second World War. This will be done by examining one Nazi agency: the German Library of Information which operated out of New York City from 1936 to 1941.

The first chapter explores the formation of the German Library of Information and its goals. The question of whether it as controlled by the Foreign Office or the Propaganda Ministry is also discussed.

The second chapter cover the association between the …

A Study Of General Education Curricula In Selected Small Colleges, Lavonne Fay Larson

Theses and Dissertations

Given the distinctiveness of small colleges, the primary purpose of this study was to gain a more complete understanding of general education curricula of selected small colleges in terms of the colleges' stated goals, their process of developing and modifying, and the stucture and content of their present general education curricula. A second purpose was to propose a model for developing general education curricula.

Three research methods were employed: a review of related literature, an analysis of written institutional documents, and campus interviews. Two groups of small colleges, with enrollments of less than 2000, participated. Data from the first group …