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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Psychology

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Series

2011

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Adolescents Prefer More Immediate Rewards When In The Presence Of Their Peers, Lia O'Brien, Dustin Albert, Jason Chein, Laurence Steinberg Dec 2011

Adolescents Prefer More Immediate Rewards When In The Presence Of Their Peers, Lia O'Brien, Dustin Albert, Jason Chein, Laurence Steinberg

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Adolescents take more risks in the presence of their peers, but the mechanism through which peer presence affects risky decision-making is unknown. We propose that the presence of peers increases the salience of the immediate rewards of a risky choice. The current study examined the effect of peer presence on reward sensitivity in a sample of 100 late adolescents ages 18 through 20 (M=18.5) using a delay discounting task, which assesses an individual's preference for immediate versus delayed rewards. Participants were randomly assigned to complete the task alone or with 2 same-age, same-sex peers observing. Consistent with our …


Vocabulary Development In Greek Children: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison Using The Language Development Survey, Christina F. Papaeliou, Leslie Rescorla Sep 2011

Vocabulary Development In Greek Children: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison Using The Language Development Survey, Christina F. Papaeliou, Leslie Rescorla

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

This study investigated vocabulary size and vocabulary composition in Greek children aged 1; 6 to 2; 11 using a Greek adaptation of Rescorla's Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1989). Participants were 273 toddlers coming from monolingual Greek-speaking families. Greek LDS data were compared with US LDS data obtained from the instrument's normative sample (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000). Vocabulary size increased markedly with age, but Greek toddlers appeared to get off to a slower start in early word learning than US children. The correlation between percentage word use scores in Greek and US samples was moderate in size, indicating considerable overlap …


Pathways To Treatment Retention For Individuals Legally Coerced To Substance Use Treatment: The Interaction Of Hope And Treatment Motivation, Ashley S. Hampton, Bradley T. Conner, Dustin Albert, Douglas Longshore May 2011

Pathways To Treatment Retention For Individuals Legally Coerced To Substance Use Treatment: The Interaction Of Hope And Treatment Motivation, Ashley S. Hampton, Bradley T. Conner, Dustin Albert, Douglas Longshore

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Although several states have adopted policies diverting individuals convicted of non-violent drug offenses to substance use treatment, in lieu of incarceration or as a condition of probation, previous research has produced inconsistent findings on the effectiveness of such programs when comparing outcomes for legally coerced individuals to more voluntary entrants. Less studied in these populations is within group variation in treatment expectations and motivation influences, which have been shown to affect retention as well. As motivation has traditionally been viewed as contributing to treatment retention and higher levels of hope (the perception that goals can be met) are viewed as …


Judgment And Decision Making In Adolescence, Dustin Albert, Laurence Steinberg Feb 2011

Judgment And Decision Making In Adolescence, Dustin Albert, Laurence Steinberg

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

In this article, we review the most important findings to have emerged during the past 10 years in the study of judgment and decision making (JDM) in adolescence and look ahead to possible new directions in this burgeoning area of research. Three inter-related shifts in research emphasis are of particular importance and serve to organize this review. First, research grounded in normative models of JDM has moved beyond the study of age differences in risk perception and toward a dynamic account of the factors predicting adolescent decisions. Second, the field has seen widespread adoption of dual-process models of cognitive development …


Sources Of Somatization: Exploring The Roles Of Insecurity In Relationships And Styles Of Anger Experience And Expression, Liang Liu, Shiri Cohen, Marc S. Schulz, Robert J. Waldinger Jan 2011

Sources Of Somatization: Exploring The Roles Of Insecurity In Relationships And Styles Of Anger Experience And Expression, Liang Liu, Shiri Cohen, Marc S. Schulz, Robert J. Waldinger

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Research has shown strong connections between insecure attachment in close relationships and somatization. In addition, studies have demonstrated connections between somatic symptoms and anger experience and expression. In this study, we integrate perspectives from these two literatures by testing the hypothesis that proneness to anger and suppression of anger mediate the link between insecurity in relationships and somatization. Between 2000 and 2003, a community-based sample of 101 couples in a large U.S. city completed self-report measures, including the Somatic Symptom Inventory, the Relationship Scales Questionnaire, the Multidimensional Anger Inventory, the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory. Controlling …


Neural Activity, Neural Connectivity, And The Processing Of Emotionally-Valenced Information In Older Adults: Links With Life Satisfaction, Robert J. Waldinger, Elizabeth A. Kensinger, Marc S. Schulz Jan 2011

Neural Activity, Neural Connectivity, And The Processing Of Emotionally-Valenced Information In Older Adults: Links With Life Satisfaction, Robert J. Waldinger, Elizabeth A. Kensinger, Marc S. Schulz

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

This study examines whether differences in late-life well-being are linked to how older adults encode emotionally-valenced information. Using fMRI with 39 older adults varying in life satisfaction, we examined how viewing positive and negative images affected activation and connectivity of an emotion-processing network. Participants engaged most regions within this network more robustly for positive than for negative images, but within the PFC this effect was moderated by life satisfaction, with individuals higher in satisfaction showing lower levels of activity during the processing of positive images. Participants high in satisfaction showed stronger correlations among network regions – particularly between the amygdala …


Age Differences In Strategic Planning As Indexed By The Tower Of London, Dustin Albert, Laurence Steinberg Jan 2011

Age Differences In Strategic Planning As Indexed By The Tower Of London, Dustin Albert, Laurence Steinberg

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

The present study examined age differences in performance on the Tower of London, a measure of strategic planning, in a diverse sample of 890 individuals between the ages of 10 and 30. Although mature performance was attained by age 17 on relatively easy problems, performance on the hardest problems showed improvements into the early 20s. Furthermore, whereas age-related performance gains by children and adolescents (ages 10–17) on the hardest problems were partially mediated by maturational improvements in both working memory and impulse control, improved performance in adulthood (ages 18+) was fully mediated by late gains in impulse control. Findings support …


Peer Influences On Adolescent Risk Behavior, Dustin Albert, Laurence Steinberg Jan 2011

Peer Influences On Adolescent Risk Behavior, Dustin Albert, Laurence Steinberg

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Moving beyond studies of age differences in “cool” cognitive ­processes related to risk perception and reasoning, new approaches to understanding ­adolescent risk behavior highlight the influence of “hot” social and emotional ­factors on adolescents’ decisions. Building on evidence from developmental neuroscience, we present a theory that highlights an adolescent gap in the developmental timing of neurobehavioral systems underpinning incentive processing and cognitive control. Whereas changes in brain regions involved in incentive processing result in heightened sensitivity to social and emotional rewards in early adolescence, cognitive control systems do not reach full maturity until late adolescence or early adulthood. Within this …