This recently completed study examined whether attribution theory can explain helping behavior in an interdependent classroom environment that utilized a cooperative-learning model. The study focused on student participants enrolled in 6 community college communication classes taught by the same instructor. Three levels of cooperative-learning…

The emotional trauma of recent events may never go away. A million people were uprooted by Hurricane Katrina, including an estimated 372,000 children of school age. Three weeks later, Hurricane Rita slammed into the Texas-Louisiana coastline, forcing thousands more to evacuate. Acute symptoms of trauma range from confusion, nightmares, and…

Simulation and real data studies are used to investigate the value of modeling multiple-choice distractors on item response theory linking. Using the characteristic curve linking procedure for Bock's (1972) nominal response model presented by Kim and Hanson (2002), all-category linking (i.e., a linking based on all category characteristic curves…

The mediator role of response expectancies and the moderator role of hypnotic suggestibility were evaluated in the analogue treatment of pain. Approximately 1,000 participants were assessed for hypnotic suggestibility. Later, as part of a seemingly unrelated experiment, 188 of these individuals were randomly assigned to distraction,…

The shift at the beginning of the year from the summer at home to the fall at school can be both an exciting and an anxious time for young children. Often, there is a fine line between the two emotions, with one considered positive and other negative. Awareness of how to manage these feelings in a teacher's group is essential to creating the right…

This article used multitrait-multimethod methodology and covariance modeling for an investigation of the presence and correlates of method effects associated with negatively worded items on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem (RSE) scale (Rosenberg, 1989) using a sample of 757 adults. Results showed that method effects associated with negative item phrasing…

In this article, the authors report the results of a survey on technology access and use in both religious and nonsectarian schools in the state of Illinois. Four hundred surveys were sent to a cross section of private schools, with a response rate of 45%. The study demonstrates there were only minimal differences between sectarian and…

Objectives: The present study was designed to explore structural differences between forensic interviews in which children made allegations and those in which children did not make allegations. Methodology: Fifty forensic interviews of 4- to 13-year-old suspected victims of abuse who did not disclose abuse during the interview were compared with…

How do children understand situations in which the targets of moral transgressions do not complain about the way they are treated? One-hundred and twenty participants aged 5, 7, 10, 13, and 16 years were interviewed about hypothetical situations in which one child ("transgressor") made an apparently unfair demand of another child ("victim"), who…

Cognitive diagnosis models are constrained (multiple classification) latent class models that characterize the relationship of questionnaire responses to a set of dichotomous latent variables. Having emanated from educational measurement, several aspects of such models seem well suited to use in psychological assessment and diagnosis. This article…

Recent reexaminations of adolescent literacy have expanded previous cognitive psychological models of reading to include views of the social and cultural aspects of literacy. The term critical literacy refers to approaches that focus on the social forces that influence the creation and interpretation of texts. When applied to the study of literary…

The association between corporal punishment and children's emotional and behavioral functioning was studied in a sample of 98 non-referred children with a mean age of 12.35 (SD=1.72) recruited from two school systems in the southeastern United States. Children were divided into those who had experienced no corporal punishment over approximately a…

Stimulus preference assessments for individuals with developmental disabilities typically involve offering choices among stimuli and providing immediate access to the chosen stimuli. Several researchers have explored the utility of presenting choices verbally, thereby obviating the need to present the choices in tangible form and deliver access to…

During a psychiatric hospitalization of 5 to 10 days, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) strategies can be used for the management of inpatients and to support the transition to outpatient treatment. This format was chosen after several years of frustration dealing with crisis inpatient care. The use of CBT is well known, and it seemed that an…

Recent evidence suggests that the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) is composed of two orthogonal factors, one representing traits such as dominance and low anxiety (PPI-I) and a second that reflects more socially deviant aspects of psychopathy (PPI-II). To assess whether response sets differentially affect these factors, the present…