New Mexico experienced a surge in the gaming industry during the mid-1990s with the initiation of a state lottery and other new gaming opportunities, as well as the development of many Indian gaming establishments. This paper explores patterns associated with gambling in two random samples of the adult population (N = 2674) in the entire State of…

Increasing bodies of evidence suggest that keeping secrets may be detrimental to well-being and adjustment, whereas confiding secrets may alleviate the detriments of secrecy and benefit well-being and adjustment. However, few studies have addressed the consequences of keeping and confiding secrets simultaneously, and even fewer have done so…

Although previous research has identified a number of interesting aspects of future thinking in adults, little is known about the developmental trajectory and coherence of future-oriented behaviors during early childhood. The primary goal of this study was to explore these issues by administering a battery of tasks assessing different aspects of…

This study examines the contemporary user patterns that emerged when a new medium--the personal computer and the Internet--was introduced into the user's media ecology. The study focuses on the introductory period and current usage. Data analysis conformed to practices accepted by oral historians (Richie, 2003, and Brundage, 2008), and grounded…

The purpose of this research is to find the relationships among attributes of creative problem solving ability and their relationships with the Math Creative Problem Solving Ability. In addition, the attribute patterns of high, medium, and low mathematical creative groups were identified and compared. There were 409 fifth and sixth graders…

Teaching literature from a psychological perspective provides a basis for the study and analysis of human motivation and behavior, as psychology and literature make mutual contributions to the study of both disciplines. Melancholia is a recurring theme in the novels of Dick Francis, and the first-person accounts of despair and depression are…

A frequently noted but largely anecdotal behavioral observation in Williams syndrome (WS) is an increased tendency to approach strangers, yet the basis for this behavior remains unknown. We examined the relationship between affect identification ability and affiliative behavior in participants with WS relative to a neurotypical comparison group.…

Cognitive-behavioral conceptualizations of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) have predominantly viewed compulsions as being motivated by harm avoidance. However, sensations of things being incomplete or not "just right" may also underlie compulsions in OCD. Preliminary research suggests that distinguishing between harm avoidance and…

The present study used a concurrent operants preference assessment to evaluate preference for two instructional approaches commonly used with children diagnosed with autism, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and the Treatment and Education of Autistic and Communication Handicapped Children (TEACCH). Results showed that the three children with autism…

Proportion compatible manipulations are often used to index strategic processes in selective attention tasks. Here, a subtle confound in proportion compatible manipulations is considered. Specifically, as the proportion of compatible trials increases, the ratio of complete repetitions and complete alternations to partial repetitions increases on…

Conditioned defeat is a model wherein hamsters that have previously experienced a single social defeat subsequently exhibit heightened levels of avoidance and submission in response to a smaller, non-aggressive intruder. While we have previously demonstrated the critical involvement of the basolateral and central nuclei of the amygdala in the…

The present experiment investigated whether the gambling of American Indian (AI) and non-AI participants would be sensitive to the actions and/or ethnicity of another gambler (i.e., a confederate) when playing a slot-machine simulation. Eight male AIs and eight male non-AIs participated in five gambling sessions. In one, the participant gambled…

According to early childhood education scholar and leading expert on this topic, Lilian G. Katz, dispositions are a "pattern of behavior exhibited frequently... in the absence of coercion... constituting a habit of mind under some conscious and voluntary control... intentional and oriented to broad goals" that can be taught and caught through…

The authors' professional standards used to be pretty straightforward and specific. Not exactly works of literary creativity, but they served the purpose of giving them structure and direction, and let their principals know what they actually did all day. Then came along a new buzzword called "dispositions." They heard it for the first time when…

The present study examined children's and adults' categorization and moral judgment of truthful and untruthful statements. 7-, 9- and 11-year-old Chinese children and college students read stories in which story characters made truthful or untruthful statements and were asked to classify and evaluate the statements. The statements varied in terms…