The actor-observer hypothesis (E. E. Jones & R. E. Nisbett, 1971) states that people tend to explain their own behavior with situation causes and other people's behavior with person causes. Widely known in psychology, this asymmetry has been described as robust, firmly established, and pervasive. However, a meta-analysis on 173 published studies…

In the statistical and transcriptional analyses reported in this exploratory study, original rhythms of 6-11-year-old children (N=36) were examined. The hypotheses were based on a new model of musical development, and tested empirically using non-pitch rhythmic improvisation in a MIDI-environment. Several representational types were found in…

Although hopelessness and depression are known risk factors for suicide, most individuals who are hopeless or depressed never make a suicide attempt. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that college students' (n = 230) attitudes toward suicide (the degree to which they see it as an acceptable option under some circumstances) would moderate the…

The weak central coherence (WCC) account of autism characterizes the learning style of individuals with this condition as favoring localized and fragmented (to the detriment of global and integrative) processing of information. This pattern of learning is thought to lead to deficits in aspects of perception (e.g., face processing), cognition, and…

This field study examined how early socialization experiences affect new employee mastery of socialization content and socialization outcomes. New employees reported the realism of their preentry knowledge and the helpfulness of socialization agents. A follow-up survey assessed mastery of socialization content along with role clarity, job…

Two experiments investigated adult age differences in episodic and semantic long-term memory tasks, as a test of the hypothesis of specific age-related decline in context memory. Older adults were slower and exhibited lower episodic accuracy than younger adults. Fits of the diffusion model (R. Ratcliff, 1978) revealed age-related increases in…

This article describes an activity that involves the use of simulation for decision-making. It is useful for demonstrating concepts in probability and statistics. (Contains 4 figures and 2 tables.)

This study reports on relationships among gender, maternal depressed mood, and children's trajectories of depressive phenomena across middle childhood and early adolescence. It tested the hypothesis that, compared to boys, girls become increasingly vulnerable to maternal depression as they enter adolescence. The study sample consisted of 834…

Three Turkish special education teachers conducted a functional analysis to identify variables that might initiate or maintain the problem behaviors of three children with developmental disabilities. The analysis procedures were conducted in natural classroom settings. In Phase 1, following initial training in functional analysis procedures, the…

Formulating-Hypotheses (F-H) items present a situation and ask the examinee to generate as many explanations for it as possible. This study examined the generalizability, validity, and examinee perceptions of a computer-delivered version of the task. Eight F-H questions were administered to 192 graduate students. Half of the items restricted…

This study examined the hypothesis that age-related increases in reasoning ability are associated with the ability to represent relations of increasing complexity, defined as the number of entities related. The study's purpose was to determine the extent to which this ability to process relations with three entities increased between ages 4 and 8…

Selected methodological characteristics of meta-analyses related to educational achievement are reviewed in an exploration of the practice of meta-analysis and the characteristics of meta-analyses related to educational achievement, as well as possible relationships among background, methodological and substantive characteristics, and effect…

It has previously been shown by M. Beller (1990) that an additive tree (Addtree, a hierarchical tree representation of similarity data developed by S. Sattath and A. Tversky in 1977), may be useful for representing the structure between tests and items through the similarity among them as measured by their intercorrelations. In this study, the…

A questionnaire study assessed 143 faculty members at Kent State University to determine if the problem of theft and mutilation of library materials causes faculty members to view the library as well as the miscreants responsible for this behavior in a negative light. It is hypothesized that a majority of faculty members responding to the survey…

The effects of mobilizing prior knowledge on information processing were studied. Two hypotheses, the cognitive set-point hypothesis and the selective attention hypothesis, try to account for the facilitation effects of prior knowledge activation. These hypotheses predict different recall patterns as a result of mobilizing prior knowledge. In…