Psychological Bulletin

LaFromboise, Teresa; Coleman, Hardin L. K.; Gerton, Jennifer

doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.114.3.395pmid: 8272463

A vital step in the development of an equal partnership for minorities in the academic, social, and economic life of the United States involves moving away from assumptions of the linear model of cultural acquisition. In this article we review the literature on the psychological impact of being bicultural. Assimilation, acculturation, alternation, multicultural, and fusion models that have been used to describe the psychological processes, social experiences, and individual challenges and obstacles of being bicultural are reviewed and summarized for their contributions and implications for investigations of the psychological impact of biculturalism. Emphasis is given to the alternation model, which posits that an individual is able to gain competence within 2 cultures without losing his or her cultural identity or having to choose one culture over the other. Finally, a hypothetical model outlining the dimensions of bicultural competence is presented.

Belsky, Jay

doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.114.3.413pmid: 8272464

This article applies a Developmental–Ecological perspective to the question of theetiology of physical child abuse and neglect by organizing the paper around a variety of“contexts of maltreatment.” The roles of parent and child characteristicsand processes are considered (“developmental context”), including anexamination of intergenerational transmission. The “immediate interactionalcontext” of maltreatment, which focuses on the parenting and parent–childinteractional processes associated with abuse and neglect, is analyzed. Finally, the“broader context” is discussed with 3 specific subsections dealing with thecommunity, cultural, and evolutionary contexts of child maltreatment. Implications forintervention are considered and future research directions are outlined.

Allan, Lorraine G.

doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.114.3.435pmid: 8272465

The study of the mechanism that detects the contingency between events, in both humans and non-human animals, is a matter of considerable research activity. Two broad categories of explanations of the acquisition of contingency information have received extensive evaluation: rule-based models and associative models. This article assesses the two categories of models for human contingency judgments. The data reveal systematic departures in contingency judgments from the predictions of rule-based models. Recent studies indicate that a contiguity model of Pavlovian conditioning is a useful heuristic for conceptualizing human contingency judgments.

Mead, Alan D.; Drasgow, Fritz

doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.114.3.449pmid: N/A

The effects of themedium of test administration—paper and pencil versuscomputerized—were examined for timed power and speeded tests of cognitiveabilities for populations or young adults and adults. Meta-analytic techniques were usedto estimate the cross-mode correlation after correcting for measurement error. A total of159 correlations was meta-analyzed: 123 from timed power tests and 36 from speeded tests.The corrected cross-mode correlation was found to be .91 when all correlations wereanalyzed simultaneously. Speededness was found to moderate the effects of administrationmode in that the cross-mode correlation was estimated to be .97 for timed power tests butonly .72 for speeded tests. No difference in equivalence was observed between adaptivelyand conventionally administered computerized tests. Some limitations on the generality ofthese results are discussed, and directions for future research are outlined.

Sayette, Michael A.

doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.114.3.459pmid: 8272466

This article reviews the effects of alcohol on stress responses among social drinkers. Despite considerable research, the relationship between alcohol and stress has remained unclear. An appraisal-disruption model of alcohol’s effects on stress responses is proposed, which attempts to integrate many divergent findings. According to this model, alcohol disrupts initial appraisal of stressful information by constraining the spread of activation of associated information previously established in long-term memory. The conditions under which such disruption is likely to occur are outlined. Evidence relevant to each of the model’s propositions is considered. It is concluded that the appraisal-disruption model provides a framework for integrating many of the findings from past investigations. Theoretical issues pertinent to the model are addressed.

Polster, Michael R.

doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.114.3.477pmid: 8272467

Studies of drug effects on memory represent a large body of literature that, for the most part, has not had an impact on psychological theories of memory and amnesia produced by cognitive psychologists, who tend to theorize independently of information about the brain. Recently, however, there has been a movement toward cognitive neuropsychological approaches to memory in which theorists have begun to consider, and even focus on, neuroanatomical realities. This approach currently relies on data from organic amnesic patients and normal Ss. This article suggests that studies of drug-induced amnesia complement these current lines of investigation and therefore merit consideration from cognitive neuropsychologists interested in memory. To this end, the drugs and memory literature is reviewed, and its potential relationship with more mainstream cognitive neuropsychology is discussed.

Cliff, Norman

doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.114.3.494pmid: N/A

Much behavioralresearch involves comparing the central tendencies of different groups, or of the samesubjects under different conditions, and the usual analysis is some form of meancomparison. This article suggests that an ordinal statistic, d, is oftenmore appropriate. d compares the number of times a score from one groupor condition is higher than one from the other, compared with the reverse. Compared tomean comparisons, d is more robust and equally or more powerful; it isinvariant under transformation; and it often conforms more closely to the experimenter’sresearch hypothesis. It is suggested that inferences from d be based onsample estimates of its variance rather than on the more traditional assumption ofidentical distributions. The statistic is extended to simple repeated measures designs,and ways of extending its use to more complex designs are suggested.

Ratcliff, Roger

doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.114.3.510pmid: 8272468

The effect of outliers on reaction time analyses is evaluated. The first section assessesthe power of different methods of minimizing the effect of outliers on analysis of variance(ANOVA) and makes recommendations about the use of transformations and cutoffs. The secondsection examines the effect of outliers and cutoffs on different measures of location, spread,and shape and concludes using quantitative examples that robust measures are much less affectedby outliers and cutoffs than measures based on moments. The third section examines fittingexplicit distribution functions as a way of recovering means and standard deviations andconcludes that unless fitting the distribution function is used as a model of distributionshape, the method is probably not worth routine use.

MacCallum, Robert C.; Browne, Michael W.

doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.114.3.533pmid: 8272469

In conventionalrepresentations of covariance structure models, indicators are defined as linear functionsof latent variables, plus error. In an alternative representation, constructs can bedefined as linear functions of their indicators, called causalindicators, plus an error term. Such constructs are not latent variables butcomposite variables, and they have no indicators in the conventional sense. The presenceof composite variables in a model can, in some situations, result in problems withidentification of model parameters. Also, the use of causal indicatorscan produce models that imply zero correlation among many measured variables, a problemresolved only by the inclusion of a potentially large number of additional parameters.These phenomena are demonstrated with an example, and general principles underlying themare discussed. Remedies are described so as to allow for the evaluation of models thatcontain causal indicators.

Budescu, David V.

doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.114.3.542pmid: N/A

Whenever multiple regression is used to test and compare theoretically motivated models, itis of interest to determine the relative importance of the predictors. Specifically,researchers seek to rank order and scale variables in terms of their importance and to expressglobal statistics of the model as a function of these measures. This article reviews the manymeanings of importance of predictors in multiple regression, highlights their weaknesses, andproposes a new method for comparing variables: dominance analysis. Dominance is a qualitativerelation defined in a pairwise fashion: One variable is said to dominate another if it is moreuseful than its competitor in all subset regressions. Properties of the newly proposed methodare described and illustrated.