Tomoe Kanaya

Psychological Control and Autonomy Granting: Opposite Ends of a Continuum or Distinct Constructs?

This article explores the relationship between parental psychological control and parental autonomy granting, and the relations between these constructs and indicators of adolescent psychosocial functioning, in a sample of 9,564 adolescents from grades 9 to 12. Participants completed a comprehensive parenting questionnaire as well as several measures of psychosocial adjustment. Confirmatory factor analyses of the parenting items revealed discrete factors for psychological control and autonomy granting, suggesting that these are distinct parenting constructs rather than opposite ends of a parental control continuum. Moreover, structural equation modeling showed that these factors were weakly correlated and differentially related to adolescent internalizing symptoms. Findings have implications for future conceptualization and measurement of psychological control and autonomy granting, and for research examining their effects on adolescent development.

The Flynn Effect and U.S. Policies: The Impact of Rising IQ Scores on American Society Via Mental Retardation Diagnoses.

Over the last century, IQ scores have been steadily rising, a phenomenon dubbed the Flynn effect. Because of the Flynn effect, IQ tests are periodically renormed, making them harder. Given that eligibility for mental retardation (MR) services relies heavily on IQ scores, renormed tests could have a significant impact on MR placements. In longitudinal IQ records from 9 sites around the country, students in the borderline and mild MR range lost an average of 5.6 points when retested on a renormed test and were more likely to be classified MR compared with peers retested on the same test. The magnitude of the effect is large and affects national policies on education, social security, the death penalty, and the military. This paper reports the perceptions of professionals as they relate to IQ score fluctuations in normal, borderline, and/or MR populations.

Believing Is Seeing How Rumors Can Engender False Memories in Preschoolers

This study examined how an erroneous rumor circulated among preschoolers can influence their memory. One fourth of the children overheard a rumor from an adult conversation in which it was alleged that an event the children had not experienced themselves had occurred. A second fourth were the classmates of those who overheard the rumor. A third group had no exposure to the rumor. The remaining children actually experienced the event suggested by the rumor. One week later, the children were interviewed in either a neutral or a suggestive manner. Results from a second interview after a 2-week delay revealed that under both interview conditions, children who overheard the rumor, either from the adult conversation or during naturally occurring interactions with classmates, were as likely to report experiencing the rumored but nonexperienced event as were those who actually experienced it. Most reports of the rumored but nonexperienced event were in childrens free recall and were accompanied by high levels of fictitious elaboration.

The Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise: Developing Childhood Proclivities into Adult Competencies: The Overlooked Multiplier Effect

In this chapter, we tackle a problem that has been at the heart of the debate over the relative influence of genes and environments in producing cognitive competencies. Our goal is to attempt to reconcile the disparate claims of behavior genetics researchers who stress the prepotency of genes in producing intellectual competence (for example, Bouchard, Lykken, Tellegan, and McGue, 1998) with those whom Scarr (1997) refers to as “socialization theorists” because of their stance on the crucial role of the social and material environment in shaping developmental outcomes. Our means of making this reconciliation is to describe recent efforts by diverse scholars to explain cognitive growth in terms of theories, models, and metaphors that are inherently multiplicative, more so than prior ones. We do not intend to delve into a comparative analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each model or metaphor, as that is not our goal, but instead we want to make the point that various researchers, coming from very different orientations, have found the need to postulate similar types of multiplier effects to account for cognitive growth across a wide range of attainments (reading, intelligence, mathematics, motoric). In the treatment that follows we use the terms “proclivities,” “penchants,” and “abilities” interchangeably, to refer to basic, underlying “resource pools” that are undoubtedly biologically based. Thus, we speak of a newborns penchant, ability, or proclivity to stare, attend, remember, and process the perceptual world.

The difficulty of basing death penalty eligibility on iq cutoff scores for mental retardation

Suppose you are told that there has been an enormous reduction in the rate of Americans classified as mentally retarded during the past 30 years—from 2.27% of the school-age population in 1974 to only 0.94% of those in 1992 (Flynn, 1998a). In addition, suppose you are told that average intelligence is growing by leaps and bounds—the average Briton gained 55 IQ points between the cohort aged 20 in 1892 and the cohort aged 20 in 1992. Good news, you would undoubtedly respond. According to recent psychometric data, something akin to this situation appears to have occurred (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1993). For example, the Ravens Progressive Matrices is a popular test of so-called fluid intelligence that was developed and standardized in 1942. At that time, many adults were given the test, including ones between the ages of 20 and 70 years old. In 1992 the Ravens was restandardized on a sample of Scottish adults who were representative of adults in the United Kingdom. (These norms show that performance peaked by ages 35–40—similarly to the 1942 norms, which peaked somewhat

Apples and Oranges Are Both Round: Furthering the Discussion on the Flynn Effect

While the magnitude of the Flynn effect is well established (approximately 3 points a decade on the Wechsler scales), the causes behind it are still unknown and hotly debated. Kaufman argues that, because of the administrative and scoring changes that occurred with the introduction of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Revised, Flynn’s interpretation of the effect is not appropriate. Although agreeing that these changes account for some aspects of rising IQ, this study questions the impact of these administrative/scoring changes to account for most of the impact, given the heavy documentation of the Flynn effect on multiple IQ tests and norms over time and around the world. The authors also add to the discussion led by Zhou, Zhu, and Weiss by stressing the importance of examining the role of individual differences within the Flynn effect to understand fully the exact nuances and cause(s) of it.

The Impact of the Flynn Effect on LD Diagnoses in Special Education

Because of the Flynn effect, IQ scores rise as a test norm ages but drop on the introduction of a newly revised test norm. The purpose of the current study was to determine the impact of the Flynn effect on learning disability (LD) diagnoses, the most prevalent special education diagnosis in the United States. Using a longitudinal sample of 875 school children who were initially diagnosed with LD on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Revised (WISC-R), children experienced a significant decline in IQ when retested on the third edition of the WISC (WISC-III) compared to peers who were tested on the WISC-R twice. Furthermore, results from logistic regression analyses revealed that the probability of a rediagnosis of LD on reevaluation significantly decreased, in part, because of this decline on the WISC-III. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for both basic research and educational policy.

The Flynn Effect in the WISC Subtests among School Children Tested for Special Education Services.

The Flynn effect, a secular rise in IQ seen throughout the world, was examined on the WISC-R and WISC-III subtests in a longitudinal sample of more than 2,500 school children who were tested between 1974 and 2002. Multivariate analysis of variance and multiple regression analyses revealed that all the subtests experienced significant decreases in scores on the introduction of the WISC-III, as expected because of the Flynn effect, with the exception of Information and Digit Span. (Mazes was not included in the analyses because of a limited sample size.) On Picture Arrangement and Coding, however, children who were repeatedly tested on the WISC-III also experienced significant decreases compared with children who were repeatedly tested on the WISC-R. These findings add to the growing literature comparing the magnitude of the Flynn effect on crystallized versus fluid measures. Implications for special education testing and the current WISC-IV are discussed.

Discussing the Flynn Effect: From Causes and Interpretation to Implications

Clark, Lawlor-Savage, and Goghari (this issue) point out that evidence of IQ rises had been documented decades before it was named the Flynn effect. These previous studies, however, were conducted sporadically and in isolated samples. Flynn (1984, 1987) examined them in a large-scale manner and was able to show their systematic and global nature. These findings still remained relatively unknown until they were cited in The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray (1994), who were among the first to call them the Flynn effect. Since then, numerous researchers (e.g., Pietschnig & Voracek, 2015) have continued to find similar results. These results indicate that IQ is rising throughout the world (with no exceptions to date), and the rise is higher in tests of fluid reasoning than in tests of crystallized reasoning. Further, the Flynn effect is experienced at the same rate by individuals throughout the distribution, including the upper and lower tails (Kanaya, Scullin, & Ceci, 2003; Wai & Putallaz, 2011). These findings have led Flynn and others to question: (a) What could cause these specific, secular and global patterns? and (b) What do these gains mean? The authors have outlined many of the theories and go further to propose one that is similar to Flynn’s (2009): that societal demands have changed such that abstract reasoning skills are relied upon and reinforced more now than in the past. They also argue that the gains do not reflect changes in intellectual abilities and begin to tease apart the difference between intelligence and IQ. This latter distinction is quite important. Indeed, even Spearman stated that intelligence is “mere vocal sound, a word with so many meanings that finally it has none” (Spearman, 1961, p. 246). To define and to operationalize “intelligence” is a daunting task (see Neisser et al., 1996, for an excellent review). On the other hand, IQ (by definition) is a concrete score derived from a specific test. Therefore, assuming that the Flynn effect (a trend in IQ) can be interpreted as gains in intelligence (“a mere vocal sound”) may be inherently problematic.

The language dependent recall effect influences the number of items recalled in autobiographical memory reports

This study investigated the influence of the language dependent recall effect on the number of memory items recalled in bilingual adults’ autobiographical memories. Thirty-nine Spanish–English bilinguals were randomly assigned to receive task instructions and write one childhood memory (before age 10) and one recent memory (from the last five years) in either Spanish (Bi-Sp) or English (Bi-Eng). Twenty English monolinguals served as a control group. Memory items were coded by calculating the proportion of nouns, verbs, and adjectives relative to the total word count. When recalling childhood memories, but not recent memories Bi-Sp participants were more likely to experience a match between encoding and retrieval linguistic contexts than Bi-Eng participants. Consequently, Bi-Sp participants recalled a significantly greater proportion of nouns than Bi-Eng participants. In contrast, there were no significant differences in recent memories. These findings suggest that match between encoding and retrieval linguistic contexts afford better retrieval than a mismatch.