New York College of Health Professions

About: New York College of Health Professions is a education organization based out in Syosset, New York, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Productivity & Higher education. The organization has 390 authors who have published 348 publications receiving 17360 citations.

Habit and intention in everyday life: The multiple processes by which past behavior predicts future behavior.

Abstract: Past behavior guides future responses through 2 processes. Well-practiced behaviors in constant contexts recur because the processing that initiates and controls their performance becomes automatic. Frequency of past behavior then reflects habit strength and has a direct effect on future performance. Alternately, when behaviors are not well learned or when they are performed in unstable or difficult contexts, conscious decision making is likely to be necessary to initiate and carry out the behavior. Under these conditions, past behavior (along with attitudes and subjective norms) may contribute to intentions, and behavior is guided by intentions. These relations between past behavior and future behavior are substantiated in a meta-analytic synthesis of prior research on behavior prediction and in a primary research investigation. In everyday explanations of behavior, habits denote one's customary ways of behaving. Claiming that one performed a behavior because of habit provides an understandable explanation for an act that otherwise might seem irrational or even harmful. Habits also are featured in the popular psychology literature in the form of self-help books designed to identify readers' existing habits, evaluate habits' effectiveness in meeting goals, and establish more desirable habits. Habits are not, however, important constructs in most contemporary social psychological models of human behavior. Early in their careers, most psychology graduate students learn that frequency of past behavior, a standard indicator of habit strength (Triandis, 1977, 1980), is the best predictor of

Revision of the Self-Monitoring Scale.

Abstract: Snyder's (1974) Self-Monitoring Scale exhibits a stable factor structure that does not correspond to the five-component theoretical structure he presents. Sets of face-valid items that better approximate the theoretical structure are described. Correlations between these sets of items and measures of other constructs reveal that four of the five components are positively related to social anxiety. Effective social interaction is supposedly the high self-monitor's forte, and social anxiety appears to be incompatible with this. The correlational results therefore question the entire theory and indicate the need for a narrower definition of the construct. Adopting such a definition from Snyder's review article (1979), we present a 13-item Revised Self-Monitoring scale which measures only sensitivity to the expressive behavior of others and ability to modify self-presentation. A 20-item Concern for Appropriateness scale is also described. This scale measures 2 variables that are directly associated with social anxiety--cross-situational variability and attention to social comparison information. Both scales have acceptable internal consistency, and both yield 2 subscale scores as well as a total score. Prospective users of either scale are advised to treat the 3 scores separately.

Asymmetrical brain activity discriminates between positive and negative affective stimuli in human infants

Abstract: Ten-month-old infants viewed videotape segments of an actress spontaneously generating a happy or sad facial expression. Brain activity was recorded from the left and right frontal and parietal scalp regions. In two studies, infants showed greater activation of the left frontal than of the right frontal area in response to the happy segments. Parietal asymmetry failed to discriminate between the conditions. Differential lateralization of the hemispheres for affective processes seems to be established by 10 months of age.

Impulsivity and rapid discounting of delayed hypothetical rewards in cocaine-dependent individuals.

Abstract: In this study, crack/cocaine-dependent (CD) and non-drug-using matched control (MC) participants were presented with hypothetical immediate and delayed rewards, with 16 delay conditions ranging from 5 min to 25 years. All participants were presented with hypothetical monetary rewards; however, the CD group was also presented with hypothetical crack/cocaine rewards. The objective value of the rewards ranged from $1 to $1,000. Hyperbolic discounting functions provided a good fit of the data. The CD group discounted monetary rewards at a higher rate than the MC group did, and the CD group discounted crack/cocaine rewards at a higher rate than it did monetary rewards. Moreover, scores on self-report measures indicated greater impulsivity in the CD group when compared with the MC group.