Academic achievement and Fear. An exploratory study

El miedo es una de las emociones que más inhabilita a los individuos, y sus consecuencias en el ámbito educativo pueden llegar a ser devastadoras. La presente investigación busca identificar el efecto que genera el miedo que sienten los estudiantes sobre el rendimiento académico en las asignaturas de Lectura y Matemáticas. Para ello, se realiza una explotación secundaria de los datos de la Investigación Iberoamericana sobre Eficacia Escolar (IIEE) (Murillo, 2007) con casi 7.000 estudiantes de 3º curso de Educación Primaria de 98 escuelas públicas ubicadas en 9 países de Iberoamérica (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, España, Panamá, Perú, y Venezuela). Los datos indican que los efectos negativos del miedo son estables en cuanto al género de los estudiantes, sin embargo, son mayores para aquellos con mejores niveles de rendimiento académico, en comparación con los estudiantes con niveles de rendimiento más bajos. Los resultados obtenidos reflejan que los estudiantes se vuelven vulnerables ante la falta de políticas educativas de carácter más social que garanticen la seguridad de todos y todas dentro de las escuelas, esto es, políticas que promuevan la equidad frente a la calidad.Fear is one of the emotions that most incapacitates individuals, its consequences in the educational environment can be devastating. The present research studied the effect of fear in students’ lives, possibly generated by a variety of sources, and its effect on test performance in Reading and Mathematics. To this end, we reanalyzed the data of Murillo’s (2007) Ibero-American Research on School Effectiveness (IIEE) study that involved 7000 third-graders from 257 public schools across 9 Ibero-American countries (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Spain and Venezuela). As expected, fear lowered students’ test performance in Reading as well as Mathematics; in fact, fear even lowered students’ tendency to try answering test questions. Importantly, while these effects were essentially uniform across gender, this decrease was stronger for high-performing students than for low-performing students. These findings imply that even high performing students may become vulnerable in the absence of social and educational policies that guarantee their physical and emotional safety within schools. Accordingly, policies that promote school safety and equity need to be maintained

Haunted people syndrome revisited: empirical parallels between subjective paranormal episodes and group-stalking accounts

Research suggests a Haunted People Syndrome (HP-S) is defined by the recurrent perception of anomalous subjective and objective events. Occurrences are traditionally attributed to supernatural agencies, but we argue that such interpretations have morphed into themes of “surveillance and stalking” in group-stalking reports. We tested a series of related hypotheses by re-analyzing survey data from the 2015 Sheridan and James study to explore statistical patterns in “delusional” group-stalking accounts (N=128) versus“non-delusional” (control) accounts of lone-culprit stalking (N=128). As expected, we found that (i) account types had different Rasch hierachies, (ii) the Rasch hierarchy of group-stalking experiences showed a robust unidimensional model, and (iii) this group-stalking hierarchy correlated significantly with spontanous “ghost“ experiences. However, we found no clear evidence for “event clustering” that might signify contagious processes in symptom perception. Findings support the viability of the HP-S construct and the idea that experiences of group-stalking and haunts share common sources

A New Look at the Relation Between Discrepancy and Change

194 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1982.In persuasive communication theory and research discrepancy is traditionally defined in terms of the (absolute) difference between initial position of the receiver and the position advocated by the source of a message. Three experiments were performed in which the persuasive communication process was studied at the belief level. An interactive computer system was used to manipulate the receivers' initial beliefs.First, based on existing persuasive communication models it was predicted that--holding other relevant factors like the source, the receiver, the topic of the message, and the extremity of the receivers' initial positions constant--equal levels of discrepancy should result in equal amounts of change. This hypothesis was tested in Experiment I by manipulating the receivers' initial beliefs(Pl) at scale positions adjacent to the midpoint of the scale. For equal levels of discrepancy less agreement with the source and less change was obtained if the source belief(Ps) fell on the opposite side of the midpoint than if Ps fell on the same side of the midpoint as Pl. Experiment II indicated that this effect cannot be attributed to the fact that the midpoint of the scale serves as an anchor, as predicted from social judgment theory. Instead, Experiment III showed that the decrease in change in the different side condition is contingent upon the receivers' awareness of qualitative differences between Pl and Ps.Second, five quantitative persuasive communication models were fitted to the data of Experiment II and III. In both cases the best overall fit was obtained for the linear model C = b.D (where C = change, D = discrepancy, and b is a parameter to be estimated). It was further shown in Experiment II that despite a significant increase in the receivers' certainty, extremity of initial position did not affect change. This made it possible to combine equally discrepant messages in order to study the relation between discrepancy and change in greater detail. In conflict with existing theory and research in the persuasive communication area, it was possible to identify three subgroups of receivers who either showed a negatively accelerated, a (near) linear, or a positively accelerated relation between discrepancy and change. This finding was replicated in Experiment III.It has repeatedly been shown that a person's attitudes, intentions, and behaviors are ultimately determined by his or her beliefs. Therefore, the present findings raise serious questions concerning the validity of the assumptions made in traditional persuasive communication research. A framework is proposed to deal with some of these issues in terms of the qualitative "regions" of a belief dimension.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Redefining delusion based on studies of subjective paranormal ideation

The DSM-IV definition of delusion is argued to be unsatisfactory because it does not explain the mechanism for delusion formation and maintenance, it implies that such beliefs are necessarily dysfunctional (pathological), it underestimates the social component to some delusions, and it is inconsistent with research indicating that delusions can be modified through techniques such as contradiction, confrontation, and cognitive-behavioral therapy. However, a well-replicated mathematical model of magical/delusional thinking based on a study of paranormal beliefs and experiences is consistent with the hypothesis that attributional processes play a central role in delusion formation and maintenance. The model suggests attributional processes serve the adaptive function of reducing fear associated with ambiguous stimuli and delusional thinking is on a continuum with nonpathological forms. Based on this collective research an amendment to the definition of delusion is proposed and its clinical implications are addressed.J. Houran and R. Langehttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1515417