Effects of text messaged self-monitoring on class attendance and punctuality of at-risk college student athletes

This study examined the effects of text messaging class arrival to an academic counselor on the attendance and punctuality of 4 college student athletes. Each participant had a history of class tardiness and was considered to be at risk for academic failure. Class attendance and punctuality improved for all participants.     

Evaluating the generalization of math fact fluency gains across paper and computer performance modalities

Computer-based interventions are being used more in the classroom. Student responses to these interventions often contribute to decisions making regarding important outcomes. It is important to understand the effect of these interventions within the context of the intervention as well as across related context. The current study examined the generalization of math fact fluency gains resulting from a computer-based intervention to paper-and-pencil performance. A total of 31 second grade students completed fluency drills on the computer or with paper and pencil. Pretest-posttest performance on both computer and paper and pencil for all students was evaluated using a doubly multivariate repeated measure ANOVA. Results indicated that gains achieved on the computer did not generalize to paper-and-pencil performance.     

Health Programming for Clergy: An Overview of Protestant Programs in the United States

The health of clergy is important, and clergy may find health programming tailored to them more effective. Little is known about existing clergy health programs. We contacted Protestant denominational headquarters and searched academic databases and the Internet. We identified 56 clergy health programs and categorized them into prevention and personal enrichment; counseling; marriage and family enrichment; peer support; congregational health; congregational effectiveness; denominational enrichment; insurance/strategic pension plans; and referral-based programs. Only 13 of the programs engaged in outcomes evaluation. Using the Socioecological Framework, we found that many programs support individual-level and institutional-level changes, but few programs support congregational-level changes. Outcome evaluation strategies and a central repository for information on clergy health programs are needed.     

Does the deduction theorem fail for modal logic?

Various sources in the literature claim that the deduction theorem does not hold for normal modal or epistemic logic, whereas others present versions of the deduction theorem for several normal modal systems. It is shown here that the apparent problem arises from an objectionable notion of derivability from assumptions in an axiomatic system. When a traditional Hilbert-type system of axiomatic logic is generalized into a system for derivations from assumptions, the necessitation rule has to be modified in a way that restricts its use to cases in which the premiss does not depend on assumptions. This restriction is entirely analogous to the restriction of the rule of universal generalization of first-order logic. A necessitation rule with this restriction permits a proof of the deduction theorem in its usual formulation. Other suggestions presented in the literature to deal with the problem are reviewed, and the present solution is argued to be preferable to the other alternatives. A contraction- and cut-free sequent calculus equivalent to the Hilbert system for basic modal logic shows the standard failure argument untenable by proving the underivability of ${\square\,A}$ from A.     

Counting to ten milliseconds: low-anger, but not high-anger, individuals pause following negative evaluations

Low-anger individuals are less reactive, both emotionally and behaviourally, to a large variety of situational primes to anger and aggression. Why this is so, from an affective processing perspective, has been largely conjectural. Four studies (total N=270) sought to link individual differences in anger to tendencies exhibited in basic affective processing tasks. On the basis of motivational factors and considerations, it was hypothesised that negative evaluations would differentially activate a psychological alarm system at low levels of anger, resulting in a pause that should be evident in the speed of making subsequent evaluations. Just such a pattern was evident in all studies. By contrast, high-anger individuals did not pause following their negative evaluations. In relation to this affective processing tendency, at least, dramatically different effects were observed among low- versus high-anger individuals. Implications for the personality-processing literature, theories of trait anger, and fast-acting regulatory processes are discussed.     

The effects of optimism and pessimism on updating emotional information in working memory

In the present study we elucidate the emotional and executive control interactions that might underlie optimism and pessimism. Participants completed a self-report measure of optimism/pessimism and performed an emotion faces categorisation task and an emotion n-back task in which they indicated whether each of a series of faces had the same or a different emotional expression (happy, sad, neutral) as the face presented two trials before. Trials were structured to measure latency to update emotional content in working memory (WM). More pessimistic individuals formed connections among positive stimuli, and broke connections among positive and sad stimuli, in WM more slowly than did less pessimistic individuals; levels of optimism/pessimism did not affect the rate with which individuals formed and broke connections among neutral representations in WM. It appears, therefore, that levels of pessimism are related to specific affective cognitive mechanisms in WM that may be involved in emotion regulation.     

Adjunctive mirror exposure for eating disorders: A randomized controlled pilot study

Mirror exposure therapy has proven efficacious in improving body image among individuals with shape/weight concerns and eating disorders. No randomized controlled trials have examined the effect of mirror exposure in a healthy-weight clinical sample of eating disordered individuals. The purpose of the current study was to test the efficacy of a five-session acceptance based mirror exposure therapy (A-MET) versus a non directive body image therapy (ND) control as an adjunctive treatment to outpatient eating disorder treatment. Thirty-three males and females aged 14–65 with a body mass index of 18.5–29.9 were randomized to five sessions of A-MET or ND with a 1-month follow-up. Results indicated large to moderate effect size differences for efficacy of A-MET across measures of body checking, body image dissatisfaction, and eating disorder symptoms (d = ?0.38 to ?1.61) at end of treatment and follow-up. Baseline measures of social comparison and history of appearance-related teasing were predictive of treatment response. There were also differential effects of treatment on participants' perceived homework quality, but no differences in therapeutic alliance. Results suggest that A-MET is a promising adjunctive treatment for residual body image disturbance among normal and overweight individuals undergoing treatment for an eating disorder. Future research and clinical implications are discussed.     

Parental and Secondary School Teachers’ Perceptions of ICT Professionals, Gender Differences and their Role in the Choice of Studies

The influence of parents and teachers in the decisions made by adolescents regarding study options has not been widely documented in Spain. The main aim of this qualitative study consisted of analyzing the opinions of parents and secondary school teachers about their role in the different academic and professional choices boys and girls make. Seven focus groups (4 with 27 parents and 3 with 22 secondary school teachers) from 5 schools located in urban and rural areas of Catalonia (Spain) were carried out in order to explore how both groups perceive Information and Communication Technology (ICT) professionals, gender differences in study options and their own role in adolescents’ choice of study options. Our findings show that parents and teachers hold stereotypes about ICTs and consider that gender does not condition adolescents’ study choices. Both groups saw themselves as playing a secondary role in adolescents’ academic and professional choices. Some gender differences among parents and teachers emerged regarding their perception of the ICT professionals and their own role and of others in shaping adolescents’ study choices.?The findings and their practical implications are discussed.     

Auditory-phonetic projection and lexical structure in the recognition of sine-wave words

Speech remains intelligible despite the elimination of canonical acoustic correlates of phonemes from the spectrum. A portion of this perceptual flexibility can be attributed to modulation sensitivity in the auditory-to-phonetic projection, although signal-independent properties of lexical neighborhoods also affect intelligibility in utterances composed of words. Three tests were conducted to estimate the effects of exposure to natural and sine-wave samples of speech in this kind of perceptual versatility. First, sine-wave versions of the easy and hard word sets were created, modeled on the speech samples of a single talker. The performance difference in recognition of easy and hard words was used to index the perceptual reliance on signal-independent properties of lexical contrasts. Second, several kinds of exposure produced familiarity with an aspect of sine-wave speech: (a) sine-wave sentences modeled on the same talker; (b) sine-wave sentences modeled on a different talker, to create familiarity with a sine-wave carrier; and (c) natural sentences spoken by the same talker, to create familiarity with the idiolect expressed in the sine-wave words. Recognition performance with both easy and hard sine-wave words improved after exposure only to sine-wave sentences modeled on the same talker. Third, a control test showed that signal-independent uncertainty is a plausible cause of differences in recognition of easy and hard sine-wave words. The conditions of beneficial exposure reveal the specificity of attention underlying versatility in speech perception.