Development and validation of a novel instrument to measure pedestrians’ smartphone use: The Smombie Scale

This study aimed to develop and verify the psychometric properties of the Smombie Scale, a new instrument to measure pedestrians’ smartphone use. The instrument development process comprised two phases: instrument development and psychometric evaluation. Data were collected from September to October 2020 using the “Invite” panel aggregator. The link to the online questionnaire was sent via smartphone text message to 400 young adults aged 18–39 years and yielded 398 valid responses. We randomly selected 200 participants for the exploratory factor analysis; the remaining 198 participants were selected for confirmatory factor analysis. The Smombie Scale comprises 15 items and four factors: (a) perceived risk; (b) stationary smartphone use, always on the smartphone; (c) pending instant message; and (d) smartphone dependency. Model fit was statistically significant (χ²/df = 2.20). The analyses indicated a sufficient goodness-of-fit index of 0.93, a comparative goodness-of-fit index of 0.95, a normed fit index and Tucker–Lewis index of 0.91, and a root mean square error of approximation of 0.07. The scale was also found to have sufficient reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.83). The newly developed Smombie Scale is valid and reliable in measuring pedestrians’ smartphone use among young adults. The Smombie Scale shows evidence of being suitable for evaluating smartphone-distracted pedestrians. Its results can provide data for drafting educational programs to prevent smombie behaviors and deal with potential risks.     

Development and validation of the Drivers’ Emotional Intelligence Inventory (EMOVIAL)

Road fatalities involving young road users have become a global health issue. Although human factors are known to be involved in road fatalities, little research has examined the way in which emotional competencies may affect road accidents. With the aim of filling this gap we describe the development and validation of a scale for measuring emotional intelligence when driving. The EMOVIAL inventory consists of nine items distributed across three dimensions (attention to emotions while driving, clarity of emotions while driving, and emotional regulation while driving). Analysis of its psychometric properties showed it to be valid and reliable. The paper discusses how the scale may be used to improve road safety.     

Effects of an inquiry-focused school improvement program on the development of pupils’ attitudes towards curiosity,their implicit ability and effort beliefs,and goal orientations

Motivation and Emotion - The present study describes the effects of a 2-year inquiry-focused school improvement intervention on pupils’ attitudes towards epistemic curiosity, their implicit...     

Children’s understandings of counting: Detection of errors and pseudoerrors by kindergarten and primary school children

In this study, the development of comprehension of essential and nonessential aspects of counting is examined in children ranging from 5 to 8 years of age. Essential aspects, such as logical rules, and nonessential aspects, including conventional rules, were studied. To address this, we created a computer program in which children watched counting errors (abstraction and order irrelevance errors) and pseudoerrors (with and without cardinal value errors) occurring during a detection task. The children judged whether the characters had counted the items correctly and were asked to justify their responses. In general, our data show that performance improved substantially with age in terms of both error and pseudoerror detection; furthermore, performance was better with regard to errors than to pseudoerrors as well as on pseudoerror tasks with cardinal values versus those without cardinal values. In addition, the children’s justifications, for both the errors and pseudoerrors, made possible the identification of conventional rules underlying the incorrect responses. A particularly relevant trend was that children seem to progressively ignore these rules as they grow older. Nevertheless, this process does not end at 8 years of age given that the conventional rules of temporal and spatial adjacency were present in their judgments and were primarily responsible for the incorrect responses.     

Barriers to children’s walking to school in Iranian and Chinese samples

Factors that contribute to children’s walking to school have been investigated in previous research, which primarily focussed on socio-economic variables in high income countries. There is a general lack of studies which have examined mode choice differences on school trips in low and middle income countries. Focusing on parental social cognitive variables in addition to household socio-economic characteristics, the present study is among the first to compare barriers to children’s walking in daily commuting to schools across samples from two middle income countries: Iran and China. A self-administered questionnaire was devised and distributed among primary school pupils (7–9 years old) in Mashhad, Iran and Nanjing, China. The children were asked to take the questionnaires to their parents to complete and return the filled forms. A total of 671 (response rate of 90 percent) and 224 (response rate of 82 percent) completely filled questionnaires were returned in Mashhad and Nanjing, respectively. Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) showed that parents in Mashhad perceived higher risk and reported more worry of children being involved in road crashes when walking to school. Analyses revealed more safety favourable parental attitudes in the Chinese sample, compared to the Iranian sample. Parental attitudes towards transport safety were safer in the sample from Nanjing as compared to Mashhad. Hierarchical binary logistic regression showed that walking time from home to school and parental worry about road crashes were negatively associated with children’s walking to school in both samples. In the Iranian sample, results suggested that while household car ownership and higher family income were associated with a decreased probability that a child walk to school, the total number of children in the household increased the probability of walking to school.     

Development and initial validation of the comprehensive early childhood parenting questionnaire (CECPAQ) for parents of 1–4 year-olds

Parenting is a multifaceted task and the way in which parents fulfill this task plays an important role in children’s growth and development, especially in early childhood. Conceptualization and assessment of parenting behavior is elementary for research on child and family development and would fill a gap in clinical work, as there is a lack of questionnaires simultaneously assessing multiple parenting behaviors specific for early childhood. Therefore the Comprehensive Early Childhood Parenting Questionnaire (CECPAQ) was designed; a parent report measure of commonly occurring behaviors in five domains of parenting (i.e., support, stimulation, structure, harsh discipline, and positive discipline) central to early childhood. Data were collected from 1139 mothers and 526 fathers of 1–4 year-old children. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed a five-factor structure (composed of 54 items). The five parenting domains were found to have good internal consistency and temporal stability. Preliminary evidence of validity of the CECPAQ was demonstrated by moderate relationships with measures of parental stress and child problem behavior. It is concluded that the CECPAQ is a promising measure of self-perceived parenting behavior for parents of 1–4 year-old children.     

Gender,age, attendance at a place of worship and young people’s attitudes towards the Bible

This article discusses the outcomes of a questionnaire survey which sought to ascertain the attitudes of young people towards the Bible. One thousand and sixty‐six pupils from Years 6, 9 and 12 in nine English schools participated. The young people’s attitudes are discussed in relation to gender, age and attendance at a place of worship. The research team found that being female, in Year 6 and attending a place of worship very often are factors associated with the most positive attitudes towards the Bible, while being male, in Year 9 and never attending a place of worship are associated with the least positive attitudes. The article also discusses the difficulty of explaining individual correlations regarding age and gender.     

Popper’s three worlds and attitudes to the explanatory gap

The thesis is explored that Popper’s three worlds may be used as an intuition pump to reveal the insight that all three attitudes to the explanatory gap (that there is no gap, an unclosable gap, or a closable gap) are true from different perspectives. Ontologically, there is only one world and no gap. Epistemically, there is an irresolvable duality, an unclosable gap. From the point of view of scientific theory, there is a soluble problem, that of providing a principled account of the relation between phenomenal features of consciousness and functional accounts in terms of behaviour, neurophysiology and physics. Requirements for filling the gap are examined in more detail, and attempts to fill the gap are discussed. It is argued that, on current knowledge, it appears that only at the level of sub-atomic physics can parallels with phenomenal features of consciousness be found that are sufficiently powerful to provide a transparent account.     

Development of children’s ability to detect kinship through facial resemblance

Facial features appear to be a prominent kinship cue for ascribing relatedness among human individuals. Although there is evidence that adults can detect kinship in unrelated and unfamiliar individual’s faces, it remains to be seen whether people already possess the ability when they are young. To further understand the development of this skill, we explored children’s ability to detect parent-offspring resemblance in unrelated and unfamiliar faces. To this end, we tested approximately 140 children, aged 5–11, in two photo-matching tasks. We used a procedure that asked them to match one neonate’s face to one of three adults’ faces (Task 1), or to match one adult’s face to one of three neonate’s faces (Task 2). Our findings reveal asymmetrical performance, depending on the tasks assigned (performance of Task 2 is stronger than for Task 1), and on the sex of individuals who made up the parent-offspring pair (male parents are better matched with neonates than female parents, and boys are better matched than girls). The picture that emerges from our study is, on one hand, that the ability to detect kinship is already present at the age of five but continues to improve as one gets older, and on the other, that perception of parent-offspring facial resemblance varies according to the appraisers’ characteristics.     

A corrective to Bovens and Hartmann’s measure of coherence

Bovens and Hartmann (Bayesian Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) propose to analyze coherence as a confidence-boosting property. On the basis of this idea, they construct a new probabilistic theory of coherence. In this paper, I will attempt to show that the resulting measure of coherence clashes with some of the intuitions that motivate it. Also, I will try to show that this clash is not due to the view on coherence as a confidence-boosting property or to the general features of the model that Bovens and Hartmann use to analyze coherence. It will turn out that there is at least one other measure that is similarly based on the concept of a confidence-boosting property, but does not have the same counterintuitive results.     

Development of a therapists’ self-report measure of pluralistic thought and practice: the Therapy Pluralism Inventory

This study aimed to develop a self-report measure of pluralistic thought and practice. Following pilot development, a 23-item inventory was placed on an online survey site, and 474 participants satisfactorily completed the measure. Respondents were trainee or qualified therapists, predominantly female, based in the UK, and of a humanistic or integrative/eclectic orientation. A principal components analysis resulted in two scales, Pluralistic Philosophy and Pluralistic Practice, which had good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α?=?.72 and .80, respectively). Confirmatory factor analysis showed good model fit for this two factor solution. The Therapy Pluralism Inventory (TPI) has potential for use in training and research, although additional validity and normative data are needed.     

Development of intuitive rules: Evaluating the application of the dual-system framework to understanding children’s intuitive reasoning

Theories of adult reasoning propose that reasoning consists of two functionally distinct systems that operate under entirely different mechanisms. This theoretical framework has been used to account for a wide range of phenomena, which now encompasses developmental research on reasoning and problem solving. We begin this review by contrasting three main dual-system theories of adult reasoning (Evans & Over, 1996; Sloman, 1996; Stanovich & West, 2000) with a well-established developmental account that also incorporates a dual-system framework (Brainerd & Reyna, 2001). We use developmental studies of the formation and application of intuitive rules in science and mathematics to evaluate the claims that these theories make. Overall, the evidence reviewed suggests that what is crucial to understanding how children reason is the saliency of the features that are presented within a task. By highlighting the importance of saliency as a way of understanding reasoning, we aim to provide clarity concerning the benefits and limitations of adopting a dual-system framework to account for evidence from developmental studies of intuitive reasoning.     

Attending to the spiritual through the teaching of science: a study of pre‐service primary teachers’ attitudes

Analysis of the attitudes of 140 pre‐service primary teachers, and of extended interviews with 15 of these prospective teachers, indicates differences in the ways pre‐service teachers use science in their heuristic reasoning and their ability and/or willingness to include a spiritual dimension in their science teaching. These differences were a reflection of neither the prospective teachers’ formal scientific training nor their personal religious faiths – both factors have been found to make little difference. Rather, they are indicative of how their personal conceptual frameworks emanate and influence their teaching approaches. Most are clearly able to engage with science’s spiritual component: an appreciation of the need for individual humility and recognition that scientific understanding is the result of a shared, collective endeavour. Despite most prospective teachers being neither hostile to the thought of addressing spiritual issues during their teaching of science nor totally convinced of its importance, they are also largely ignorant of the possibility, never mind the potential benefits, of its inclusion.     

Altruistic values in children’s spirituality: a study of children’s responses to the terror attacks in Oslo and on Utøya and issues of education

In reactions to the terror attacks in Oslo and on Utøya on July 22, 2011, belief in an open society, hope and altruism played an important part. This has led to research on the role of such values in Norwegian democracy. The present study explores messages given by children right after the event, using an approach based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s philosophy of dialogue. Several issues of educational significance are discussed: the meaning of ritual in children’s thinking, coping with offending, death, and understanding children’s spiritual and religious thinking when confronted with a critical event. It is argued that hope and altruism seem to be natural parts of children’s spirituality, but these values are not self-evident in a society. This is a challenge to education.     

The Other As Shamer Scale – 2: Development and validation of a short version of a measure of external shame

External shame arises from the perception of negative judgements about the self in the mind of others and is currently measured by Other As Shamer Scale (OAS). This scale has been used in numerous studies. This study sought to develop a valid and reliable shorter form of the scale, called OAS2, in an adult sample of 690 participants, using experts’ item ratings and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The OAS2 consisted of 8 items, which replicated the unidimensional structure of the OAS (Matos et al., 2011) and revealed a good fit. The OAS2 had good internal consistency (.82), similar to the longer version. The OAS2 has good concurrent and divergent validity, being highly correlated with the OAS (r = .91). The OAS and OAS2 have very similar significant correlations with measures of internal shame, psychopathology and anger, with no significant difference between them. Our results, suggest that the OAS2 is an economic, valid and reliable measure of external shame.     

Parents’ influence on the development of their children’s ethnic intergroup attitudes: a longitudinal analysis from middle childhood to early adolescence

This study investigated to what extent parents’ intergroup attitudes influence the development of their children’s ethnic intergroup attitudes (i.e., ingroup bias), and which socialization factors moderate this influence. We report on a four-year longitudinal study of 213 children (M_age = 7.94) and their parents conducted in Eastern Germany. Findings showed significant interindividual differences in children’s developmental trajectories, which could, in part, be explained by child gender, socio-economic status and parental attitudes. The influence of parents’ intergroup attitudes was moderated by parenting style and parental similarity in attitudes both of which, our findings suggest, can make the transmission of parental attitudes more likely.