Procrastination,Hoarding, and Attention Beyond Age 65 a Community-Based Study

We examined procrastination, hoarding, and attention in 80 older adults in community samples in the American South. Volunteers completed Lay’s General Procrastination Inventory, Frost, Steketee, and Grisham’s Saving Inventory Revised, the Oral Trail Making Test, a computerized Stroop Color Word Test, and measures of semantic and phonemic verbal fluencies. Findings suggest that procrastination affects older adults and it may be reliably measured. As with younger people procrastination and hoarding correlated in a positive direction. Hoarding correlated negatively with performance on the Trail Making Test Part B and the Color Word Score on a modified version of the Stroop Test. Hoarding also correlated negatively with Semantic Fluency though not with Phonemic Fluency. Procrastination correlated significantly and negatively only with Semantic Fluency and not with other attention measures. Limitations of the study and implications for future research are discussed.     

Trait Versus Task-Induced Emotional Reactivity and Distress Intolerance in Hoarding Disorder: Transdiagnostic Implications

Evidence from analogue samples suggests that deficits in emotional functioning, namely elevated emotional reactivity and distress intolerance, are implicated in the development and maintenance of hoarding disorder. We aimed to extend previous research in this area by investigating emotional reactivity and distress intolerance in a sample of individuals diagnosed with hoarding disorder (n = 24) in comparison to clinical controls (n = 21) and nonclinical community controls (n = 26) using a combination of self-report, physiological, and behavioral measures. We found that trait distress intolerance was significantly and independently associated with greater hoarding severity. The hoarding and clinical control groups reported more trait emotional reactivity and distress intolerance than the community control group, but did not differ from each other on these traits. The hoarding group reported more subjective distress before beginning a frustrating behavioral task, but did not evidence more physiological arousal. Moreover, the hoarding group experienced similar increases in distress during the task and did not differ from either group in regard to time persisting on this task. The clinical control group, however, terminated the frustrating task significantly faster than the community control group, who tended to persist until the task timed out. Lastly, trait distress intolerance evidenced a small-to-moderate but nonstatistically significant independent relationship with task persistence time. Given the desynchrony between subjective distress and physiological arousal, we encourage researchers to utilize multimodal assessment in the future. We also suggest that clinicians start to use behavioral experiments, as has been done with other psychological disorders, to improve distress intolerance among persons who experience hoarding disorder.     

Holtzman Inkblot Anxiety and Shading Scores Related to State and Trait Anxiety

The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and the group Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT) were administered to 52 college Ss in order to determine the relationship between HIT Anxiety (Ax) and Shading (Sh) scores and A-Trait and A-State scores. Neither Ax or Sh correlated with A-Trait. Ax correlated with A-State, both before and during the administration of the inkblots. To determine the influence of productivity or inhibition, inkblot protocol word counts were obtained. Word count failed to correlate with the sc ores on the STAI, but did correlate significantly with the HIT scores.     

The Effects of Continuous and Intermittent Distractors on Cognitive Performance and Attention in Preschoolers

We investigated the effects of different amounts of distraction on preschoolers’ task performance and attention. Children 3.5 and 4 years of age completed problem-solving tasks in one of three conditions: no distraction, intermittent (periodic) distraction, or continuous distraction. The results revealed differential effects of the distractors at the different ages. The younger group was susceptible to any kind of distraction; task performance and attention were equally impaired during both distraction conditions. The older group was less susceptible to external distraction, with task performance and attention most impaired in the continuous distraction condition. The results are discussed in terms of the relevance of the amount of competition for attentional focus present in distractors and the development of executive functions in early childhood.     

Imperfection,Indecision, and Hoarding

Hoarding disorder is a new DSM-5 disorder that causes functional impairment and affects 2 to 6% of the population (Frost and Steketee 2014). The current study evaluated a multiple mediation model with 243 undergraduate women in which indecisiveness (VOCI; Thordarson et al. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42(11), 1289-1314, 2004) and decisional procrastination (DPS; Mann 1982) mediated the relationship between dimensions of perfectionism (F-MPS-B; Burgess et al. 2016a) and hoarding behavior (SI-R; Frost et al. Behaviour Research And Therapy, 42(10), 1163–1182, 2004) and excessive acquiring (CAS; Frost et al. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 8, 219–242, 2012). Multiple mediational analyses indicated a significant indirect effect for decisional procrastination, but not indecisiveness, in mediating evaluative concerns (but not striving) to SI-R Total, SI-R Clutter, SIR Excessive Acquisition, and both CAS subscales. Both mediators were significant pathways between evaluative concerns and SI-R Difficulty Discarding. These findings support a cognitive behavioral model of hoarding, suggesting that evaluative concerns produces problems in decision-making that influence acquisition, discarding, and clutter.     

Procrastination, busyness and bingeing

The first inquiry employed repeated surveys and direct observations of procrastinators to question two traditional assumptions about procrastinators—that they are reliable reporters of how they spend workweeks, and that they are not easily observed in the act of procrastinating. The second inquiry tested an intervention for procrastination (helping new faculty find brief, daily sessions in which to write) that proved effective and relatively unaversive. The effectiveness of the intervention helped to confirm the notion that procrastination of a relatively unstructured activity like scholarly writing has at least two central components, bingeing and busyness.     

Trait Goal Orientation, Self-Regulation, and Performance: A Meta-Analysis

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to meta-analytically examine trait goal orientation constructs and their relationships with the self-regulation variables of self-monitoring, self-evaluations, self-reactions, and self-efficacy as well as task performance across a range of contexts.

Design, Methodology, Approach

Data were gathered from published and unpublished research examining the goal orientation construct and self-regulation and/or task performance. Effect sizes from 102 research reports involving over 16,000 participants were included.

Findings

In general the mastery-approach goal orientation construct was positively related to the self-regulation and performance variables. Conversely, negative relationships were found between the performance-avoid goal orientation and those variables. Relationships between goal orientation and self-regulation tended to be higher compared to those found for goal orientation and performance. Overall, the findings support the discriminant validity of the three factors of goal orientation (mastery-approach, performance-approach, performance-avoid).

Practical Implications

Practitioners and researchers will benefit from learning that mastery-approach goal orientation consistently relates to self-regulation and task performance. The findings indicate that a mastery-approach goal orientation could serve as a meaningful predictor in selection processes or as an explanatory variable of motivation.

Originality/Value

The present study updates and expands upon past research by focusing on relationships of trait goal orientation across a variety of contexts. The results extend meta-analytic results to a wider range of self-regulatory variables.     

Procrastination,Flow, and Academic Performance in Real Time Using the Experience Sampling Method

The authors' aim was to first provide an alternative methodology in the assessment of procrastination and flow that would not reply on retrospective or prospective self-reports. Using real-time assessment of both procrastination and flow, the authors investigated how these factors impact academic performance by using the Experience Sampling Method. They assessed flow by measuring student self-reported skill versus challenge, and procrastination by measuring the days to completion of an assignment. Procrastination and flow were measured for six days before a writing assignment due date while students (n = 14) were enrolled in a research methods course. Regardless of status of flow, both the nonflow and flow groups showed high levels of procrastination. Students who experienced flow as they worked on their paper, in real time, earned significantly higher grades (M = 3.05 ± 0.30: an average grade of B) as compared with the nonflow group (M = 1.16 ± 0.33: an average grade of D; p = .007). Additionally, students experiencing flow were more accurate in predicting their grade (difference scores, flow M = 0.12 ± 0.33 vs. nonflow M = 1.39 ± 0.29; p = .015). Students in the nonflow group were nearly a grade and a half off in their prediction of their grade on the paper. To the authors' knowledge, the study is the first to provide experimental evidence showing differences in academic performance between students experiencing flow and nonflow students.     

Hoarding Disorder: Diagnosis,Assessment, and Treatment

Hoarding disorder (HD) is a newly added mental disorder in the most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). In this article, the symptoms, characteristics, and features of HD are described, along with diagnosis and assessment strategies. The most efficacious treatments for counseling clients diagnosed with HD are also discussed.     

A Unidimensional Latent Trait Model for Continuous Item Responses

A general linear latent trait model for continuous item responses is described. The special unidimensional case for continuous item responses is Joreskog's (1971) model of congeneric item responses. In the context of the unidimensional case model for continuous item responses the concepts of item and test information functions, specific objectivity, item bias, and reliability are discussed; also the application of the model to test construction is shown. Finally, the correspondence with latent trait theory for dichotomous item responses is discussed.     

Procrastination,deadlines, and performance: self-control by precommitment

Procrastination is all too familiar to most people. People delay writing up their research (so we hear!), repeatedly declare they will start their diets tomorrow, or postpone until next week doing odd jobs around the house. Yet people also sometimes attempt to control their procrastination by setting deadlines for themselves. In this article, we pose three questions: (a) Are people willing to self-impose meaningful (i.e., costly) deadlines to overcome procrastination? (b) Are self-imposed deadlines effective in improving task performance? (c) When self-imposing deadlines, do people set them optimally, for maximum performance enhancement? A set of studies examined these issues experimentally, showing that the answer is "yes" to the first two questions, and "no" to the third. People have self-control problems, they recognize them, and they try to control them by self-imposing costly deadlines. These deadlines help people control procrastination, hit they are not as effective as some externally imposed deadlines in improving task performance.     

Situation Trait Relevance, Trait Expression, and Cross-Situational Consistency: Testing a Principle of Trait Activation

An interactionist principle of trait activation is proposed, emphasizing situation trait relevance (i.e., opportunity for trait expression) as a moderator of trait–behavior relations and cross-situational consistency (CSC). One hundred fifty-six students completed trait measures and expressed intentions in 10 scenarios targeted to each of five traits (e.g., risk taking). Trait–intention correlations within scenario sets were themselves correlated with mean situation trait relevance ratings provided by 26 proficient judges; CSCs in intentions (45 correlations per trait) were correlated with an index of shared trait relevance in situation pairs. In support of trait activation, (a) trait–intention relations for three traits were higher in more relevant situations (e.g., second-order r = .66 for risk taking) and (b) CSCs were higher in scenarios jointly high in targeted trait relevance (e.g., second-order r = .55 for risk taking). Discussion highlights applications of trait activation in diverse research domains.     

Academic Procrastination in Two Settings: Motivation Correlates,Behavioral Patterns,and Negative Impact of Procrastination in Canada and Singapore

Two studies are reported examining academic procrastination and motivation in 1,145 university students from Canada and Singapore. In Study 1, relationships between procrastination and motivation variables were found to be similar across contexts, with self‐efficacy for self‐regulated learning most strongly associated with procrastination in both contexts. In Study 2, patterns of procrastinating behavior and the negative impact of procrastination were examined and compared in Canadian and Singaporean undergraduates. Participants in both contexts reported writing to be the academic task most prone to procrastination. More Singaporeans than Canadians were classified as negative procrastinators (i.e. rated procrastination as a negative influence on academic functioning). In both contexts, negative procrastinators spent more time procrastinating than neutral procrastinators and displayed lower self‐efficacy for self‐regulated learning. On décrit deux recherches portant sur la motivation et la procrastination universitaire (tendance à remettre au lendemain) de 1145 étudiants du Canada et de Singapour. Dans la première étude, les relations entre la motivation et la procrastination sont apparues être analogues dans les deux pays, la variable la plus fortement associéà la procrastination étant l'auto‐efficience pour l'apprentissage autorégulé. Dans la deuxième étude, les schémas comportementaux de procrastination et son impact négatif ont été analysés et comparés chez les étudiants de 1° cycle canadiens et singapouriens. Les sujets des deux pays ont mentionné la rédaction comme étant la tâche universitaire la plus soumise à la procrastination. Davantage de Singapouriens que de Canadiens été classés en procrastinateurs négatifs (c'est‐à‐dire que la procrastination est considérée comme étant un handicap pour les études). Dans les deux cas, les procrastinateurs négatifs gaspillaient plus de temps que les procrastinateurs neutres et manifestaient une moindre auto‐efficience pour l'apprentissage autorégulé.     

Attention, Joint Attention, and Social Cognition

ABSTRACT— Before social cognition there is joint processing of information about the attention of self and others. This joint attention requires the integrated activation of a distributed cortical network involving the anterior and posterior attention systems. In infancy, practice with the integrated activation of this distributed attention network is a major contributor to the development of social cognition. Thus, the functional neuroanatomies of social cognition and the anterior–posterior attention systems have much in common. These propositions have implications for understanding joint attention, social cognition, and autism.     

Procrastination,consideration of future consequences,and episodic future thinking

Despite the intrinsic temporal nature of procrastination, little research has examined the link between this form of self-regulatory failure and the consideration of future consequences, and no study has addressed the link between procrastination and episodic future thinking. The aim of the present study was to explore these relationships. Participants were asked to project themselves into possible future events and to rate the amount of sensory-perceptual details and autonoetic consciousness associated with their representations. They were also asked to complete questionnaires that assessed procrastination, the consideration of future consequences, and negative affect. Results showed that both the consideration of future consequences and episodic future thinking were associated with procrastination, and in particular with procrastination-related decision making abilities and procrastination-related motivational dispositions, respectively.     

Attention to Positive and Negative Social-Evaluative Words: Investigating the Effects of Social Anxiety,Trait Anxiety and Social Threat

The study investigated how attention to negative (threatening) and positive social-evaluative words is affected by social anxiety, trait anxiety and the expectation of social threat. High and low socially anxious individuals carried out a modified dot-probe task either while expecting to give a speech or under non-threatening conditions. High socially anxious individuals showed no significant attentional bias towards or away from social-evaluative words. This result significantly contrasted with an identical design that showed avoidance of emotional faces in high socially anxious participants drawn from the same population (Mansell et al ., 1999). Participants who expected to give a speech showed less attentional avoidance of negative and positive social-evaluative words. High trait anxiety was associated with selective attention to negative relative to positive social-evaluative words, consistent with earlier findings of attention to threat cues in high trait-anxious individuals. Implications for designing attention tasks and attentional bias across different dimensions of anxiety are discussed.     

大学生完美主义、自尊与学业拖延的关系

采用问卷法调查了311名大学生学业拖延与完美主义和自尊的关系,特别考察了自尊在完美主义与学业拖延关系间的中介作用。研究结果表明:(1) 学业拖延与消极完美主义显著正相关,与积极完美主义显著负相关,与自尊显著负相关;自尊与消极完美主义显著负相关,与积极完美主义显著正相关。(2) 消极完美主义显著正向预测学业拖延,积极完美主义和自尊显著负向预测学业拖延。(3) 自尊在积极、消极完美主义与学业拖延关系间起部分中介作用。     

人格特质与行为绩效关系研究

人格特质理论产生的目的就是要找到行为产生的根源,并用于解释和预测人的行为。这就注定了人格特质理论在解释和预测人的行为绩效以及人才选拔中的影响力。但许多研究结果表明,人格特质与行为绩效的相关系数并不是很高(0．15——0．25)。这与特质理论所持假设的片面及其在测验上存在的问题有关。     

Metacognitions in Triathletes: Associations With Attention,State Anxiety,and Relative Performance

This study investigated how metacognitive beliefs in triathletes covary with state anxiety dimensions, prior to competition. It also examined how metacognitions relate to concentration, after controlling for state anxiety. Regression analyses revealed that specific metacognitive beliefs were differentially predictive of state anxiety dimensions and concentration. When accounting for the state anxiety variables in a hierarchical model predicting concentration, positive beliefs about worry, negative beliefs about worry, and cognitive anxiety remained as significant predictors. Metacognitive beliefs were also found to differ across time-to-event intervals. Overall, the results demonstrated that a metacognitive framework is a viable pathway for future sporting research.