Energy‐Related Behaviors in Office Buildings: A Qualitative Study on Individual and Organisational Determinants

An analysis of individual and organisational determinants of energy‐related behaviors in office buildings and the interplay between the two is presented. Interviews and focus groups were conducted with office workers from four organisations in two Dutch provinces. The results indicate that, overall, work efficiency and productivity was prioritised over energy conservation. In general, self‐efficacy was the most salient individual determinant, and social norm the least discussed determinant of current office energy‐related behaviors. Nevertheless, both self‐efficacy and social norm elements were encountered in employees' proposed strategies to achieve future office energy‐saving. Formal and informal aspects of the organisational context were found to equally affect individual determinants and their related behaviors. Facility managers' and general office workers' views differed in a few but important ways. Interorganisational comparisons showed that differences in organisational foci were linked to the relative salience of normative, gain, and hedonic motivations.     

Role resources and work–family enrichment: The role of work engagement

This article proposes a theoretical model of work-family enrichment and tests the mediating role of work engagement. The inclusion of work engagement extends prior research on work-family interface, and allows for examination of the effects of role resources (job resources, family support) on work-family enrichment. A two-wave survey was conducted among a matched sample of 786 employees in China. The model was tested with structural equation modeling techniques. The results showed that work engagement was the most proximal predictor of work-family enrichment. Work engagement fully mediated the relationship between family-friendly organizational policies and work-family enrichment, and also between job autonomy and family-work enrichment. Further, work engagement partially mediated the relationships between two job resources (supervisor support, job autonomy) and work-family enrichment, and also between family support and family-work enrichment. No difference was found in gender and marital status in the proposed model. Implications for future research and practices are discussed.     

An Examination of the Role of Mentees’ Social Skills and Relationship Quality in a School-Based Mentoring Program

Research on youth mentoring highlights the importance of the relationship quality between mentor and mentee; mentoring results in more positive outcomes when the mentee perceives the relationship as satisfying and trustworthy. Research on relationship quality shows that social skills are important for constructing new relationships. However, whereas improved social skills are often one of the main goals of youth mentoring, little is known about the importance of social skills for relationship quality in youth mentoring relations. In this study, we examined whether mentee's pre-intervention social skills were related to mentor–mentee relationship quality as perceived by the mentee, and in turn, if relationship quality was associated with post-intervention social skills. We additionally examined possible gender and age differences in these associations. Data were used from a two-wave study that assessed relationship quality and social skills before and after one semester of mentoring of 390 secondary school students in a school-based mentoring program. Results indicated that relationship quality was positively associated with post-intervention social skills. However, only for young mentees pre-intervention social skills were associated with better relationship quality. Moreover, only for young mentees, relationship quality mediated the association between pre- and post-intervention social skills.     

Anticipation in Real‐World Scenes: The Role of Visual Context and Visual Memory

The human sentence processor is able to make rapid predictions about upcoming linguistic input. For example, upon hearing the verb eat, anticipatory eye‐movements are launched toward edible objects in a visual scene (Altmann & Kamide, 1999). However, the cognitive mechanisms that underlie anticipation remain to be elucidated in ecologically valid contexts. Previous research has, in fact, mainly used clip‐art scenes and object arrays, raising the possibility that anticipatory eye‐movements are limited to displays containing a small number of objects in a visually impoverished context. In Experiment 1, we confirm that anticipation effects occur in real‐world scenes and investigate the mechanisms that underlie such anticipation. In particular, we demonstrate that real‐world scenes provide contextual information that anticipation can draw on: When the target object is not present in the scene, participants infer and fixate regions that are contextually appropriate (e.g., a table upon hearing eat). Experiment 2 investigates whether such contextual inference requires the co‐presence of the scene, or whether memory representations can be utilized instead. The same real‐world scenes as in Experiment 1 are presented to participants, but the scene disappears before the sentence is heard. We find that anticipation occurs even when the screen is blank, including when contextual inference is required. We conclude that anticipatory language processing is able to draw upon global scene representations (such as scene type) to make contextual inferences. These findings are compatible with theories assuming contextual guidance, but posit a challenge for theories assuming object‐based visual indices.     

Does content matter? The effect of remorseful tone on length of prison sentence

The expression of remorse by offenders has been found to affect jurors' determination of length of prison sentences. This study explores this phenomenon by contrasting the impact of exercising remorse solely in words or through emotional tone. Remorse consists of guilt, shame and sorrow. This study examines the contribution of each of these emotions to judgements about prison sentences, which is an area seldom explored in the literature. It is shown that regardless of the gender of the offender, participants censured a significantly more severe punishment for the offender who expressed a sense of remorse using words rather than tone. In addition, only shame was a significant predictor of the severity of punishment. These findings are consistent with previous studies and further differentiate the influence of displaying remorse at the content and tonal levels.     

Kindergarten children's use of category membership

Kindergarten children (N = 70) learned to order 12 photographically presented objects. The objects were well known and either unrelated or categorizable into two, three, four, or six well-known categories. Free recall was assessed. Results indicated that the children used category membership both to learn and to recall the items. However, they processed the list composed of six pairs of items at least as efficiently as lists composed of fewer but larger groups of items (including a list indexed as easiest through previous adult performance).     

Marital discord and child behavior problems: A meta-analysis

The relation of marital discord to the behavior problems of children was examined through a meta-analysis of the results of prior research. The sample comprised all published studies through 1988 that met criteria for the metaanalysis and that could be located through a combined computer and hand search of the literature. Marital discord included conflict, disharmony, and lack of agreement between currently married parents. Child behavior problems were defined as conduct problems, excluding internalized difficulties, such as anxiety. Four hypotheses were drawn from recent reviews of studies on this topic: The relation between marital conflict and child behavior problems will be (1) positive overall and will be stronger (2) for boys than for girls, (3) for cases based entirely on parent self-report data than for cases involving external sources of data, (4) for clinic than for nonclinic families. Results supported the first three hypotheses. Little evidence was found for an association between marital conflict and the behavior problems of girls. Findings are discussed in terms of their methodological and theoretical implications and in relation to a recent review of research on sex differences in children's reactions to divorce.     

ABILITY PATTERNS AMONG THREE CHINESE COMMUNITIES

The score patterns in eight ability areas were compared among three Chinese communities having differential demands for English competence. A total of 610 9th graders of high academic achievement were selected for the study. The data analyses revealed that the ability patterns significantly differed among groups. Specifically, the Guangzhou group was best in Chinese language usage and verbal reasoning, the Hong Kong group came second, and the Singapore group came third. The superiority order among these groups was reversed in English language usage and verbal reasoning. The Guangzhou and Hong Kong groups excelled in mathematical reasoning. The Hong Kong group was inferior in mechanical reasoning. However, the three groups were not significantly different in spatial and abstract reasonings. The results seem to support the prediction that environmental demands have differential influence on students' ability patterns.     

Evaluating the filial behaviour scale across three cultural groups using exploratory structural equation modelling

Filial piety is a Confucian concept that guides how children treat and take care of their parents. The Filial Behaviour Scale (FBS) is a 25-item instrument developed in the Chinese context measuring behavioural manifestations of filial piety. Although the components of filial piety have been found to be relevant across cultures, little research has investigated the psychometric properties of the FBS in other cultural contexts. The present study evaluated the factor structure, internal consistency, measurement invariance and construct validity of the FBS across three cultural groups: the United States, Italy and Malaysia. Participants were 1090 emerging adults (67% females; M_age = 21.29 years, SD = 1.97; White Americans: n = 455, White Italians: n = 428, Malays: n = 328). A two-factor structure emerged across groups: Obedience/Obligation (behaviours showing obedience and obligation towards parents) and Relationship (behaviours expressing affection and promoting positive parent–child relationships). The two factors demonstrated adequate internal consistency, full configural, partial metric and partial scalar invariance, as well as unique associations with depressive symptoms and parent–child relationships across groups. These findings yielded a more nuanced understanding of filial behaviour and supported the utility of a two-factor FBS among emerging adults in various cultural contexts.     

An Investigation of Sound-Symbolism in the Context of Tactile Feeling

Sound symbolism suggests a non-arbitrary relationship between speech sounds and the concepts to which those sounds refer (Hinton, Nichols, &; Ohala, 2006 Hinton, L., Nichols, J., &; Ohala, J. J. (2006). Sound symbolism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]). Supporting evidence comes primarily from studies investigating how speech sounds relate to semantically compatible visual concepts. The present study therefore attempted to examine sound symbolism in the context of tactile perception. Contrary to the propositions of sound symbolism, participants in Experiment 1 did not consistently assign names with plosive consonant to objects with curved frames. Experiment 2, however, found that names with fricative consonants were more likely to be applied to materials with rough surfaces. The results suggested the existence of a direct relationship between speech sounds and their referent concepts that could be crucial in revealing the phenomenon of sound symbolism. A future study was also proposed to study the contributions of mouth shape and airflow to associations between speech sounds and tactile feelings. (161 words)