Influence of Relationship Education on Relationship Satisfaction for Low‐Income Couples

The authors randomly assigned 54 ethnically diverse, low‐income married couples with children to receive relationship education either immediately or in 6 months. Couples attended 12 hours of relationship education using the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program curriculum. The authors collected pre‐ and postassessment data and compared differences in relationship satisfaction between treatment and wait‐list control couples. Results indicated significant differences in relationship satisfaction between the 2 groups. Findings support relationship education as an efficacious intervention for low‐income couples.     

Development and Validation of a New Measure of Intuition: The Types of Intuition Scale

The Types of Intuition Scale (TIntS) measures three types of intuition identified in a literature review by Pretz and Totz (2007): holistic, inferential, and affective. Holistic intuitions integrate diverse sources of information in a Gestalt‐like, non‐analytical manner; inferential intuitions are based on previously analytical processes that have become automatic; and affective intuitions are based on feelings. Current intuition measures inadequately assess these distinct types. We report four validity studies: Study 1 reports the reliability and factor structure of the TIntS and correlations with extant intuition and personality measures. Study 2 presents a confirmatory factor analysis. Studies 3 and 4 examine the predictive validity of the TIntS with respect to clinical decision making in occupational therapy and musical performance. Scales were internally consistent and stable over time, and factor analyses supported the predicted distinctions among them. Correlations with existing measures of intuition, personality, and behavior showed that the TIntS is unique in its assessment of all three types of intuition in one measure. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flexing Work Boundaries: The Spillover and Crossover of Workplace Support

Using boundary theory and conservation of resources theory, we examined how job incumbents’ perceptions of supervisor instrumental support and organizational segmentation support influence outcomes for both the incumbent and the spouse. First, we examined how supervisor instrumental support and organizational segmentation support shape incumbents’ perceived ability to flex work boundaries and thus affect their experience of family functioning and their organizational commitment. Second, we examine the effects of supervisor instrumental support and organizational segmentation support on spousal martial satisfaction and the spouse's commitment to the incumbent's employing organization as mediated through boundary flexibility and the spouse's perception of successful boundary management by the incumbent. Using a matched set of 503 subordinates and their spouses, this study found that both supervisor instrumental support and organizational segmentation support contribute to work boundary flexibility. Further, for the incumbent, family functioning and organizational commitment were enhanced through work boundary flexibility, whereas for the spouse, marital satisfaction and commitment to the incumbent's organization were enhanced through both incumbent work boundary flexibility and the spouse's perception of successful boundary management by the incumbent. We discuss the study's implications for theory, research, and practice while suggesting new research directions.     

Support at work and home: The path to satisfaction through balance

This study examines social support (from both coworkers and partners) and its path to satisfaction through work–family balance. This study fills a gap by explaining how support impacts satisfaction in the same domain, across domains, and how it crosses over to impact the partner's domain. Using a matched dataset of 270 job incumbents and their partners, the findings reveal that work–family balance plays a mediating role in assisting social support's contribution to both job and family satisfaction. Evidence indicates that employees experience heightened work–family balance due to social support from partners and coworkers and that support and balance impact satisfaction in both the work and family domains. Implications of these findings and avenues for future research are discussed.     

Object and size awareness in preschool-age children

Self-awareness is a skill developed during the first few years of life. Although some research demonstrates that this ability may be incomplete in toddlers, there is little to no literature relating to preschoolers. This study tested 44 preschool-age children on 8 tasks to assess their awareness of the structural characteristics of their own size and weight as well as the size and weight of external objects. The most frequently observed behavior was for children to make an attempt at something that was inappropriate for their size and weight, but overall participants showed a better understanding of their own bodies than other objects. Both the number of attempts required to solve the problems and accuracy of their solutions demonstrated these task differences. These results indicate that the development of body awareness skills is far from complete for 3- and 4-year-olds.     

Attention and semantic processing during speech: an fMRI study

This fMRI study was conducted to investigate whether language semantics is processed even when attention is not explicitly directed to word meanings. In the “unattended” condition, the subjects performed a visual detection task while hearing semantically related and unrelated word pairs. In the “phoneme” condition, the subjects made phoneme judgements between prime and target words, and in the “word” condition, they indicated whether the words in each word pair were semantically related or unrelated. In the word condition, stronger activity was obtained for unrelated than related words in the superior temporal gyrus/sulcus (STG/STS), lingual/fusiform gyri and cuneus, whereas in the phoneme condition no such effect was observed. However, during the unattended condition, stronger activity was found in the right STG. Our results suggest that both semantic judgement of word pairs and their passive hearing activate the same neural networks but this activation is more restricted in the passive hearing.