The Relationships Between Spiritual Well-Being,Quality of Life,and Psychological Factors Before Radiotherapy for Prostate Cancer

Journal of Religion and Health - Given shifting trends of religious identities in the USA, better understanding the impact of patients’ religious identities on health-related quality of life...     

Help yourself by helping others: The joint impact of group member organizational citizenship behaviors and group cohesiveness on group member objective task performance change

This paper examines how a group member's individual‐targeted citizenship behavior (OCBI) and organization‐targeted citizenship behavior (OCBO) interact with a salient group‐level contextual variable, group cohesiveness, to foster positive change for that group member, starting with job self‐efficacy change, and followed by objective task performance change. Over a span of 6 months, we engaged in multilevel, multisource, multistage data collection and surveyed 587 members in 83 work groups. Our results indicate that a group member's OCBI, in comparison with OCBO, is more positively related to his or her job self‐efficacy change. Group cohesiveness was found to attenuate the relationship between a group member's OCBI and job self‐efficacy change, and conversely, to accentuate the relationship between a group member's OCBO and job self‐efficacy change. Furthermore, a group member's job self‐efficacy change mediated the interactive effects of the group member's OCBI and group cohesiveness (as well as the group member's OCBO and group cohesiveness) on his or her objective task performance change.     

Activation of semantic information at the sublexical level during handwriting production: Evidence from inhibition effects of Chinese semantic radicals in the picture‐word interference paradigm

Using a non‐alphabetic language (e.g., Chinese), the present study tested a novel view that semantic information at the sublexical level should be activated during handwriting production. Over 80% of Chinese characters are phonograms, in which semantic radicals represent category information (e.g., 椅 ‘chair,’ 桃 ‘peach,’ 橙 ‘orange’ are related to plants) while phonetic radicals represent phonetic information (e.g., 狼 ‘wolf,’ 朗 ‘brightness,’ 郎 ‘male,’ are all pronounced /lang/). Under different semantic category conditions at the lexical level (semantically related in Experiment 1; semantically unrelated in Experiment 2), the orthographic relatedness and semantic relatedness of semantic radicals in the picture name and its distractor were manipulated under different SOAs (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony, the interval between the onset of the picture and the onset of the interference word). Two questions were addressed: (1) Is it possible that semantic information could be activated in the sublexical level conditions? (2) How are semantic and orthographic information dynamically accessed in word production? Results showed that both orthographic and semantic information were activated under the present picture‐word interference paradigm, dynamically under different SOAs, which supported our view that discussions on semantic processes in the writing modality should be extended to the sublexical level. The current findings provide possibility for building new orthography‐phonology‐semantics models in writing.     

Why did adolescents have sleep problems after earthquakes? Understanding the role of traumatic exposure,fear, and PTSD

To examine the relationships between trauma exposure, fear, post‐traumatic stress disorder, and sleep problems in adolescents, 746 adolescent survivors of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China were assessed at 1 year (T1) and 1.5 years (T2) after the earthquake using a trauma exposure questionnaire, a fear questionnaire, a child posttraumatic stress disorder symptom scale, and a subscale on child sleep problems. The results showed that T1 trauma exposure were not directly associated with sleep problems at T1 and T2, but played a positive role in sleep problems at both T1 and T2 indirectly through T1 posttraumatic stress disorder and T1 fear. T1 trauma exposure was also positively and indirectly associated with T2 sleep problems through T1 posttraumatic stress disorder via T1 sleep problems, or through T1 fear via the path from T1 posttraumatic stress disorder to T1 sleep problems. These findings indicated that fear and posttraumatic stress disorder 1 year after the earthquake played a mediating role in the relationship between trauma exposure at 1 year after the earthquake, and sleep problems at both 1 year and 1.5 years after the earthquake, respectively. In particular, posttraumatic stress disorder also had a multiple mediating effect in the path from trauma exposure to sleep problems via fear. Furthermore, the findings indicated that sleep problems were relatively stable between 1 and 1.5 years after an earthquake.     

Self-regulatory Behaviors and Approaches to Learning of Arts Students: A Comparison Between Professional Training and English Learning

This study investigated the self-regulatory behaviors of arts students, namely memory strategy, goal-setting, self-evaluation, seeking assistance, environmental structuring, learning responsibility, and planning and organizing. We also explored approaches to learning, including deep approach (DA) and surface approach (SA), in a comparison between students’ professional training and English learning. The participants consisted of 344 arts majors. The Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire and the Revised Learning Process Questionnaire were adopted to examine students’ self-regulatory behaviors and their approaches to learning. The results show that a positive and significant correlation was found in students’ self-regulatory behaviors between professional training and English learning. The results indicated that increases in using self-regulatory behaviors in professional training were associated with increases in applying self-regulatory behaviors in learning English. Seeking assistance, self-evaluation, and planning and organizing were significant predictors for learning English. In addition, arts students used the deep approach more often than the surface approach in both their professional training and English learning. A positive correlation was found in DA, whereas a negative correlation was shown in SA between students’ self-regulatory behaviors and their approaches to learning. Students with high self-regulation adopted a deep approach, and they applied the surface approach less in professional training and English learning. In addition, a SEM model confirmed that DA had a positive influence; however, SA had a negative influence on self-regulatory behaviors.     

The Inversion Effect for Chinese Characters is Modulated by Radical Organization

In studies of visual object recognition, strong inversion effects accompany the acquisition of expertise and imply the involvement of configural processing. Chinese literacy results in sensitivity to the orthography of Chinese characters. While there is some evidence that this orthographic sensitivity results in an inversion effect, and thus involves configural processing, that processing might depend on exact orthographic properties. Chinese character recognition is believed to involve a hierarchical process, involving at least two lower levels of representation: strokes and radicals. Radicals are grouped into characters according to certain types of structure, i.e. left–right structure, top–bottom structure, or simple characters with only one radical by itself. These types of radical structures vary in both familiarity, and in hierarchical level (compound versus simple characters). In this study, we investigate whether the hierarchical-level or familiarity of radical-structure has an impact on the magnitude of the inversion effect. Participants were asked to do a matching task on pairs of either upright or inverted characters with all the types of structure. Inversion effects were measured based on both reaction time and response sensitivity. While an inversion effect was observed in all 3 conditions, the magnitude of the inversion effect varied with radical structure, being significantly larger for the most familiar type of structure: characters consisting of 2 radicals organized from left to right. These findings indicate that character recognition involves extraction of configural structure as well as radical processing which play different roles in the processing of compound characters and simple characters.     

The Role of Family Routines in the Intergenerational Transmission of Depressive Symptoms between Parents and their Adolescent Children

Whereas previous research on environmental factors implicated in the intergenerational transmission of depression has tended to focus on the role of parenting quality (e.g., harshness), the current study sought to assess whether structural aspects of families may contribute to depression-relevant affective and immune processes in youths. Specifically, the present study examined the role of family routines in linking parental depressive symptoms to youth emotion regulation, a depression-relevant marker of low-grade inflammation, and depressive symptoms in youths. 261 parent-adolescent dyads reported on their own depressive symptoms, family routines, and youths’ emotion regulation abilities. In addition, peripheral blood was drawn from youths to assess levels of the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin 6 (IL-6). Path analyses provided support for a model in which parental depressive symptoms related to fewer family routines, which in turn were associated with higher IL-6 and depressive symptoms in youths as well as marginally associated with worse youth emotion regulation. Moreover, family routines were found to statistically account for part of the association between parent- and youth- depressive symptoms. Together, these results suggest that family routines may represent an additional facet of the family environment that can potentially contribute to the intergenerational transmission of depressive symptoms.     

The Relationship between Online Game Experience and Multitasking Ability in a Virtual Environment

Online game playing has become popular entertainment, yet its relationship with individuals' multitasking ability was inconsistent. Types of online game genre so far have not been compared and may be associated with multitasking abilities. This study proposed to explore the relationships between types of online game playing and multitasking ability, using Edinburgh Virtual Errands Test (EVET). One hundred and sixteen participants playing different online game genres, including multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), other online game playing, and no‐online game playing were compared. Each participant was required to fill in Chen's Internet Addiction Scale and the Internet Usage Questionnaire and perform EVET and working memory tests. The results showed a positive correlation between multitasking ability and working memory. In addition, a positive association was found between MOBA‐type gaming and multitasking abilities measured by EVET. In conclusion, MOBA‐type gaming compared with other game playing is associated with better multitasking abilities in a virtual environment.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cultural influences in acquiescent response: A study of trainer evaluation biases

The current study is developed to identify factors that affect trainees’ acquiescent tendency in organizational trainer evaluations. We posit that conflict‐handling style affects ones tendency to acquiesce in trainer evaluations, and this relationship is regulated by cultural influence. Surveys were sent to employees with training experience in Taiwan and North America, 395 valid responses were collected. Results showed that the two individual conflict‐handling styles: non‐confrontation style and dominating style, are positively related to acquiescent tendency; and their relationship is found moderated by the influence of Confucian work dynamism, thus confirming the influence of cultural norms. Our findings contribute to HRD practitioners by highlighting the different conflict‐handling style and culture influence will result in different level of acquiescent propensity, trainer evaluations results should be interpreted more carefully and cautiously.