Testing a longitudinal social cognitive model of intended persistence with engineering students across gender and race/ethnicity

We examined the temporal relations within Lent et al.'s (2013) integrative SCCT model of academic satisfaction and intended persistence in a sample of 551 engineering undergraduates from a Hispanic serving institution. They completed measures of instrumentality, support, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, interests, academic satisfaction, and intended persistence at two time points approximately 12 months apart. Using longitudinal cross-panel design, the findings supported a model where: (a) instrumentality predicted self-efficacy, (b) self-efficacy was a temporal precursor for both interests and academic satisfaction, (c) support was a temporal precursor for outcome expectations, while also predicting academic satisfaction, (d) academic satisfaction and intended persistence had a reciprocal relation with one another, and (e) relations in the model did not differ by gender or race/ethnicity. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Reducing the Linear Perception of Nonlinearity: Use of a Physical Representation

Research shows that while judging accumulations of quantities over time (e.g., money in a bank account or CO₂ in Earth's atmosphere), people assume that the shape of the accumulation is similar to the shape of the inflow (i.e., people rely on a correlation heuristic). Relying on the correlation heuristic is particularly worrisome for Earth's climate, as judging the CO₂ accumulation according to its emissions (inflow) would underestimate the actual (nonlinear) increase. This misperception undermines the seriousness of climate problem and results in wait‐and‐see behavior. We report two experiments where the effectiveness of a physical representation is compared with graphical and text representations in reducing people's underestimation of nonlinear accumulation in different contexts and problems. A physical representation presents an accumulation using a picture that works as a metaphor. In the first experiment, participants drew the shape of an accumulation over time relying on physical or graphical representations in one of two contexts: carbon dioxide and marbles. Although the participants underestimated the accumulation in both contexts, underestimations were reduced in the physical representation compared with the graphical representation. In the second experiment, we extended the evaluation of physical representations against both text and graphical representations in two different climate problems (with linearly increasing or decreasing inflow). Again, underestimations of the accumulation were reduced in the physical representation compared with the other two representations, regardless of the nature of the problem. We discuss implications of using the physical representation for improving people's estimates of nonlinear CO₂ accumulation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cultural dimensions,socioeconomic development,climate, and emotional hedonic level

A research synthesis was conducted with four studies which correlated national mean self-ratings of affect balance (positive minus negative affect) and subjective well-being with the nations' cultural characteristics (individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and power-distance national scores on Hofstede's dimensions), socioeconomic development (Human Development Index), and climate (absolute latitude). A meta-analysis of these collective level cross-cultural studies shows that individualism correlates positively with affect balance and subjective well-being, controlling for socioeconomic development, cultural femininity, power-distance, uncertainty avoidance, and climate. Similar results were found for individual-level data. The meaning of collective-level or national means of individual self-reports of affect balance is discussed.     

Testing parameters in structural equation modeling: every "one" matters

A problem with standard errors estimated by many structural equation modeling programs is described. In such programs, a parameter's standard error is sensitive to how the model is identified (i.e., how scale is set). Alternative but equivalent ways to identify a model may yield different standard errors, and hence different Z tests for a parameter, even though the identifications produce the same overall model fit. This lack of invariance due to model identification creates the possibility that different analysts may reach different conclusions about a parameter's significance level even though they test equivalent models on the same data. The authors suggest that parameters be tested for statistical significance through the likelihood ratio test, which is invariant to the identification choice.     

Estimation of speakers' weight and height from speech: a re-analysis of data from multiple studies by Lass and colleagues

Research on identification of speakers' weight and height from their speech has yielded controversial results. Conclusions from a series of reports conducted by Lass and colleagues must be interpreted with caution because they are based on comparisons of only two types of data, mean of actual values and mean of estimated values. Cohen and others clearly demonstrated that this method of analysis overstated the accuracy of listeners' judgments. Following Van Dommelen's procedure, data from six of Lass's reports were re-analyzed with more appropriate statistics. Results of re-analysis show that (a) listeners are not very efficient guessing the weight or height of speakers, as only 14%, of the estimations correlated significantly with actual values. (b) Judgments are highly consistent under different acoustic conditions, suggesting that listeners follow vocal stereotypes about the body size of speakers, even though these stereotypes are wrong.     

Never ready: Addictions counselors dealing with client death

This study explored the experiences of addictions counselors who have undergone client death and the immediate and long-lasting impacts of client death on addictions counselors through the consensual qualitative research (CQR) method. We conducted semistructured interviews with 10 participants exploring their lived, in-depth, experiences in working with clients with addictive disorders with focus given to the death of clients and how they responded to the experience. Results from a data analysis process using the CQR method indicate eight domains: (a) professional ethics, (b) coping skills, (c) client care, (d) preparation for profession, (e) experience of addiction, (f) agency impact, (g) exploring the death experience, (h) recommendations, and 28 categories embedded in each of these domains. Implications for counselor education, training, and practice are discussed.     

Linguistic semantic agraphia: A dissociation of the lexical spelling system from semantics

Two spelling systems have been described. The phonological system transcodes speech sounds to letters and is thought to be useful for spelling regular words and pronounceable nonwords. Although the second system, the lexical-semantic system, is thought to use visual word images and meaning to spell irregular words, it is not known if this system is dependent on semantic knowledge. We used a homophone spelling test to examine the lexical-semantic system in five patients. The patients were asked to spell individual homophones (doe or dough) using the context of a sentence. Semantically incorrect and correct homophones were spelled equally well, whether they were regular or irregular. These results demonstrate that an irregular word may be spelled without knowledge of the word's meaning. Therefore, the lexical system can be dissociated from semantic influence.     

Social Status,the Status Distribution,and Performance in Small Groups1

This article reports two experiments on the effects of status and the status distribution on performance. Grade-school children were randomly assigned a label denoting high status or one denoting low status and then randomly assigned to small groups where they were the only ones of their status or where only one child had a status different from theirs. After completing a group task, the children individually took an anagram test, which served as the performance measure. Consistent with research on the effects of social status, in both experiments children with high status performed significantly better on the anagram test than did children with low status. More important, there were significant status by status distribution interactions. Performance among low-status children was even lower if their status was relatively uncommon than if it was relatively common, whereas performance by high-status children was either unaffected (Experiment 1) or enhanced (Experiment 2) if their status was relatively uncommon. The discussion centers on implications of the results for research and theory on tokenism and perceptions of the prevalence of status characteristics.     

Transcortical sensory aphasia: Evidence for subtypes

Impaired auditory comprehension and fluent but semantically empty speech in conjunction with preserved repetition characterize the syndrome of transcortical sensory aphasia (TSA). Repetition, however, may be mediated by at least two distinct processes--a lexical process that may involve the recognition and subsequent activation of discrete stored word representations and a nonlexical process that involves phonologic decoding and immediate phonologic encoding from immediate memory. We investigated the spontaneous speech, reading, and tendency to recognize and spontaneously correct syntactic errors in four patients with TSA: this analysis suggests there are two subtypes of TSA. We contend that in one subtype both the lexical and direct repetition (or speech production) mechanisms are preserved, but in the second subtype the lexical mechanism is disrupted and repetition is mediated by the nonlexical mechanism.