The Influence of Music on Driver Stress1

In order to examine the efficacy of music in dealing with daily stressors, automobile drivers were randomly assigned to either a music or nonmusic group. The music group listened to their favorite music, while the nonmusic group abstained from any music or talk radio during their entire commute to or from school or work. Using a cellular telephone. state measures of driver stress were obtained during a single commute in Iow‐ and high‐congestion conditions. A Condition × Music Group interaction was found. Driver stress was greater in high congestion than in low congestion, but the nonmusic group demonstrated extreme levels of stress within high congestion. Listening to self‐selected music appeared to limit driver stress only within highly frustrating and irritating traffic congestion.     

Reconsidering the Job‐Performance—Turnover Relationship: The Role of Gender in Form and Magnitude1

Research assessing the relationship between job performance and turnover has historically yielded mixed results. Reported findings have reflected no relationships, linear associations, or U‐shaped forms between these constructs. The current study attempted to shed light on the intricate relationship between job performance and voluntary turnover by investigating gender boundaries and relevant controls. After controlling for age, tenure, and job satisfaction, the data provided evidence of a U‐shaped association between job performance and turnover. However, once the data were partitioned into male and female subsamples, a different pattern emerged, whereby males continued to reflect the U‐shaped relationship and females reflected no job‐performance‐turnover relationship. Implications of these findings for both theory and research are provided.     

Anxiety,Depression, and Procrastination Among Students: Rumination Plays a Larger Mediating Role than Worry

Procrastination is prevalent among students and is associated with negative outcomes, including poor academic performance and psychological distress. Research also suggests that anxiety and depression can exacerbate procrastination; however, the mechanisms associated with the development of procrastination are less understood. The current study aimed to clarify the role of negative repetitive thought (i.e., rumination and worry) in the links between anxiety and procrastination, and depression and procrastination. Ninety-one undergraduate students completed self-report measures of anxiety, depression, worry, brooding rumination, and procrastination, and two multiple mediator models were tested. Procrastination was positively correlated with the study variables, including medium effects for anxiety and depression, a large effect for rumination, and a small effect for worry. Rumination independently mediated the relationships between anxiety and procrastination, and depression and procrastination. Worry did not independently mediate these relationships. The current findings suggest rumination plays a larger role in the links between anxiety, depression, and procrastination than worry. Thus, students with higher levels of anxiety and depression engage in more negative repetitive thought, which may contribute to procrastinatory behavior as a result of a preoccupation with depressing or painful thoughts about the past.     

Using latent class growth analysis to form trajectories of premorbid adjustment in schizophrenia

Premorbid adjustment varies widely among individuals with schizophrenia and has been shown to bear significantly on prodrome and onset characteristics, and on cognition, symptoms, and functioning after onset. The current analysis focused on the Premorbid Adjustment Scale, a retrospective measure assessing social and academic function at several time points from early childhood to illness onset. In an effort to explore discrete developmental subtypes, we applied latent class growth analysis to data from the Premorbid Adjustment Scale in our sample of individuals with schizophrenia (N = 208), finding three latent trajectory classes. The first of these classes showed consistently adequate-to-good social and academic functioning before onset; the second showed initially good function and deterioration with time until onset; the third showed poor functioning in childhood that deteriorated further during the years up to diagnosis. The classes differed significantly in terms of age of onset, processing speed, and functioning after onset. There were no significant differences in symptomatology. Our findings illustrate a potentially powerful methodological approach to the problem of heterogeneity in schizophrenia research, and add weight to the notion that aspects of premorbid history may be useful for subtyping schizophrenia patients. The potential implications of this subtyping strategy, including those pertaining to potential genetics studies, are discussed.     

Religion,Spirituality, and Marriage and Family Therapy: A Study of Family Therapists' Beliefs about the Appropriateness of Addressing Religious and Spiritual Issues in Therapy

For many years the literature in the field of family therapy was silent as to the religious and spiritual aspects of clients' lives. During the past five years, however, many voices have come forth calling attention to the importance of bringing spirituality and religion into our conversations with clients. The result of these new voices has been a significant increase in attention to spirituality in journal articles, books, and presentations at national conferences. While there appears to be a strong movement in favor of bringing spirituality and religion into the therapy room, there have been no published studies in marriage and family therapy journals that explore marriage and family therapists' beliefs about the appropriateness of addressing spiritual issues in therapy. The purpose of this study was to fill this gap in the literature by examining the beliefs of a random sample of clinical members of AAMFT in respect to this issue.     

The Gestalt principle of similarity benefits visual working memory

Visual working memory (VWM) is essential for many cognitive processes, yet it is notably limited in capacity. Visual perception processing is facilitated by Gestalt principles of grouping, such as connectedness, similarity, and proximity. This introduces the question, do these perceptual benefits extend to VWM? If so, can this be an approach to enhance VWM function by optimizing the processing of information? Previous findings have demonstrated that several Gestalt principles (connectedness, common region, and spatial proximity) do facilitate VWM performance in change detection tasks (Jiang, Olson, & Chun, 2000; Woodman, Vecera, & Luck, 2003; Xu, 2002, 2006; Xu & Chun, 2007). However, one prevalent Gestalt principle, similarity, has not been examined with regard to facilitating VWM. Here, we investigated whether grouping by similarity benefits VWM. Experiment 1 established the basic finding that VWM performance could benefit from grouping. Experiment 2 replicated and extended this finding by showing that similarity was only effective when the similar stimuli were proximal. In short, the VWM performance benefit derived from similarity was constrained by spatial proximity, such that similar items need to be near each other. Thus, the Gestalt principle of similarity benefits visual perception, but it can provide benefits to VWM as well.     

The use and misuse of student samples: An empirical investigation of European marketing research

In spite of the five decade old debate on the merits of student samples, to date, no systematic review of the practice is undertaken. The need for such a review is warranted considering the impasse in the debate and inconsistencies among scholars in their approach to student sample usage. This paper thus presents a systematic review of student sample usage in European Marketing Research (EJM, IJRM and IMR during 2005–2014, inclusive) to highlight existing reporting practices, identify sub‐domains of marketing where the usage is more prevalent and to report best practices. Results demonstrate that 99 (19.96 per cent) papers making generalization claims used student samples exclusively, had inconsistent reporting practices (e.g. demographic profile, limitations) and demonstrated trivial concern (e.g. bias estimation treatment, identification of moderators) for the implications of student sample usage on their study findings. In addition, 11 clusters representing sub‐domains of marketing research and where the practice is prevalent are identified. These clusters provide novel direction to the debate on student sample usage by framing it away from the broader discipline of marketing and bringing it closer to the interests of scholars, i.e. linking it to sub‐domains of marketing research. Finally, best practices related to student samples usage are reported to help academicians enhance the validity of their findings. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How position dependent is visual object recognition?

Visual object recognition is often assumed to be insensitive to changes in retinal position, leading to theories and formal models incorporating position-independent object representations. However, recent behavioral and physiological evidence has questioned the extent to which object recognition is position independent. Here, we take a computational and physiological perspective to review the current behavioral literature. Although numerous studies report reduced object recognition performance with translation, even for distances as small as 0.5 degrees of visual angle, confounds in many of these studies make the results difficult to interpret. We conclude that there is little evidence to support position-independent object recognition and the precise role of position in object recognition remains unknown.     

PsychoPro 2.0: Using multidimensional scaling to examine the perceptual categorization of race

Recently, researchers examining cognitive mechanisms involved in the detection of racial markers have been using psychophysics to examine perceptual thresholds delineating race using a program called PsychoPro (MacLin, MacLin, Peterson, Chowdhry, & Joshi, 2009). PsychoPro allows researchers to collect data using facial stimuli morphed along a racial continuum with psychophysical methodology. PsychoPro 2.0 was updated so researchers could collect paired-comparison data that can then be analyzed using multidimensional scaling (MDS). MDS allows researchers to examine the perceptions of racial boundaries along perceptual dimensions not bounded by the stimulus continuum, by having the observer make paired comparisons to racial stimuli based on their perceived similarity. Results indicate that ratings were made on the basis of at least six different racial dimensions that suggest the emergence of a third race not represented by the original morph starting images. Details of the software, the new paired-comparison feature and its relevance in psychophysical studies in general and racial categorization in particular are presented.