Beyond conscientiousness: Career optimism and satisfaction with academic major

The study focuses on psychological predictors of academic major satisfaction. According to the career construction theory (Savickas, 2005), vocational personality and career adaptability should generate career satisfaction. In this study, vocational personality was operationalised as Big Five conscientiousness, and career adaptability was operationalised as generalised self-efficacy and career optimism. A sample (N = 529) of university students completed an online survey. The resultant data were used to construct a structural model of the hypothesised relationships among variables. A good fitting model [χ² = 10.454 (7) p = .164; GFI = .993; CFI = .999; RMSEA < .031 (< .001–.066)] indicated that career optimism fully mediated the relationship between conscientiousness and academic major satisfaction. Results were consistent with previous research into personality and academic performance. Moreover, the results highlight the significant role of optimism in satisfaction with career generally, and studies, specifically. Suggestions are made for future research into modelling the relationships according to different academic disciplines and for the potential role of optimism as a learning objective for career education and counseling.     

Learning new faces in an interactive activation and competition model

Abstract

Certain contemporary accounts of object and face recognition use connectionist networks with local representations. This paper describes and extends one such account: an interactive activation and competition (IAC) model of face recognition. In contrast to many networks with distributed representations, IAC models do not incorporate a learning mechanism. This limits their use in psychological modelling. This paper describes how a learning mechanism can be built into an IAC model. The mechanism automatically learns new representations and appears to have many of the desirable properties traditionally associated with distributed networks. Some simulations that produce results consistent with our knowledge of human face learning are reported. Finally, the relation between this work and current theories of visual object recognition is discussed.     

The neural fate of individual item representations in visual working memory

Previous research has demonstrated an interaction between eye gaze and selected facial emotional expressions, whereby the perception of anger and happiness is impaired when the eyes are horizontally averted within a face, but the perception of fear and sadness is enhanced under the same conditions. The current study reexamined these claims over six experiments. In the first three experiments, the categorization of happy and sad expressions (Experiments 1 and 2) and angry and fearful expressions (Experiment 3) was impaired when eye gaze was averted, in comparison to direct gaze conditions. Experiment 4 replicated these findings in a rating task, which combined all four expressions within the same design. Experiments 5 and 6 then showed that previous findings, that the perception of selected expressions is enhanced under averted gaze, are stimulus and task-bound. The results are discussed in relation to research on facial expression processing and visual attention.     

Emotional Experience and Facial Expression in Alzheimer's Disease

ABSTRACT

Emotional experiences and facial muscle activity of individuals with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) (n = 13) and healthy elderly control subjects (n = 21) were measured while viewing emotion-eliciting images. Alzheimer's disease and control groups rated their emotional experiences similarly and in the expected directions on dimensions of valence and arousal. Change in corrugator activity while viewing images, compared to baseline, was comparable across groups and was greatest while viewing negative images. Change in zygomatic activity, however, was significantly different between AD and control groups, with AD subjects demonstrating an inverted pattern of activity compared to controls. These findings are discussed as possible consequences of frontal cortical system involvement accompanying the disease process.     

Body satisfaction is associated with Transtheoretical Model constructs for physical activity behavior change

Despite advancements in health behavior theory and practice, less than half of the United States population meets physical activity recommendations. Two cross-sectional studies (n = 432; n = 1455) were conducted to explore associations between body satisfaction and Transtheoretical Model (TTM) constructs proposed to explain the physical activity behavior change process. A series of regression analyses were conducted, controlling for demographic and TTM variables, as appropriate. Results indicate that body satisfaction significantly explains 2–8% of variance in the TTM constructs responsible for promoting stage movement. Furthermore, body satisfaction was significantly associated with stages of change representing short (>6 months) and long-term (>5 years) maintenance of physical activity. Future research should continue to examine these construct relationships using more rigorous research designs, with the ultimate goal of implementing body satisfaction components alongside traditionally effective TTM interventions to improve physical activity maintenance.     

Jan Amos Comenius’s Trinitarian and Conciliar Vision of a United Europe: Christ as the Universal ‘Centre of Security’

This article explores Jan Amos Comenius’s vision of a Christian united Europe and its connection to his theological programme of reform. This is manifest first of all in his linguistic projects, in which he sought to break down the language barriers separating Christians both from each other and from the mission field of the New World, but it came to fruition especially in his comprehensive reform project of pansophia, especially as this was represented in his massive Consultatio catholica. For it is here that Comenius expands on his dream of a union of nations under one Christian religion. In this, Christ who transcends time and space, uniting in himself all the diverse aspirations of the nations, is revealed as the global ‘centre of security.’ Importantly, Comenius’s expression of this is profoundly indebted to Nicholas of Cusa and the article concludes by highlighting Comenius’s own Trinitarian and conciliar vision of Christian Europe.     

Imagining Disability Futurities

This article explores twelve short narrative films created by women and trans people living with disabilities and embodied differences. Produced through Project Re?Vision, these micro documentaries uncover the cultures and temporalities of bodies of difference by foregrounding themes of multiple histories: body, disability, maternal, medical, and/or scientific histories; and divergent futurities: contradictory, surprising, unpredictable, opaque, and/or generative futures. We engage with Alison Kafer's call to theorize disability futurity by wrestling with the ways in which “the future” is normatively deployed in the service of able‐bodiedness and able‐mindedness (Kafer 2013 ), a deployment used to render bodies of difference as sites of “no future” (Edelman 2004 ). By re‐storying embodied difference, the storytellers illuminate ongoing processes of remaking their bodily selves in ways that respond to the past and provide possibilities for different futures; these orientations may be configured as “dis‐topias” based not on progress, but on new pathways for living, uncovered not through evoking the familiar imaginaries of curing, eliminating, or overcoming disability, but through incorporating experiences of embodied difference into time. These temporalities gesture toward new kinds of futures, giving us glimpses of ways of cripping time, of cripping ways of being/becoming in time, and of radically re‐presencing disability in futurity.     

Adventist Perspectives on Faith Integration: Subject Index for Christ in the Classroom,Volumes 1–20

This article presents a bibliography of essays focused on the integration of faith and learning (IFL) from the Christ in the Classroom collection. The contents of the first 20 (of a total of 40) volumes of this collection are organized here by subject area. An index for the remaining volumes will be published in 2018. All essays are available for free download at http://www.aiias.edu/ict/.     

Cardiovascular reactions to psychological stress and abuse history: the role of occurrence,frequency, and type of abuse

Background and objectives: Extreme cardiovascular reactions to psychological stress have been associated with traumatic life experiences. Previous studies have focused on the occurrence or frequency of abuse rather than type of abuse. We examined how occurrence, frequency, and the type of abuse history are related to cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) to acute psychological stress. Design: The study consisted of between group and continuous analyses to examine the association between occurrence, type, and frequency of abuse with cardiovascular reactions to acute psychological stress. Methods: Data from 64 participants were collected. Heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure were measured at baseline and during a standard mental arithmetic stress task. Results: Individuals who experienced abuse showed diminished CVR to acute psychological stress; this was driven specifically by the history of sexual abuse. Frequency of abuse did not relate to stress reactions. Conclusions: These findings accord with previous work suggesting a relationship between traumatic life experience and hypoarousal in physiological reactivity and extend previous findings by suggesting the relationship may be driven by sexual abuse.