The language and social background questionnaire: Assessing degree of bilingualism in a diverse population

Research examining the cognitive consequences of bilingualism has expanded rapidly in recent years and has revealed effects on aspects of cognition across the lifespan. However, these effects are difficult to find in studies investigating young adults. One problem is that there is no standard definition of bilingualism or means of evaluating degree of bilingualism in individual participants, making it difficult to directly compare the results of different studies. Here, we describe an instrument developed to assess degree of bilingualism for young adults who live in diverse communities in which English is the official language. We demonstrate the reliability and validity of the instrument in analyses based on 408 participants. The relevant factors for describing degree of bilingualism are: (1) the extent of non-English language proficiency and use at home, and (2) non-English language use socially. We then use the bilingualism scores obtained from the instrument to demonstrate their association with: (1) performance on executive function tasks, and (2) previous classifications of participants into categories of monolinguals and bilinguals.     

Creation and Implementation of an Environmental Scan to Assess Cancer Genetics Services at Three Oncology Care Settings

An environmental scan (ES) is an efficient mixed-methods approach to collect and interpret relevant data for strategic planning and project design. To date, the ES has not been used nor evaluated in the clinical cancer genetics setting. We created and implemented an ES to inform the design of a quality improvement (QI) project to increase the rates of adherence to national guidelines for cancer genetic counseling and genetic testing at three unique oncology care settings (OCS). The ES collected qualitative and quantitative data from reviews of internal processes, past QI efforts, the literature, and each OCS. The ES used a data collection form and semi-structured interviews to aid in data collection. The ES was completed within 6 months, and sufficient data were captured to identify opportunities and threats to the QI project’s success, as well as potential barriers to, and facilitators of guideline-based cancer genetics services at each OCS. Previously unreported barriers were identified, including inefficient genetic counseling appointment scheduling processes and the inability to track referrals, genetics appointments, and genetic test results within electronic medical record systems. The ES was a valuable process for QI project planning at three OCS and may be used to evaluate genetics services in other settings.     

Enabling a Socio-cognitive Perspective of Mindfulness: The Development and Validation of the Langer Mindfulness Scale

This article outlines the development of a 14-item measure of socio-cognitive mindfulness. Using eight samples (including multisource and multi-wave data) with a total of 4139 responses the authors developed a reliable scale with a tri-dimensional factor structure that replicated across five separate samples. The scale possessed both convergent and discriminant validity, and criterion-related validity was demonstrated through the scale’s relation with development-related categories of psychological well-being, such as life satisfaction and humor, dimensions of physical well-being, e.g., strength, flexibility, and reaction time, as well as aspects of social and organizational well-being including job satisfaction, creativity. Overall, the present study suggests that the Langer Mindfulness Scale (LMS14) is a reliable and valid measure and that the LMS has important implications for individual development within social contexts.     

Modeling Nonstationary Emotion Dynamics in Dyads using a Time-Varying Vector-Autoregressive Model

Emotion dynamics are likely to arise in an interpersonal context. Standard methods to study emotions in interpersonal interaction are limited because stationarity is assumed. This means that the dynamics, for example, time-lagged relations, are invariant across time periods. However, this is generally an unrealistic assumption. Whether caused by an external (e.g., divorce) or an internal (e.g., rumination) event, emotion dynamics are prone to change. The semi-parametric time-varying vector-autoregressive (TV-VAR) model is based on well-studied generalized additive models, implemented in the software R. The TV-VAR can explicitly model changes in temporal dependency without pre-existing knowledge about the nature of change. A simulation study is presented, showing that the TV-VAR model is superior to the standard time-invariant VAR model when the dynamics change over time. The TV-VAR model is applied to empirical data on daily feelings of positive affect (PA) from a single couple. Our analyses indicate reliable changes in the male’s emotion dynamics over time, but not in the female’s—which were not predicted by her own affect or that of her partner. This application illustrates the usefulness of using a TV-VAR model to detect changes in the dynamics in a system.     

Dinergy: The Primordial Meta-Pattern in Nature

In Answer to Job, Jung quotes Tertullian from his De Testimonio Animae: “What you allow to the mistress you will assign to the disciples.” Nature is the mistress and we are all potential disciples.

If we look carefully and sympathetically at nature, we see that she is a process with one main overlying meta-pattern. All stable patterns in nature contain a balance of forces, a kind of reconciliation of opposites. This is true from the formation of hydrogen soon after the Big Bang, through the process of star formation and in the biological functions of living systems. One of the more beautiful ways to understand this concept of dinergy is to look at the pattern formations on the surface of seashells. Just as the telescope has enabled us to understand the process and pattern of planetary motions, so has the computer enabled a better understanding of weather patterns and the patterning on seashells.

Although the neo-Darwinists would have us believe that such intricate and beautiful designs must have some survival benefit, I think that the deeper insight into nature comes from Thomas Mann (1947/1999 Mann, T. (1999). Doctor Faustus. New York: Vintage. (Original work published 1947) [Google Scholar]) in his novel Doctor Faustus, in which he wrote that “meaning and design always run alongside one another” (p. v). These patterns are a manifestation of process and emergence. But most importantly, these patterns represent an essential feature in all dynamic systems: that is, a positive feedback that self-enhances the initial deviation from the mean. However, sooner or later, self-enhancing processes evoke antagonistic (opposing) reactions. Of course, Jung understood this long before systems theory, as enantiodromia.     

The Effect of Type of Feedback in Multiple-Choice Testing on Long-Term Retention

We investigated how different types of feedback in multiple-choice testing influence long-term retention. Participants completed an initial multiple-choice test on general-knowledge questions. Then, they were randomly placed into one of the following four conditions: feedback displaying the original question and four alternative options including the correct answer (Feedback 1); feedback displaying the original question and the correct answer (Feedback 2); feedback displaying only the correct answer (Feedback 3); and no feedback (Control). On the final test two days later, participants in the feedback conditions showed improved retention—even participants who received Feedback 3 outperformed the control group, regardless of whether feedback followed correct or incorrect responses. There was no difference between the feedback conditions when feedback followed correct responses, but Feedback 1 was superior to Feedback 3 when feedback followed incorrect responses. The function of feedback in multiple-choice testing is to maintain correct responses and to correct erroneous responses.     

Project STARS (Studies on Trajectories of Adolescent Relationships and Sexuality): A longitudinal,multi-domain study on sexual development of Dutch adolescents

This study gives an overview of Project STARS (Studies on Trajectories of Adolescent Relationships and Sexuality), a four-wave longitudinal study of 1297 Dutch adolescents. First, the sample, measures and four sub-projects are described. Second, hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine how key variables from the individual domain (impulsivity), parent domain (parent–adolescent relationship quality), peer domain (involvement with peers) and media domain (time spent on social networking sites), and their interactions predict changes in the experience with sexual behaviour of adolescents across time. Results showed that higher levels of impulsivity, lower quality of relation with parents, more frequent involvement with peers and more time spent on social networking sites at baseline predicted increases in sexual experience of adolescents over a subsequent 1.5-year time period. No interaction effects among the domains were found. The findings highlight the significance of a multi-domain approach to the study of adolescent sexual development.