Visual search for drowning swimmers: Investigating the impact of lifeguarding experience

How does domain expertise influence dynamic visual search? Previous studies of visual search often use abstract search arrays that are devoid of applied context, with comparatively few studies exploring applied naturalistic and dynamic settings. The current research adds to this literature by examining lifeguard drowning‐detection across two studies using naturalistic, dynamic search tasks. Behavioural responses and eye‐movement data were recorded as participants watched staged video clips and attempted to identify if a swimmer was drowning. The results demonstrate lifeguard superiority in response times to drowning events, compared to non‐lifeguards. No differences between lifeguard and non‐lifeguard eye‐movements were noted however. This suggests that the experiential benefit in response times results from other underlying processes, rather than any scanning benefits. This research highlights the complex nature of naturalistic and dynamic searches, while demonstrating the robust nature of simulated videos in producing experience effects in visual search.     

Training Young Adult Peers in a Mobile Motivational Interviewing‐Based Mentoring Approach to Upstream HIV Prevention

Mentoring relationships are characterized by a sustained, high quality, and skill‐building relationship between a protégé and mentor (Handbook of Youth Mentoring, Los Angeles, SAGE, 2014). Within prevention science, youth mentoring programs emphasize creating a specific context that benefits a young person. Program‐sponsored relationships between youth and adults allow for creating a mentor–mentee partnership, but do not require the establishment of a strong bond in order to deliver prevention‐focused activities and experiences (Handbook of Youth Mentoring, Los Angeles, SAGE, 2014). Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a counseling style used widely to promote health behavior change and in prevention interventions. As part of an upstream approach to HIV prevention, we combined mentoring and MI by training peer mentors to use MI skills in their interactions as part of a large RCT of a mobile life skills intervention for adolescent men who have sex with men (AMSM). Our training model developed for training peer mentors in MI skills resulted in peers reaching and exceeding established MI fidelity thresholds (e.g., mean percentage of complex reflections = 80%, mean reflection to question ratio = 2.2:1). We offer reflections on lessons learned and future directions for those researchers and practitioners who may benefit from adapting this blended approach for mentoring AMSM.     

Job Embeddedness: A new attitudinal measure

Job embeddedness is a relatively new concept that offers the potential to improve our ability to explain why people stay in their jobs. This article outlines the development and testing of new measures of on‐ and off‐the‐job embeddedness. Analyses of survey data show the measures demonstrate adequate psychometric properties across samples (three military and one nonmilitary organization) and across different organizational levels, genders, and tenure, as well as discriminant validity over other turnover‐relevant constructs and appropriate convergent validity with a number of further constructs identified in the literature.     

A Review of: “Hollander,M. (2008). Helping Teens Who Cut: Understanding and Ending Self Injury.”

Based upon informal observation of adverse effects arising during behaviorally oriented parent-training programs, 119 parents attending such programs answered a structured questionnaire regarding six specific adverse effects. Each of the “side effects” were reported by a substantial portion of the participants. In most cases, the severity of effects was not extreme. The mean number of side effects reported by each parent was 1.70. Based upon these findings, clinicians conducting such parent-training programs are encouraged to provide content material to prevent or ameliorate these adverse effects.     

A Review of: “Kennedy-Moore,E., & Lowenthal,M. S. (2011). Smart Parenting for Smart Kids: Nurturing Your Child's True Potential.”

Behavioral procedures aimed at decreasing disruptiveness through increasing self-evaluative skills and programming generalization in a class of disruptive retarded children were examined. Phases of the study included: (a) baseline; (b) systematic feedback; (c) a token economy; (d) matching of teacher's ratings by students; (e) four fading phases during which progressively fewer students were required to match the teacher; (f) self-evaluation during which each student received the amount of points self-allotted regardless of teacher's ratings; (g) doubling of point costs of back-up reinforcers ("Inflation"); (h) complete removal of back-up reinforcers ("Points Only"); and (i) return to baseline conditions. The class was observed 5 days per week dueing a morning experimental period and several times per week in the afternoon as a measure of generalization. Additional measures of generalization included days when the token program was not in effect ("Off Days") and when the class was taught by a substitute teacher. Behavior was recorded according to an interval sampling observational code. The results showed that systematic feedback was effective in significantly reducing disruptiveness with even greater reductions resulting from the token program and the subsequent matching and fading phases. Decreased levels of disruptiveness were maintained throughout self-evaluation and the phases which followed. Decreased levels of disruption also generalized to afternoon sessions, to days when the experimental procedures were not in effect, and to self-evaluate, the class initially matched the teacher's ratings with about 50% accuracy. This gradually increased to consistently above 90% during the latter phases. The study demonstrated that retarded children can learn to accurately observe and veridically evaluate their own behavior, and that this has beneficial effects in terms of decreased disruptiveness.     

Challenging ‘Belief’ and the Evangelical Bias: Student Christianity in English Universities

Abstract

Popular and academic accounts of university-based religion tend to privilege evangelical Christianity, presented as a morally conservative, conversionist movement at odds with university contexts, which are widely assumed to be vehicles for a progressive Western modernity. This is especially the case in the UK, given the association of higher education with secularisation, yet virtually no research has studied this interface by examining the lives of students. This article discusses findings from the three-year project “Christianity and the University Experience in Contemporary England”, including a nation-wide survey of undergraduate students, in examining how the experience of university shapes on-campus expressions of Christian identity. We argue that a sizeable constituency of undergraduates self-identify as ‘Christian’, but evangelicals emerge not as the dominant majority, but as a vocal minority. The emerging internal complexity is masked by a public discourse that conceives of religion in terms of propositional belief and presents evangelicalism as its pre-eminent form.