Emotions while writing about emotional and non-emotional topics

Research on the effects of expressive writing about emotional experiences and traumatic events has a long history in the affective and social sciences. However, very little is known about the incidence and impact of affective states when the writing activities are not explicitly emotional or are less emotionally charged. By integrating goal-appraisal and network theories of affect within cognitive process models of writing, we hypothesize that writing triggers a host of affective states, some of which are tied to the topic of the essays (topic affective states), while others are more closely related to the cognitive processes involved in writing (process affective states). We tested this hypothesis with two experiments involving fine-grained tracking of affect while participants wrote short essays on topics that varied in emotional intensity including topics used in standardized tests, to socially charged issues, and personal emotional experiences. The results indicated that (a) affect collectively accounted for a majority of the observations compared to neutral, (b) boredom, engagement/flow, anxiety, frustration, and happiness were most frequent affective states, (c) there was evidence for a proposed, but not mutually exclusive, distinction between process and topic affective states, (d) certain topic affective states were predictive of the quality of the essays, irrespective of the valence of these states, and (e) individual differences in scholastic aptitude, writing apprehension, and exposure to print correlated with affect frequency in expected directions. Implications of our findings for research focused on monitoring affect during everyday writing activities are discussed.     

The Temporal and Dynamic Nature of Self-Regulatory Processes During Independent and Externally Assisted Hypermedia Learning

This study examined the temporal and dynamic nature of students’ self-regulatory processes while learning about the circulatory system with hypermedia. A total of 74 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions: independent learning or externally assisted learning. Participants in the independent learning condition used a hypermedia environment to learn about the circulatory system on their own, while participants in the externally assisted condition used the same hypermedia environment, but were given prompts and feedback from a human tutor during the session to facilitate their self-regulatory behavior. Previously published pretest–posttest shifts toward more mature understanding of the circulatory system indicate that the externally assisted condition leads to greater learning. The present article uses think-aloud data during learning to explore process issues in light of models of self-regulated learning and conditions of engagement that may affect those processes. Results indicate that access to a human tutor influences the deployment of regulatory processes, intervals of use, and temporal dependencies. For example, there is significantly more planning during the final time interval of the learning session in the externally assisted condition; students in both conditions deploy more learning strategies in the first and second time intervals, compared to the last two time intervals. Additionally, in the externally assisted condition participants were more likely to shift from planning to monitoring and less likely to shift from learning strategies to planning. We discuss theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues pertaining to these results, as well as implications for future research and the design of adaptive hypermedia systems.     

Do I belong?: it depends on when you ask

A feeling of belonging to an academic context is a critical determinant of academic achievement and persistence, particularly for students of color. Despite the fact that students of color are generally more susceptible to fluctuations in belonging uncertainty than White students, survey design can unintentionally mask this reality. We investigated whether context effects undermine the accurate assessment of belonging uncertainty in junior high and high school students (Study 1) and college students (Study 2). Considering one's ethnic identification (Study 1) and personal experiences with discrimination (Study 2) threatens sense of belonging in students of color, but not White students. Researchers should consider question order within surveys so as not to artificially mask belonging uncertainty in students of color.     

Work ethic and organizational commitment as conditions of unethical pro‐organizational behavior: Do engaged workers break the ethical rules?

Unethical pro‐organizational behaviors (UPB) are actions that break rules or established standards, but are undertaken for the purposes of helping the organization or coworkers. Although research has already examined the role of work ethic and organizational commitment in shaping employee behaviors, little is known about the reason for and antecedents of employees undertaking UPB. In a sample of 425 working adults from multiple industries, we tested whether work ethic and organizational commitment dimensions predict the readiness to undertake UPB. The time‐lagged study showed that the work ethics dimension “hard work,” and normative and affective organizational commitment, are positive predictors of UPB. The ethics dimensions “morality/ethics,” “delay of gratification,” “centrality of work” and “anti‐leisure attitudes” are negative predictors of UPB.     

Undernutrition during suckling and latent learning ability of rehabilitated adult male rats

The present report investigates the effects of early undernutrition on the latent learning ability of rehabilitated adult male rats in a simple maze task. Rats were undernourished during suckling by feeding their dams an 8% casein diet. Well-nourished dams received a 25% casein diet during the same period. Rats were weaned at 21 days of age and nutritionally rehabilitated until they became adults, when behavioral task was conducted. Under a nonappetitive condition, rats were exposed either to an open field or to a maze apparatus. They were thereafter deprived of water and tested in the maze apparatus. Both well-nourished and undernourished rats that had been previously exposed to the maze performed better than those exposed to the open field. Nutritional treatment had no effect on performance of either the latent learning or of the open-field groups. These results suggest that rehabilitated adult rats are able to learn about the environment when no immediate reinforcement is involved. The discrepancy between our findings and results reported by others may be due to differences in task complexity and/or perhaps to the fact that nutritional rehabilitation also plays a role in reversing some of the deleterious effects of early undernutrition on learning ability of rats.     

Mind wandering during film comprehension: The role of prior knowledge and situational interest

This study assessed the occurrence and factors that influence mind wandering (MW) in the domain of film comprehension. The cascading model of inattention assumes that a stronger mental representation (i.e., a situation model) during comprehension results in less MW. Accordingly, a suppression hypothesis suggests that MW would decrease as a function of having the knowledge of the plot of a film prior to viewing, because the prior-knowledge would help to strengthen the situation model during comprehension. Furthermore, an interest-moderation hypothesis would predict that the suppression effect of prior-knowledge would only emerge when there was interest in viewing the film. In the current experiment, 108 participants either read a short story that depicted the plot (i.e., prior-knowledge condition) or read an unrelated story of equal length (control condition) prior to viewing the short film (32.5 minutes) entitled The Red Balloon. Participants self-reported their interest in viewing the film immediately before the film was presented. MW was tracked using a self-report method targeting instances of MW with metacognitive awareness. Participants in the prior-knowledge condition reported less MW compared with the control condition, thereby supporting the suppression hypothesis. MW also decreased over the duration of the film, but only for those with prior-knowledge of the film. Finally, prior-knowledge effects on MW were only observed when interest was average or high, but not when interest was low.     

Latent Profiles of Comorbid Depression as Predictors of PTSD Treatment Outcome

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) frequently co-occurs with major depressive disorder, and empirically supported PTSD treatments consistently improve depression. However, both diagnoses are heterogeneous and specific patterns of symptom overlap may be related to worse treatment outcome. Two hundred individuals with chronic PTSD participated in a doubly randomized preference trial comparing prolonged exposure and sertraline. Latent Profile Analysis was used to identify classes based on PTSD and depression symptoms prior to starting treatment. A three-class model best fit the data, with a high depression and PTSD severity class (distressed), a moderate depression and low PTSD avoidance class (depressive), and a low depression and high PTSD avoidance class (avoidant). The avoidant class showed the lowest rates of major depressive disorder diagnosis and transdiagnostic vulnerabilities to depression. Patients in the distressed class experienced more robust PTSD treatment response, with no differences between prolonged exposure and sertraline. These findings highlight the role of avoidance in nondepressed PTSD presentations while also demonstrating that co-occurring depression is not contraindicated in evidence-based PTSD treatment.     

Executive Functions in School‐age Children: Influence of Age,Gender, School Type and Parental Education

Summary: This study aimed to evaluate whether age, gender, type of school and parental education could predict executive performance in school‐age children. Unconstrained, phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks (n = 402), as well as the Hayling Sentence Completion Test (n = 275) and the Random Number Generation task (n = 274) were administered to typically developing 6‐to‐12‐year‐old children. A hierarchical regression analysis was performed (p ≤ 0.05). The most significant explanatory models involved child age and parental education, as well as these two variables in addition to the type of school attended by the child. The main individual predictors of executive performance were age and school type. These results may be related to structural and functional alterations in the brain, an increased repertoire of cognitive strategies, the effects of education and the intensity of environmental cognitive stimulation. These findings may contribute to the development of stimulation and intervention programs for EF in clinical and educational settings.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The relationship between childhood abuse and adult personality disorder symptoms

This study assessed personality disorder symptomatology in a community sample of healthy adults without diagnosable DSM-IV-TR Axis I psychiatric disorders who reported a history of childhood abuse. Twenty-eight subjects with a history of moderate to severe physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse according to the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire were compared to 33 subjects without an abuse history on symptoms of personality disorders. Subjects in the Abuse group were more likely to report subclinical symptoms of paranoid, narcissistic, borderline, antisocial, obsessive compulsive, passive-aggressive, and depressive personality disorders. These findings link reports of childhood abuse with symptoms of personality disorders in the absence of Axis I psychiatric disorders in a community sample of healthy adults.