Enacted Ebola Stigma and Health-related Quality of Life in Post Ebola Epidemic: A Psychosocial Mediation Framework Through Social Support,Self-Efficacy,and Coping

Applied Research in Quality of Life - On-site experiences and reports have shown that the multiple outbreaks of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) resulted in...     

Career Adapt-Abilities Scale in a French-speaking Swiss sample: Psychometric properties and relationships to personality and work engagement

The aim of this study was to analyze the psychometric properties of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS) in a French-speaking Swiss sample and its relationship with personality dimensions and work engagement. The heterogeneous sample of 391 participants (M_age = 39.59, SD = 12.30) completed the CAAS-International and a short version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. To assess personality dimensions, participants completed either the Zuckerman–Kuhlman–Aluja Personality Questionnaire (n = 283) or the NEO-FFI-R (n = 108). The internal consistencies for the four subscales and total scores of the CAAS ranged from good to excellent, and skewness and kurtosis values indicated that scores were normally distributed. Gender differences and correlations with age were small or negligible. Several CFA models confirmed the factor structure of the French version of the CAAS-International, with loadings very similar to the ones observed for the international form. Adaptability was related to different personality dimensions, particularly neuroticism and conscientiousness, and also to work engagement. When predicting work engagement, career adaptability had a significant incremental validity over personality dimensions. Finally, career adaptability partially moderated the relationship between personality and work engagement, suggesting that career adaptability also contributes to regulating the expression of personality dispositions.     

Semantic similarity, predictability, and models of sentence processing

The effects of word predictability and shared semantic similarity between a target word and other words that could have taken its place in a sentence on language comprehension are investigated using data from a reading time study, a sentence completion study, and linear mixed-effects regression modeling. We find that processing is facilitated if the different possible words that could occur in a given context are semantically similar to each other, meaning that processing is affected not only by the nature of the words that do occur, but also the relationships between the words that do occur and those that could have occurred. We discuss possible causes of the semantic similarity effect and point to possible limitations of using probability as a model of cognitive effort.     

The benefits and costs of comparisons in a novel object categorization task: Interactions with development

We investigated how children use within- or between-category comparisons to generalize novel names for novel objects on the basis of a nonsalient dimension (texture) rather than a salient one (shape). Previous studies have not experimentally addressed the costs associated with comparisons. We conjectured that increasing the number of stimuli to be compared (and thus, converging evidence in favor of the target texture-based generalization), might not necessarily be beneficial, especially in young children (3- to 4-year-olds vs. 5- to 6-year-olds). Our results showed that more evidence in favor of texture (i.e., more within-category exemplars sharing the same texture) did not linearly increase texture-based choices in the same way for younger and older children. They also revealed that between-category comparisons gave rise to texture-based generalizations in both age groups. Overall, our results show that even though within- and between-category comparisons contribute to generalizations based on texture, they also generate cognitive constraints that interact with age.     

Dimensionality of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Its Relationships With the Three-and the Five-Factor Personality Models

The interpersonal correlates of the Guilt Inventory (Kugler &; Jones, 1992), which yields scores for state guilt, trait guilt, and moral standards, were assessed. Data collection addressed three issues including the relationships among Guilt Inventory scores and measures of: (a) interpersonal emotions and traits (e.g., shyness, self-consciousness, anger, etc.); (b) the social support network; and (c) ratings of trait guilt, moral standards, and relevant adjectives by friends and family members. Results indicated that trait and state guilt scores were significantly related to various interpersonal measures, most particularly, depression, anxiety, shyness, and loneliness, but only modestly related to satisfaction with social support. Moral standards were generally unrelated to these variables. Others tended to rate participants higher on trait guilt negatively (e.g., higher on contemptuous, angry, guilty, etc.), and participants higher on moral standards in socially acceptable terms (e.g., higher on prompt, self-reliant, moral, and religious). Results are interpreted in view of the frequently cited distinction between social and nonsocial emotions.     

The role of specificity in the lexical encoding of participants

In addition to information about phonology, morphology and syntax, lexical entries contain semantic information about participants (e.g., Agent). However, the traditional criteria for determining how much participant information is lexically encoded have proved unreliable. We have proposed two semantic criteria (obligatoriness and selectivity) that jointly identify the participants that are lexically encoded in verbs. We tested whether one of these criteria, semantic selectivity, makes psychologically real distinctions between participant information that is lexically encoded and participant information that is not. We examined how readers integrated syntactically optional WH-constituents in filler-gap sentences when the participant information conveyed by the WH-filler was specific to a restricted class of verbs (i.e., source locations) and when it was not (i.e., event locations). Our results provide support for the role of specificity in the lexical encoding of participant information of syntactically optional constituents.     

Letter position information and printed word perception: the relative-position priming constraint

Six experiments apply the masked priming paradigm to investigate how letter position information is computed during printed word perception. Primes formed by a subset of the target's letters facilitated target recognition as long as the relative position of letters was respected across prime and target (e.g., "arict" vs. "acirt" as primes for the target "apricot"). Priming effects were not influenced by whether or not absolute, length-dependent position was respected (e.g., "a-ric-t" vs. "arict"/"ar-i-ct"). Position of overlap of relative-position primes (e.g., apric-apricot; ricot-apricot; arict-apricot) was found to have little influence on the size of priming effects, particularly in conditions (i.e., 33 ms prime durations) where there was no evidence for phonological priming. The results constrain possible schemes for letter position coding.