Elevation and mentoring: An experimental assessment of causal relations

Mentoring is a prosocial behavior in which an experienced person guides someone with less experience. Elevation refers to the responses elicited when a person witnesses others upholding the highest standards of moral virtue. Three experimental studies bring these two domains together. For all three studies, participants were randomly assigned to either read a story of someone exhibiting moral excellence or to a control condition. Participants in the elevation condition reported feeling more elevated, more positive attitudes toward mentoring, less negative attitudes toward mentoring, greater intentions to become a mentor (Study 1); an increased proclivity to gather information about becoming a mentor (Study 2a); and, an increased tendency to engage in mentoring directly via submitting advice to students (Study 2b). In their totality, the current studies link another prosocial outcome with elevation and demonstrate a condition under which individuals are more likely to be motivated to become a mentor.     

Dead Babies: Response to Orna Guralnik’s Paper

The author’s response to Orna Guralnik’s paper focuses on the patient’s dreams as potent carriers of disavowed histories, carrying within themselves the potential of symbolizing for the first time the unspeakable truths that are repressed and see their first shimmer of light in nocturnal dreams. In her discussion, the author links Freud’s concept of hypermnesic dreams to Lacan’s concept of the Real as an initial attempt to give words to the traumatic.     

Psychosocial Stressors of Sickle Cell Disease on Adult Patients in Cameroon

Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is a debilitating illness that affects quality of life. Studies of the psychosocial burden of SCD on patients have been rarely reported in Africa. We used a quantitative method, with face-to-face administered questionnaires, to study indices of psychosocial stressors on adult SCD patients in Cameroon. The questionnaire included a 36-item stress factors scale evaluating general perceptions of stress and five main stressors’ domain: disease factors, hospital factors, financial factors, family factors and quality of personal-life factors. Items pertaining to psychosocial stressors involved four response options with increasing severity: 0, 1, 2 or 3. Non-parametric tests were used for analysis. The majority of the 83 participants were urban dwellers, female, 20–30 years old, single, unemployed, with at least a secondary or tertiary education. Median age at diagnosis was 100 months; 47.8 % had >3 painful vaso-oclusive crises annually. Only 4.8 % had been treated with hydroxyurea. The majority reported moderate to severe difficulty coping with SCD. The “degree of clinical severity” category displayed the highest median score (2.0), while familial stressors showed the lowest (0.8). Being female, married, with low education level, an additional affected sibling and low direct income were significantly associated with specific stressors’ categories. In Cameroon, there is an urgent need to implement policies that ensure affordable access to health-care and practices to reduce SCD morbidity and improve patients’ quality of life.     

Children's attributions for peer victimization: A social comparison approach

A social comparison framework was used to examine the relations between children's attributions for victimization and adjustment. In Study One, 192 nine-to ten-year-old children were asked why someone may pick on them. Results revealed attributions reflecting five causes of victimization that could be reliably sorted by direction of social comparison: (a) jealous peer (downward), (b) mutual antipathy (horizontal), (c) being different from each other (horizontal), (d) personal behavior (upward) and (e) being uncool (upward). Children's responses were used to create an attribution measure that was administered to 206 eight-to eleven-year-old children. Results were consistent with the social comparison hypothesis such that peer jealousy was uniquely associated with lower levels of loneliness and greater acceptance whereas personal behavior and not being uncool were correlated with greater loneliness and lower perceived acceptance and self-esteem. Findings supported the usefulness of a social comparison framework for understanding associations among attributions and adjustment.     

Technology and At-Risk Young Readers and their Classrooms

This study examined the ways in which 18 first-grade teachers and their students in 11 high-risk urban schools began to use literacy-focused technology. The goal of the study was to observe the technology in use by the students, to observe the classroom dynamics and teachers’ instructional choices centered around technology use, to look at student learning, and to investigate student and teacher perceptions and beliefs as they began to use technology for literacy. Analyses of classroom and pupil observational data and of student performance data indicated positive effects of the literacy technology on classroom instruction and student literacy achievement. Further, interviews of students and teachers confirmed that the literacy technology was perceived as engaging and effective by both groups of stakeholders. The study also generated implications for further research and practice in schools struggling to make change.     

Finding a Book for Jamal: Recommending Text Types for at-Home Reading of Beginning Readers Who Struggle

The purpose of this study was to determine what types of texts would best support the at-home reading for a first grader who struggled with reading. Results of running records for 12 books of varying text types indicated he used visual cues, picture cues, and his schema as he attempted to read. Ten of 12 of the texts were hard for him to read. Most interesting about his transactions with the books were his spontaneous embedded oral narratives (EONs)—similar to think-alouds—which he constructed primarily from the illustrations. Furthermore, in contrast to little books, trade books encouraged EONs that were more like the language used in the books. Recommendations for choosing books for at-home reading and for parent support of readers who struggle are included.     

Proactive Customer Service Performance: Relationships With Individual,Task, and Leadership Variables

Despite the increasing interest in specific forms of proactive employee behavior in domains such as career development and organizational change, little research has investigated proactive behavior in the realm of customer service. Based on a review of the literatures on proactive behavior, customer service, and job performance, this study investigated relationships between a relevant set of individual and situational predictor variables and proactive customer service performance (i.e., individual service employees' self-started, long-term-oriented, and persistent service behavior that goes beyond explicitly prescribed requirements). Field survey data from 186 supervisor-subordinate dyads working in a large financial services organization demonstrated that proactive service performance, as rated by supervisors, was factorially distinct from prescribed task performance. Multiple regression analysis revealed that proactive service performance was significantly and positively associated with employee ratings of trait personal initiative, affective organizational commitment, task complexity, and participative leadership. The task and leadership variables explained incremental variance in proactive service performance beyond the individual predictors.     

Perceived racial/ethnic discrimination, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and health risk behaviors among Mexican American adolescents

Utilizing the concept of race-based traumatic stress, this study tested whether posttraumatic stress symptoms explain the process by which perceived discrimination is related to health risk behaviors among Mexican American adolescents. One hundred ten participants were recruited from a large health maintenance organization in Northern California. Mediational analyses indicated that adolescents who perceived more discrimination reported worse posttraumatic stress symptoms, controlling for covariates. In turn, adolescents who experienced heightened posttraumatic stress symptoms reported more alcohol use, more other drug use, involvement in more fights, and more sexual partners. Perceived discrimination was also directly related to involvement in more fights. Results provide support for the notion of race-based traumatic stress, specifically, that perceived discrimination may be traumatizing for Mexican American adolescents. Counseling psychologists and counselors in schools and community settings should assess Mexican American adolescents for the effects of discrimination and provide appropriate interventions to reduce its negative emotional impact.     

Does the Amount of Participation in Afterschool Programs Relate to Developmental Outcomes? A Review of the Literature

Contrary to the findings from previous reviews we found little support for the general notion that greater amounts of participation in afterschool programs was related to academic, behavioral, or socio-emotional outcomes. However, some relationships did emerge depending on how participation was conceptualized and measured, and the methodology used to assess the relationship between participation and outcomes. For example, some benefits occurred when participants with high levels of participation were compared to non-participants, not when they were compared to other program participants. Several suggestions are offered to improve future research on the relationship between aspects of participation and developmental outcomes.