Schemas Mediate the Link Between Procrastination and Depression: Results from the United States and Pakistan

The current study extended the Procrastination-Health model by examining a multiple mediation model, with two cognitive schemas (defectiveness; insufficient self-control) serving as mediators. The models were as follows: procrastination → defectiveness → depression; procrastination → insufficient self-control → depression. Participants included 412 (271 women, 141 men) United States (US) and 240 (107 women, 133 men) Pakistani college students, who responded via self-report questionnaires. In the US sample, results revealed a non-significant direct effect between procrastination and depression after consideration for the two cognitive schemas, suggesting the schemas completely mediated the model. Both defectiveness and insufficient self-control schemas were significant individual mediators. In the Pakistani model, results revealed a significant direct effect and indirect effect through the two cognitive schemas, indicating partial mediation. Only the indirect path through defectiveness schemas was significant in the Pakistani model. Given slight differences in the two models, a moderated-mediation model was analyzed to determine if the strength of the direct and indirect effects varied by nationality. The strength of the direct and indirect effects was not moderated by nationality. Overall, this is the first study to identify cognitive mediators in the procrastination-depression relationship. Such findings represent a significant extension of the Procrastination-Health model and offer some unique cognitive insights into culturally sensitive conceptualizations and treatments for depression.     

The role of delight in driving repurchase intentions

A channel differentiator for brick-and-mortar retail stores is the availability of salespeople to assist customers directly in their purchase decision. This research considers two aspects of customer interactions with retail salespeople that lead to perceptions of extraordinary service and enhance repurchase intentions: customer comfort and salesperson expertise. Retail customers desire value-added informational assistance from the salesperson to minimize ambiguity associated with the product and to reduce the risk associated with a purchase decision. A retail salesperson needs to make customers feel comfortable so that the customer will share specific needs during the interaction, and the salesperson can recommend appropriate products and services. Our findings reveal that while both customer comfort and salesperson expertise positively influence satisfaction with the salesperson and customer delight, only customer delight leads to repurchase intentions. While satisfaction is a commonly asserted goal for retailers; the present research suggests that in a transaction-based environment, elevated emotions such as customer delight represent a more powerful predictor of repurchase intentions. This research provides evidence of trainable salesperson behaviors that enhance customer perceptions of extraordinary service and offer firms an opportunity for significant performance gains.     

Effects of repetition on age differences in associative recognition

The study reported here examined the effect of repetition on age differences in associative recognition using a paradigm designed to encourage recollection at test. Young and older adults studied lists of unrelated word pairs presented one, two, four, or eight times. Test lists contained old (intact) pairs, pairs consisting of old words that had been studied with other partners (rearranged lures), and pairs consisting of two unstudied words (new lures). Participants gave old/new responses and then indicated whether their responses were based on details that they could recollect or on familiarity. Older adults exhibited an ironic effect of repetition—an increase in false alarms on rearranged lures with more study opportunities—whereas young adults did not. Older adults also claimed to recall details of the study episode for rearranged lures whose constituent words were presented more frequently, but this was not true for young adults. Although both young and older adults said that they based correct rejections of rearranged lures on memory for details of the study episode, this effect was stronger for young adults. The observed age differences are consistent with older adults having reduced use of recollection in associative recognition tasks.     

Parental Distress Tolerance in Three Periods of Child Development: The Moderating Role of Child Temperament

Emotion regulation (ER) is essential to everyday, normative functioning. One aspect of ER is distress tolerance—the ability to persist in goal-directed activities when experiencing aversive states. Despite an assumption that ER improves with age, very little is known about ER across parenthood. Emotion regulation may be taxed by parenthood with implications for negativity in the family environment. The purpose of the current study was to describe levels of distress tolerance across periods of parenthood and to evaluate child temperament as a moderator of the relationship between child’s age and parents’ distress tolerance. A total of 602 parents (66.3% female, M _age ? =?32.31 years, SD?=?7.07) whose eldest child belonged to one of three developmental periods (i.e., infancy, n?=?187; early childhood, n?=?214; late childhood, n?=?201) completed an online survey. While we found no evidence for a main effect of child’s age on parent distress tolerance, children’s negative affectivity moderated the association between period of parenthood and parent distress tolerance. Specifically, children who were higher in negative affectivity had parents who reported less distress tolerance between the developmental periods. The implications of the current study are discussed in the context of current and future research on emotional regulation among parents.     

Family Involvement in a Whole-School Bullying Intervention: Mothers’ and Fathers’ Communication and Influence with Children

Research indicates that involving families in school efforts to prevent and manage bullying behaviour is essential to success. Parents can influence their children's involvement in bullying situations by modelling positive social behaviour, offering advice about appropriate responses to bullying, and encouraging help-seeking. This paper reports family-related findings from the three-year group randomized control trial of the Friendly Schools Friendly Families (FSFF) intervention, which provided training and whole-school, classroom and family resources to build the capacity of schools to prevent bullying victimization and perpetration. Over 1400 parents and carers of Grades 2, 4 and 6 school students completed a survey at baseline and two post-tests. Parents exposed to the FSFF parent component received resources about ways to reduce bullying, build parenting skills and enhance parent–child communication; they also completed home activities with their children; and were encouraged to engage with their children’s school to reduce bullying. Mothers and fathers reported significant increases in the frequency of discussions with their child about bullying. Mothers were more likely than fathers to give pro-social, passive and help-seeking advice compared to fathers, who were more likely to encourage their child to ‘fight back’. The intervention improved fathers’ perceptions of their influence on children’s responses to being bullied. These results highlight the importance of working with both male and female caregivers when addressing children’s bullying behaviour. The findings also demonstrate that a parent intervention can have a positive impact on parent–child communication about bullying when it is an integral part of a whole-school approach.     

Evaluating everyday explanations

People frequently rely on explanations provided by others to understand complex phenomena. A fair amount of attention has been devoted to the study of scientific explanation, and less on understanding how people evaluate naturalistic, everyday explanations. Using a corpus of diverse explanations from Reddit’s “Explain Like I’m Five” and other online sources, we assessed how well a variety of explanatory criteria predict judgments of explanation quality. We find that while some criteria previously identified as explanatory virtues do predict explanation quality in naturalistic settings, other criteria, such as simplicity, do not. Notably, we find that people have a preference for complex explanations that invoke more causal mechanisms to explain an effect. We propose that this preference for complexity is driven by a desire to identify enough causes to make the effect seem inevitable.     

Examining the Prevalence and Predictors of Injury From Adolescent Dating Violence

Medical needs of youth who experience dating violence are not well understood because of limited past research examining the prevalence and predictors of injuries and medical help seeking. To address these gaps, the current study described the prevalence and predictors of injuries from dating violence from grades 8 through 12 in a large sample of youth. Results indicate that one third to one half of youth who experienced any physical and/or sexual dating violence also sustained an injury. Prevalence of injury was highest in the 8th grade and was significantly higher for females than for males across grades 8 through 11. Youth who experienced greater amounts of violent victimization in their relationships (physical, sexual, and psychological) were at the highest risk for injury. Results also suggest that victims at highest risk for injury are girls, White youth, those experiencing multiple types of violence, and those who also engage in perpetration. Given the high prevalence of injury among youth who report dating violence, healthcare professionals may be in a unique position to screen and counsel youth about dating violence. Because the highest prevalence of injury occurred before high school, prevention programs should start early and selected prevention may be used for youth at highest risk for injury.     

Preschoolers search for hidden objects

The issue of whether young children use spatio-temporal information (e.g., movement of objects through time and space) and/or contact-mechanical information (e.g., interaction between objects) to search for a hidden object was investigated. To determine whether one cue can have priority over the other, a dynamic event that put these cues into conflict was created, with only spatio-temporal information being valid. The 3-year-olds used in the study were found to use the valid spatio-temporal cue exclusively and seemed to ignore the contact-mechanical cue. Both search behavior and eye tracking during the event support the view of a sophisticated sensitivity to the validity of a cue in indicating a target’s hidden location.