Relieving career anxiety and indecision: the role of undergraduate students’ perceived control and faculty affiliations

As educators and mentors, we often focus on helping undergraduate students make career decisions. However, there is also value in helping alleviate career anxiety and indecision, both of which impede decision-making and are not automatically resolved once a decision is made. This research examined the role of individual differences (age, gender, and perceived control) and learning environment variables (year in university, participation in an orientation program, and faculty affiliations) as predictors of undergraduates’ (n = 844) career-related anxiety and indecision. Traditional individual difference variables like age and gender had little effect whereas perceived control (primary and secondary) predicted lower levels of career anxiety and indecision. The outcomes were not influenced by environmental factors such as year in university or completion of an orientation program, but students’ self-reported faculty affiliation had significant effects. Students who were not affiliated with any specific faculty reported more indecision than students in arts, science, and professional faculties. Likewise, students in professional faculties had less career anxiety and career indecision than arts students. The implications of these results for potential interventions and future research are discussed.     

Prior experience modifies acquisition trajectories via response–strategy sampling

Animal Cognition - Few studies have considered how signal detection parameters evolve during acquisition periods. We addressed this gap by training mice with differential prior experience in a...     

Thanks,congratulations and publishing useful research

This editorial covers the types and styles of papers European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology publishes and an examination of how to make work and organizational psychology research more useful to society.     

A daily diary study of coping in the context of the job demands-control-support model

We examined one of the processes thought to underpin Karasek and Theorell’s job demands-control-support model (1990). This is that control and support accentuate better well-being by fostering problem-focused coping with work demands. We also examined whether other forms of coping implemented through control and support are related to indicators of well-being. In a daily diary study of 29 workers in a public hospital, we found higher levels of subsequent goal attainment were associated with problem-focused coping implemented by executing control. Problem-focused coping implemented by eliciting support was associated with higher concurrent and subsequent levels of pleasant affect. We found other forms of coping were also associated with affect and goal attainment. The results have implications for elaboration of the DCS model.     

Investigating Perceptions of Students to a Peer-Based Academic Integrity Presentation Provided by Residence Dons

This study investigated students’ (n?=?819) perceptions following a prepared, common presentation regarding academic integrity provided by their residence dons. This peer instruction study utilized both quantitative and qualitative analyses of survey data within a pre-test post-test design. Overall, students reported gains in knowledge, as well as confidence in their knowledge of academic integrity. Notably, students reported increases in their personal value for academic integrity after participating in the presentations. Overall, the quality and content of the presentations were judged positively, and participants’ ratings of the presentation were predictive of increases in personal value of academic integrity, as well as self-reported knowledge and confidence gains. Qualitative analyses supported that the key ideas in the presentation served as the focal material for discussion, but also introduced specific topics that students wanted to explore in greater depth.     

Direct versus indirect tests of memory: Directed forgetting meets the generation effect

Subjects read 20 words and generated 20 others from definitions during a 40-item study phase. Production of each word was followed by an instruction to remember or to forget that word. In free recall, a direct test of memory, words that had been generated were recalled much better than words that had been read. The remember-forget instructional manipulation affected read words but not generated words. In speeded word reading, an indirect test of memory, all studied words showed priming, but read words showed more priming than generated words. Here, the effect of remember versus forget instructions appeared only for generated words. These dissociations of a direct and an indirect test indicate that two powerful encoding manipulations affect separable processes to which these tests are differentially sensitive.     

An ethics perspective on transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and human neuromodulation

This paper concerns the ethics of human neuromodulation using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). We examine the challenges of modulating the brain with TMS through the research ethics lens and in clinical medicine for treating frank pathology, primarily in psychiatric diseases. We also consider contemporary issues raised in the neuroethics literature about managing unexpected findings, and relate these to TMS and to other frontier neurotechnology that is becoming openly available in the public domain. We argue that safety and informed consent are of paramount importance for TMS, but that personal values and sociocultural factors must also be considered when examining the promise of this technology and applications that ought to be highlighted for extra precautions.     

Young children make scale errors when playing with dolls

Prior research (DeLoache, Uttal & Rosengren, 2004) has documented that 18- to 30-month-olds occasionally make scale errors: they attempt to fit their bodies into or onto miniature objects (e.g. a chair) that are far too small for them. The current study explores whether scale errors are limited to actions that directly involve the child's body. We investigated whether children would also make scale errors with a doll and objects that were much too small for the doll (e.g. a chair, a bed). Many participants did try to fit the doll into or onto the miniature objects. Thus, the previously documented phenomenon of scale errors extends to situations in which the relevant size difference is between two objects. This finding supports the view that scale errors occur when visual information about object size fails to influence the decision to act on an object. The results are discussed in terms of the use of visual information for the planning and control of actions.