父母情感温暖对儿童青少年学校投入的影响:有调节的中介模型

研究探索了青少年自我管理能力在父母情感温暖与学校投入之间的中介作用,以及学校氛围对上述中介效应的调节作用。采用父母情感温暖量表、青少年自我管理量表、学校氛围量表和学校投入量表对1033名中小学生进行测查。结果表明:(1)父母情感温暖可以正向预测学校投入;(2)自我管理在其中起中介作用,即父母情感温暖可以通过自我管理间接影响学校投入;(3)父母情感温暖影响学校投入的有调节的中介模型成立,其中学校氛围在前半段和后半段路径中均起调节作用,但作用有所不同。     

Bayesian Diagnostics of Hidden Markov Structural Equation Models with Missing Data

Cocaine is a type of drug that functions to increase the availability of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. However, cocaine dependence or abuse is highly related to an increased risk of psychiatric disorders and deficits in cognitive performance, attention, and decision-making abilities. Given the chronic and persistent features of drug addiction, the progression of abstaining from cocaine often evolves across several states, such as addiction to, moderate dependence on, and swearing off cocaine. Hidden Markov models (HMMs) are well suited to the characterization of longitudinal data in terms of a set of unobservable states, and have increasingly been used to uncover the dynamic heterogeneity in progressive diseases or activities. However, the existence of outliers or influential points may misidentify the hidden states and distort the associated inference. In this study, we develop a Bayesian local influence procedure for HMMs with latent variables in the presence of missing data. The proposed model enables us to investigate the dynamic heterogeneity of multivariate longitudinal data, reveal how the interrelationships among latent variables change from one state to another, and simultaneously conduct statistical diagnosis for the given data, model assumptions, and prior inputs. We apply the proposed procedure to analyze a dataset collected by the UCLA center for advancing longitudinal drug abuse research. Several outliers or influential points that seriously influence estimation results are identified and removed. The proposed procedure also discovers the effects of treatment and individuals’ psychological problems on cocaine use behavior and delineates their dynamic changes across the cocaine-addiction states.     

The failing measurement of attitudes: How semantic determinants of individual survey responses come to replace measures of attitude strength

The traditional understanding of data from Likert scales is that the quantifications involved result from measures of attitude strength. Applying a recently proposed semantic theory of survey response, we claim that survey responses tap two different sources: a mixture of attitudes plus the semantic structure of the survey. Exploring the degree to which individual responses are influenced by semantics, we hypothesized that in many cases, information about attitude strength is actually filtered out as noise in the commonly used correlation matrix. We developed a procedure to separate the semantic influence from attitude strength in individual response patterns, and compared these results to, respectively, the observed sample correlation matrices and the semantic similarity structures arising from text analysis algorithms. This was done with four datasets, comprising a total of 7,787 subjects and 27,461,502 observed item pair responses. As we argued, attitude strength seemed to account for much information about the individual respondents. However, this information did not seem to carry over into the observed sample correlation matrices, which instead converged around the semantic structures offered by the survey items. This is potentially disturbing for the traditional understanding of what survey data represent. We argue that this approach contributes to a better understanding of the cognitive processes involved in survey responses. In turn, this could help us make better use of the data that such methods provide.     

Dissociation of reward and effort sensitivity in methcathinone‐induced Parkinsonism

Methcathinone‐induced Parkinsonism is a recently described extrapyramidal syndrome characterized by globus pallidus and substantia nigra lesions, which provides a unique model of basal ganglia dysfunction. We assessed motivated behaviour in this condition using a novel cost‐benefit decision‐making task, in which participants decided whether it was worth investing effort for reward. Patients showed a dissociation between reward and effort sensitivity, such that pallidonigral complex dysfunction caused them to become less sensitive to rewards, while normal sensitivity to effort costs was maintained.     

How Does More Attention to Subjective Well-Being Affect Subjective Well-Being?

There is an ongoing debate as to whether pursuing happiness is beneficial for people’s subjective well-being (SWB). To address this question, we tested whether attention to SWB – measured by participation in SWB surveys – is related to experienced SWB in two longitudinal studies. The initial study was conducted from November to December 2013 (N?=?129), and the replication study, three years later from November to December 2016 (N?=?120). The studies include two groups: one group (the control group) answered three SWB surveys over 4 weeks, and the other group (the experimental group) followed the same procedure but additionally tracked their SWB in detail using the experience sampling method four times a day and the day reconstruction method once a day using a smartphone application for two weeks to heighten their attention to their SWB. Both studies show higher SWB scores at later measurements compared to the first ones.     

Fast similarities: efficiency advantages of similarity-focused comparisons

People constantly have to make efficient use of their limited cognitive resources. Recently, T. Mussweiler and K. Epstude (2009) demonstrated that comparative thinking simplifies information processing and increases the efficiency of judgment. However, there are different types of comparative thinking. While comparing 2 entities, people may focus on either similarities or dissimilarities between target and standard. The authors propose that these 2 comparative thinking styles differ in their efficiency. Specifically, the authors hypothesize that comparisons with a focus on similarities lead to more focused information processing and faster judgments than comparisons with a dissimilarity focus. In line with these hypotheses, the authors demonstrate that participants are indeed faster at judging the similarity of 2 stimuli (Study 1) and that they search for less target information in a comparative judgment task (Study 2) if they focus on similarities rather than dissimilarities. Focusing on similarities thus appears to be the more efficient comparative thinking style.     

Selective effects of motor expertise in mental body rotation tasks: comparing object-based and perspective transformations

Brain imaging studies provide strong evidence for the involvement of the human mirror system during the observation of complex movements, depending on the individual's motor expertise. Here, we ask the question whether motor expertise not only affects perception while observing movements, but also benefits perception while solving mental rotation tasks. Specifically, motor expertise should only influence the performance in mental body rotation tasks (MBRT) with left-right judgment, evoking a perspective transformation, whereas motor expertise should not affect the MBRT with same-different judgment, evoking an object-related transformation. Participants with and without motor expertise for rotational movements were tested in these two conditions in the MBRT. Results showed that motor experience selectively affected performance in the MBRT with the left-right judgment, but not with same-different judgment. More precisely, motor expertise only benefited performance when human figures were presented in (for non-experts) unfamiliar, upside-down body orientations.     

Leadership and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: OCB-Specific Meanings as Mediators

Purpose  

This study seeks to examine how perceived organizational instrumentality (the extent to which employees believe that OCB contributes to the functionality and effectiveness of their work unit or organization) and perceived individual instrumentality (the extent to which employees believe that OCB is important to their own interests) relate to employee engagement in OCB and how these perceptions mediate the effects of leadership on OCB.     

Psychoanalytische Kurzzeittherapie f��r Kinder von 4 bis 10?Jahren

Depressive disorders in childhood are not easily identifiable as distinct nosologic entities because of high comorbidity and developmental specificities of their appearance. Psychopathologic developments show that early recognition and prevention of depressive disturbances have a high relevance in health care. In the following article the authors present the basic principles of the psychoanalytic short-term therapy (PaKT) for the treatment of affective disturbances and emotional symptoms in childhood which they worked out as therapy guidelines in form of a manual.