Specific Effect of Modeling Ion Young Children’s Word Productions

The Psychological Record - Effects of object-name contiguity on word production were examined in 11/2- to 2-yr-old children. Two objects and two spoken names were presented in each of three...     

Development of the Connectedness to Treatment Setting Scale for Children with Cancer and Their Parents

Treatment for pediatric cancer requires periodic and long hospital admissions. The intensity and frequency of the interactions taking place in the treatment setting indicate that this is a context to which children and their families can feel connected. This study’s main goal was to develop the Connectedness to Treatment Setting Scale (CTSS-Pediatric Cancer), a 10-item scale assessing children’s and parents’ connectedness to the health setting where children receive cancer treatment. Participants were 128 dyads of children receiving treatment at two Portuguese public hospitals and their parents. Two exploratory factor analyses with children’s and parents’ data separately and a dyadic confirmatory factor analysis with the whole sample supported a second-order factorial structure of the CTSS-Pediatric Cancer, where three dimensions (Sense of Belonging, Comfort and Emotional Care) loaded onto a total score of connectedness. Findings suggest that the CTSS-Pediatric Cancer is a valid and useful assessment measure.     

The threat simulation theory of the evolutionary function of dreaming: Evidence from dreams of traumatized children

The threat simulation theory of dreaming (TST) () states that dream consciousness is essentially an ancient biological defence mechanism, evolutionarily selected for its capacity to repeatedly simulate threatening events. Threat simulation during dreaming rehearses the cognitive mechanisms required for efficient threat perception and threat avoidance, leading to increased probability of reproductive success during human evolution. One hypothesis drawn from TST is that real threatening events encountered by the individual during wakefulness should lead to an increased activation of the system, a threat simulation response, and therefore, to an increased frequency and severity of threatening events in dreams. Consequently, children who live in an environment in which their physical and psychological well-being is constantly threatened should have a highly activated dream production and threat simulation system, whereas children living in a safe environment that is relatively free of such threat cues should have a weakly activated system. We tested this hypothesis by analysing the content of dream reports from severely traumatized and less traumatized Kurdish children and ordinary, non-traumatized Finnish children. Our results give support for most of the predictions drawn from TST. The severely traumatized children reported a significantly greater number of dreams and their dreams included a higher number of threatening dream events. The dream threats of traumatized children were also more severe in nature than the threats of less traumatized or non-traumatized children.     

Optimal matching analysis in career research: A review and some best-practice recommendations

Optimal matching is a method for the analysis of sequential data. It allows researchers to detect patterns in career sequences or occupational trajectories. We first give a brief introduction to the method and review the existing career literature that employs optimal matching. To examine which data properties are required for optimal matching analysis, we conducted Monte Carlo simulations of career sequences with varying parameters for sequence length, sample size and missing items. We find that sequence length is the relevant factor for correct results, while sample size does not substantially affect result quality. Another important finding is that sequences with up to 30% elements missing can be used for optimal matching analysis. We also show which settings for the optimal matching procedure deliver the best results.     

Bounded by Disbelief: How Atheists in the United States Differentiate themselves from Religious Believers

Recent empirical studies have revealed that religious believers tend to hold atheists and other religious doubters in low regard. This article examines how atheists in turn negotiate and construct the social and symbolic boundaries between atheists and religious believers. I draw on ethnographic and interview data to explore the lenses through which atheists view religion, religious believers, and the boundary between religious believers and non-believers. I find that atheists participate in boundary work to construct difference between religious believers and non-believers. However, atheists see greater social distance between themselves and some groups of religious believers than they do in relation to other groups, constructing religious leaders and devout adherents of particular religions as especially different. Atheists’ constructions of religious believers also vary in response to their individual experiences with religious people. The analysis illuminates the complexity of boundary work among members of a minority group.     

Self-esteem,motivation and school attendance among sub-Saharan African girls: A self-determination theory perspective

Sub-Saharan samples are severely under-represented in the psychological literature. Taking an ecological approach, the current study examines key propositions derived from self-determination theory in a sample of adolescent girls in Mozambique. As a framework theory, self-determination theory consists of six sub-theories. We test the main premises of two of these theories: organismic integration theory and basic psychological need theory. In line with organismic integration theory, we assess the role of intrinsic, extrinsic, introjected and identified motivation for school attendance. We also test the possible moderating role of the ecological variable resource scarcity. The second part of the study focuses on the main premise of the basic psychological need sub-theory, which states that satisfaction of the needs for relatedness, competence and autonomy underlies intrinsic motivation, goal-directed behaviour (school attendance) and well-being (self-esteem). The study also assesses the moderation of resource scarcity in these relationships. Results provide support for both sub-theories of self-determination theory. Resource scarcity is not found to moderate the relationships between motivation and attendance or between need satisfaction and well-being, motivation and attendance. Implications for the universality claim of self-determination theory, as well as for the field of international development aid, are discussed.     

Resilience in Virtual Teams: Developing the Capacity to Bounce Back

Resilience, or the capacity to bounce back from adversity strengthened and more resourceful, can be considered an important quality of virtual teams in the contemporary working world. A team is the basic organizational unit many modern firms are composed of—and, the virtual ones are those conducting teamwork over distance using a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to accomplish an organizational task. Yet, we know little about how these teams with members who rarely meet in person can build resilience. We develop further the notion of resilience from the traditional focus on significant adversity to also include mundane yet crucial events that can become key for building resilience in virtual teams. Our study focuses on team dynamics and builds on an experimental research setting using a longitudinal, qualitative and interpretative research design to examine five anatomically similar, well-performing virtually working teams over their life cycle. Our findings show that team members in two out of the five teams engaged in specific reflection and action mechanisms—self-reflective practices, regulation of emotional expression, and engagement in concrete actions promoting team inclusion—that in turn helped these teams become more robust and prepared to face new adversities. Implications for practice and research are discussed.     

The ups and downs of social comparison: mechanisms of assimilation and contrast

Social comparisons influence self-evaluations in multiple ways. Sometimes self-evaluations are assimilated toward a given standard. At other times, they are contrasted away from the standard. On the basis of the selective accessibility model (T. Mussweiler, 2003a), the authors hypothesized that assimilation results if judges engage in the comparison process of similarity testing and selectively focus on similarities to the standard, whereas contrast occurs if judges engage in dissimilarity testing and selectively focus on differences. If these alternative comparison mechanisms are indeed at play, then assimilative and contrastive social comparisons should be accompanied by diverging informational foci on similarities versus differences. Results of 5 studies support this reasoning, demonstrating that assimilation results under conditions that foster similarity testing, whereas contrast occurs under conditions that foster dissimilarity testing. Furthermore, assimilative social comparisons are accompanied by a general informational focus on similarities, whereas contrastive comparisons are accompanied by a focus on differences.     

Identifying reading strategies using latent semantic analysis: Comparing semantic benchmarks

We explored methods of using latent semantic analysis (LSA) to identify reading strategies in students’ self-explanations that are collected as part of a Web-based reading trainer. In this study, college students self-explained scientific texts, one sentence at a time. LSA was used to measure the similarity between the self-explanations andsemantic benchmarks (groups of words and sentences that together represent reading strategies). Three types of semantic benchmarks were compared: content words, exemplars, and strategies. Discriminant analyses were used to classify global and specific reading strategies using the LSA cosines. All benchmarks contributed to the classification of general reading strategies, but the exemplars did the best in distinguishing subtle semantic differences between reading strategies. Pragmatic and theoretical concerns of using LSA are discussed.     

Attention bias towards personally relevant stimuli: the individual emotional Stroop task

The emotional Stroop task is a widely used method for investigating attentional bias towards stimuli due to mood or affect. In general, standardized stimuli are used, which might not be appropriate when investigating individual contextual frameworks. It was investigated whether words chosen to be related to individuals' personal life events would produce more pronounced Stroop interference (as an indicator of attentional bias) than stimuli without any personal relevance. Twenty-six nonclinical subjects, 20 female and 6 male, participated in the study. Mean age was 36.1 yr. (SD = 18.1). All were recruited by means of local advertising. Stimulus material consisted of four word types: personal words related to negative life events with and without current personal relevance, and negative and neutral words without any personal relevance. Words were presented in three blocks. Analysis of variance showed main effects for word type and blocks, with slower reactions in the personally relevant conditions than in the negative, or neutral conditions, and in response to the first blocks as opposed to the last. These findings indicate that regardless of the word valence, personally relevant stimuli evoke more pronounced Stroop interference than do stimuli without personal relevance.