An investigation of cross‐national differences in positivity and job satisfaction

The present research examined the role of national differences in positivity as an explanation of cross‐national variation in job satisfaction (JS) ratings. National positivity values were derived from a sample of current employees by calculating the mean residual in a regression of global JS on mean facet satisfaction ratings. As predicted, the positivity values derived in the present research showed convergent validity with other indices of nation‐level positivity, and national differences in extraversion. National differences in positivity showed significant incremental associations with national differences in JS ratings after controlling for the effects of acquiescence, perceived differences in working conditions, and national development. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.     

The time course of semantic and syntactic processing in Chinese sentence comprehension: Evidence from eye movements

In the present study, we examined the time course of semantic and syntactic processing when Chinese is read. Readers’ eye movements were monitored, and the relation between a single-character critical word and the sentence context was manipulated such that three kinds of sentences were developed: (1) congruent, (2) those with a semantic violation, and (3) those with both a semantic and a syntactic violation. The eye movement data showed that the first-pass reading times were significantly longer for the target region in the two violation conditions than in the congruent condition. Moreover, the semantic + syntactic violation caused more severe disruption than did the pure semantic violation, as reflected by longer first-pass reading times for the target region and by longer go-past times for the target region and posttarget region in the former than in the latter condition. These results suggest that the effects of, at least, a semantic violation can be detected immediately by Chinese readers and that the processing of syntactic and semantic information is distinct in both first-pass and second-pass reading.     

Assessing the format of the presentation of text in developing a Reading Strategy Assessment Tool (R-SAT)

We are constructing a new computerized test of reading comprehension called the Reading Strategy Assessment Tool (R-SAT). R-SAT elicits and analyzes verbal protocols that readers generate in response to questions as they read texts. We examined whether the amount of information available to the reader when reading and answering questions influenced the extent to which R-SAT accounts for comprehension. We found that R-SAT was most predictive of comprehension when the readers did not have access to the text as they answered questions.     

Congruency effects in the letter search task: Semantic activation in the absence of priming

Semantic priming is typically eliminated when participants perform a letter search on the prime, suggesting that semantic activation is conditional upon one's attentional goals. However, in such studies, semantic activation (or the lack thereof) is not measured during the letter search task itself but, instead, is inferred on the basis of the responses given to a later target. In the present study, direct online evidence for semanticactivation was tested using words whose meaning should bias either a positive or a negative response (e.g.,present vs. absent). In Experiment 1, a semantic congruency effect was obtained, with faster responses when the word meaning matched the required response. Experiment 2 replicated the congruency effect while, simultaneously, showing the elimination of semantic priming. It is concluded that letter search does not affect the initiation of semantic activation. Possible accounts for the elimination of priming following letter search include activation-based suppression and transfer-inappropriate processing.     

Narcissism and romantic attraction: Evidence from a collectivistic culture

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between narcissism and romantic attraction in a collectivistic culture (i.e., Thailand). In Study 1, participants completed a measure of narcissism and rated their attraction to four potential romantic partners. There was an overall preference across participants for caring targets. Additionally, high narcissists were more attracted to admiring and high status targets than were low narcissists. A similar pattern of results was found in Study 2 with targets that were either high caring/low status or high status/low caring. Overall, caring in a partner was highly valued in a collectivistic culture, but narcissism still predicted attraction to targets who offered the potential for self-enhancement. These findings suggest that classically Western self-enhancement can be found in Eastern samples; however, to uncover these self-enhancement processes, researchers might need to use a personality variable such as narcissism.     

Transposed-letter effects in reading: evidence from eye movements and parafoveal preview

Three eye movement experiments were conducted to examine the role of letter identity and letter position during reading. Before fixating on a target word within each sentence, readers were provided with a parafoveal preview that differed in the amount of useful letter identity and letter position information it provided. In Experiments 1 and 2, previews fell into 1 of 5 conditions: (a) identical to the target word, (b) a transposition of 2 internal letters, (c) a substitution of 2 internal letters, (d) a transposition of the 2 final letters, or (e) a substitution of the 2 final letters. In Experiment 3, the authors used a further set of conditions to explore the importance of external letter positions. The findings extend previous work and demonstrate that transposed-letter effects exist in silent reading. These experiments also indicate that letter identity information can be extracted from the parafovea outside of absolute letter position from the first 5 letters of the word to the right of fixation. Finally, the results support the notion that exterior letters play important roles in visual word recognition.     

Implications of counterfactual structure for creative generation and analytical problem solving

In the present research, the authors hypothesized that additive counterfactual thinking mind-sets, activated by adding new antecedent elements to reconstruct reality, promote an expansive processing style that broadens conceptual attention and facilitates performance on creative generation tasks, whereas subtractive counter-factual thinking mind-sets, activated by removing antecedent elements to reconstruct reality, promote a relational processing style that enhances tendencies to consider relationships and associations and facilitates performance on analytical problem-solving tasks. A reanalysis of a published data set suggested that the counterfactual mind-set primes previously used in the literature tend to evoke subtractive counterfactuals. Studies 1 and 2 then demonstrated that subtractive counterfactual mind-sets enhanced performance on analytical problem-solving tasks relative to additive counterfactual mind-sets, whereas Studies 3 and 4 found that additive counterfactual mind-sets enhanced performance on creative generation tasks relative to subtractive counterfactual mind-sets.     

Psychological momentum: intuitive physics and naive beliefs

The present research examines psychological momentum (PM), a perceived force that lay intuition suggests influences performance. PM theory is proposed to account for how momentum perceptions arise, and four studies demonstrate the influence of lay intuitions about PM on expectations regarding performance outcomes. Study 1 establishes that individuals share intuitions about the types of events that precipitate PM, and Study 2 finds that defeating a rival increases momentum perceptions. Study 3 provides evidence for the lay belief that as more PM accumulates during a prior task, there should be more residual momentum left to carry over to a subsequent task, and Study 4 finds that an individual whose PM is interrupted is expected to have greater difficulty completing a task than is an individual whose steady progress is interrupted. Discussion focuses on linkages between PM and related constructs.     

Community Mental Health Service Providers' Codes of Ethics and the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing

This study compared the codes of ethics of 13 professional organizations for community mental health service providers that have been represented at the meetings of the Fair Access Coalition for Testing with the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (American Educational Research Association [AERA], American Psychological Association [APA], & National Council on Measurement in Education [NCME], 1985) and all those standards cited in the revised Standards (AERA, APA, & NCME, 1999) that the investigators identified as pertaining to clinical assessment, as these standards apply to test users. The results suggest that only 2 of the codes of ethics address many of the Standards. Implications and recommendations for professional organizations are provided.     

Linkages Between Children's Social and Academic Competence: A Longitudinal Analysis

The relation between social and academic competence was examined in a group of school-age children (N = 163) using structural equation modeling to determine the direction of influence between these two domains across time. A model posing that a reciprocal relation exists between the two domains was tested. The two nested models within the reciprocal model were also tested. To test these models, social acceptance as well as prosocial and aggressive behaviors were assessed by teachers and peers, and children's academic achievement was measured by language and math report-card grades and work skills. Results supported the reciprocal model, indicating that academic achievement directly influenced social competence from both first to second and second to third grade, and social competence was reciprocally related to academic achievement from second to third grade. Implications of these findings for the education process are discussed.