Parental Involvement in Primary School Education: its Relationship with Children’s Academic Performance and Psychosocial Competence through Engaging Children with School

The benefits of parental involvement in children’s education have been well established but increasing evidence suggests that overparenting may have adverse effects on children. The question of whether excessive parental involvement hinders children’s academic and psychosocial development warrants further investigations. This study examined the associations of parental educational involvement at home and in school with academic performance and psychological health of 507 Chinese Grade 3 schoolchildren in Hong Kong. Parents reported on their level of involvement in children’s schooling and their children’s psychosocial issues. Children were surveyed to determine their school engagement, and their Chinese language and mathematics attainment was assessed. We also explored the underlying mechanism by testing children’s engagement with school as a mediator of the relationships. Our results showed that home-based parental educational involvement was positively associated with children’s language competence and psychosocial wellbeing, and the associations were linked through engaging children with school. However, the benefits reached a plateau at higher level of parental involvement in children’s learning at home. School-based parental involvement had an indirect effect on children’s prosocial behavior through school engagement. These findings highlight the significance of optimal level of parental involvement in children’s education at home for children’s development.     

College Cheating Thirty Years Later: The Role of Academic Entitlement

This research reports on a thirty-year follow-up study of academic dishonesty, often referred to as college cheating. The present study examines the role of academic entitlement as a predictor of college cheating. A sense of entitlement is regarded as a primary characteristic of today’s millennial students, those born between 1980 and 2000. However, previous research has never investigated the role of academic entitlement on college cheating. Instead, previous research has mostly favored neutralization as a theoretical explanation for academic dishonesty. The results indicate that, even though reports of college cheating have decreased over time, academic entitlement is a significant predictor of cheating in college.     

Discrimination threshold for haptic volume perception of fingers and phalanges

Humans exhibit a remarkable ability to discriminate variations in object volume based on natural haptic perception. The discrimination thresholds for the haptic volume perception of the whole hand are well known, but the discrimination thresholds for haptic volume perception of fingers and phalanges are still unknown. In the present study, two psychophysical experiments were performed to investigate haptic volume perception in various fingers and phalanges. The configurations of both experiments were completely dependent on haptic volume perception from the fingers and phalanges. The participants were asked to blindly discriminate the volume variation of regular solid objects in a random order by using the distal phalanx, medial phalanx, and proximal phalanx of their index finger, middle finger, ring finger, and little finger. The discrimination threshold of haptic volume perception gradually decreases from the little finger to the index finger as well as from the proximal phalanx to the distal phalanx. Overall, both the shape of the target and the part of the finger in contact with the target significantly influence the precision of haptic perception of volume. This substantial data set provides detailed and compelling perspectives on the haptic system, including for discrimination of the spatial size of objects and for performing more general perceptual processes.     

Does a Tired Mind Help Avoid a Decision Bias? The Effect of Ego Depletion on Escalation of Commitment

In this research, we investigated the effect of ego depletion on escalation of commitment. Specifically, we conducted two laboratory experiments and obtained evidence that ego depletion decreases escalation of commitment. In Study 1, we found that individuals were less susceptible to escalation of commitment after completing an ego depletion task. In Study 2, we confirmed the effect observed in Study 1 using a different manipulation of ego depletion and a different subject pool. Contrary to the fundamental assumption of bounded rationality that people have a tendency to make decision errors when mental resources are scarce, the findings of this research show that a tired mind can help reduce escalation bias.     

Will Victims Become Aggressors or Vice Versa? A Cross-Lagged Analysis of School Aggression

Peer aggression and victimization are ubiquitous phenomena in schools which warrant the attention of educators and researchers. The high connection between aggression and victimization behooves researchers to look into how the comorbidity of them develops over time. The present study investigated the associations between aggression and victimization over 3 years in early adolescence and whether these associations are moderated by gender and teacher support. Participants were 567 Grade 7, 8 and 9 students (49.38% girls) from 3 schools in Hong Kong. Over the course of study, they were asked to fill in a set of questionnaires that consisted of items related to peer aggression, victimization, and teacher support at 5 time points. Four models of cross-lagged relations between peer aggression and victimization were tested. The results supported a reciprocal model of peer aggression and victimization for both boys and girls although girls engaged in less peer aggression and victimization than boys. Further analyses also revealed that teacher support acted as a suppressor of the reciprocal relations. The present study sheds lights on intervention strategies that may remediate peer aggression and victimization in schools.     

Situational meaninglessness and state boredom: Cross-sectional and experience-sampling findings

Theories of boredom assert that boredom is a product of situational meaninglessness. We conducted two studies to test if the perceived meaningfulness of a situation is associated with state boredom, above and beyond sadness, personality traits, and boredom proneness. In Study 1, 105 participants (72.4% female: mean age?=?33.9 years, SD?=?17.5) described situations in which they experienced boredom, no boredom, engagement, or sadness. They then rated the level of state boredom, sadness, and meaninglessness that they experienced in that situation. As hypothesized, state boredom was associated with situational meaninglessness, before and after controlling for sadness. In Study 2, 148 participants (73.0% female; mean age?=?19.2 years, SD?=?1.8) first provided baseline data on personality traits and boredom proneness. Through a smartphone app-based experience-sampling method, they then responded to a brief questionnaire multiple times a day, across 7 days. The questionnaire asked about the nature of their current activity, whether the activity was done alone or with other people, and their affective state. Results from multilevel modelling of 3022 entries suggest that perceived meaningfulness of the activity was negatively associated with state boredom, above and beyond sadness, personality, and boredom proneness. We also found that being with others during the activity acted as a moderator; activities lower in perceived meaningfulness were associated with higher ratings of state boredom when done with others than when done alone. These results demonstrate that perceptions of meaninglessness characterize state boredom.     

Benefits of team participative decision making and its potential to affect individual creativity

How does team participative decision‐making affect individual creative performance? Building on team climate theory (Anderson & West, 1998; West 1990, 2002; West & Sacramento, 2012), this study investigates the indirect effect of team participative decision making on employee creativity through individual perception of cognition team diversity and psychological safety. Results from 256 supervisor–subordinate dyads in 45 teams show that team participative decision making is positively associated with cognitive team diversity and psychological safety. For the mediating effects, team participative decision‐making climate is positively indirectly related to creative performance via psychological safety but not via cognitive team diversity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

3～6岁儿童人格发展的群组序列追踪研究

目的:运用自编幼儿人格发展教师评定问卷对幼儿人格进行追踪测量,探讨其年龄及性别发展特点。方法:用整群抽样法选取3~3.5岁、3.5~4岁、4~4.5岁3个年龄群组幼儿为被试,采用群组序列的追踪设计,进行为期1年半的追踪测量,结合潜变量增长曲线模型和多层线性模型处理数据,探讨幼儿在3~6岁间人格的发展特点。结果:(1)幼儿的智能特征、认真自控、外倾性、亲社会性、情绪稳定性5个人格维度在3~4岁发展最快,4~5岁持续增长但发展速度放缓,到5~6岁时趋于平稳;(2)女孩的认真自控和亲社会性在3岁时显著高于男孩,但在3~6岁间的增长率不存在差异,即女孩的认真自控和亲社会性在幼儿阶段发展水平始终高于男孩。结论:从家庭进入幼儿园的环境变迁促使了幼儿人格的进一步发展,5岁左右幼儿人格开始初步形成;女孩的认真自控和亲社会性水平在幼儿阶段始终高于男孩。