Entrepreneurship in young adults: Initial findings from the young entrepreneurs study

The scientific study of youth entrepreneurship is truly in its infancy, with research on the development of entrepreneurship constrained by theoretical foundations that rely on static, trait-like approaches that equate entrepreneurship with stable personality characteristics. In this article, we define entrepreneurship as a fluid process that relies on the bidirectional interplay between a developing individual and his or her context. We report initial findings from the Young Entrepreneurs Study that clarify how entrepreneurial intentions and actions manifest in youth. We present quantitative analyses that examined the relations between entrepreneurial strengths and entrepreneurial activities in a sample of 3461 college students, and we describe the results of semi-structured interviews from a 48-person subset of our larger sample that explored how entrepreneurial intentions and actions manifested in our sample. We describe a mixed-method triangulation that integrates these two sets of findings, then discuss implications for future research.     

The alliance in a friendship coaching intervention for parents of children with ADHD

The alliance between parent and therapist was observed in a group-based parent-training intervention to improve social competency among children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The intervention, called Parental Friendship Coaching (PFC), was delivered to 32 parents in small groups as part of a randomized clinical trial. PFC was delivered in eight, 90-minute sessions to parents; there was no child treatment component. Observed parent–therapist alliance recorded among 27 of the parents was measured using the Therapy Process Observational Coding System—Alliance scale (TPOCS-A; McLeod, 2005). Early alliance and change in alliance over time predicted improvements in several parenting behaviors and child outcomes, including peer sociometrics in a lab-based playgroup. These preliminary findings lend support to the importance of examining the parent–therapist alliance in parent-training groups for youth social and behavioral problems.     

Trajectories of school engagement during adolescence: implications for grades, depression, delinquency, and substance use

Using longitudinal data from the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development, the authors assessed 1,977 adolescents across Grades 5 to 8 to determine if there were distinctive developmental paths for behavioral and emotional school engagement; if these paths varied in relation to sex, race/ethnicity, and family socioeconomic status (SES); and whether links existed between trajectories of school engagement and grades, depression, substance use, and delinquency. Four trajectories for behavioral school engagement and four trajectories of emotional engagement were identified using a semiparametric mixture model. These trajectories were distinct with regard to initial levels of and changes in engagement, as well as to their shapes. Trajectories varied in regard to sex, SES, and race/ethnicity. Different trajectories of behavioral and emotional engagement were linked to grades, depression, delinquency, and substance use. Directions for future research and application are discussed.     

Alcohol affects goal commitment by explicitly and implicitly induced myopia

Alcohol commits people to personally important goals even if expectations of reaching the goals are low. To illuminate this effect, we used alcohol myopia theory, stating that alcohol intoxicated people disproportionally attend to the most salient aspects of a situation and ignore peripheral aspects. When low expectations of reaching an important goal were activated students who consumed alcohol were less committed than students who consumed a placebo. We observed less commitment regardless of whether low expectations were explicitly activated in a questionnaire (Study 1) or implicitly activated through subliminal priming (Study 2). The results imply that, intoxicated people commit to goals according to what aspects of a goal are activated either explicitly or implicitly.     

Spreading Activation in an Attractor Network With Latching Dynamics: Automatic Semantic Priming Revisited

Localist models of spreading activation (SA) and models assuming distributed representations offer very different takes on semantic priming, a widely investigated paradigm in word recognition and semantic memory research. In this study, we implemented SA in an attractor neural network model with distributed representations and created a unified framework for the two approaches. Our models assume a synaptic depression mechanism leading to autonomous transitions between encoded memory patterns (latching dynamics), which account for the major characteristics of automatic semantic priming in humans. Using computer simulations, we demonstrated how findings that challenged attractor‐based networks in the past, such as mediated and asymmetric priming, are a natural consequence of our present model’s dynamics. Puzzling results regarding backward priming were also given a straightforward explanation. In addition, the current model addresses some of the differences between semantic and associative relatedness and explains how these differences interact with stimulus onset asynchrony in priming experiments.