Consumers Felt Commitment Towards Retailers: Index Development and Validation

This work seeks to develop an index of the consumer's felt commitment towards the retailer through a formative scale. By using structural equation modeling (SEM), in particular the multiple indicators and multiple causes (MIMIC) model, as well as reflective and formative indicators, the methodology developed by Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer is applied in order to construct this index. To clarify the whole meaning of the concept, the article undertakes a thorough review of literature on felt commitment and formative index development. Several MIMIC models are developed in order to validate the index. The empirical study was carried out in the financial services sector.     

Situational and dispositional coping: an examination of their relation to personality,cognitive appraisals,and psychological distress

Reliable data on the relationships between situational and dispositional coping strategies are sparse. In order to address this gap in the literature, this study examined the determinants and adaptational outcomes of both types of coping. Two hundred and thirty‐three students completed, along with measures of situational and dispositional coping, measures of personality, cognitive appraisals, and psychological distress, the latter variable being evaluated concurrently and prospectively (10 weeks). Results showed that personality shared as much variance with situational as with dispositional coping, but the patterns of relationships were rather different. In addition, cognitive appraisals were found to add significant incremental validity in predicting situational coping beyond trait coping, but primary appraisals were redundant with personality traits, in particular neuroticism. Finally, in spite of the significant amount of variance shared between the two types of coping, they both accounted for individual differences in concomitant and prospective psychological distress, and the relation between dispositional coping and distress was partially mediated by situational coping. The implications of these findings for understanding the relationships between the two types of coping strategy are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Early neuropsychological correlates of later clock drawing and clock copying abilities among school aged children.

Although widely used in empirical study and bedside neuropsychological evaluation of geriatric populations, there is little literature on clock copying and drawing among children. However, existing research suggests that clock drawing tests (CDTs) may be effective and efficient tools for assessing neurocognitive development in children. This paper reports data on clock drawing on demand (CDT-D) and clock drawing to copy (CDT-C) among a non-clinical sample of elementary school aged children and identifies predictive relationships between earlier measures of executive function, visuo-construction, and visual-motor coordination and CDT performance 3 years later. Similar to findings with adult samples, analyses revealed better performance on copying than on drawing. Longitudinal analyses indicate that general intelligence significantly predicted performance on both tasks. Visual-motor coordination only predicted performance on the drawing on demand subtest of the CDT.     

Normative data on the familiarity and difficulty of 196 Spanish word fragments.

In this article, normative data on the familiarity and difficulty of 196 single-solution Spanish word fragments are presented. The database includes the following indices: difficulty, familiarity, frequency, number of meanings, number of letters given in the fragment, first and/or last letters given, and ratio of letters to blanks. A factor analysis was performed on difficulty, and two factors were obtained. Frequency, familiarity, and number of meanings loaded highly on the first factor, which we consider to measure lexical processes, whereas number of letters in the fragment, first and/or last letters given, and ratio of letters to blanks loaded highly on the second factor, which we judge to be determined by perceptual information. Regression analyses using factor scores as predictors showed that both factors accounted for a significant part of the completion probability scores. The full set of these norms may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society Web archive at www.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

Normative data on the familiarity and difficulty of 196 Spanish word fragments

In this article, normative data on the familiarity and difficulty of 196 single-solution Spanish word fragments are presented. The database includes the following indices: difficulty, familiarity, frequency, number of meanings, number of letters given in the fragment, first and/or last letters given, and ratio of letters to blanks. A factor analysis was performed on difficulty, and two factors were obtained. Frequency, familiarity, and number of meanings loaded highly on the first factor, which we consider to measure lexical processes, whereas number of letters in the fragment, first and/or last letters given, and ratio of letters to blanks loaded highly on the second factor, which we judge to be determined by perceptual information. Regression analyses using factor scores as predictors showed that both factors accounted for a significant part of the completion probability scores. The full set of these norms may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society Web archive atwww.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

Letter string processing and visual short-term memory

The present study investigated whether expertise with letter string processing influences visual short-term memory capacity. Specifically, we examined whether performance in a change-detection task would vary as a function of stimulus type (letters vs. symbols) and type of display (horizontal, vertical, and circular). Participants were asked to detect a one-character change in a briefly presented character array following a delay of 900?ms. Concurrent articulation was used to limit effects of rehearsal. Type of display significantly affected performance with letters, but not with symbols, with a selective increase in change-detection accuracy for horizontally presented letter arrays compared with vertical and circular arrays. These findings confirm the standard limits of storage in visual short-term memory, but critically reveal a selective advantage for letter arrays over symbol arrays when presented horizontally. Such an advantage is probably due to the utilization of a specialized encoding mechanism built up over years of reading experience.     

The use of virtual reality in the study, assessment, and treatment of body image in eating disorders and nonclinical samples: a review of the literature

This article reviews research into the use of virtual reality in the study, assessment, and treatment of body image disturbances in eating disorders and nonclinical samples. During the last decade, virtual reality has emerged as a technology that is especially suitable not only for the assessment of body image disturbances but also for its treatment. Indeed, several virtual environment-based software systems have been developed for this purpose. Furthermore, virtual reality seems to be a good alternative to guided imagery and in vivo exposure, and is therefore very useful for studies that require exposure to life-like situations but which are difficult to conduct in the real world. Nevertheless, review highlights the lack of published controlled studies and the presence of methodological drawbacks that should be considered in future studies. This article also discusses the implications of the results obtained and proposes directions for future research.     

Modesty and style in Islamic attire: Refashioning Muslim garments in a Western context

My ethnographic fieldwork conducted with female converts to Islam in France and in Quebec (Canada) shows that, for these women, being Muslim does not necessarily mean wearing clothes with ‘oriental’ designs. Rather, they are starting their own clothing companies so as to produce distinct Muslim-Western fashions that they promote through the Internet. By interpreting Islam in a context where Muslims are a minority religious group, converts construct alternative religious and social representations of Muslim identity that accord with their feminist interpretation of the Qu’ran while simultaneously incorporating the Western background within which they were socialized. In this regard, the strategies that they develop for wearing the veil and for integrating into their environment (family, workplace, etc.) make it clear that fashion, religion and politics are interacting in multiple, creative ways. In this paper, I look at how new Muslim feminist subjectivities are produced and realized through habits of dress, resulting in new representations of the body. I explore this issue by considering dress and hairstyle strategies developed by Muslim converts, in order to examine new perspectives on the place of gender in religion as it relates to particular social contexts.