Underlying correlation structures of parental stress, general health and anxiety

A partial least square regression (PLSR) was performed on the Swedish Parenthood Stress Questionnaire (SPSQ) sum score and subscales on incompetence, role restriction, social isolation, spouse relationship and health problems, using 42 items from the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and 20 items from the State Anxiety Inventory (STAI-X1). The dataset contained 227 fathers and 301 mothers of children aged 1.0-6.6 years from a population-based study on parental psychological distress in the general Norwegian population, and all items correlated positively with SPSQ. Subscales on spouse relationship, incompetence, social isolation and role restriction related to items on state anxiety and depression. The SPSQ subscale on health problems related to GHQ items on somatic symptoms and social dysfunction. The STAI-X1 item "not feeling rested" had a particularly important effect on parental stress. Underlying correlation structures between parental stress and items from STAI-X1 and GHQ were explored, but only the SPSQ sum score could be acceptably predicted. PLSR as a statistical methodology was found useful for health and psychometric data.     

Latino English Language Learners’ Writing During Literacy-Enriched Block Play

Although growing numbers of young English language learners (ELLs) from low-income homes enroll in U.S. schools, there remains a lack of research on how they respond to common school literacy practices including a literacy-enriched play. This exploratory study aims to examine the writing behaviors of six kindergarteners in their classroom's literacy-enriched block center. The results were varied since all children engaged in different types and frequencies of writing. However, most ELLs responded positively to the intervention and practiced their emergent writing skills. Therefore, literacy-enriched play centers can benefit early childhood classrooms serving culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse students.     

Introducing Walk-Alongs in Visitor Studies: A Mobile Method Approach to Studying User Experience

Abstract

This article introduces the walk-along method as a potential approach to study visitor interactions and experiences in situ. Prompted by the methodological challenges involved in gaining insight into the individual, subjective visitor experience, this article explores the potentials and pros and cons of the mobile, walk-along method. The mobile walk-along method is an open-ended qualitative approach to capturing visitors’ immediate experiences, interpretations, and emotions in the instant of experiencing. This article points to the method’s relevance in visitor studies by drawing on empirical and methodological insights from a visitor study at a science center exhibition about movement and health at the Experimentarium near Copenhagen, Denmark. Based on 34 group walk-alongs (108 visitors), the findings show that the walk-along method can provide an understanding of visitor experience related to visitors’ spatial practice, personal biographies and the social architecture between visitors.     

THE INFLUENCE OF INTENSITY AND DURATION OF ELECTRICAL STIMULATION ON SUBJECTIVE VARIABLES

The unpleasantness and subjective duration of an A.C. current of 50 c/sec applied to two fingers was scaled by subjects using the method of magnitude estimation. Stimulation was varied with regard to both intensity and duration. It was found that (1) unpleasantness increased logarithmically with stimulus duration, (2) unpleasantness was a power function, with the exponent 1.5, of stimulus intensity, (3) subjective duration was essentially linearly related to stimulus duration, and (4) subjective duration increased logarithmically with intensity of stimulation.     

On the interaction between memory scanning and response set

In the first of two item recognition experiments, a study by Egeth, Marcus, and Bevan (1972) was duplicated, but using a within-Ss design. Consistent with their findings, analogous differences obtained between mean RTs to positive set sizes of one and three were found to be significantly greater when Ss pressed two different keys to indicate whether or not a test letter was a member of the positive set (two-response condition) than when Ss pressed a single key to indicate only that a test letter was a positive set member (one-response condition). The number of set sizes used and results obtained for the two-response condition, which were inconsistent with characterization of the search process as either serial and exhaustive or serial and self-terminating, both limited and complicated interpretation of the obtained interaction. Further, these results suggested that the procedures used differed in important ways from those known to consistently produce linear and parallel item recognition functions for both positive and negative trials for the two-response condition. In Experiment II, those item recognition procedures which are known to allow serial exhaustive search to occur were used, and data were collected for four positive set sizes. Reaction time was a linear function of set size for both response conditions, the slopes of the functions did not differ significantly, and absolute slope values were consistent with previously reported findings for the two-response condition and letter stimuli. It is concluded that response requirements sometimes have effects on memory scanning (the slope of the item recognition function). Such an effect was observed when the experimental conditions were such as to allow neither serial and exhaustive nor serial and self-terminating memory search to occur. But, response requirements do not always have effects on memory scanning, and this was found to be the case when the experimental conditions were such as to allow serial and exhaustive memory search to occur and it was shown to occur.     

Treatment of a selectively mute third-grade child

A third-grade girl who did not speak in school was treated by school personnel using principles of behavior modification. A step-by-step procedure was designed which first encouraged speech in a one-to-one setting with an adult. Gradually elements of the regular school situation were introduced into the setting. The final phrase of treatment involved moving the elements back into the regular classroom. At the end of the school year, $\text{2}\text{1}\text{2}$ months following termination of treatment, the subject was still speaking freely.     

Experiments on habit reversal in the white rat following electro-convulsive treatment

Rats in a T-maze were taught two opposite habits successively, the first being heavily over learned compared to the second. One group of 14 rats was then given a series of 6 electroconvulsive shocks. The control group of 11 rats underwent a dummy procedure.

Tested subsequently the control group maintained the second habit but among the shocked animals some adopted the second habit and some the first. This was no evidence of habit reversal, however, for the behaviour of the shocked animals at the choice point was not distinguishable statistically from random behaviour.

The data of earlier workers are re-examined and, in all cases, animals said to have undergone habit reversal act as if at random.