Family Members as Boundary Managers: Behaviors that Promote and Limit Service Members’ Involvement in Daily Family Life

When military service members deploy, they move outside the immediate boundary of their families. However, because boundaries are permeable, service members remain a psychological part of their families in spite of their physical absence. The extent of service members’ continued involvement in daily family life is likely tied to their non-deployed family members’ actions to manage this boundary. In the current study, we were interested in identifying non-deployed family members’ actions to either promote, or limit, service members’ involvement in daily family life during deployment. These actions by family members constitute boundary management behaviors. We collected qualitative data from a sample of Army reservists (N = 13) and their household family members (N = 15). Findings indicated that family members used a variety of boundary management behaviors during deployment, some of which promoted reservists’ involvement, and others which limited it. In addition, boundary management behaviors varied by who they targeted, their intentionality, and their implications for reservists’ well-being. Findings illustrate the value in equipping military families with language that enables them to communicate openly about the significance of their boundary management behavior over the course of deployment so that they may arrive at a balance between stretching and restricting boundaries that best suits their unique needs.     

When people’s judgments of learning (JOLs) are extremely accurate at predicting subsequent recall: the “Displaced-JOL effect”

Judgments of learning (JOL) made after a delay more accurately predict subsequent recall than JOLs made immediately after learning. One explanation is that delayed JOLs involve retrieving information about the target item from secondary memory, whereas immediate JOLs involve retrieval from primary memory. One view of working memory claims that information in primary memory is displaced to secondary memory when attention is shifted to a secondary task. Thus, immediate JOLs might be as accurate as delayed JOLs if an intervening task displaces the target item from primary memory, requiring retrieval from secondary memory, prior to making the JOL. In four experiments, participants saw related word-pairs and made JOLs predicting later recall of the item. In Experiment 1, delayed JOLs were more accurate than JOLs made shortly after learning, regardless of whether a secondary task intervened between learning and JOL. In Experiments 2–4, the secondary task demands increased and JOLs made shortly after learning with an intervening task were just as accurate as delayed JOLs, and both were more accurate than immediate JOLs with no intervening task (Experiment 4). These results are consistent with a retrieval-based account of JOLs, and demonstrate that the “delayed-JOL effect” can be obtained without a long delay.     

The ontogenetic ritualization of bonobo gestures

Great apes communicate with gestures in flexible ways. Based on several lines of evidence, Tomasello and colleagues have posited that many of these gestures are learned via ontogenetic ritualization—a process of mutual anticipation in which particular social behaviors come to function as intentional communicative signals. Recently, Byrne and colleagues have argued that all great ape gestures are basically innate. In the current study, for the first time, we attempted to observe the process of ontogenetic ritualization as it unfolds over time. We focused on one communicative function between bonobo mothers and infants: initiation of “carries” for joint travel. We observed 1,173 carries in ten mother–infant dyads. These were initiated by nine different gesture types, with mothers and infants using many different gestures in ways that reflected their different roles in the carry interaction. There was also a fair amount of variability among the different dyads, including one idiosyncratic gesture used by one infant. This gestural variation could not be attributed to sampling effects alone. These findings suggest that ontogenetic ritualization plays an important role in the origin of at least some great ape gestures.     

Dual pathways of emotional competence towards incremental and radical creativity: resource caravans through feedback-seeking frequency and breadth

ABSTRACT

This study examined how employees’ emotional competence predicts feedback-seeking behaviour (FSB) and consequently incremental and radical creativity on the basis of conservation of resource (COR) theory. We posit that emotional competence enhances the two types of creativity by generating resource caravans through distinct patterns of FSB. Our analysis based on the data collected from 206 employees from 85 work teams revealed that emotional competence has a significant indirect effect on the incremental creativity of team members, as rated by leaders, through frequent feedback seeking. Emotional competence also exhibited a considerable direct effect on radical creativity. In addition, emotional competence predicted source variety, namely, feedback-seeking breadth, which in turn contributed to radical creativity. This study offers new and useful theoretical and practical insights regarding the different types of creativity in the workplace by employing COR theory and the resource caravan perspective.     

A virtual reality assessment and training system for unilateral neglect.

Patients with unilateral neglect have problems reporting, responding, or orienting to novel or meaningful stimuli that is presented to the side opposite to that of a brain lesion. This creates a serous problem in regards to daily living activities. However, the established methods for assessing and training of unilateral neglect patients have several deficits. Recently, virtual reality (VR) technologies have been used as an assessment and treatment tool for rehabilitation. Hence, this study designed a VR system to assess and train unilateral neglect patients. In addition, the suitability and feasibility of our VR system for unilateral neglect patients was verified.     

Intuitive Heuristics Linking Perfectionism, Control, and Beliefs Regarding Body Shape in Eating Disorders

A number of correlational studies have established a clear association between perfectionism, control and beliefs regarding body shape in eating disorders (EDs). The aim of this study is to test the effectiveness of the above- mentioned associations in exploring the presence of intuitive heuristics. Intuitive heuristics can be conceived as as mental shortcuts, cognitive processes that are highly susceptible to irrational biases. Forty one non clinical female controls and 27 in-patient females with an ED diagnosis participated in an experimental task that tested whether participants would show an intuitive rather than a logically based link between perfectionism in different domains (study, work, hygiene) and a thin body shape. In the healthy female participants the occurrence of proposed link was noted in the hygiene domain only, while ED participants showed this intuitive association in all the domains explored: study, work, and hygiene. The study confirms in clinical ED sample a wider employment of heuristics associating perfectionism and thinness that is based on purely intuitive irrational reasoning.     

Parenting Behaviors and Childhood Anxiety: A Psychometric Investigation of the EMBU-C

Parent rearing behaviors, including both behavioral modeling and parent–child interactions, are associated with anxiety in children. Patterns of overprotection or rejecting behavior from parents may lead children to develop behavioral avoidance, lower self-confidence, and higher symptoms of anxiety. Additional research is needed to further elucidate the role that parenting behavior plays in the development of childhood anxiety. Unfortunately, few measures of parenting behavior exist. The EMBU-C is a 40-item child-report measure of these behaviors, but empirical data supporting the psychometric properties of the EMBU-C are limited. The current investigation examined the psychometric properties of the EMBU-C in the context of childhood anxiety. Participants were 213 children with an anxiety disorder and 150 recruited from the community (all aged 8–13 years). Overall, the EMBU-C demonstrated promising psychometrics. In terms of convergent validity, parent rearing behaviors described on the EMBU-C were significantly related to children’s anxiety symptoms, anxiety-related disability, parenting stress, family functioning and children’s externalizing behaviors. Further, the overprotection and anxious-rearing subscales discriminated between clinical and community participants. Finally, parental overprotection significantly predicted increases in child anxiety and anxiety-related disability 1 year later. Thus, the EMBU-C appears to have value as a clinical tool for assessing parental factors that may contribute to anxiety in children. Recommendations for further item development and measure improvement are offered.     

The Contribution of Job Happiness and Job Meaning to the Well-Being of Workers from Thriving and Failing Companies

In a time of global economic crisis, workers’ well-being is of paramount concern for both organizations and society at large. Conceptualizations within positive psychology distinguish between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being components, and call for the need to include them in an integrated perspective. Within this framework, the present study aimed at investigating the impact of situational uncertainty on eudaimonic and hedonic well-being, and the spillover effects of work into individuals’ lives. Data were collected from 85 Italian employees at a thriving insurance company and at a failing one. Participants were administered Job Content Questionnaire, Eudaimonic and Hedonic Happiness Investigation, Satisfaction with Life Scale, and Psychological Wellbeing Scales. Data were analyzed through hierarchical regression analyses. Concerning well-being at work, employees at the failing company reported higher job insecurity and lower job happiness compared to employees at the thriving company, while job meaning scores did not differ between groups. Concerning general well-being, an unexpected positive association was found between positive relations and situational uncertainty. A spillover effect of job happiness and meaning on life satisfaction, environmental mastery, and autonomy was also detected. In particular, a moderating effect of job meaning was identified, showing that attributing high importance to one’s job had wide affective consequences, spilling over to global life evaluations. Findings bring forward practical suggestions for well-being promotion, in terms of shifting domain importance (Wu Journal of Happiness Studies 10:37–47, 2009), and investing in multiple life areas (Sirgy and Wu Journal of Happiness Studies 10:183–196, 2009) for the promotion of a balanced life.