The Convergent Validity of Four Burnout Measures in a Chinese Sample: A Confirmatory Factor‐Analytic Approach

The purpose of this paper is to study the convergent validity of the four most widely used burnout measures in a sample of Chinese nurses (N= 717). First, Structural Equation Modeling was used to investigate the factor structure of scores produced by the Maslach Burnout Inventory‐General Survey (MBI‐GS), the Burnout Measure (BM), the Shirom‐Melamed Burnout Measure (SMBM), and the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI). Next, several competing models were tested to investigate the convergent validity of these four burnout instruments. The final results suggest that burnout is best conceived of as a multidimensional construct consisting of exhaustion and withdrawal, which are two related but conceptually distinct aspects. In addition, positively phrased items should be dropped from burnout measures for they constitute a separate factor that is considered to be an artifact.     

Perceptual learning in maze discriminations

In Experiment 1, rats were trained on a discrimination between rubber- and sandpaper-covered arms of a maze after one group had been pre-exposed to these intra-maze cues. Pre-exposure facilitated subsequent discrimination learning, unless the discrimination was made easier by adding further discriminative stimuli, when it now significantly retarded learning. In Experiment 2, rats were trained on an extra-maze spatial discrimination, again after one group, but not another, had been pre-exposed to the extra-maze landmarks. Here too, pre-exposure facilitated subsequent discrimination learning, unless the discrimination was made substantially easier by arranging that the two arms between which rats had to choose were always separated by 135°. The results of both experiments can be explained by supposing that perceptual learning depends on the presence of features common to S+ and S-.     

Left-Right Brain Research and Its Premature Generalization to the Counseling Setting

Brain lateralization research has led to speculation about counseling and guidance implications of left-right brain differences. Serious limitations in these implications are highlighted.     

Children and adults both see ‘pirates’ in ‘parties’: letter‐position effects for developing readers and skilled adult readers

Developing readers often make anagrammatical errors (e.g. misreading pirates as parties), suggesting they use letter position flexibly during word recognition. However, while it is widely assumed that the occurrence of these errors decreases with increases in reading skill, empirical evidence to support this distinction is lacking. Accordingly, we compared the performance of developing child readers (aged 8–10 years) against the end‐state performance of skilled adult readers in a timed naming task, employing anagrams used previously in this area of research. Moreover, to explore the use of letter position by developing readers and skilled adult readers more fully, we used anagrams which, to form another word, required letter transpositions over only interior letter positions, or both interior and exterior letter positions. The patterns of effects across these two anagram types for the two groups of readers were very similar. In particular, both groups showed similarly slowed response times (and developing readers increased errors) for anagrams requiring only interior letter transpositions but not for anagrams that required exterior letter transpositions. This similarity in the naming performance of developing readers and skilled adult readers suggests that the end‐state skilled use of letter position is established earlier during reading development than is widely assumed.