the role of career stress in the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and career attitude maturity in south korean undergraduates

Given the central role of career stress in college students' lives, this research examined whether career stress mediated the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and career attitude maturity in a sample of 185 undergraduate students in South Korea. The results indicated that career ambiguity stress, as measured by a career stress inventory, fully mediated the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and career attitude maturity. That is, maladaptive perfectionism correlated with greater levels of career ambiguity stress, and greater career ambiguity stress correlated with an unconstructive level of career attitude maturity. The authors discuss the findings' implications for career counselors in college settings.     

Subjective distress associated with chronic stuttering

Stuttering is a chronic condition involving involuntary disruption to speech fluency. While elevated social anxiety has been found to be a risk factor for adults who have stuttered all their lives, it is unclear how stuttering influences other negative mood states such as interpersonal sensitivity and depressive mood. Consequently, controlled research was conducted that investigated negative affectivity across a number of domains in adults who stutter. Participants included 200 adults who have stuttered since childhood, with comparisons made to 200 non-stuttering controls of similar age and sex. The adults who stuttered were found to have significantly elevated levels of distress and negative mood states compared to the controls. As expected, significant differences were found for anxiety, however, significant and substantial differences were also found across a broad range of negative affect, including dimensions such as somatization, interpersonal sensitivity, depressive mood, hostility and paranoia. The implications of these findings for the better management of stuttering are discussed.Educational objectives: The reader will be able to describe: (a) the negative impact of a chronic disorder like stuttering on people who have stuttered all their life; (b) the factor structure of the SCL-90-R; (c) the negative affectivity construct, and (d) the difference between psychogenic theories of stuttering and neurological theories of stuttering.     

Implicit interpretation biases affect emotional vulnerability: a training study

Cognitive theories of emotion propose that the interpretation of emotion-eliciting situations crucially shapes affective responses. Implicit or automatic biases in these interpretations may hinder emotion regulation and thereby increase risk for the onset and maintenance of psychological disorders. In this study, participants were randomly assigned to a positive or negative interpretation bias training using ambiguous social scenarios. After the completion of the training, a stress task was administered and changes in positive and negative affect and self-esteem were assessed. The results demonstrate that the interpretation bias training was successful in that participants exhibited a tendency to interpret novel scenarios in accordance with their training condition. Importantly, the positive training condition also had a protective effect on self-esteem. Participants in this condition did not exhibit a decrease in self-esteem after the stress task, whereas participants in the negative condition did. These results demonstrate that implicit cognitive biases can be trained and that this training affects self-esteem. Implications of these findings for research on psychopathology and emotion regulation are discussed.     

Forum: Quilting as metaphor for theological education

How is quilt‐making both metaphor and pedagogy for early‐career faculty of theology and religion who seek to cultivate critical and creative imagination for teaching, and to probe the challenges and promises of complex identities and vocations within 21st‐century landscapes of theological education? This forum presents essays (with explanatory introduction) by five members of the 2016–2017 Workshop for Early Career Theological School Faculty, who were impelled to story their experience of being “handed over to themselves” by an “arts and craft” project which forced them to think with their hands, speak with found objects, and re‐present themselves in the form of 12 × 12‐inch quilt squares. In self‐reflexive prose, these scholar‐teachers offer through this medium a glimpse of their unexpected moments of revelatory learning, as each was pulled into deeper contemplation of their personhood, experience, know‐how, and practical wisdom, each uncovering valuable hidden sources for more expansive theological query, and each re‐thinking the possibilities for theological education and its pedagogies.     

Individual differences in negative affect repair

The extant literature implicates affect repair ability as one source of individual differences in negative affect. Emerging from this literature are three regulatory traits that should predict repair ability (negative mood regulation expectancies, monitoring, labeling), yet no experimental examination of this possibility exists. Two studies explored this issue. Participants (Ns=305, 146) watched negative affect-inducing videos and completed a repair or control writing task, before and after which they reported their affect. Results revealed wide individual differences in repair ability. Specifically, participants with high expectancies of repair success and those who attend to and understand their affect experienced the largest decreases in negative affect and largest increases in positive affect following the repair tasks. These findings advance understanding of individual differences in affect regulation and have implications for future research.     

Driving Under the Influence (of Stress): Evidence of a Regional Increase in Impaired Driving and Traffic Fatalities After the September 11 Terrorist Attacks

ABSTRACT— Did the September 11 terrorist attacks elicit a subsequent increase in traffic fatalities? Gigerenzer (2004) argued that decreases in flying and increases in driving in the 3 months after the attacks led to 353 "surplus" traffic fatalities. We applied a more systematic analysis to the same data and found no evidence of a significant increase in miles driven or of a significant increase in traffic fatalities. However, we did find evidence for a regional effect of the attacks on driving behaviors. We hypothesized that geographic proximity to the attacks increased stress, which in turn decreased driving quality. Our analyses revealed that in the last 3 months of 2001, the Northeast exhibited a significant increase in traffic fatalities, as well as a significant increase in fatal accidents involving an alcohol- or drug-related citation. Increased stress related to physical proximity to the attacks may explain the increase in traffic fatalities.     

Coherent plaids are preattentively more than the sum of their parts

We investigated whether plaids activate preattentive mechanisms that are distinct from those activated by their component gratings. Observers searched for a target plaid, the sum of two perpendicular components in a circular window (radius = 0.65°). The target was present on half the trials. On all trials, half of the distractors had the same frequency and orientation as one component of the plaid, and the rest were the same as the other component. The target and the distractors were arrayed evenly on a circle (radius = 2.36°) around fixation. Target and distractor contrasts were randomly perturbed up to ±30%. The following results held for each of the 6 participants tested. (1) When F1 = 2 c/deg and F2 = 5.25 c/deg, response times (RTs) increased significantly when set size (number of distractors plus target, if present) was increased from four to eight. (2) When the spatial frequencies of both plaid components were the same (i.e., both 2 c/deg or both 5.25 c/deg), RTs increased very slightly, if at all, when set size was increased from four to eight. These results suggest the existence of a preattentive, plaid-sensitive mechanism with band-limited input that does not respond to individual grating components.     

Electromyographic evidence of neurological controller signals with viscous load

Ensemble averaging after pre-editing of surface EMG potentials has enabled construction of underlying controller signals from stereotyped head movements. Carefully controlled, intended time-optimal movements by trained, actively participating human subjects have been found to yield repeatable, multi-pulse controller signals. Also, adaptive changes in these horizontal head movements in response to added viscous loads showed further causal relationships between movement dynamics and EMG signals from left and right splenius muscles. These experimental results are a base from which modeling studies can be performed to explicate the neurological control strategies used in the performance of this class of movements.     

Child care effects in context: quality, stability, and multiplicity in non-maternal child care arrangements during the first 15 months of life

Main and interactive effects of child care quality, stability, and multiplicity on infants' attachment security, language comprehension, language production, and cognitive development at 15 months were examined using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care. Thirty-nine percent of the infants in this sample experienced arrangement change, and 46% experienced multiple concurrent arrangements during the first 15 months. As in previous studies, concurrent quality, average quality, and quality slope significantly predicted cognitive and language development. There was some evidence that certain forms of unstable child care--including nonfamilial change, familial to nonfamilial change, and within-home to out-of-home change--were associated with poorer language development. Multiple child care arrangements involving family members positively predicted language comprehension; multiple care involving a mix of family and non-relative caregivers negatively predicted language comprehension. Interactions among variables exhibited "effects in context." That is, under conditions of low or moderate quality in the primary care arrangement, the use of fewer multiple arrangements was associated with higher language scores; under conditions of high primary care quality, the use of more multiple arrangements was associated with higher language scores.     

Rethinking procrastination: positive effects of "active" procrastination behavior on attitudes and performance

Researchers and practitioners have long regarded procrastination as a self-handicapping and dysfunctional behavior. In the present study, the authors proposed that not all procrastination behaviors either are harmful or lead to negative consequences. Specifically, the authors differentiated two types of procrastinators: passive procrastinators versus active procrastinators. Passive procrastinators are procrastinators in the traditional sense. They are paralyzed by their indecision to act and fail to complete tasks on time. In contrast, active procrastinators are a "positive" type of procrastinator. They prefer to work under pressure, and they make deliberate decisions to procrastinate. The present results showed that although active procrastinators procrastinate to the same degree as passive procrastinators, they are more similar to nonprocrastinators than to passive procrastinators in terms of purposive use of time, control of time, self-efficacy belief, coping styles, and outcomes including academic performance. The present findings offer a more sophisticated understanding of procrastination behavior and indicate a need to reevaluate its implications for outcomes of individuals.