Recent advances in research on school-based extracurricular activities and adolescent development

Updating a previous systematic review of the literature, this review summarizes the literature over the last 5 years on the relationship between school-based extracurricular activity participation and academic achievement, substance use, sexual activity, psychological adjustment, and delinquency. The review also considers mediators and moderators of these relationships. This review also discusses recent advances in activity research including participation measurement (intensity, breadth, and duration), person-centered approaches, and an exploration of the overscheduling hypothesis. The review reveals a mixed picture of the relationship between activity participation and these adolescent developmental outcomes. A call for continued exploration into measurement issues, analysis approaches, outcome measures, and causal models of activities and adolescent functioning is made.     

Emotion words shape emotion percepts

People believe they see emotion written on the faces of other people. In an instant, simple facial actions are transformed into information about another's emotional state. The present research examined whether a perceiver unknowingly contributes to emotion perception with emotion word knowledge. We present 2 studies that together support a role for emotion concepts in the formation of visual percepts of emotion. As predicted, we found that perceptual priming of emotional faces (e.g., a scowling face) was disrupted when the accessibility of a relevant emotion word (e.g., anger) was temporarily reduced, demonstrating that the exact same face was encoded differently when a word was accessible versus when it was not. The implications of these findings for a linguistically relative view of emotion perception are discussed.     

Bridging the Distance Between Us: How Initial Responses to Sales Team Conflict Help Shape Core Selling Team Outcomes

Intra-team conflict within core selling teams can shape team outcomes. Using congruency theory, we propose how conflict responses impact the relational distance between individuals in a core selling team, creating positive/negative team outcomes. Our framework suggests managers may improve team outcomes by monitoring sales team members' responses to conflict, encouraging internal cognitive voice behaviors, and intervening in teams not using internal cognitive voice behaviors when relational or process conflict exists. Our model helps explain the paradox in which an individual who is part of a “winning” team (one achieving its team goals) may still choose to exit the team.     

A case of developmental exposure to inorganic mercury

This case report describes behavioral and neuropsychological function in a young man who experienced chronic exposure to elemental mercury at home from age 4 through 9 years. Data are presented on school history, behavior, and performance on standardized tests during the developmental period, and from a full neuropsychological evaluation at age 19 years, several years after environmental exposure had ended. These data specify the course of a decline in function as development proceeds. The patient's progress appeared normal in the preschool period but pronounced academic difficulties and persistent emotional irritability emerged during the elementary school years. At age 19 years, neuropsychological testing revealed diminished executive function, difficulties with language, problems with visuospatial orientation, deficiencies in tine motor control, and manual tremor. Tension, irritability, and depressive affect were evident as well as marked problems with academic performance. These findings suggest widespread cerebral dysfunction, both cortical and subcortical, and are consistent with the diffuse pattern of brain damage seen in children with exposure to heavy metals.     

Which Scientificity for the social Sciences?

Since their emergence in the nineteenth century, the epistemology of social sciences has oscillated from aiming at the classical model of scientificity to emphasizing its own specificities. We argue here that the existence of unambiguous, well defined objects has allowed discoveries and cumulativity in the natural sciences. Whereas, in the social sciences, the term is most often used in a metaphorical meaning, as it represents a basically fluid and changing reality. Its apprehension partly depends on the emotional/intellectual identity of the researcher, which makes it difficult to achieve a full consensus. Yet, beside real, natural or created objects, we do find structures, regularities and objectivations in society.     

Discrete Emotions or Dimensions? The Role of Valence Focus and Arousal Focus

The present study provides evidence that valence focus and arousal focus are important processes in determining whether a dimensional or a discrete emotion model best captures how people label their affective states. Individuals high in valence focus and low in arousal focus fit a dimensional model better in that they reported more co-occurrences among like-valenced affective states, whereas those lower in valence focus and higher in arousal focus fit a discrete model better in that they reported fewer co-occurrences between like-valenced affective states. Taken together, these findings suggest that one static, nomothetic theory may not accurately describe the subjective affective experience of all individuals.     

Four frames for the study of creativity

Abstract

In Jean Genet's play The Balcony, the plot revolves around role reversal. Characters who were on the peripherii of society, the pimps, whores, and thieves, all of a sudden find it necessary to assume roles as pillars of society. The basic point of the play is that roles are powerful determinants of behavior, and whoever occupies the role of, say, Chief Judge of the Supreme Court, will behave more or less as anyone else would behave in the same role. People who have watched from the balcony change their behavior when asked to move to center stage.     

Changes in Perceived Supervisor Embeddedness: Effects on Employees’ Embeddedness,Organizational Trust,and Voice Behavior

Guided by social information processing theory, this study examines how perceived supervisor embeddedness relates to employees’ own affect toward, attachment to, and behavior within the firm. Data were collected from 338 employees at 3 points in time over a 10‐month period. The results supported the proposed model in 3 key ways. First, perceived supervisor embeddedness was directly related to employees’ own embeddedness over time. Second, organizational trust mediated the relationship between perceived supervisor embeddedness and employees’ own embeddedness over time. Third, organizational trust and employee embeddedness were both related to employees’ voice behavior over time.     

Impact of chronic illness: Differing perspectives of younger and older women

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the life experiences of six women with chronic illness who represent three differing life stages. The participants included two women who were in young adulthood, two who were between the ages of 40 and 60, and two women in their late 70s. The women were all diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, or a combination of these disorders. They were interviewed concerning the impact illness has had on their lives, the manner in which chronic illness has altered their self-perceptions, and the ways in which they have come to make meaning from the event. While the women had achieved varying levels of acceptance of their illness, it appeared that the ability to cope was dependent on numerous factors across several life circumstances. Distinctions were made regarding ability to either adjust to the illness or use the experience as a catalyst for personal growth.