Effects of Small-Group and One-on-One Reading Fluency Interventions with Second Grade, Low-Performing Spanish Readers

This study compared children’s Spanish reading performance across 2 reading intervention conditions: small group versus individual (teacher–student). Six second-grade Costa Rican students with low Spanish reading ability participated in the study. An alternating-treatments design was used to compare the relative effectiveness of the 2 interventions to each other and to a no-intervention control condition. Results showed that nearly all students benefitted from 1 or both of the reading interventions. Findings are consistent with previous research with English readers and suggest that delivering fluency-based reading interventions with fidelity (such as those described in the current study) to Spanish readers may be an effective way to improve Spanish-speaking students’ reading skills. Results are also consistent with past research on the comparable effectiveness of delivering a reading-fluency intervention to a small group versus an individual. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of relative efficiency in the delivery of reading-fluency interventions, and with respect to educators in and out of the United States who work with students struggling with Spanish-reading fluency.     

More than words? Hypomanic personality traits,visual imagery and verbal thought in young adults

The use of visual mental imagery has been proposed to be a risk factor for the development of bipolar disorder, due to its potential to amplify affective states. This study examined the relation between visual imagery (both trait usage and intrusive experiences of such imagery), intrusive verbal thought, and hypomania, as assessed by self-report questionnaires, in a sample of young adults (N=219). Regression analyses found (after controlling for anxiety, depression, and positive and negative affect) that levels of intrusive visual imagery predicted levels of hypomania, but that neither trait use of visual imagery nor intrusive verbal thought did. These results were consistent with the proposal that being a 'visualiser', as opposed to a 'verbaliser', is a risk factor for bipolar disorder, with the caveat that it is specifically intrusive experiences of imagery, rather than the tendency to utilize imagery per se, that acts as a risk factor.     

Depression,Quantified Medication Adherence,and Quality of Life in Renal Transplant Candidates and Recipients

Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings - Like patients with many chronic illnesses, ESRD patients experience psychological challenges with greater incidence of depression and reduced...     

Perceived Parenting History and Current Parenting Attitudes: Examining Maternal Stress and Depression as Mediators

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Patterns of parenting behaviors tend to persist across generations, but less is known about the associations between mothers’ perceived histories of...     

Parental Psychological Control and Adjustment Among Detained Youth: Does Perceived Containment Matter?

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Parental psychological control is linked to adjustment difficulties, but the links to specific adjustment outcomes and factors that contribute to these links...     

Familiarity breeds dissent: Reliability analyses for British-English idioms on measures of familiarity,meaning, literality,and decomposability

To date, there have been several attempts made to build a database of normative data for English idiomatic expressions (e.g., Libben & Titone, 2008; Titone & Connine, 1994), however, there has been some discussion in the literature as to the validity and reliability of the data obtained, particularly for decomposability ratings. Our work aimed to address these issues by looking at ratings from native and non-native speakers and to extend the deeper investigation and analysis of decomposability to other aspects of idiomatic expressions, namely familiarly, meaning and literality. Poor reliability was observed on all types of ratings, suggesting that rather than decomposability being a special case, individual variability plays a large role in how participants rate idiomatic phrases in general. Ratings from native and non-native speakers were positively correlated and an analysis of covariance found that once familiarity with an idiom was accounted for, most of the differences between native and non-native ratings were not significant. Overall, the results suggest that individual experience with idioms plays an important role in how they are perceived and this should be taken into account when selecting stimuli for experimental studies. Furthermore, the results are suggestive of the inability of speakers to inhibit the figurative meanings for idioms that they are highly familiar with.     

Women in Federal Law Enforcement: The Role of Gender Role Orientations and Sexual Orientation in Mentoring

Women have always been under-represented in United States’ law enforcement relative to the population, but women are successful law enforcement officers who bring important skills to the field. Thus, understanding work experiences and the barriers female law enforcement officers face is critical in retaining and promoting women in the field. However, law enforcement is also a masculine, male-dominated occupation causing even greater occupational stress to women through discrimination, exclusion, and harassment (Kakar 2002). The goal of this study was to analyze the relationships among gender role orientations (masculinity and femininity), sexual orientation, and mentoring for female sworn federal law enforcement officers throughout the United States. It was hypothesized that (1) masculine female officers would receive more mentoring, (2) low femininity would enhance masculinity’s effect, (3) sexual minorities would receive less mentoring, negating the beneficial effects of masculinity when the interaction is taken into account, and last, (4) the 3-way interaction between masculinity, femininity, and sexual orientation would uniquely impact mentoring. In the current sample, masculinity was found to positively relate to career mentoring and role modeling whereas sexual orientation was negatively related to career mentoring. The three-way interaction between masculinity, femininity, and sexual orientation also significantly related to career mentoring and role modeling; implications and future directions are discussed.     

Behavioral ethics for Homo economicus,Homo heuristicus,and Homo duplex

In this article we explore how assumptions about human nature may influence the ways one might try to promote ethical behavior in organizations. We summarize two common views of human nature in organizational research—Homo economicus and Homo heuristicus. We then extend these views by putting forward a third view of human nature initially proposed by Emile Durkheim—Homo duplex—which describes human beings as moving back and forth between a lower (individual) and higher (collective) level. We suggest that the Homo duplex view is uniquely equipped to account for variables of interest to organizational scholars because of its attention to a fundamental tension: People in organizations can be both selfish and groupish, and the balance between those tendencies influences the ethical profile of the organization in complex ways. We end with a discussion of the theoretical implications of the Homo duplex view for behavioral ethics researchers.