Reliability and validity of the Oxford Happiness Inventory among university students in Iran

The aim of the present study was to examine the internal reliability, content validity, construct validity, and concurrent validity of the Persian translation/Farsi version of the Oxford Happiness Inventory. The Oxford Happiness Inventory and Fordyce Happiness Inventory were completed by a sample of 727 Iranian university students. Findings confirmed the internal reliability, construct, and concurrent validity of the Oxford Happiness Inventory. Thus, it can be recommended for use as a trait-measure of happiness among Iranian samples.     

ALTERING THE NEAR‐MISS EFFECT IN SLOT MACHINE GAMBLERS

This study investigated the potential for recreational gamblers to respond as if certain types of losing slot machine outcomes were actually closer to a win than others (termed the near‐miss effect). Exposure to conditional discrimination training and testing disrupted this effect for 10 of the 16 participants. These 10 participants demonstrated high percentages of conditional discrimination testing performance, and the remaining 6 participants failed the discrimination tests. The implications for a verbally based behavioral explanation of gambling are presented.     

Natural teeth and cognitive function in humans

A number of neurobiological, psychological and social factors may account for cognitive impairment. In animal studies a relation between dental status and cognitive performance has been found. It is unclear whether such a relation exists for humans. In a first step we compared the performance of 1,351 participants (53% women, 47% men; age M = 54.0) with natural teeth to 487 edentulous participants (59% women, 41% men; age M = 71.3) on 12 cognitive tests. The natural teeth group had a lower mean age, fewer women, more years of education, higher mini-mental state (MMSE), and performed significantly higher on several cognitive tests. In a subsequent analysis, the cognitive performance of a subset of the participants (50-85 years) was examined. In this analysis, 211 had natural dentition and 188 were edentulous. The groups were matched for gender, age, social variables, diseases, stress and MMSE. The cognitive disadvantage of the edentulous group was still apparent. The results suggest that functional natural teeth relate to relatively preserved cognitive functioning in older age.     

Stop the clock because I can’t stop: time pressure,but not monitoring pressure,impairs response inhibition performance

ABSTRACT

Psychological pressure can exert detrimental effects on cognitive tasks that depend on attentional control. However, the effect of psychological pressure on inhibitory cognitive processes has been relatively overlooked. The study purpose was to examine the effect of psychological pressure on response inhibition. In Experiment 1, participants (N?=?125) were assigned to a combined time and performance-based incentive pressure condition or control condition. In Experiment 2, participants (N?=?124) were allocated to a time pressure only or control condition. Participants (N?=?149) in Experiment 3 were assigned to either an explicit monitoring pressure condition in which their performance was video-recorded or control condition. Participants in all experiments completed a Go/NoGo Task to assess response inhibition performance. Pressure impaired performance in Experiments 1 and 2 but not Experiment 3. The results demonstrate that time pressure, but not explicit monitoring pressure, significantly impairs inhibition accuracy. These findings are consistent with the distraction theory of performance pressure.     

Responsiveness of measures of attentional bias to clinical change in social phobia

This study examined responsiveness of the dot probe measure of attentional bias to standard cognitive-behaviour group therapy (CBGT) for social phobia. People who met criteria for social phobia were randomly allocated to either an immediate treatment condition or a waiting list control (WLC). All participants completed self-report measures of social anxiety, depression, and anxiety sensitivity, a verbal dot probe and a facial dot-probe task before and after eight weeks of standard CBGT was undertaken by the treatment group. On the first measurement occasion the two groups had similar scores on all measures. On the second measurement occasion the self-report scores for the CBGT group were lower than those of the WLC group. Performance on the dot-probe tasks for the CBGT group had also changed. The treatment group appeared to direct their attention away from social threat words and threatening faces after CBGT.     

Visual Attention and Lexical Involvement in L1 and L2 Word Processing: Emotional Stroop Effect

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Given the fact that the process of engaging and interacting with the text is not only the function of a reader but also the text itself, the current study...     

Atlantis: a time‐value model in e‐commerce

This paper presents a model for resolving two main issues of time in e‐commerce. The first issue is the time value of e‐commerce that represents the value of each moment of the commerce time from the perspective of buyers and sellers. Buyers and sellers can use this model to calculate the time value at each moment of time and accordingly decide whether it is profitable to buy or sell at that moment. The second issue is to allow buyers or sellers to increase their savings or decrease their costs by changing each of the factors governing the time value model of the concerned e‐commerce. We present relevant model specifically for Amazon e‐commerce to present a proof of concept of our proposed models.     

Attentional bias for words and faces in social anxiety

Conflicting findings concerning the nature and presence of attentional bias in social anxiety and social phobia have been reported in the literature. This paper reports the findings of two studies comparing people with high and low social anxiety on dot probe tasks using words, faces photographed in front view, and faces photographed in profile as stimuli. In Study 1 those with high social anxiety displayed an attentional bias towards negative faces. The low social anxiety group showed an attentional bias towards positive faces. No significant effects were observed on the dot probe using words as stimuli. Study 2 used pairs of faces presented in profile as though looking at each other. One of the faces displayed either a positive, negative or neutral expression. The second face always had a neutral expression, and in half of the trials it was the subject's own face. The findings of this more ecologically valid procedure replicated those of Study 1. Facilitated attention to dots following emotional faces was specific to threatening facial stimuli. From these studies it appears that the facial dot probe task is a more sensitive index of attentional bias than the word task in a non-clinical sample with social anxiety.     

Developing an Output‐Oriented Super Slacks‐Based Measure Model with an Application to Third‐Party Reverse Logistics Providers

Outsourcing is an increasingly significant topic pursued via corporations seeking enhanced efficiency. Third‐party reverse logistics involves the employ of external firms to carry out some or all of the firm's logistics activities. Output‐oriented super slacks‐based measure (SBM) model is one of the models in data envelopment analysis (DEA). In many real‐world applications, data are often stochastic. A successful approach to address uncertainty in data is to replace deterministic data via random variables, leading to chance‐constrained DEA. In this paper, a chance‐constrained output‐oriented super SBM model is developed and also its deterministic equivalent, which is a nonlinear program, is derived. Furthermore, it is shown that the deterministic equivalent of the stochastic output‐oriented super SBM model can be converted into a quadratic program. In addition, sensitivity analysis of the stochastic output‐oriented super SBM model is discussed with respect to changes on parameters. Finally, a numerical example demonstrates the application of the proposed model. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.