Teachers’ perceived time pressure,emotional exhaustion and the role of social support from the school principal

Social Psychology of Education - Many teachers experience high levels of work-related strain due to time pressure, which over time can lead to various health problems, such as emotional exhaustion....     

A study of families' satisfaction with a family interventions in psychosis service in Somerset

Although research has shown the efficacy of family interventions in psychosis, there has been little research into families' own experience of services in routine clinical settings. Fifteen of the first twenty-two referrals to a Somerset Family Interventions Service agreed to take part in semi-structured interviews regarding family satisfaction and clinical outcome. High levels of engagement and satisfaction with the service were reported in spite of initial apprehension regarding family sessions. Family members thought that the sessions had helped them deal more effectively with problems and relatives' symptoms. They valued the opportunity for open discussion, developing new perspectives and problem-solving, as well as liaison/closer working with mental health services. Positive therapeutic qualities/skills (e.g. empathic, non-judgemental approach; mutually agreed goals) were highlighted. This study also indicated that successful engagement in family work requires referral at an early stage. The findings of this study, particularly those relating to the therapeutic relationship, are discussed, including their relevance for future research.     

The Interplay of Implicit Causality,Structural Heuristics,and Anaphor Type in Ambiguous Pronoun Resolution

Two visual-world eye-tracking experiments investigating pronoun resolution in Finnish examined the time course of implicit causality information relative to both grammatical role and order-of-mention information. Experiment 1 showed an effect of implicit causality that appeared at the same time as the first-mention preference. Furthermore, when we counterbalanced the semantic roles of the verbs, we found no effect of grammatical role, suggesting the standard observed subject preference has a large semantic component. Experiment 2 showed that both the personal pronoun hän and the demonstrative tämä preferred the antecedent consistent with the implicit causality bias; tämä was not interpreted as referring to the semantically non-prominent entity. In contrast, structural prominence affected hän and tämä differently: we found a first-mention preference for hän, but a second-mention preference for tämä. The results suggest that semantic implicit causality information has an immediate effect on pronoun resolution and its use is not delayed relative to order-of-mention information. Furthermore, they show that order-of-mention differentially affects different types of anaphoric expressions, but semantic information has the same effect.     

Aggression and self-esteem: a diary study of children's reactivity to negative interpersonal events

The study employs a daily diary design to assess self-esteem reactivity and its association with children's aggressive behavior. We test the hypothesis that the self-esteem of aggressive children will be more reactive to negative interpersonal events than the self-esteem of nonaggressive children. Results provide partial support for the aggression/reactivity hypothesis. Aggressive children's self-esteem was more reactive to negative peer events but less reactive to negative adult events than the self-esteem of less aggressive children. These findings are discussed in relation to the experimental literature relating self-esteem instability and ego-threat to aggression and in relation to the extensive body of research on childhood aggression. Intervention implications are also considered.     

Toward Assessing and Improving Survey Questions on Religion: The ARDA's Measurement Wizard

Developing survey measures of religion is deceptively difficult. As religion in America becomes more diverse and research projects become more global, finding a shared vocabulary that taps into concepts of interest and selecting response categories that capture the full range of choices becomes ever more challenging. This research project introduces new tools and techniques for exploring and evaluating past survey measures of religion, including a new software tool that draws on the ARDA's massive collection of survey measures. We offer two examples to demonstrate how these resources can serve to evaluate past survey measures of religion and improve future measures.     

From crisis of evidence to a “crisis” of relevance? Incentive-based answers for social psychology’s perennial relevance worries

Current controversies in social psychology have sparked the promotion of new rules for evidence in the field. This “crisis of evidence” echoes prior concerns from the 1970s about a so-called “crisis of social psychology”, with such issues as replication and statistical significance once more under examination. I argue that parallel concerns about the relevance of our research, raised but not completely resolved in the 1970s crisis, also deserve a fresh look. In particular, the advances made in the current crisis of evidence came about because of changes in academic career incentives, particularly publishing. Today, many voices in psychology urge greater respect for relevance in topics, methods and communication, but the lack of clear and concrete incentives to do so has stood in the way of answers. I diagnose the current incentive structures, propose partial solutions that are within the reach of journal editors and professional societies, and conclude by discussing the links between relevance and evidence, as well as special challenges to the relevance of social psychology post-2016.     

Applying a longitudinal tracer methodology to evaluate complex interventions in complex settings

Long-running multi-faceted intervention studies are particularly problematic in large complex organizations where traditional methods prove too resource intensive and can yield inaccurate and incomplete findings. This paper describes the first use of, longitudinal tracer methodology (LTM), a realist approach to evaluation, to examine the links between multiple complex intervention activities (processes) and their outcomes on a construction megaproject. LTM is especially useful when the researcher has little control over intervention delivery but has evidence drawn from multiple sources to evaluate the intervention activities effects over time. This methodology has rarely been deployed in complex organizational settings and not on a construction megaproject. This paper presents a case study of its use over a period of three years, on 24 construction sites forming London’s Thames Tideway Tunnel (Tideway) megaproject. The study examines the “transformational” power of occupational safety and health (OSH) interventions across the multiple organizations and supply chains in the megaproject. The study shows how the method can be adapted in-flight to accommodate shifting lines of inquiry as the intervention activities progress and change. This feature along with its resource-efficient operation, make it an attractive option where interventions are likely to have differential effects across multiple sites of enactment.     

Grasping remaps the distribution of visuospatial attention and enhances competing action activation

We examined how action goals influence the distribution of visuospatial attention near the body (Experiment 1) and how the temporal relationship between distractors and targets modifies shifts in visuospatial attention (Experiment 2). Targets were light emitting diodes (LEDs) in the left and right hemispace of a visual display. Following left or right target illumination, participants reached to point-to or grasp target object in blocked trials. Coincident with target onset, a distractor LED illuminated in the same or opposite hemispace between the initiation point and target, or no distractor appeared. In Experiment 1, during grasping there was a larger temporal interference effect (slower reach initiation) than with pointing. When grasping versus pointing, participants deviated more towards same-side distractors and away from opposite-side distractors. In Experiment 2, distractors onset 200ms prior to (?200-ms), coincident with (0 ms), or 200ms following (+200 ms) the target. For both reach types, ?200-ms distractors had greater onset temporal interference than 0 ms and +200-ms distractors. For grasping, +200 ms distractors had larger temporal interference than 0 ms distractors. For ?200-ms, reach trajectories deviated more towards opposite-side distractors and away from same-side distractors, the reverse of the pattern for 0 ms and +200-ms distractors.