Impact of employee assistance programs on substance abusers and workplace safety

Businesses have dealt with substance abuse in different ways. Some organizations have established Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) to address these problems. One large national company chose to fire employees with positive drug screens, offer them EAP services, and then consider them for rehire after treatment. A study of performance records for 12,167 employees with safety incidents revealed that rehired employees had a significantly higher incident rate than the company's general population. Results indicated no difference in pre‐ and post‐EAP incident rates for rehired workers, and the post‐EAP incident rate fluctuated for 2 years. Implications of hiring/rehiring individuals who abuse drugs and alcohol are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research.     

Only self-generated actions create sensori-motor systems in the developing brain

Previous research shows that sensory and motor systems interact during perception, but how these connections among systems are created during development is unknown. The current work exposes young children to novel 'verbs' and objects through either (a) actively exploring the objects or (b) by seeing an experimenter interact with the objects. Results demonstrate that the motor system is recruited during auditory perception only after learning involved self-generated interactions with objects. Action observation itself led to above-baseline activation in one motor region during visual perception, but was still significantly less active than after self-generated action. Therefore, in the developing brain, associations are built upon real-world interactions of body and environment, leading to sensori-motor representations of both objects and words.     

Risk factors for onset of eating disorders: Evidence of multiple risk pathways from an 8-year prospective study

Objective

Use classification tree analysis with lagged predictors to determine empirically derived cut-points for identifying adolescent girls at risk for future onset of threshold, subthreshold, and partial eating disorders and test for interactions between risk factors that may implicate qualitatively distinct risk pathways.

Method

Data were drawn from a prospective study of 496 adolescent girls who completed diagnostic interviews and surveys annually for 8 years.

Results

Body dissatisfaction emerged as the most potent predictor; adolescent girls in the upper 24% of body dissatisfaction showed a 4.0-fold increased incidence of eating disorder onset (24% vs. 6%). Among participants in the high body dissatisfaction branch, those in the upper 32% of depressive symptoms showed a 2.9-fold increased incidence of onset (43% vs. 15%). Among participants in the low body dissatisfaction branch, those in the upper 12% of dieting showed a 3.6-fold increased incidence onset (18% vs. 5%).

Conclusion

This three-way interaction suggests a body dissatisfaction pathway to eating disorder onset that is amplified by depressive symptoms, as well as a pathway characterized by self-reported dieting among young women who are more satisfied with their bodies. It may be possible to increase the effectiveness of prevention programs by targeting each of these qualitatively distinct risk groups, rather than only individuals with a single risk factor.     

Priming infants to use pattern information in an object individuation task: the role of comparison

There is evidence that 4.5-month-olds do not always use surface pattern to individuate objects but that they can be primed to attend to pattern differences through select experiences. For example, if infants are first shown events in which the pattern of an object predicts its function (dotted containers pound and striped containers pour), they will attend to pattern differences in a subsequent individuation task. However, 4.5-month-olds must see multiple exemplars of the pound and pour events and view the dotted and striped containers together during the events. These results suggest that it is the formation of event categories, in which pattern is linked to object function, that supports pattern priming and that direct comparison of the exemplars facilitates the extraction of event categories. The present research investigated conditions that support the comparison process in 4.5-month-olds. The results revealed that the comparison process was initiated only when the dotted and striped containers were seen directly adjacent to each other; if the containers sat far apart, so that infants had to shift their gaze to compare them, event categories were not extracted. In addition, it was comparison of the two patterned containers, and not comparison of the two function events, that was critical to the formation of event categories. These results join a growing body of research indicating the importance of comparison to category formation in infants and reveal the impact of categorization and comparison processes on object individuation in infancy.     

Judgement of confidence in childhood memories

Memory judgement processes, based on the characteristics and associations of retrieved memories such as sensory details and supporting memories, are considered as important as retrieval in several autobiographical memory models. Judgement processes have received less research attention than memory characteristics themselves. The present studies examined memory judgement using qualitative analysis of the reasons participants gave for confidence in retrieved childhood memories. For memories they were confident of, participants cited memory phenomenology, especially sensory and affective details, much more frequently than consistency with other autobiographical knowledge. For memories they were not confident of, participants reported lack of consistency with autobiographical knowledge or with others' memories more often than memory phenomenology as reasons for their uncertainty. Participants' comments also revealed several metacognitive beliefs about the relationship between memory characteristics and accuracy. These data are consistent with two‐process models of memory judgement associated with true versus false memories. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Career Adapt-Abilities Scale in Macau: Psychometric characteristics and construct validity

The purpose of the study was to determine if the CAAS could be used with middle school students. Currently no study has been done for the application of CAAS on middle school students. We examined the reliability and validity of the Career Adapt-Ability Scale (CAAS) in Macau for middle school and high school students. The CAAS consists of four scales, each with six items, which measure concern, control, curiosity, and confidence. We tested the internal consistency and factor structure with 270 middle school students and 188 high school students. We also compared students' performance on CAAS in terms of gender and age. The results indicated that internal consistency estimates for the subscale and total scores were good for both high school and middle school students. The factor structure was quite similar to the one computed for combined data from 13 countries (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012). In addition, we found that high school students scored significantly higher than middle school students on the CAAS scales. Based on the results, the CAAS-Macau Form appears ready for use by researchers and practitioners who wish to measure adaptability resources among middle school and high school students in Macau.     

Depth from binocular half-occlusions in stereoscopic images of natural scenes

Over the past two decades psychophysical experiments have firmly established that binocular half-occlusions are useful sources of information for the human visual system. The existing literature has focused on simplified stimuli that have no additional cues to depth, apart from stereopsis. From this large body of work we can be confident that the visual system is able to exploit binocular half-occlusions to aid depth perception; however, we do not know if this signal has any influence on perception when observers view complex stereoscopic stimuli with multiple sources of depth information. This issue is addressed here with the use of stereoscopic images of natural scenes, some of which have been digitally altered to manipulate a major half-occlusion signal. Our results show that depth-ordering judgments for these relatively complex stimuli are significantly affected by the nature of the half-occlusion signal, but only when highly textured surfaces are viewed. Under such conditions, the replacement of a binocular half-occlusion with background texture slows reaction time relative to performance when the occluded region is consistent with the foreground object. This result is specific to conditions when the depth ordering is correct (ie not reversed) and depends upon the size of the half-occlusion. The influence of the half-occlusion information in the presence of potent depth cues such as perspective, texture gradient, shading, and interposition is convincing evidence that this information plays a significant role in human depth perception.     

Reconsidering formative measurement

The relationship between observable responses and the latent constructs they are purported to measure has received considerable attention recently, with particular focus on what has become known as formative measurement. This alternative to reflective measurement in the area of theory-testing research is examined in the context of the potential for interpretational confounding and a construct's ability to function as a point variable within a larger model. Although these issues have been addressed in the traditional reflective measurement context, the authors suggest that they are particularly relevant in evaluating formative measurement models. On the basis of this analysis, the authors conclude that formative measurement is not an equally attractive alternative to reflective measurement and that whenever possible, in developing new measures or choosing among alternative existing measures, researchers should opt for reflective measurement. In addition, the authors provide guidelines for researchers dealing with existing formative measures.