A longitudinal examination of the relationship between teacher burnout and depression

This study investigates the longitudinal relationships between burnout and depression among teachers. Middle and high school teachers participated in a 3‐wave survey. The results of the latent growth modeling analysis revealed that there was a significant relationship between the initial status of burnout and the initial status of depression. Results also indicated a significant relationship between the change rate of burnout and the change rate of depression. Moreover, the autoregressive cross‐lagged modeling revealed a causal relationship such that teacher's burnout leads to subsequent depression symptoms, not vice versa.     

Cultural Differences in Targets of Stigmatization Between Individual- and Group-Oriented Cultures

This research investigated cultural differences in stigmatization of out-groups representing Goffman's distinction between “tribal stigma” and “blemishes of character.” We hypothesized that “group-oriented” (vs. individual-oriented) cultures would be more likely to stigmatize nonnormative groups, including tribal out-groups (people of a different race, immigrants/foreign workers) and out-groups with blemishes of character (homosexuals, heavy drinkers, drug addicts), because of higher value of behavioral conformity and/or lower value of uniqueness. Country-level analyses with nine individual-oriented and four group-oriented countries supported our hypotheses and revealed that the cultural value of uniqueness played a more influential role than behavioral conformity. We discuss implications and directions for future research.     

High-resolution electron microscope studies of irradiation-induced crystalline-to-amorphous transition in boron carbide

Abstract

The crystalline-to-amorphous (C-A) transition in boron carbide induced by 2 MeV electron irradiation was studied by high-resolution electron microscopy. It is revealed that the C-A transition takes place not homogeneously but heterogeneously over the irradiated volume and the volume fraction of the amorphous phase continuously increases with increasing dose of electrons.     

Effects of varying target luminance and cue luminance on attentional effects of spatial cues

Attentional effects of letter cues on target processing were investigated in a bilateral spatial cueing paradigm. Luminance contrast of the cue stimuli and of the target stimuli were both manipulated. Consistent with predictions derived from theoretical models of visual attention, manipulating cue luminance and target luminance had very different effects on performance. In agreement with the dorsal stream attention hypothesis (Marrett et al., 2011) orienting effects were unaffected by changes in cue luminance; but in agreement with the work of Reynolds, Pasternak, and Desimone (2000) and Carrasco, Ling, and Read (2004) orienting effects were strongly modulated by changes in the luminance and perceptual quality of the target. Theoretical implications of the results are considered and the data are explained in terms of a sensory enhancement effect, whereby attention amplifies the neuronal responses for attended stimuli.     

Well-being of mothers of children with mental retardation: An evaluation of the Double ABCX model in a cross-cultural context

The present study was designed to compare the psychological well-being of mothers of children with mental retardation in the USA and Korea. The Double ABCX model of stress proposed by McCubbin and Patterson (1983) was evaluated for the two national groups. Thirty-eight American and 40 Korean mothers participated in the home-visit interview. The path models in the present study partially supported the ABCX model, but different path models for the two national groups provided important explanations for the well-being of mothers from the two nations. The cause of stress for the American mothers was specific to the individual variables. For Korean mothers, cultural values that carry social influence were more strongly associated with their attitudes towards the child and their experience of stress.     

Influence of self-construals on the perception of different self-presentation styles in Korea

The present study investigated how perceivers' self-construals influence the perception of others who use self-enhancement or self-effacement in communication. It was predicated that independent self and interdependent self would differently affect the evaluation of self-enhancing presentation and self-effacing presentation. Two hundred and forty-six Korean college students read a scenario depicting a person using bragging, and positive and negative self-presentations for his/her accomplishment, and then evaluated the presenter in the scenario on intention of future interaction, satisfaction with conversation and likeability. Results showed that people with independent self evaluated the positive presentation more favorably than people with interdependent self, whereas people with interdependent self evaluated the negative presentation more favorably than people with independent self. No significant difference was found in the evaluation of bragging presentation. The results imply that although the purpose of self-presentation is to give positive self to others, it is differently expressed through self-enhancement in North American culture and through self-effacement in East Asian culture. The results also supported previous cross-cultural studies on self-enhancement and self-effacement by providing an examination from individual level analysis.     

10‐month‐old infants’ inference of invisible agent: Distinction in causality between object motion and human action1

Abstract: Two habituation experiments investigated 10‐month‐old infants’ interpretation of events where a stationary object began to move without any visible causes. During habituation, infants saw that an object partly hidden by an occluder began to move away from the occluder. Then, they were tested with three test events without the occluder: the ?rst event showed a hand pushing the object, the second event showed a hand failing to touch the object, and the last event had no agent. The objects were a ball in Experiment 1, and a person in Experiment 2. The test event that the infants looked at for the shortest duration in Experiment 1 was where the hand pushed the ball, whereas they looked at the three test events almost equal amounts of time in Experiment 2. These results indicate that 10‐month‐old infants responded to the events in terms of causality and could infer the presence of the agent behind the occluder only when they saw the habituation event featuring the ball.     

Creative Fixation is No Laughing Matter: The Effects of Funny and Unfunny Examples on Humor Production

How do people come up with humorous ideas? In creative cognition research, exposure to good examples sometimes causes fixation (people get “stuck” on the examples) but other times sparks inspiration (people's responses are more creative). The present research examined the effects of funny and unfunny examples on joke production. A sample of 175 adults read scenarios that they completed with funny responses. All participants were instructed to be funny, but before responding they read (a) funny responses as examples of good responses to emulate, (b) unfunny responses as examples of poor responses to avoid, or (c) no examples. The participants’ own responses were rated for funniness and for similarity to the example responses, and response times were recorded. Reading either funny or unfunny examples, compared to no examples, caused people to come up with funnier jokes. Similarity to the examples was low in all conditions, so fixation was relatively modest, but people who saw unfunny examples spent more time coming up with their responses. Taken together, the findings support the growing literature showing that examples are often inspiring rather than constraining, and they imply that good and bad examples spark creative thought via different paths.     

The use of paraprofessionals in crisis intervention

Single-session crisis services by paraprofessionals (graduate students and community volunteers) in the emergency room of a community hospital were offered to 293 clients. These clients were followed-up 6 to 12 months after their last contact and asked about: (1) the effectiveness of the service, (2) their use of referrals, (3) the major source of change in their crisis situation, and (4) their rating of improvement for their presenting problem. There were 104 clients who completed the follow-up. The results support the interpretation that timely intervention by paraprofessionals may have long-lasting results in specific problem areas. A model emphasizing the use of service deliverers as researchers is proposed.