The Effect of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy on Irrational Career Beliefs of Students of Electrical Electronics and Other Engineering Trades in Technical Colleges in Nigeria

Irrational beliefs are factors that can explain students’ emotional and/or pragmatic problems. Irrational career beliefs are career myths, maladaptive cognitions and inaccurate beliefs regarding career and the work world which impact negatively on career decision-making. The present research investigated the effectiveness of rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) on irrational career beliefs of students of electrical electronics, automobile trade, building/woodwork and mechanical trades in technical colleges in Nigeria. Using a pretest–posttest control group, 173 participants were assessed quantitatively at four time points. One-way ANOVA, repeated-measures ANOVA and paired sample t test were utilized for analysis of data. Posttest results indicated that the irrational career beliefs of the REBT participants declined significantly compared to a waitlist control group. Furthermore, results of both 3- and 6-months follow-up evaluations showed that the significant reduction in irrational career beliefs of the REBT participants was maintained. Therefore, supporting interventions which aim to promote functional career beliefs and thoughts among the citizens, beginning from the early school years to the graduate school level and in the workplaces, should be considered a top policy issue in Nigeria. Further studies are needed to examine whether exposing students to an REBT program can lead to less anxiety related to career decision-making and improved career self-efficacy beliefs.     

Algorithmic modeling of the irrelevant sound effect (ISE) by the hearing sensation fluctuation strength

Background sounds, such as narration, music with prominent staccato passages, and office noise impair verbal short-term memory even when these sounds are irrelevant. This irrelevant sound effect (ISE) is evoked by so-called changing-state sounds that are characterized by a distinct temporal structure with varying successive auditory-perceptive tokens. However, because of the absence of an appropriate psychoacoustically based instrumental measure, the disturbing impact of a given speech or nonspeech sound could not be predicted until now, but necessitated behavioral testing. Our database for parametric modeling of the ISE included approximately 40 background sounds (e.g., speech, music, tone sequences, office noise, traffic noise) and corresponding performance data that was collected from 70 behavioral measurements of verbal short-term memory. The hearing sensation fluctuation strength was chosen to model the ISE and describes the percept of fluctuations when listening to slowly modulated sounds (f(mod) < 20?Hz). On the basis of the fluctuation strength of background sounds, the algorithm estimated behavioral performance data in 63 of 70 cases within the interquartile ranges. In particular, all real-world sounds were modeled adequately, whereas the algorithm overestimated the (non-)disturbance impact of synthetic steady-state sounds that were constituted by a repeated vowel or tone. Implications of the algorithm's strengths and prediction errors are discussed.     

Cross-ethnic assessment of body weight and height on the basis of faces

Previous research has revealed a strong relationship between mere visual facial cues and body weight. They can be exploited to validly judge the weight of the human body. We tested to what extent observers are able to judge body weight and height on the basis of same-ethnicity and different-ethnicity faces. Caucasian and Asian observers saw Caucasian and Asian faces and estimated the person’s weight and height – merely on the basis of greyscale photographs of the face. These height and weight estimates were influenced by ethnocentric specifics of familiar face proportion and face–body relationship. Own-ethnicity weight estimations showed higher accuracy than foreign-ethnicity estimations. Observers ignored the changed base-rate for weight of other-culture faces in a culture-egocentric fashion. Height judgments, in contrast, reflect a higher degree of sophistication. A bias toward the own, familiar body proportion was visible here, especially for Japanese observers—however, the height judgments showed that observers were able to incorporate the other-ethnicity height proportion to some extent.     

Ambivalence over emotional expression in major depression

High ambivalence over the expression of emotions (AEE) has consistently been associated with high levels of depression in previous research. However, there is a lack of studies examining this construct and its associations in a clinical sample of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Therefore, the present study compared 76 MDD with 77 non-depressed controls (NC) regarding AEE. As expected, MDD reported greater AEE as compared to ND. Furthermore, levels of AEE and levels of depression were positively correlated in the MDD group. These findings extend previous work and underline the importance of AEE as a central construct in depression. Targeting AEE in treatments of depression may help to modify maladaptive interpersonal patterns of emotional expression.     

Home Sweet Home! Does Moving Have (Lasting) Effects on Housing Satisfaction?

Previous research has found that moving has lasting effects on housing satisfaction while adaptation to changing living environments is surprisingly absent from this research. This paper challenges and extends this current state of research. Using data from a large-scale German household panel we find that housing satisfaction (a) sharply declines before the move (self-selection into relocation), (b) substantially increases after moving (relocation effect), (c) declines in the following years (adaptation), (d) after about 2 years reaches satisfaction levels similar to the levels several years before the move (full adaptation), (e) but due to selection into moving stays above satisfaction levels in the years directly before the move (lasting gains due to self-selection). Further analyses indicate that moving due to house-related reasons leads to partly lasting gains, while moving due to significant life events only has temporary effects. Finally, we show that permanent changes in housing satisfaction due to house-related relocations can be fully explained using self-assessed comparisons between old and new living environment.     

Detecting distortions of peripherally presented letter stimuli under crowded conditions

When visual features in the periphery are close together they become difficult to recognize: something is present but it is unclear what. This is called “crowding”. Here we investigated sensitivity to features in highly familiar shapes (letters) by applying spatial distortions. In Experiment 1, observers detected which of four peripherally presented (8 deg of retinal eccentricity) target letters was distorted (spatial 4AFC). The letters were presented either isolated or surrounded by four undistorted flanking letters, and distorted with one of two types of distortion at a range of distortion frequencies and amplitudes. The bandpass noise distortion (“BPN”) technique causes spatial distortions in Cartesian space, whereas radial frequency distortion (“RF”) causes shifts in polar coordinates. Detecting distortions in target letters was more difficult in the presence of flanking letters, consistent with the effect of crowding. The BPN distortion type showed evidence of tuning, with sensitivity to distortions peaking at approximately 6.5 c/deg for unflanked letters. The presence of flanking letters causes this peak to rise to approximately 8.5 c/deg. In contrast to the tuning observed for BPN distortions, RF distortion sensitivity increased as the radial frequency of distortion increased. In a series of follow-up experiments, we found that sensitivity to distortions is reduced when flanking letters were also distorted, that this held when observers were required to report which target letter was undistorted, and that this held when flanker distortions were always detectable. The perception of geometric distortions in letter stimuli is impaired by visual crowding.