Sojourners’ Ineffective Sociocultural Adaptation: Paranoia as a Joint Function of Distrust toward Host Nationals and Neuroticism

The present study examines how sojourners’ paranoia mediates the negative relationship between their distrust toward host nationals and sociocultural adaptation, and how sojourners’ neuroticism moderates this mediated relationship. By conducting a two-part survey study with U.S. undergraduate students who traveled abroad for academic programs, I found that only among neurotic sojourners, distrust toward host nationals was negatively related to sociocultural adaptation, mediated by paranoia. These findings suggest that distrust-related cognition and emotion as well as neuroticism are all important predictors of sociocultural adaptation, and shed light on the inquiry regarding sojourners’ adaptation and distrust/trust.     

Childhood Adversity and Children’s Academic Functioning: Roles of Parenting Stress and Neighborhood Support

Existing research has shown that adverse childhood experiences from family instability and lack of safety increase children’s risk for poor academic functioning. A recent conceptual framework, however, has emphasized the need to investigate how parenting might mediate while community context might moderate the association between childhood adversity and children’s cognitive development. In the current study, we tested the roles of parenting stress and neighborhood support in the association between cumulative childhood adversity and children’s current academic functioning. We conducted a secondary data analysis on the subsample of school-aged children (i.e., 6–17 years old; N?=?65,680) from the 2011–2012 United States National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH). The parent provided telephone survey data on six types of adversity (e.g., parent’s divorce) that the target child experienced, parenting stress, neighborhood support, as well as the child’s academic functioning. Controlling for the child’s age, gender, ethnicity, and the parent’s education level, structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed a significant moderated mediating effect: parenting stress partially mediated the association between history of childhood adversity and children’s current academic functioning (β?=??1.760, p?<?0.001), while neighborhood support moderated the association between parenting stress (β?=?0.492, p?<?0.001) and academic functioning.     

The effect of diabetes knowledge and attitudes on self-management and quality of life among people with type 2 diabetes

We examined the effect of diabetes knowledge and attitudes on self-management and quality of life (QoL) of people with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). We employed a cross-sectional study design. A total of 137 female and 129 male participants with T2DM completed the diabetes knowledge scale (DKN), Diabetes Integration Scale-19 (ATT19), Summary of Diabetes Self-care Activities (SDSCA) scale, and Diabetes Quality of Life (DQoL) scale, measuring diabetes knowledge, attitudes, self-management, and QoL respectively. The SDSCA scale measures diet, exercise, blood glucose monitoring, and foot care. The DQoL scale measures satisfaction and impact of QoL. An initial path model that tested the inter-relationships of the study variables was first identified based on previous research. Then, the path model was tested using Mplus 7.3. In the final model, diabetes knowledge was a significant predictor of attitudes and self-management in terms of blood glucose monitoring and foot care. Attitudes was a significant predictor of impact of QoL. Self-management in terms of blood glucose monitoring was a significant predictor of impact of QoL and diet was a significant predictor of satisfaction and impact of QoL. Exercise and foot care aspects of Self-management were significant predictors of satisfaction and impact of QoL respectively. The final model showed a good fit to the data: RMSEA = .045 (90% CI: .009, .071; Clfit = .601), CFI = .950, SRMR = .058. The findings suggest a theoretical basis to direct the development of appropriate health programs and interventions for improving QoL in people with T2DM and warrant replication in diverse samples.     

Successful emotion regulation requires both conviction and skill: beliefs about the controllability of emotions,reappraisal, and regulation success

To succeed in self-regulation, people need to believe that it is possible to change behaviour and they also need to use effective means to enable such a change. We propose that this also applies to emotion regulation. In two studies, we found that people were most successful in emotion regulation, the more they believed emotions can be controlled and the more they used an effective emotion regulation strategy – namely, cognitive reappraisal. Cognitive reappraisal moderated the link between beliefs about the controllability of emotion and success in emotion regulation, when reappraisal was measured as a trait (Study 1) or manipulated (Study 2). Such moderation was found when examining the regulation of disgust elicited by emotion-inducing films (Study 1), and the regulation of anger elicited by real political events (Study 2). We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice in emotion regulation.     

‘It seems at the moment my career is dependent on factors outside of my control’: reflections on graduates’ experiences of employment and career enactment in an era of economic uncertainty and austerity

ABSTRACT

This paper explores contested notions of the purpose of education and careers work. The research for the paper examines public sector employee reactions to notion of a psychological contract breach, when cuts in funding put their jobs and careers at risk. It argues that, in this environment, the search for career fulfilment can be marked by feelings of cruel optimism, wicked problems and broken expectations. The findings are then used to present the case for further research, firstly, to address the notion of possible selves, as individuals explore alternative identity affirming career opportunities; and secondly, the impact of changes in public policy on the processes of psychological contracting between students and staff in further and higher education.     

The reasoning skills and thinking dispositions of problem gamblers: a dual‐process taxonomy

We present a taxonomy that categorizes the types of cognitive failure that might result in persistent gambling. The taxonomy subsumes most previous theories of gambling behavior, and it defines three categories of cognitive difficulties that might lead to gambling problems: The autonomous set of systems (TASS) override failure, missing TASS output, and mindware problems. TASS refers to the autonomous set of systems in the brain (which are executed rapidly and without volition, are not under conscious control, and are not dependent on analytic system output). Mindware consists of rules, procedures, and strategies available for explicit retrieval. Seven of the eight tasks administered to pathological gamblers, gamblers with subclinical symptoms, and control participants were associated with problem gambling, and five of the eight were significant predictors in analyses that statistically controlled for age and cognitive competence. In a commonality analysis, an indicator from each of the three categories of cognitive difficulties explained significant unique variance in problem gambling, indicating that each of the categories had some degree of predictive specificity. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nonverbal arithmetic in humans: light from noise

Animal and human data suggest the existence of a cross-species system of analog number representation (e.g., Cordes, Gelman, Gallistel, & Whalen, 2001; Meeck & Church, 1983), which may mediate the computation of statistical regularities in the environment (Gallistel, Gelman, & Cordes, 2006). However, evidence of arithmetic manipulation of these nonverbal magnitude representations is sparse and lacking in depth. This study uses the analysis of variability as a tool for understanding properties of these combinatorial processes. Human subjects participated in tasks requiring responses dependent upon the addition, subtraction, or reproduction of nonverbal counts. Variance analyses revealed that the magnitude of both inputs and answer contributed to the variability in the arithmetic responses, with operand variability dominating. Other contributing factors to the observed variability and implications for logarithmic versus scalar models of magnitude representation are discussed in light of these results.     

Domain specific attentional impairments in children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome

One of the defining cognitive characteristics of the chromosome 22q deletion syndrome (DS22q11.2) is visuospatial processing impairments. The purpose of this study was to investigate and extend the specific attentional profile of children with this disorder using both an object-based attention task and an inhibition of return task. A group of children with the disorder was compared in these tasks with a group of age-matched typically developing children. The children with DS22q11.2 demonstrated impaired spatially based orienting which is consistent with previous findings in this group. Strikingly, the children with DS22q11.2 also demonstrated an improved ability to use object-based cues, relative to the typically developing group. Finally, the children with DS22q11.2 demonstrated an intact inhibition of return system, however, it appears to be delayed developmentally.     

Human rights and correctional clinical practice

The formulation of human rights theory and policies represents an ethical advance and promises to supply a framework for resolving ethnic, social, and individual conflicts. Ethics is essentially a means for coordinating the conflicting interests of peoples and nations and human rights provide a strong foundation to do this in multiple domains. Our aim in this paper is to apply a human rights perspective, in association with a justifying theory and set of goods, to the correctional arena. First, we discuss the definition of human rights, their proper analysis and justification. We then apply the results of our discussion to the assessment, treatment, and monitoring of offenders. Finally, we consider the policy, research, and intervention implications of a human rights perspective for correctional practitioners.