A navigation flow map method of representing students' searching behaviors and strategies on the web, with relation to searching outcomes.

To acquire a better understanding of the online search strategies that students employ to use the Internet, this study investigated six university students' approaches to Web-based information searches. A new method, called navigation flow map (NFM), is presented that graphically displays the fluid and multilayered relationships between Web navigation and information retrieval that students use while navigating the Web. To document the application of NFM, the Web search strategies of six university students were analyzed as they used the Internet to perform two different tasks: scientific-based and social studies-based information searches. Through protocol analyses using the NFM method, the students' searching strategies were categorized into two types: Match or Exploration. The findings revealed that participants with an Exploration approach had more complicated and richer task-specific ways of searching information than those with a Match approach; and further, through between-task comparisons, we found that participants appeared to use different searching strategies to process natural science information compared to social studies information. Finally, the participants in the Exploration group also exhibited better task performance on the criterion measures than those in the Match group.     

Supporting intimates on faith

What is the role of faith in the familiar practice of supporting intimates in their personal projects? Is there anything distinctly valuable about such faith-based support? I argue that the virtue of being supportive, a characteristic of the good friend or lover, involves a distinctive kind of faith: faith in another persons’ chosen self-expressive pursuit(s). Support based on such faith enables the supported party to enjoy a more meaningful and autonomous exercise of agency in self-expressive arenas, and engenders a sense of relational unity or solidarity, deepening the normative and emotional bonds of the relationship.     

Changes in Public Attitudes and Perceptions about Homelessness Between 1990 and 2016

Public attitudes on homelessness can and has influenced policies and services for homeless populations. This study surveyed national public attitudes about homelessness in the 21st century and examined changes in attitudes in the past two decades. An online survey of public attitudes about homelessness was conducted with 541 U.S. adults across 47 states in November 2016 using Amazon Mechanical Turk. Survey results were compared to two public surveys conducted in 1990. Compared to previous surveys, the current sample endorsed more compassion, government support, and liberal attitudes about homelessness. The largest changes were related to increased support for homeless individuals to use public spaces for sleeping and panhandling. When asked about the demographic composition of the homeless population, the contemporary sample tended to overestimate the proportions who were young and racial/ethnic minorities, while underestimating the proportions who were married, or had mental health or substance abuse problems. Together, the findings suggest there has been an increase in compassion and liberal attitudes toward homelessness in the past two decades. Greater support for homeless individuals during an era of economic recessions and governmental homeless initiatives presents opportunities for new public health approaches to address homelessness.     

Cultural Differences in the Reciprocal Relations between Emotion Suppression Coping,Depressive Symptoms and Interpersonal Functioning among Adolescents

The current study examined the prospective relations between emotion suppression and maladjustment (i.e., depressive symptoms, family stress events, peer stress events, and family and peer support) among Vietnamese American (n = 372) and European American adolescents (n = 304). We found that at baseline Vietnamese Americans adolescents reported greater use of emotion suppression coping than European American adolescents. Multi-group structural equation modeling indicated that for European American teens emotion suppression was significantly related to increased depression symptoms and decreased quality of peer relationships. In contrast, for the Vietnamese Americans teens emotion suppression relations to later maladjustment was either nonsignificant or attenuated relative to the European American. These findings suggest ethnic group differences in both the utilization, and consequences and function of emotion suppression among Vietnamese American and European American adolescents.     

The Effects of Person-Environment Fit and External Locus of Control on Organizational Affective Commitment: a Study of Immigrant Wives in Taiwan

The National Immigration Agency of Taiwan reported that, by 2014, more than 498,000 immigrant spouses were registered in Taiwanese households, 91 % of which was female. Immigrant wives are now a significant part of Taiwanese society, and they are an important aspect of the labor force in Taiwan’s economy. However, they face major challenges in the workplace, which influences their work outcomes, results in a reduced labor force for enterprises, and increases societal costs. This pioneering study employed the person-environment fit and locus of control concepts from the organizational behavior field to address this issue. A sample of 130 immigrant wives from Indonesia and Vietnam living in Taiwan was surveyed. The results of a hierarchical regression analysis found that immigrant wives’ person-job fit and person-supervisor fit significantly influenced their affective commitments to their workplaces. An external locus of control significantly weakened the relationship between person-environment fit and affective commitment. The contributions and implications of the study results were discussed.     

Electrophysiological and behavioral evidence reveals the effects of trait anxiety on contingent attentional capture

Few studies have investigated the effects of anxiety on contingent attentional capture. The present study examined contingent attentional capture in trait anxiety by applying a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm during electroencephalographic recording. Overall, the behavioral and electrophysiological results showed a larger capture effect when a distractor was the same color as the target compared to when the distractor was not of the target color. Moreover, high-anxiety individuals showed a larger N2pc in the target colored distractor condition and nontarget colored distractor condition compared to the distractor-absent condition. In addition, the reaction time was slower when distractors were presented in the left visual field compared to when they were in the right visual field. This pattern was not seen in low-anxiety individuals. The findings may indicate that high-anxiety individuals allocate attention to the target less efficiently and have reduced suppression of distractors compared to low-anxiety individuals who could suppress attention to the distractors more efficiently. Future work could valuably investigate the consequences of such differences in terms of benefits and disruption associated with attentional capture differences in a range of anxious populations in different risk monitoring situations.     

The emotional integration of childhood experience: physiological, facial expressive, and self-reported emotional response during the adult attachment interview

Attachment researchers claim that individual differences in how adults talk about their early memories reflect qualitatively distinct organizations of emotion regarding childhood experiences with caregivers. Testing this assumption, the present study examined the relationship between attachment dimensions and physiological, facial expressive, as well as self-reported emotional responses during the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Consistent with theoretical predictions, more prototypically secure adults behaviorally expressed and reported experiencing emotion consistent with the valence of the childhood events they described. Insecure adults also showed distinctive and theoretically anticipated forms of emotional response: Dismissing participants evidenced increased electrodermal activity during the interview, a sign of emotional suppression, whereas preoccupied adults showed reliable discrepancies between the valence of their inferred childhood experiences and their facial expressive as well as reported emotion during the AAI. Results substantiate a case that the AAI reflects individual differences in emotion regulation that conceptually parallel observations of attachment relationships in infancy.     

Somatic and social: Chinese Americans talk about emotion

Empirical findings suggest that Chinese and Americans differ in the ways that they describe emotional experience, with Chinese using more somatic and social words than Americans. No one, however, has investigated whether this variation is related to differences between Chinese and American conceptions of emotion or to linguistic differences between the English and Chinese languages. Therefore, in two studies, the authors compared the word use of individuals who varied in their orientation to Chinese and American cultures (European Americans [EA], more acculturated Chinese Americans [CA], and less acculturated CA) when they were speaking English during emotional events. Across both studies, less acculturated CA used more somatic (e.g., dizzy) and more social (e.g., friend) words than EA. These findings suggest that even when controlling for language spoken, cultural conceptions of emotion may shape how people talk about emotion.     

Relationships among burnout, job involvement, and organizational citizenship behavior

R. Cropanzano, D. E. Rupp, and Z. S. Byrne (2003) found that emotional exhaustion (i.e., 1 dimension of burnout) negatively affects organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The authors extended this research by investigating relationships among 3 dimensions of burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and diminished personal accomplishment) and OCB. They also affirmed the mediating effect of job involvement on these relationships. Data were collected from 296 paired samples of service employees and their supervisors from 12 hotels and restaurants in Taiwan. Findings demonstrated that emotional exhaustion and diminished personal accomplishment were related negatively to OCB, whereas depersonalization had no independent effect on OCB. Job involvement mediated the relationships among emotional exhaustion, diminished personal accomplishment, and OCB.     

SGK protein kinase facilitates the expression of long-term potentiation in hippocampal neurons

Previous studies showed that the serum- and glucocorticoid-inducible kinase (sgk) gene plays an important role in long-term memory formation. The present study further examined the role of SGK in long-term potentiation (LTP). The dominant-negative mutant of sgk, SGKS422A, was used to inactivate SGK. Results revealed a time-dependent increase in SGK phosphorylation after tetanization with a significant effect observed 3 h and 5 h later. Transfection of SGKS422A impaired the expression, but not the induction, of LTP. Furthermore, the constitutively active sgk, SGKS422D, up-regulated postsynaptic density-95 expression in the hippocampus. These results together support the role of SGK in neuronal plasticity.