Improvement Strategies in Free-Throw Shooting and Grip-Strength Tasks

Participants performed a free-throw shooting task and a grip-strength task before and after imagery, nonspecific arousal, or no instructions. Imagery improved performance in the free-throw shooting task, which is assumed to have more cognitive components than the grip-strength task. Imagery did not improve performance in the grip-strength task, which is assumed to have fewer cognitive components than the free-throw task. Nonspecific arousal, on the other hand, improved performance in the grip-strength task but not in the free-throw shooting task. Athletic experience, confidence levels, and gender were correlated with actual performance levels in both tasks, but not with improvement. Results are discussed within the transfer-appropriate processing framework.     

Modeling Concordance Correlation Coefficient for Longitudinal Study Data

Measures of agreement are used in a wide range of behavioral, biomedical, psychosocial, and health-care related research to assess reliability of diagnostic test, psychometric properties of instrument, fidelity of psychosocial intervention, and accuracy of proxy outcome. The concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) is a popular measure of agreement for continuous outcomes. In modern-day applications, data are often clustered, making inference difficult to perform using existing methods. In addition, as longitudinal study designs become increasingly popular, missing data have become a serious issue, and the lack of methods to systematically address this problem has hampered the progress of research in the aforementioned fields. In this paper, we develop a novel approach to tackle the complexities involved in addressing missing data and other related issues for performing CCC analysis within a longitudinal data setting. The approach is illustrated with both real and simulated data.     

CYPRUS TURKISH FAIRY TALES: GLIMPSE OF A HARMONIOUS PAST

On the island of Cyprus, believed to be the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Muslim minority (settled there following the Ottoman conquest of the island in 1571) and Orthodox Christians (the native majority) lived together in peace for hundreds of years. However, as a result of ethnic conflict in the late 1950s, the Muslim Cypriot Turks established their own political state in the north of the island in 1974, and Cyprus was divided into northern Turkish and southern Greek sections. This paper attempts to examine historical, religious, cultural and psychological aspects of the relationship between these two large groups, prior to recent conflicts, by studying fairy tales told by Turkish Cypriots about a hundred years ago. It is hoped that this paper will encourage similar studies of other communities where different large-group identities live side by side, and that such studies may support their peaceful co-existence.     

Impact of Self-Orientations and Work-Context–Related Variables on the Well-Being of Public- and Private-Sector Turkish Employees

The authors (a) explored the impact of individual differences in self-orientations (i.e., relatedness and individuation) of 383 Turkish public- and private-sector employees on their basic need satisfaction at work and their well-being (i.e., life satisfaction and psychological well-being); (b) considered differences in perceived autonomy- and relatedness-supportiveness of the work contexts; and (c) tested a model in which the relationship between self-orientations and well-being is partially mediated by the perceived supportiveness of the work context and the need satisfaction of employees at work, using structural equation modeling. Results suggest that self-orientations of employees predict their well-being both directly and indirectly through the mediation of perceived supportiveness and need satisfaction provided by the work context, which seem to vary according to sector type.     

Perceptions of Turkish psychiatric inpatients about therapeutic factors of group psychotherapy

Many studies on therapeutic factors in group psychotherapy were done during the 1970s and 1980s, primarily with Western samples, The present study was carried out in a psychiatric inpatient clinic in Turkey. Using Yalom's (1975) therapeutic factor questionnaire administered at discharge, patients rated existential factor, instillation of hope and self-understanding as the most helpful factors and identification as the least helpful. There were significant differences among patients with regard to gender, age, education, comorbid personality disorder, but not with Axis I diagnosis or number of attended sessions. Patients' and psychiatrist's rating showed significant differences. Differences between this Turkish sample and those reported in common Western literature are discussed under the light of relatedness psychology, which is an important concept of cross-cultural psychology.