Causal Attributions Predict Willingness to Support the Allocation of Funding to Lung Cancer Treatment Programs

Lung cancer patients may experience stigmatization as a result of the link between their disease and smoking, such as lack of public support for funding lung cancer treatment programs. This study examines whether causal attributions for the contraction of lung cancer predict the stigmatization of individuals with the disease by investigating willingness to support the allocation of funds to hypothetical lung cancer treatment programs. Participants were 766 undergraduate students. The findings indicate that participants who made causal attributions preferred to support the allocation of funding to programs that value the lives of breast cancer patients, rather than lung cancer patients. These findings have implications for understanding the influence of causal attributions on the stigmatization of lung cancer.     

Assessing Workgroup Norms for Civility: The Development of the Civility Norms Questionnaire-Brief

Purpose

This research describes the development and validation of the Civility Norms Questionnaire-Brief (CNQ-B), a 4-item measure designed to assess workgroup climate for civility. Climate for civility is defined as employee perceptions of norms supporting respectful treatment among workgroup members.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Five samples (N?=?2,711) of adult employees, including two from distinct organizations and three from multiple organizations, responded to the CNQ-B and additional measures.

Findings

Evidence for the internal consistency, and convergent and discriminant validity of the CNQ-B was observed. Additionally, evidence for the criterion-related and incremental validity of the CNQ-B was demonstrated as it was a significant predictor of later-assessed incivility experiences and accounted for significant variability in work attitudes beyond incivility experiences and related measures.

Implications

The CNQ-B is a psychometrically sound instrument despite being composed of only four items. The CNQ-B can be used by researchers and practitioners alike to assess climate for civility, to study climate for civility as a precursor to incivility experiences, and to target workgroups that could benefit from interventions (e.g., training) to enhance civility and reduce incivility.

Originality/Value

This is one of the first studies to conduct a rigorous psychometric assessment of a measure of workgroup climate for civility that is grounded in theory and research on workplace civility and incivility. At four items, the CNQ-B is the shortest assessment tool currently available that is designed for this purpose.     

Sleep-dependent consolidation of procedural motor memories in children and adults: the pre-sleep level of performance matters

In striking contrast to adults, in children sleep following training a motor task did not induce the expected (offline) gain in motor skill performance in previous studies. Children normally perform at distinctly lower levels than adults. Moreover, evidence in adults suggests that sleep dependent offline gains in skill essentially depend on the pre-sleep level of performance. Against this background, we asked whether improving children's performance on a motor sequence learning task by extended training to levels approaching those of adults would enable sleep-associated gains in motor skill in this age group also. Children (4-6 years) and adults (18-35 years) performed on the motor sequence learning task (button-box task) before and after ~2-hour retention intervals including either sleep (midday nap) or wakefulness. Whereas one group of children and adults, respectively, received the standard amount of 10 blocks of training before retention intervals of sleep or wakefulness, a further group of children received an extended training on 30 blocks (distributed across 3 days). A further group of adults received a restricted training on only two blocks before the retention intervals. Children after standard training reached lowest performance levels, whereas in adults performance after standard training was highest. Children with extended training and adults after reduced training reached intermediate performance levels. Only at these intermediate performance levels did sleep induce significant gains in motor sequence skill, whereas performance did not benefit from sleep in the low-performing children or in the high-performing adults. Spindle counts in the post-training nap were correlated with performance gains at retrieval only in the adults benefitting from sleep. We conclude that, across age groups, sleep induces the most robust gain in motor skill at an intermediate pre-sleep performance level. In low-performing children sleep-dependent improvements in skill may be revealed only after enhancing the pre-sleep performance level by extended training.     

The Ethics Code Does Not Equal Ethics: A Response to O’Donohue

ABSTRACT

O’Donohue has identified 37 criticisms of the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (Ethics Code), although many of his criticisms go far beyond what is found written in the APA Ethics Code, to include the process of adjudicating ethics complaints by the American Psychological Association Ethics Committee, and the process by which the Ethics Code was developed. The authors claim that a major shortcoming of O’Donohue’s article is that he adopted an unrealistically expansive role for the Ethics Code that was not clearly linked to furthering the goals of the ethics code revision.     

READING IN VOCATIONAL SUBJECTS: AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ READING ABILITY AND CLASSROOM PERFORMANCE

The study investigated the reading ability and classroom performance of vocational students enrolled in the second year of study in auto mechanics, carpentry, electronics, graphics, and masonry. Performance on the California Achievement Test showed average reading achievement for electronics students and below average reading achievement for students in the remaining vocational areas. Students’ ability to read their vocational textbook was measured by a cloze task, with auto mechanics students showing an adequate level of comprehension for instruction. Carpentry, graphics, and masonry students showed performance below instructional level. Significant differences were found in reading achievement between electronics students and the other four areas, and between auto mechanics and masonry. Vocational students in the present sample represented, to some extent, separate groups for reading achievement rather than the traditional view of homogeneity across vocational subjects. Teachers’ evaluations of students’ classroom performance showed statistically significant correlations with textbook reading ability in only two subjects, auto mechanics and carpentry. Correlations suggested that success may not always be dependent on the ability to comprehend the textbook, and that the vocational teachers sampled may not have placed a high value on reading ability as an indicator of competence in a vocational subject.