Measuring service learning outcomes: test-retest reliability of four scales

Previous research efforts have developed and validated various scales potentially useful in evaluating service learning outcomes. The developmental efforts reported for the four scales examined in this study did not include the test-retest reliabilities that would provide assurance to service learning researchers of the long-term stability and therefore usefulness of these measures. Summary estimates of 13-wk. test-retest reliabilities for the scales Civic Participation, Self-efficacy Toward Service, Attitude Toward Helping Others, and College Education's Role in Addressing Social Issues provide service learning researchers with evidence of stability of the scales over the typical duration of service learning courses.     

Feelings or cognitions? Moral cognitions and emotions as longitudinal predictors of prosocial and aggressive behaviors

There is debate regarding the roles of sociomoral cognitions and emotions in understanding moral development. The short-term longitudinal relations among perspective taking, sympathy, prosocial moral reasoning, prosocial behaviors and aggression in adolescents were examined. Participants were 489 students (M age = 12.28 years, SD = .48; 232 boys) in public and private schools from predominantly middle class families in Valencia, Spain. Students completed measures of perspective taking, sympathy, prosocial moral reasoning, prosocial behaviors, and aggressive behaviors. Overall, structural equation modeling analyses showed that moral reasoning and emotions were interrelated and predicted both prosocial behaviors and aggression. Discussion focuses on the relevance of both social cognitions and emotions in moral development.     

Are number gestures easier than number words for preschoolers?

Some researchers have argued that children's earliest symbols are based on their sensorimotor experience and that arbitrary symbol-referent mapping poses a challenge for them. If so, exposure to iconic symbols (such as one-finger-for-one-object manual gestures) might help children in a difficult domain such as number. We assessed 44 preschoolers’ processing of number gestures and number words on two tasks: give-a-number and how-many. Children were generally more accurate when mapping number words than number gestures onto a number of toys, suggesting that the iconicity of number gestures does not help children map symbols to numbers. We argue that children learn number gestures as arbitrary symbols and do not take advantage of their iconicity.     

Subjective reports of stimulus,response, and decision times in speeded tasks: How accurate are decision time reports?

Four experiments examined how accurately participants can report the times of their own decisions. Within an auditory reaction time (RT) task, participants reported the time at which (a) the tone was presented, (b) they decided on the response, or (c) the response key was pressed. Decision time reports were checked for plausibility against the actual RTs, and we compared the effects of experimental manipulations on these two measures to see whether the reported decision times showed appropriate effects. In addition, we estimated the amount of error associated with individual decision time reports by checking how often participants’ decision time reports were implausibly early (i.e., before stimulus onset) or late (i.e., after response), and by using several quantitative models. Overall, the results suggest that decision time reports are not very accurate but they may be usable for some purposes.     

Local communities responding to ecological challenges—A psycho‐social approach to the Natura 2000 Network

The institutionalization of biodiversity conservation through legal instruments has led to mixed reactions at both the individual and community levels, with conflict and resistance co‐existing with support. The overall purpose of this paper is to describe how rural communities living in areas included in the Natura 2000 Network of protected sites, where local practices of land use are regulated by new legal directives, receive biodiversity conservation goals. Previous studies suggest that this reception is strongly shaped by place identification, but their contradictory results demand further clarification. This study examines the role of psycho‐social variables identified by previous studies as potentially relevant moderators of identification: (a) Vested interest in natural resources, (b) evaluation of the designation process of protected areas and (c) institutional trust. It further extends previous research by analysing the support given to contextually relevant ecological practices. Results reveal a positive link between place identification and attitudes in the high vested interest condition and show that support for conservation practices is better predicted in the high vested interest and low trust conditions. The discussion focuses on the relevance of analysing contextually relevant psycho‐social moderators when attempting to understand how local communities' relation with biodiversity conservation is affected by legislative innovation. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: Evidence of brief mental training

Although research has found that long-term mindfulness meditation practice promotes executive functioning and the ability to sustain attention, the effects of brief mindfulness meditation training have not been fully explored. We examined whether brief meditation training affects cognition and mood when compared to an active control group. After four sessions of either meditation training or listening to a recorded book, participants with no prior meditation experience were assessed with measures of mood, verbal fluency, visual coding, and working memory. Both interventions were effective at improving mood but only brief meditation training reduced fatigue, anxiety, and increased mindfulness. Moreover, brief mindfulness training significantly improved visuo-spatial processing, working memory, and executive functioning. Our findings suggest that 4 days of meditation training can enhance the ability to sustain attention; benefits that have previously been reported with long-term meditators.     

Parents' Feelings Towards Their Adoptive and Non-Adoptive Children

In the current study, we examined parent gender differences in feelings (negativity and positivity) and perceptions of child behavioural and emotional problems in adoptive and biological parent-child dyads. In a sample of 85 families, we used a novel within-family adoption design in which one child was adopted and one child was a biological child of the couple, and tested whether the links between parent feelings and child maladjustment included effects of passive gene-environment correlation. Parents reported more negativity and less positivity as well as higher levels of externalizing behaviour for the adopted child compared to the non-adopted child, although effect sizes were small and no longer statistically significant after correcting for multiple comparisons. Fathers and mothers did not differ significantly in their reports of positive and negative feelings towards their children or in regard to child externalizing and internalizing behaviours. The correlations between parental negativity and positivity and child externalizing and internalizing were similar for fathers and mothers, and for adopted and non-adopted children. The findings suggest similar parent-child relationship processes for fathers and mothers, and that genetic transmission of behaviour from parent to child does not account for the association between parental warmth and hostility and child-adjustment problems.     

Role resources and work–family enrichment: The role of work engagement

This article proposes a theoretical model of work-family enrichment and tests the mediating role of work engagement. The inclusion of work engagement extends prior research on work-family interface, and allows for examination of the effects of role resources (job resources, family support) on work-family enrichment. A two-wave survey was conducted among a matched sample of 786 employees in China. The model was tested with structural equation modeling techniques. The results showed that work engagement was the most proximal predictor of work-family enrichment. Work engagement fully mediated the relationship between family-friendly organizational policies and work-family enrichment, and also between job autonomy and family-work enrichment. Further, work engagement partially mediated the relationships between two job resources (supervisor support, job autonomy) and work-family enrichment, and also between family support and family-work enrichment. No difference was found in gender and marital status in the proposed model. Implications for future research and practices are discussed.     

Longitudinal Studies of Anger and Attention Span: Context and Informant Effects

ABSTRACT This study examined stabilities of informant and context (home vs. classroom) latent factors regarding anger and attention. Participants included children from the National Institute of Child Health and Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development who were measured at 54 months, first grade, and third grade. Latent factors of anger and attention span were structured using different indicators based on mothers', fathers', caregivers', teachers', and observers' reports. We used structural equation modeling to examine the autoregressive effects within a context (stability), the concurrent associations between home and classroom contexts, and informant effects. The results indicated that for both anger and attention (1) there were significant informant effects that influenced stability in a context, (2) there was higher stability in home context than nonhome context, and (3) stability within a context increased over time. The findings suggested that anger was more prone to context effects and informant effects than attention.