Correlates of loneliness in nonreferred and psychiatrically hospitalized children

We investigated psychosocial correlates of loneliness using self- and caretaker-reports in 6–12 year old nonreferred and psychiatrically hospitalized children. In Phase 1, 109 nonreferred children completed self-report measures of internalizing problems, mothers completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), and teachers completed the CBCL-Teacher's Report Form. In Phase 2, a similar assessment battery was completed for 109 psychiatrically hospitalized children. Results indicated a moderate to strong relationship between loneliness and self-reported depression, hopelessness, low self-esteem, and anxiety. Children reporting high and low levels of loneliness were not differentiated by parent or teacher reports. Lonely children had lower IQs than their non-lonely peers.     

Brief report: Measuring self-efficacy with female adolescents who are conduct disordered: Validation of the program efficacy scale

This study focused on measuring self-efficacy with 44 female conduct disordered youth involuntarily placed in a long-term residential setting. The Program Efficacy Scale (PES) was developed as a measure of self-efficacy linked specifically to program completion. Construct validity for this measure was assessed by correlating it to the Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE) developed by Tipton and Worthington (1984) and other measures of program success. The PES was found to be significantly related to the GSE, length of placement, level of program achievement, and effort ratings by staff. Possible uses for the PES in predicting success or failure with youth in residential settings are discussed.     

The Parents Matter! Program: Practical, Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives

We provide a commentary on the Parents Matter! intervention program. Our commentary is organized around core issues confronting those who design prevention programs, namely (1) making the program practical, feasible and economical, (2) reaching a broad base of target individuals, (3) making the intervention effective in changing the behavior or outcome for those who participate in it, and (4) ensuring that the intervention is sustainable for future generations. Parents Matter! is a thoughtful and impressive program that addresses each of these issues.     

Cultivating the Arts of Inquiry, Interpretation, and Criticism: A Peircean Approach to our Educational Practices

Peirce was a thinker who claimed that his mind had been thoroughly formed by his rigorous training in the natural sciences. But he was also the author who proclaimed that nothing is truer than true poetry. In making the case for Peirce’s relevance to issues of education, then, it is necessary to do justice to the multifaceted character of his philosophical genius, in particular, to the experimentalist cast of his mind and his profound appreciation for the aesthetic, the imaginative, and (more narrowly) the metaphorical in their myriad guises. My aim in this paper is to go some distance, however small, toward doing such justice to Peirce.     

A Multi-Cultural Study of Salespeople's Behavior In Individual Pay-For-Performance Compensation Systems: When Managers Are More Equal And Less Fair Than Others

In this research, we examine salespeople's behavior in individual pay-for-performance compensation systems and show how perceived management fairness seems to energize sales employees in some environments but not in others. We use a large multicountry database of individual-level remuneration for more than 2,500 salespeople across four B2B industry sectors to demonstrate cultural adaptations of the effect of perceived management fairness. The results indicate that top management should be concerned with employees' perceptions of fairness in addition to the more typical concerns of control and motivation widely acknowledged in the microeconomics-based sales-force compensation literature. In particular, we show that perceptions of management fairness are key to salespeople's proportion of total pay generated by pay-for-performance formulas.     

Youth Athletes' Interpretations of Punitive Coaching Practices

This study examined the use of punitive coaching strategies in youth sport and the nature of these experiences for youth athletes. Semistructured interviews and concept maps were conducted with 12 competitive male and female hockey athletes 11–13 years of age. Data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. Results revealed that punishments occurred in competitive youth hockey, in the forms of benching, yelling, exercises, cleaning up equipment, and alternating positions. Findings are interpreted to suggest that punishments hindered developmental needs of youth athletes, including a positive sense of self and positive relationships with others. Implications for healthy youth development are discussed.     

Antecedents of trust in the sharing economy: A systematic review

Users and potential users of the sharing economy need to place a considerable amount of trust in both the person and the platform with which they are dealing. The consequences of transaction partners’ opportunism may be severe, for example damage to goods or endangered personal safety. Trust is, therefore, a key factor in overcoming uncertainty and mitigating risk. However, there is no thorough overview of how trust is developed in this context. To understand how the trust of users in the sharing economy is influenced, we performed a systematic literature review. After screening, 45 articles were included in a qualitative synthesis in which the results were grouped according to a well‐established trust typology. The results show various antecedents of trust in the sharing economy (e.g. reputation, trust in the platform, and interaction experience) related to multiple entities (i.e. seller, buyer, platform, interpersonal, and transaction). Trust in this economy is often reduced to the use of reputation systems alone. However, our study suggests that trust is much more complex than that and extends beyond reputation. Furthermore, our review clearly shows that research on trust in the sharing economy is still scarce and thus more research is needed to understand how trust is established in this context. Our review is the first that brings together antecedents of trust in online peer‐to‐peer transactions and integrates these findings within an existing framework. Additionally, the study suggests directions for future research in order to advance the understanding of trust in the sharing economy.     

The attentional blink: Increasing target salience provides no evidence for resource depletion. A commentary on Dux, Asplund, and Marois (2008)

The authors have argued elsewhere that the attentional blink (AB; i.e., reduced target detection shortly after presentation of an earlier target) arises from blocked or disrupted perceptual input in response to distractors presented between the targets. When targets replace the intervening distractors, so that three targets (T1, T2, and T3) are presented sequentially, performance on T2 and T3 improves. Dux, Asplund, and Marois (2008) argued that T3 performance improves at the expense of T1, and thus provides evidence for resource depletion. They showed that when T1 is made more salient (and presumably draws more resources), an AB for T3 appears to reemerge. These findings can be better explained, however, by (1) the relationship between T1 and T2 (not T1 and T3) and (2) differential salience for T3 in the long-lag condition of Dux et al.’s study. In conclusion, the Dux et al. study does not present a severe challenge to input control theories of the AB.     

The effects of simulated stuttering and prolonged speech on the neural activation patterns of stuttering and nonstuttering adults

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to investigate the neural correlates of passive listening, habitual speech and two modified speech patterns (simulated stuttering and prolonged speech) in stuttering and nonstuttering adults. Within-group comparisons revealed increased right hemisphere biased activation of speech-related regions during the simulated stuttered and prolonged speech tasks, relative to the habitual speech task, in the stuttering group. No significant activation differences were observed within the nonstuttering participants during these speech conditions. Between-group comparisons revealed less left superior temporal gyrus activation in stutterers during habitual speech and increased right inferior frontal gyrus activation during simulated stuttering relative to nonstutterers. Stutterers were also found to have increased activation in the left middle and superior temporal gyri and right insula, primary motor cortex and supplementary motor cortex during the passive listening condition relative to nonstutterers. The results provide further evidence for the presence of functional deficiencies underlying auditory processing, motor planning and execution in people who stutter, with these differences being affected by speech manner.     

Distinct contributions of the basolateral amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex to learning and relearning extinction of context conditioned fear

We studied the roles of the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in learning and relearning to inhibit context conditioned fear (freezing) in extinction. In Experiment 1, pre-extinction BLA infusion of the NMDA receptor (NMDAr) antagonist, ifenprodil, impaired the development and retention of inhibition but post-extinction infusion spared retention. Pre-extinction infusion of the GABA(A) agonist, muscimol, depressed freezing and impaired retention as did post-extinction infusion. In Experiment 2, pre-extinction mPFC infusion of ifenprodil spared the development of inhibition whereas muscimol depressed freezing. Both impaired retention when infused pre- or post-extinction. Thus, the development of inhibition involves NMDAr activation in the BLA, whereas its consolidation involves both NMDAr activation in the mPFC and NMDAr-independent mechanisms in the BLA. In Experiment 3, BLA infusion of ifenprodil impaired relearning and retention of inhibition when infused before but did not impair retention when infused after re-extinction. BLA infusion of muscimol depressed freezing but did not impair retention when infused before or after re-extinction. In Experiment 4, mPFC infusion of ifenprodil impaired relearning when infused before re-extinction, whereas muscimol depressed responses. Both drugs impaired retention when infused into the mPFC before or after re-extinction. Thus, relearning to inhibit fear responses involves NMDAr activation in both the BLA and mPFC and consolidation of the inhibitory memory involves NMDAr activation in the mPFC. However, relearning and consolidation occur in the absence of neuronal activity within the BLA. We propose that NMDAr in the mPFC supports relearning inhibition when the BLA is inactivated.