Things learned in early adulthood are remembered best

Evidence is reviewed that for older adults the period from 10 to 30 years of age produces recall of the most autobiographical memories, the most vivid memories, and the most important memories. It is the period from which peoples’ favorite films, music, and books come and the period from which they judge the most important world events to have originated. Factual, semantic, general-knowledge, multiple-choice questions about the Academy Awards, the World Series, and current events from this period were answered more accurately by two different groups of 30 older adults tested 10 years apart. A cognitive theory based on the importance of transitions and several noncognitive theories are considered as explanations of this pervasive phenomenon.     

On the modelling and estimation of attribute rankings with ties in the Thurstonian framework

A Thurstonian type approach is applied to modelling ranking data with ties. It uses a non‐totally differentiable discriminational process instead of the conventional totally differential one to relate the observed rankings and the underlying subjective values. A Monte Carlo expectation–maximization algorithm is proposed to find the maximum likelihood estimates together with the standard errors of the parameters. The approach is examined numerically by means of an artificial example and a simulation study and is applied to a study of attribute assessment.     

Estimating the polychoric correlation from misclassified data

Many variables that are used in social and behavioural science research are ordinal categorical or polytomous variables. When more than one polytomous variable is involved in an analysis, observations are classified in a contingency table, and a commonly used statistic for describing the association between two variables is the polychoric correlation. This paper investigates the estimation of the polychoric correlation when the data set consists of misclassified observations. Two approaches for estimating the polychoric correlation have been developed. One assumes that the probabilities in relation to misclassification are known, and the other uses a double sampling scheme to obtain information on misclassification. A parameter estimation procedure is developed, and statistical properties for the estimates are discussed. The practicability and applicability of the proposed approaches are illustrated by analysing data sets that are based on real and generated data. Excel programmes with visual basic for application (VBA) have been developed to compute the estimate of the polychoric correlation and its standard error. The use of the structural equation modelling programme Mx to find parameter estimates in the double sampling scheme is discussed.     

Body Surveillance Predicts Men’s and Women’s Perceived Loneliness: A Serial Mediation Model

Previous research on self-objectification mainly focuses on its influences on intrapersonal psychological distress whereas our study examined whether self-objectification would influence interpersonal distress (i.e., loneliness) and its corresponding mechanisms in a sample of American women and men recruited with MTurk. Participants’ self-objectification was indexed by their level of body surveillance, and we proposed that body surveillance would increase women’s and men’s tendency to experience shame about their body and decrease their general self-esteem, which would in turn predict their level of loneliness. A total of 373 Americans (235 women; Mdn_age?=?33 years-old, range?=?18–77) participated in the present study, and the results provided support for the proposed theoretical model. Specifically, we found that body surveillance positively predicted people’s body shame, and body shame negatively predicted self-esteem, which in turn predicted people’s loneliness. Moreover, this mediational model was not different between men and women. These results expand the scope of investigation by incorporating male samples, and they suggest that in addition to intrapersonal consequences, self-objectification can also influence people’s interpersonal well-being. Implications were discussed.

     

Formation of ductile Al-based metallic glasses without rare-earth elements

Al₇₅Cu₁₇Mg₈ is a eutectic composition according to the ternary phase diagram, which can be quenched into a fully amorphous phase by adding 2-8at.% Ni, but the addition of a similar percentage of Gd failed to form the amorphous phase. The amorphous alloys obtained exhibit two broad diffuse peaks in the X-ray diffraction curves and, correspondingly, two halo rings in the electron diffraction patterns, implying that two types of local atom configuration exist. Thermal analysis of the amorphous alloys indicates that the primary crystallization peak shifts to higher temperatures with increasing Ni content. The occurrence of a nucleation and crystal growth peak during isothermal crystallization reveals the amorphous nature of the quenched ribbon alloys. The quenched amorphous ribbons do not break after bending by 180°. Mechanical testing yielded a tensile strength of 810MPa for (Al₇₅Cu₁₇Mg₈)₉₅Ni₅, and a vein structure, characteristic of amorphous fracture, is apparent in scanning electron micrographs. The different effects of Ni and Gd on the glass formation indicate that the large atomic size of Gd is not critical to the glass formation.     

Octogenarian and centenarian performance on the Fuld Object Memory Evaluation

The Fuld Object Memory Evaluation (FOME) has considerable utility for cognitive assessment in older adults, but there are few normative data, particularly for the oldest old. In this study, 80 octogenarians and 244 centenarians from the Georgia Centenarian Study completed the FOME. Total and trial-to-trial performance on the storage, retrieval, repeated retrieval, and ineffective reminder indices were assessed. Additional data stratified by age group, education, and cognitive impairment are provided in the Supplemental data. Octogenarians performed significantly better than centenarians on all FOME measures. Neither age group benefitted from additional learning trials beyond Trial 3 for storage and Trial 2 for retention and retrieval. Ineffective reminders showed no change across learning trials for octogenarians, while centenarians improved only between Trials 1 and 2. This minimal improvement past Trial 2 indicates that older adults might benefit from a truncated version of the test that does not include trials three through five, with the added benefit of reducing testing burden in this population.     

Relationships among perceived career support,affective commitment,and work engagement

This study sought to test the predictive effects of perceived career support and affective commitment on work engagement. It was hypothesized that perceived career support would relate positively to work engagement and this relationship would be transmitted through affective commitment. Survey data were collected from 115 full‐time employees enrolled as part‐time graduate students in a large public university in Malaysia. Multiple regression analysis yielded results indicating that the relationship between perceived career support and work engagement was mediated by affective commitment. This finding suggests that employers can promote employee work engagement by ensuring employees perceive their organization to be supportive of their career and increasing employees' level of affective commitment.     

A Unified Framework for the Comparison of Treatments with Ordinal Responses

Different latent variable models have been used to analyze ordinal categorical data which can be conceptualized as manifestations of an unobserved continuous variable. In this paper, we propose a unified framework based on a general latent variable model for the comparison of treatments with ordinal responses. The latent variable model is built upon the location-scale family and is rich enough to include many important existing models for analyzing ordinal categorical variables, including the proportional odds model, the ordered probit-type model, and the proportional hazards model. A flexible estimation procedure is proposed for the identification and estimation of the general latent variable model, which allows for the location and scale parameters to be freely estimated. The framework advances the existing methods by enabling many other popular models for analyzing continuous variables to be used to analyze ordinal categorical data, thus allowing for important statistical inferences such as location and/or dispersion comparisons among treatments to be conveniently drawn. Analysis on real data sets is used to illustrate the proposed methods.     

Selected Ethical Issues in the Analysis and Reporting of Research: Survey of Business School Faculty in Malaysia

This study reports the perceptions of business school faculty on ethical behaviors related to data analysis and research reporting as well as the prevalence of such behaviors in their academic environment. Survey data for the study were obtained from a sample of 102 business school faculty from five government-funded universities in Malaysia. Study results showed that a majority of the respondents considered practices such as fabrication, manipulation, and distortion of data to be ethically unacceptable, and these behaviors were reported to be least prevalent. In contrast, the practice of misapplying statistical techniques was considered ethically acceptable and reported to be quite prevalent. On research reporting, although a majority of the respondents agreed that plagiarism and taking undeserved authorship credit were ethically unacceptable, they also reported having observed the frequent occurrence of such behaviors. Finally, practices such as cutting up research data and simultaneous submissions to more than one publication outlet at the same time were less likely to be viewed as unethical and seen to be quite a common practice. In general, the findings of this study indicate that the perceptions of the ethicality and frequency of occurrence of behaviors related to data analysis and research reporting vary among business school faculty.     

Adolescents' Reward‐related Neural Activation: Links to Thoughts of Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury

Adolescence is a critical developmental period marked by an increase in risk behaviors, including nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI). Heightened reward‐related brain activation and relatively limited recruitment of prefrontal regions contribute to the initiation of risky behaviors in adolescence. However, neural reward processing has not been examined among adolescents who are at risk for future engagement for NSSI specifically, but who have yet to actually engage in this behavior. In the current fMRI study (N = 71), we hypothesized that altered reward processing would be associated with adolescents' thoughts of NSSI. Results showed that NSSI youth exhibited heightened activation in the bilateral putamen in response to a monetary reward. This pattern of findings suggests that heightened neural sensitivity to reward is associated with thoughts of NSSI in early adolescence. Implications for prevention are discussed.