Workplace duties or opportunities? Challenge stressors,regulatory focus,and creativity

Previous research has produced contradictory findings about the impact of challenge stressors on individual and team creativity. Based on the challenge–hindrance stressors framework (LePine, Podsakoff, & LePine, 2005) and on regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997), we argue that the effect of challenge stressors on creativity is moderated by regulatory focus. We hypothesize that while promotion focus strengthens a positive relationship between challenge stressors and creativity, prevention focus reinforces a negative relationship. Experimental data showed that high demands led to better results in a creative insight task for individuals with a strong trait promotion focus, and that high demands combined with an induced promotion focus led to better results across both creative generation and insight tasks. These results were replicated in a field R&D sample. Furthermore, we found that team promotion focus moderated the effect of challenge stressors on team creativity. The results offer both theoretical insights and suggest practical implications.     

The Adolescent Unresolved Attachment Questionnaire: The Assessment of Perceptions of Parental Abdication of Caregiving Behavior

This article reports on the Adolescent Unresolved Attachment Questionnaire (AUAQ), a brief questionnaire that assesses the caregiving experiences of unresolved adolescents (as recipients of caregiving). The AUAQ was developed and validated in a large normative sample (n = 691) and a sample of 133 adolescents in psychiatric treatment. It is a self-report questionnaire consisting of 3 scales with Likert-type responses ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The Aloneness/Failed Protection Scale assesses the adolescent's perception of the care provided by the attachment figure. The Fear Scale taps the fear generated by the adolescent's appraisal of failed attachment figure care. The Anger/Dysregulation Scale assesses negative affective responses to the perceived lack of care from the attachment figure. All scales demonstrated satisfactory internal reliability and agreement between scores for adolescents (n = 91) from the normative sample who completed the AUAQ twice. Adolescents in the clinical sample also completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; C. George, N. Kaplan, & M. Main, 1984/1985/1996); the AUAQ demonstrated high convergent validity with the AAI.     

Randomised clinical trial of a family-based lifestyle intervention for childhood obesity involving parents as the exclusive agents of change

Parent-centred interventions for childhood obesity aim to improve parents' skills and confidence in managing children's dietary and activity patterns, and in promoting a healthy lifestyle in their family. However, few studies assess changes in parenting over the course of treatment. This study describes the evaluation of a lifestyle-specific parenting program (Group Lifestyle Triple P) on multiple child and parent outcomes. One-hundred-and-one families with overweight and obese 4- to 11-year-old children participated in an intervention or waitlist control condition. The 12-week intervention was associated with significant reductions in child BMI z score and weight-related problem behaviour. At the end of the intervention, parents reported increased confidence in managing children's weight-related behaviour, and less frequent use of inconsistent or coercive parenting practices. All short-term intervention effects were maintained at one-year follow-up assessment, with additional improvements in child body size. The results support the efficacy of Group Lifestyle Triple P and suggest that parenting influences treatment outcomes. Further research is needed to evaluate the long-term effectiveness of the intervention and to elucidate the mechanisms of change.     

The influence of working memory load on the Simon effect

The contribution of spatial and verbal working memory (WM) to the processing of stimulus location in the Simon task was examined in two experiments. Subjects performed the Simon task in single- and dual-task conditions. In the dual-task conditions, individuals first encoded the locations of four boxes/pseudocharacters or the identity of seven characters in memory, then responded to the color of a Simon stimulus, and finally received a test for the WM set. The Simon effect was insensitive to spatial WM load and was abolished by verbal WM load. These data reveal a role of verbal WM in the processing of spatial location in the Simon task. In addition, the data are inconsistent with dual-route models of the Simon effect and may support response discrimination accounts of the mechanisms underlying the processing of spatial location in the Simon task.     

Learned Resourcefulness and Situation-Specific Coping with Stress

This study examined whether individuals who report a broad repertoire of coping skills vary their coping efforts as a function of situational factors. Three weeks prior to their midterm exam, 80 graduate students completed Rosenbaum's (1980b) Self-Control Schedule, which assessed subjects' learned resourcefulness. High (HR) and low (LR) resourcefulness groups were created by using the upper and lower thirds of the distribution. On the day of the exam and a week later, prior to receiving results, subjects completed the Strain Questionnaire (Lefebvre & Sandford, 1985), Ways of Coping Checklist (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985), and other self-report measures. Results showed that HR subjects significantly reduced their problem-focused coping efforts from preparation week to waiting week, whereas LR subjects did not. In contrast, LR individuals reported significantly more wishful thinking, distancing, tension reduction, keeping to self, and self-blame during waiting week. For both measurement weeks, HR individuals reported significantly less stress symptoms than LR subjects.     

The Impact of Misspecifying the Within-Subject Covariance Structure in Multiwave Longitudinal Multilevel Models: A Monte Carlo Study

This Monte Carlo study examined the impact of misspecifying the 𝚺 matrix in longitudinal data analysis under both the multilevel model and mixed model frameworks. Under the multilevel model approach, under-specification and general-misspecification of the 𝚺 matrix usually resulted in overestimation of the variances of the random effects (e.g., τ₀₀, τ_τ11 ) and standard errors of the corresponding growth parameter estimates (e.g., SE_{β 0}, SE_{β 1}). Overestimates of the standard errors led to lower statistical power in tests of the growth parameters. An unstructured 𝚺 matrix under the mixed model framework generally led to underestimates of standard errors of the growth parameter estimates. Underestimates of the standard errors led to inflation of the type I error rate in tests of the growth parameters. Implications of the compensatory relationship between the random effects of the growth parameters and the longitudinal error structure for model specification were discussed.     

Theory and Analysis of Total,Direct, and Indirect Causal Effects

Mediation analysis, or more generally models with direct and indirect effects, are commonly used in the behavioral sciences. As we show in our illustrative example, traditional methods of mediation analysis that omit confounding variables can lead to systematically biased direct and indirect effects, even in the context of a randomized experiment. Therefore, several definitions of causal effects in mediation models have been presented in the literature (Baron &; Kenny, 1986 Baron, R.M., &; Kenny, D.A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1173–1182. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.51.6.1173[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Imai, Keele, &; Tingley, 2010 Imai, K., Keele, L., &; Tingley, D. (2010). A general approach to causal mediation analysis. Psychological Methods, 15, 309–334. doi:10.1037/a0020761[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Pearl, 2012 Pearl, J. (2012). The causal mediation formula: A guide to the assessment of pathways and mechanisms. Prevention Science, 13, 426–436. doi:10.1007/s11121-011-0270-1[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We illustrate the stochastic theory of causal effects as an alternative foundation of causal mediation analysis based on probability theory. In this theory we define total, direct, and indirect effects and show how they can be identified in the context of our illustrative example. A particular strength of the stochastic theory of causal effects are the causality conditions that imply causal unbiasedness of effect estimates. The causality conditions have empirically testable implications and can be used for covariate selection. In the discussion, we highlight some similarities and differences of the stochastic theory of causal effects with other theories of causal effects.