Academic Procrastination in Two Settings: Motivation Correlates,Behavioral Patterns,and Negative Impact of Procrastination in Canada and Singapore

Two studies are reported examining academic procrastination and motivation in 1,145 university students from Canada and Singapore. In Study 1, relationships between procrastination and motivation variables were found to be similar across contexts, with self‐efficacy for self‐regulated learning most strongly associated with procrastination in both contexts. In Study 2, patterns of procrastinating behavior and the negative impact of procrastination were examined and compared in Canadian and Singaporean undergraduates. Participants in both contexts reported writing to be the academic task most prone to procrastination. More Singaporeans than Canadians were classified as negative procrastinators (i.e. rated procrastination as a negative influence on academic functioning). In both contexts, negative procrastinators spent more time procrastinating than neutral procrastinators and displayed lower self‐efficacy for self‐regulated learning. On décrit deux recherches portant sur la motivation et la procrastination universitaire (tendance à remettre au lendemain) de 1145 étudiants du Canada et de Singapour. Dans la première étude, les relations entre la motivation et la procrastination sont apparues être analogues dans les deux pays, la variable la plus fortement associéà la procrastination étant l'auto‐efficience pour l'apprentissage autorégulé. Dans la deuxième étude, les schémas comportementaux de procrastination et son impact négatif ont été analysés et comparés chez les étudiants de 1° cycle canadiens et singapouriens. Les sujets des deux pays ont mentionné la rédaction comme étant la tâche universitaire la plus soumise à la procrastination. Davantage de Singapouriens que de Canadiens été classés en procrastinateurs négatifs (c'est‐à‐dire que la procrastination est considérée comme étant un handicap pour les études). Dans les deux cas, les procrastinateurs négatifs gaspillaient plus de temps que les procrastinateurs neutres et manifestaient une moindre auto‐efficience pour l'apprentissage autorégulé.     

A New Measure of the Maladaptive Self-Beliefs in Social Anxiety: Psychometric Properties in a Non-Clinical Sample

Clark and Wells’ (1995) model of social phobia proposes that there are three types of maladaptive self-beliefs responsible for persistent social anxiety (high standard, conditional, and unconditional beliefs). Although these beliefs are theoretically important, there currently is not a validated measure of these beliefs in the social anxiety literature. Hence, the Self-Beliefs Related to Social Anxiety (SBSA) Scale was developed (Wong & Moulds, 2010a) and its psychometric properties were examined in the current study using a non-clinical sample (N = 600). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses ultimately indicated that a correlated three-factor solution optimally summarized the data with the three factors corresponding to the three belief types. The SBSA and its three subscales demonstrated good internal consistency and test-retest reliability, as well as convergent and divergent validity. The SBSA thus appears to have good psychometric properties and is appropriate for use in non-clinical samples. The potential applications of the SBSA and avenues for future research are discussed.     

Whole-word phonological representations of disyllabic words in the Chinese lexicon: data from acquired dyslexia

This study addresses the issue of the existence of whole-word phonological representations of disyllabic and multisyllabic words in the Chinese mental lexicon. A Cantonese brain-injured dyslexic individual with semantic deficits, YKM, was assessed on his abilities to read aloud and to comprehend disyllabic words containing homographic heterophonous characters, the pronunciation of which can only be disambiguated in word context. Superior performance on reading to comprehension was found. YKM could produce the target phonological forms without understanding the words. The dissociation is taken as evidence for whole-word representations for these words at the phonological level. The claim is consistent with previous account for discrepancy of the frequencies of tonal errors between reading aloud and object naming in Cantonese reported of another case study of similar deficits. Theoretical arguments for whole-word form representations for all multisyllabic Chinese words are also discussed.     

Temporal kinetics of prefrontal modulation of the extrastriate cortex during visual attention

Single-unit, event-related potential (ERP), and neuroimaging studies have implicated the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in top-down control of attention and working memory. We conducted an experiment in patients with unilateral PFC damage (n=8) to assess the temporal kinetics of PFC-extrastriate interactions during visual attention. Subjects alternated attention between the left and the right hemifields in successive runs while they detected target stimuli embedded in streams of repetitive task-irrelevant stimuli (standards). The design enabled us to examine tonic (spatial selection) and phasic (feature selection) PFC-extrastriate interactions. PFC damage impaired performance in the visual field contralateral to lesions, as manifested by both larger reaction times and error rates. Assessment of the extrastriate P1 ERP revealed that the PFC exerts a tonic (spatial selection) excitatory input to the ipsilateral extrastriate cortex as early as 100 msec post stimulus delivery. The PFC exerts a second phasic (feature selection) excitatory extrastriate modulation from 180 to 300 msec, as evidenced by reductions in selection negativity after damage. Finally, reductions of the N2 ERP to target stimuli supports the notion that the PFC exerts a third phasic (target selection) signal necessary for successful template matching during postselection analysis of target features. The results provide electrophysiological evidence of three distinct tonic and phasic PFC inputs to the extrastriate cortex in the initial few hundred milliseconds of stimulus processing. Damage to this network appears to underlie the pervasive deficits in attention observed in patients with prefrontal lesions.     

Expectations About Couple Therapy Over Time

One common factor of therapy, expectations, has been demonstrated to be a significant contributor to outcome in individual therapy. Despite this, little is known about expectations about couple therapy. This paper presents the qualitative results of a study exploring clients’ expectations before beginning couple therapy and after six sessions. Results indicate that clients form pre-therapy expectations about their therapist, the process of therapy, and their partner. Results also showed that after six sessions, clients’ expectations about therapy were often met or modified in ways that were positive. Implications for therapists and researchers are included.     

Robust interactive decision-analysis (RID): Behavioral results and implications

We have proposed a novel interactive procedure for performing decision analysis, called Robust Interactive Decision Analysis (RID), which permits a decision maker (DM) to voluntarily and interactively express strong (viz, sure) binary preferences for actions, partial decision functions, and full decision functions, and only imprecise probability and utility function assessments. These serve as INPUTS TO operators to prune the state probability space and decision space until an optimal choice strategy is obtained. The viability of the RID approach depends on a DM's ability to provide such information consistently and meaningfully. On a limited scale we experimentally investigate the behavioral implications of the RID method in order to ascertain its potential operational feasibility and viability. More specifically, we examine whether a DM can (1) express strong preferences between pairs of vectors of unconditional and conditional payoffs or utilities consistently; (2) provide imprecise (ordinal and interval) state probabilities that are individually as well as mutually consistent with the state probabilities imputed from the expressed strong preferences. The results show that a DM can provide strong individually and mutually consistent preference and ordinal probability information. Moreover, most individuals also appear to be able to provide interval probabilities that are individually and mutually consistent with their strong preference inputs. However, the several violations observed, our small sample size, and the limited scope of our investigation suggest that further experimentation is needed to determine whether and/or how such inputs should be elicited. Overall, the results indicate that the RID method is behaviorally viable.     

Book reviews

Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of Knowledge, Frederick F. Schmitt, Ed., 1994. Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield, ix + 315 pp., US$22.95, ISBN: 0847679594

A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action, Esther Thelen & Linda B. Smith. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, xxii + 376 pp., $50, ISBN 0–262–20095–3 cloth

From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics, William B. Ewald, Ed., 1996. Oxford, Oxford University Press. xviii+ 1340 pp., £195.00, two volumes, ISBN 0–19–853271–7 (the set)     

Effects of media violence on viewers' aggression in unconstrained social interaction

This article provides a meta-analytic review of the experimental effects of media violence on viewers' aggression in unstructured social interaction. In the reviewed experiments, children or adolescents were exposed to violent or control presentations and their postexposure behavior was coded for aggression during spontaneous social interaction. Exposure to media violence significantly enhanced viewers' aggressive behavior when the findings were aggregated across studies, but the effect was not uniform across investigations. Only suggestive evidence was obtained concerning moderators of the effect: Marginally stronger relations were obtained in those studies using a cross-section of the normal population of children (vs. emotionally disturbed children) and in those studies conducted in laboratory settings (vs. other contexts).     

Stimulus spacing effects in duration perception are larger for auditory stimuli: Data and a model

Models of duration bisection have focused on the effects of stimulus spacing and stimulus modality. However, interactions between stimulus spacing and stimulus modality have not been examined systematically. Two duration bisection experiments that address this issue are reported. Experiment 1 showed that stimulus spacing influenced the classification of auditory, but not visual, stimuli. Experiment 2 used a wider stimulus range, and showed stimulus spacing effects for both visual and auditory stimuli, although the effects were larger for auditory stimuli. A version of Temporal Range Frequency Theory was applied to the data, and was used to demonstrate that the qualitative pattern of results can be captured with the single assumption that the durations of visual stimuli are less discriminable from one another than are the durations of auditory stimuli.     

Investigating trajectories of change in psychological distress amongst patients with depression and generalised anxiety disorder treated with internet cognitive behavioural therapy

Internet based cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is efficacious for the treatment of anxiety and depression. The current study aimed to examine the effectiveness of internet based CBT prescribed by primary care clinicians for the treatment of depression and generalised anxiety disorder. Psychological distress data from 302 patients who completed an online CBT course for depression and 361 patients who completed an online CBT course for generalised anxiety disorder were subjected to growth mixture analysis. For both disorders psychological distress decreased across each lesson in a quadratic trend. Two classes of individuals were identified with different trajectories of change: a large group of individuals who responded well to the courses and a smaller group of individuals with a lower response. Both groups were similar with respect to socio-demographic characteristics however the Low Responders tended to have higher levels of symptom severity and psychological distress at baseline in comparison to the responders. For the majority of patients (75-80%) the internet CBT courses for depression and generalised anxiety disorder were effective. Further research is required to identify and effectively treat the smaller proportion of patients who did not improve during internet CBT.