Influence of Question Format and Text Availability on the Assessment of Expository Text Comprehension

This study examines how passage availability and reading comprehension question format (open-ended vs. multiple-choice) influence question answering. In two experiments, college undergraduates read an expository passage and answered open-ended and multiple-choice versions of text-based, local, and global bridging inference questions. Half the participants were allowed to refer to the passage when answering the questions and half were not. Participants' prior domain knowledge relating to the text contents was assessed using multiple-choice and open-ended questions. Correlation-based analyses in the two experiments indicated: (a) a decline in the relationship between prior domain knowledge and comprehension when the passage was available during question answering; and (b) a high correlation between multiple-choice and open-ended question answering performance when the passage was not available for reference. Overall the results indicate that the nature of the reading comprehension assessment is influenced by the specific task with which comprehension is assessed.     

Absolve You to Yourself: Emerson's Conception of Rational Agency

Ralph Waldo Emerson famously warned his readers against the dangers of conformity and consistency. In this paper, I argue that this warning informs his engagement with and opposition to a Kantian view of rational agency. The interpretation I provide of some of Emerson's central essays outlines a unique conception of agency, a conception which gives substance to Emerson's exhortations of self‐trust. While Kantian in spirit, Emerson's view challenges the requirement that autonomy requires acting from a conception of the law. The key to understanding Emerson's opposition to Kant rests in showing how obeying the law requires spontaneity on the part of the agent herself. Emerson's concerns about conformity and consistency further enrich the view of agency, argued for by Richard Moran, according to which we take responsibility for our minds by taking up a first‐person deliberative perspective on our minds. Conformity and consistency in one's thinking and acting permits society and one's own past to dictate when deliberation may come to an end, thereby undermining a crucial sense in which an agent, in taking up the deliberative perspective, has taken responsibility for her mind.     

The effects of clinical motor variables and medication dosage on working memory in Parkinson’s disease

In this study, we investigate the interrelationship between clinical variables and working memory (WM) in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Specifically, the aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between disease duration, dopaminergic medication dosage, and motor disability (UPDRS score) with WM in individuals with PD. Accordingly, we recruited three groups of subjects: unmedicated PD patients, medicated PD patients, and healthy controls. All subjects were tested on three WM tasks: short-delay WM, long-delay WM, and the n-back task. Further, PD encompasses a spectrum that can be classified either into akinesia/rigidity or resting tremor as the predominant motor presentation of the disease. In addition to studying medication effects, we tested WM performance in tremor-dominant and akinesia-dominant patients. We further correlated WM performance with disease duration and medication dosage. We found no difference between medicated and unmedicated patients in the short-delay WM task, but medicated patients outperformed unmedicated patients in the long-delay WM and n-back tasks. Interestingly, we also found that akinesia-dominant patients were more impaired than tremor-dominant patients at various WM measures, which is in agreement with prior studies of the relationship between akinesia symptom and basal ganglia dysfunction. Moreover, the results show that disease duration inversely correlates with more demanding WM tasks (long-delay WM and n-back tasks), but medication dosage positively correlates with demanding WM performance. In sum, our results show that WM impairment in PD patients depend on cognitive domain (simple vs. demanding WM task), subtype of PD patients (tremor- vs. akinesia-dominant), as well as disease duration and medication dosage. Our results have implications for the interrelationship between motor and cognitive processes in PD, and for understanding the role of cognitive training in treating motor symptoms in PD.     

Inclusive Leadership and Employee Involvement in Creative Tasks in the Workplace: The Mediating Role of Psychological Safety

This study examines how inclusive leadership (manifested by openness, accessibility, and availability of a leader) fosters employee creativity in the workplace. Using a sample of 150 employees, we investigated the relationship between inclusive leadership (measured at Time 1), psychological safety, and employee involvement in creative work tasks (measured at Time 2). The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis indicate that inclusive leadership is positively related to psychological safety, which, in turn, engenders employee involvement in creative work.     

Effects of Attentional Focus on Skilled Performance in Golf

Wulf and colleagues (e.g., Wulf, Lauterbach, & Toole, 1999 Wulf, G., Lauterbach, B. and Toole, T. 1999. The learning advantages of an external focus of attention in golf. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 70: 1219–126.  [Google Scholar]) have demonstrated that the adoption of an external focus of attention is preferable for the learning of complex motor tasks. The present investigation extends the attention focus literature in two ways: (a) it compared the effectiveness of three different foci (internal, proximal external, and distal external) in a sample of skilled performers in a naturalistic environment, and (b) it examined the use of attentional foci under conditions of anxiety. Thirty-three skilled male golfers were assigned to one of three attentional focus groups and completed five blocks of ten pitch shots, three in neutral conditions and two in anxiety conditions. Results from two separate mixed model analyses of variance (ANOVAs) indicated that regardless of anxiety condition, those assigned to a distal external focus of attention performed most accurately (p < 0.05), whereas assignment to an internal focus of attention was associated with the least accurate performance (p < 0.05). Findings offer support for the constrained action hypothesis and point to the importance of skilled performers adopting a distal external focus, especially in competition.     

Research Priorities in the Seminary Professorate: Scholarly Research and Academic Writing as Criterion for Rank Advancement in Graduate Theological Education

The purpose of this investigation was to surface definitions for scholarly research employed in Association of Theological Schools seminaries, identify the application of scholarly research as a criteria for rank advancement, and form a scholarly research productivity reference point. The research revealed that while definitions of scholarly activity vary in ATS seminaries, common defining themes are evident; (1) promoting academic, professional, or public discourse and dissemination, (2) originality, (3) participation, or presentation in academic or professional societies, (4) professional esteem, and (5) the notion of work being verifiable. The concept of peer-reviewed publication is not widely held in the opinion of seminary faculty as essential to distinguish academic writing. University-connected seminaries often mirror the emphasis on empirical research in higher education of their institutions. The research surfaced the difficulty in forming an academic writing productivity benchmark.     

Hierarchical Relationships in Dependency Grids: Explorations in Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse

A methodology for representing the patterns of dependency in a dependency grid using partial order scalogram analysis by coordinates (POSAC) is presented. The technique, devised by Shye (1985) Shye, S. 1985. Multiple scaling: The theory and application of partial order scalogram analysis, Amsterdam: North Holland.  [Google Scholar], shows these patterns as hierarchical relationships that indicate superordinate and subordinate resources. An index of depth of resource support is calculated in addition to an index of breadth of resource (which is shown to correspond to an index of dispersion of dependency). The procedure was applied to data from 54 survivors of child sexual abuse and a similar number of control subjects who all completed both an adult and child dependency grid. There was significantly less breadth of resource in the abuse group, more so for the child version than the adult, but there was significantly more depth of resource in the dependency grids from the child sexual abuse survivors.     

Pregnant and Parenting Battered Women Speak Out about their Relationships and Challenges

Domestic violence is one of the leading health risks to women in the United States. Abuse during pregnancy increases the negative health consequences for mothers and their unborn children. This article presents survey and open-ended interview data from participants in an innovative program for pregnant and parenting battered women and examines the health status of mothers and newborns, their experience and perception of both physical and nonphysical abuse, and their challenges to prenatal care.     

Modeling Hierarchical Relationships in Hinkle's Implications Grid Data

There have been few attempts to devise suitable methods of analysis for the implications grid devised by Hinkle (1965 Hinkle, D.N. (1965). The change of personal constructs from the viewpoint of a theory of construct implications. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, The Ohio State University, Columbus. [Google Scholar]). As Hinkle noted (Hinkle, 1965 Hinkle, D.N. (1965). The change of personal constructs from the viewpoint of a theory of construct implications. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, The Ohio State University, Columbus. [Google Scholar], p. 63), there are three implications needed to define a hierarchical relationship (A → B, B → C, and A → C). Hinkle did not attempt to test this requirement, as neither did the only other published use of the technique (Fransella, 1972). Subsequently, Caputi, Breiger, and Pattison (1990 Caputi, P., Breiger, R., & Pattison, P. (1990). Analyzing implications grids using hierarchical models. International Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 3, 77–90.[Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) published a technique that explicitly sought to model implications data with respect to this requirement. In this study we use this technique to both (a) evaluate some of the choice points in the technique using data from the 28 implications grids collected by Hinkle and published as an appendix to his thesis, and (b) subsequently analyze this data to examine the hierarchical relationships as defined above. Our evaluation of the choice points showed that the joint modification approach worked best and that there was a clear cut-off to most fully represent the relationships in the raw data. Our analysis via the modeling approach found that there was no difference between the mean number of transitive superordinate constructs implied by subordinate constructs and the mean number of transitive subordinate constructs implied by superordinate constructs in the modeled data, suggesting that the laddered constructs in this study were not necessarily superordinate to the generating constructs.     

Adaptive memory: The survival-processing memory advantage is not due to negativity or mortality salience

Recent research has highlighted the adaptive function of memory by showing that imagining being stranded in the grasslands without any survival material and rating words according to their survival value in this situation leads to exceptionally good memory for these words. Studies examining the role of emotions in causing the survival-processing memory advantage have been inconclusive, but some studies have suggested that the effect might be due to negativity or mortality salience. In Experiments 1 and 2, we compared the survival scenario to a control scenario that implied imagining a hopeless situation (floating in outer space with dwindling oxygen supplies) in which only suicide can avoid the agony of choking to death. Although this scenario was perceived as being more negative than the survival scenario, the survival-processing memory advantage persisted. In Experiment 3, thinking about the relevance of words for survival led to better memory for these words than did thinking about the relevance of words for death. This survival advantage was found for concrete, but not for abstract, words. The latter finding is consistent with the assumption that the survival instructions encourage participants to think about many different potential uses of items to aid survival, which may be a particularly efficient form of elaborate encoding. Together, the results suggest that thinking about death is much less effective in promoting recall than is thinking about survival. Therefore, the survival-processing memory advantage cannot be satisfactorily explained by negativity or mortality salience.