Parent engagement in an original and culturally adapted evidence-based parenting program,Legacy for Children™

Legacy for Children™ (Legacy) is an evidence-based program focused on promoting sensitive, responsive parenting for socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Legacy has recently been culturally and linguistically adapted for Spanish-monolingual Latino families and is being piloted in partnership with an early childhood education program. We conducted a mixed methods study to identify barriers and facilitators to engagement, using program monitoring data sources from both participant and group leader perspectives. We conducted qualitative analyses of open-ended data to identify distinct barriers (e.g., employment challenges, health-related challenges and appointments) and facilitators (e.g., other mothers in group, interest in program topics) to engagement that emerged across English and Spanish language curriculum versions; curriculum-specific barriers and facilitators were also documented. We interpret these findings in light of quantitative data on measures of engagement, showing that participants in the Spanish curriculum evidenced comparable levels of parent–group leader relationship quality relative to the English group, and higher levels of parent's group support/connectedness and overall satisfaction. These results offer promising considerations for optimizing families’ engagement in parenting programs in the context of early care and education settings.     

Intention of Chinese college students to use carsharing: An application of the theory of planned behavior

Carsharing originated in Europe and then expanded to developed countries such as the United States. With the revival and popularity of the “Sharing Economy,” carsharing has remarkably increased in China in recent years. Carsharing has increased convenience for individuals without private cars and is changing the traditional view of car ownership. Chinese college students are a large, highly educated group with low incomes and low rates of car ownership. Understanding the determinants of Chinese college students' intention to carshare is critical to promote carsharing services. In this research, an expanded version of the theory of planned behavior, which contains environmental concern, is the theoretical research framework. The model was empirically tested by using the questionnaire data of 356 college students from four universities in Qingdao, China. The results indicate that subjective norm and the perceived behavioral control are directly and positively associated with Chinese college students’ intention to use carsharing, and attitude and environmental concern have no direct correlation with the intention. Environmental concern has a significant direct effect on attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. In addition, environmental concern indirectly impacts Chinese college students’ intention to use carsharing through subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. The findings yield practical insights for carsharing organizations and transportation planners. Based on these results, limitations of this study and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

诚实-谦逊性和人际亲密性对公平规范执行的影响

采用2（诚实-谦逊性：高分组、低分组）×3（人际亲密性：家人、朋友、路人）×2（提议不公性：高不公提议、低不公提议）的混合实验设计,考察人际冲突情境下诚实-谦逊性与公平规范执行中人情效应的关系。研究结果发现,随着人际亲密性的增强,人们对互动同伴的互惠预期越高,更倾向于接受不公提议;高、低诚实-谦逊者付诸公平规范执行时均会考量双方彼此的人际亲密性,但高诚实-谦逊者存在更强的人情效应。结果表明,高诚实-谦逊者更在意维持有价值的人际关系,愿意宽容重要他人的违规行为。     

Herbert Spencer's contributions to behavior analysis: a retrospective review of principles of psychology

Herbert Spencer's Principles of Psychology (1855, first edition) was regarded by his contemporaries, including William James and John Dewey, as a major contribution to what was then a very new discipline. In this book he first expounded his ideas about both evolution of species and how behavior of the individual organism adapts through interaction with the environment. His formulation of the principle that behavior changes in adaptation to the environment is closely related to the version of the law of effect propounded some years later by Thorndike. He can thus be seen as the first proponent of selectionism, a key tenet of behavior analysis. He also explicitly attacked the then prevailing view of free will as being incompatible with the biologically grounded view of psychological processes that he was advocating, and thus put forward ideas that were precursors of B. F. Skinner's in this important area of debate.     

Navigating Social Class Roles in Community Research

This paper describes the first author's attempt to collect data in a homeless shelter without attending to her role in the social class hierarchy of the organization. The author's egalitarian approach towards the homeless clients, and her lack of involvement in "staff-only" activities, transgress the social class norms within the organizational structure. While the author is successful in gaining the trust of the homeless clients, her approach alienates shelter staff, especially those in the higher echelons of the social hierarchy. The concepts of classism, world views, and Social Identity Theory, are utilized to discuss the dilemma faced by researchers who want to challenge, or work outside, a setting's status quo.     

The Executive Functions and Self-Regulation: An Evolutionary Neuropsychological Perspective

Neuropsychology Review - Neuropsychology has customarily taken a molecular and myopic view of executive functioning, concentrating largely on those proximal processes of which it may be comprised....     

Adaptation and the Set-Point Model of Subjective Well-Being: Does Happiness Change After Major Life Events?

ABSTRACT— Hedonic adaptation refers to the process by which individuals return to baseline levels of happiness following a change in life circumstances. Dominant models of subjective well-being (SWB) suggest that people can adapt to almost any life event and that happiness levels fluctuate around a biologically determined set point that rarely changes. Recent evidence from large-scale panel studies challenges aspects of this conclusion. Although inborn factors certainly matter and some adaptation does occur, events such as divorce, death of a spouse, unemployment, and disability are associated with lasting changes in SWB. These recent studies also show that there are considerable individual differences in the extent to which people adapt. Thus, happiness levels do change, and adaptation is not inevitable.     

外来工子女与父母养育方式关系的研究

摘要本研究以1128名四到六年级的外来工与城市居民子女作为被试,以儿童孤独感问卷(CLS)与父母教养方式评价量表(EMBU)为研究工具,对外来工与城市居民子女的社会孤独感与父母养育方式的关系进行研究。运用多因素方差分析与回归分析等统计方法对研究数据进行处理,结果表明:(1)儿童孤独感性别差异显著,男生的孤独感显著高于女生;(2)儿童孤独感年龄差异显著,随着年龄增长,孤独感强度呈现出显著的下降趋势;(3)外来工子女的孤独感显著高于城市居民子女的孤独感,父惩罚因子、父偏爱因子与母关心理解因子对儿童孤独感影响显著,能较好的预测儿童孤独感。     

Movement adaptations in 7- to 10-year-old typically developing children: evidence for a transition in feedback-based motor control

We used a modified double-step pointing task to study movement adaptations in 7- to 10-year-old typically developing children. We found that the majority (63%) were able to optimally adapt fast, goal-directed visually-guided movements to a late change in target location meeting the requirements of speed and accuracy. A minority (35%) failed to meet the requirement of accuracy resulting in a less optimal adaptation. The results showed that the ability to adapt movements optimally develops before the age of 7 years in typically developing children. Literature proposes a transition in development of motor control around the age of 8 years. The present results replicate and extend this by suggesting that this transition affects the later phases of fast, goal-directed visually-guided movements rather than the early phases, such as movement programming and acceleration. Finally, the results indicate that the optimally adapted movements were the result of a specific strategy in which a specific component of movement execution was slowed on all trials. This suggests that 7- to 10-year-old typically developing children have developed implicit knowledge about which movement components are the most efficient to adapt.     

Test development and use in five Iberian Latin American countries

The abundance of scholarship on test development and use generally is higher in English‐speaking than in Iberian Latin American countries. The purpose of this article is to help overcome this imbalance by describing and identifying similarities and differences in test development and use in two Iberian (Portugal and Spain) and three of the largest Latin American (Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela) countries. The stages of test development in each country, roles of professional associations, presence of standards for test use, professionals' educational training, commonly used tests, together with prominent challenges to continued progress are discussed. Test development and use in these five countries are transitioning from a dependence on the use of translated tests to greater reliance on adapted and finally nationally constructed tests. Continued growth requires adherence to international standards guiding test development and use. Stronger alliance among professional associations in the Iberian Latin American countries could serve as a catalyst to promote test development in these regions.