Collaborative competence,social capital,and mental health: A cross‐sectional analysis of a community‐based intervention for older adults

Social capital interventions for the mental health of older adults have been inconclusive to date, and have rarely investigated the psychological resources that are important to having social capital. This study focused on the “Neighborhoods in Solidarity” (NS), which are a series of Swiss community‐based interventions that aim to empower older adults to participate in their communities. Our goal was to understand whether the NS were associated with collaborative competence, social capital, and subsequently, symptoms of depression. Cross‐sectional data were collected from 947 individuals aged 55 and over (M_age = 68.66, SD = 9.04) in 10 Swiss neighbourhoods (five with the NS [n = 479] and five control neighbourhoods [n = 468]). Structural equation modelling was used to model the relationship between the NS intervention, collaborative competence, cognitive and structural dimensions of social capital, and symptoms of depression (measured by the CESD‐R‐10). Individual participation in the NS had total and indirect effects on symptoms of depression via collaborative competence and both social capitals. These findings suggest that existing community‐based interventions can be indirectly associated with better mental health outcomes in the ageing population.     

Dynamic precipitation at elevated temperatures in a dual-phase AlCoCrFeNi high-entropy alloy: an in situ study

ABSTRACT

The effect of a possible phase transformation or precipitation of the face-centred cubic (FCC) phase on intermediate-temperature deformation of a dual-phase AlCoCrFeNi high-entropy alloy has been studied using in situ tensile testing at 550°C. Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) results showed localised precipitation of the FCC phase during the intermediate-temperature deformation. The overall fracture behaviour and crack propagation of the material was not altered much compared to the room-temperature behaviour, namely brittle trans-granular fracture. Deformation at higher temperatures (above 750°C) is suggested as a way to enhance the dynamic FCC phase precipitation, in order to improve the ductility or deformability of the alloy.     

Knowledge,Attitude, and Practice of Clerical Students with Respect to HIV/AIDS in Iran, 2011

In this study, knowledge and attitude of Iranian clerical students toward HIV and AIDS was assessed. Through a cross-sectional study, 367 clerical students were surveyed, in convenience sampling method, in the Qom seminary in 2011, utilizing a self-administered structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was piloted on 20 clerical student volunteers, internal consistency measured with Cronbach’s alpha was 0.89. Participants’ scores of knowledge and attitude were calculated out of 100. The level of knowledge in 37.33 % of participants was good (scores >80), whereas 46.05 and 16.62 % had moderate (40 < scores ≤ 80) and poor (scores ≤40) levels of knowledge, respectively. The mean score of knowledge and attitude was 58.29 (95 % CI 56.11–60) and 77.26 (95 % CI 75.92–78.59) out of 100, respectively. A significant correlation was observed between level of knowledge and attitude (r = 0.33, P < 0.001). Knowledge score appeared to be significantly higher in women compared to men (p = 0.04). With an increase in age, the level of knowledge significantly decreased (r = ?0.10, P = 0.02). We could also detect a statistically significant relationship between attending educational courses on HIV/AIDS and inclusion of HIV/AIDS topics in the individual’s sermons (P < 0.001). Although clerical students had shown some sort of positive attitudes toward HIV, their knowledge still needs to be improved to enable them to deliver more accurate information to the community during the course of their speeches. Having HIV-related courses as part of their curriculum or aside may contribute a lot to this.     

Correction to: Visual-Syntactic Text Formatting: Developing EFL Learners’ Reading Fluency Components

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research -     

Exploring EFL Learners’ Metaphorical Conceptions of Language Learning: A Multimodal Analysis

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Owing to the limitations of linguistic modes to portray aptly L2 learners’ metaphors of language learning experience, growing attention has been paid to...     

A Contrastive Analysis of Emotional Terms in Bed-Night Stories Across Two Languages: Does it Affect Learners' Pragmatic Knowledge of Controlling Emotions? Seeking Implications to Teach English to EFL Learners

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - The present investigation aimed at studying emotional terms (ETs) in Persian and English bed-night stories for children by adopting a contrastive analysis...     

Correction to: The Comparative Effects of Teacher Versus Peer-Scaffolding on EFL Learners’ Incidental Vocabulary Learning and Reading Comprehension: A Socio-Cultural Perspective

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research -     

The Persian Version of the Personality Beliefs Questionnaire-Short-Form (PBQ-SF): A Psychometric Evaluation

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - The Personality Beliefs Questionnaire-Short Form (PBQ-SF) is the short-form version of PBQ (Beck and Beck in The personality belief...     

Modelling the Role of L2 Writing Anxiety in Graph-based Composing Performance and Strategy Use

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Research on integrated writing tasks is increasing, while there is a paucity of empirical findings on graph-based writing, as one type of these tasks. The...     

Vision merges with touch in a purely tactile discrimination

To construct a coherent percept of the world, the brain continuously combines information across multiple sensory modalities. Simple stimuli from different modalities are usually assumed to be processed in distinct brain areas. However, there is growing evidence that simultaneous stimulation of multiple modalities can influence the activity in unimodal sensory areas and improve or impair performance in unimodal tasks. Do these effects reflect a genuine cross-modal integration of sensory signals, or are they due to changes in the perceiver's ability to locate the stimulus in time and space? We used a behavioral measure to differentiate between these explanations. Our results demonstrate that, under certain circumstances, a noninformative flash of light can have facilitative or detrimental effects on a simple tactile discrimination. The effect of the visual flash mimics that produced by a constant tactile pedestal stimulus. These findings reveal that sensory signals from different modalities can be integrated, even for perceptual judgments within a single modality.