Job Burnout among Construction Engineers Working within Consulting and Contracting Organizations

This research investigated and compared the experience of job burnout among 249 construction engineers working within consulting and contracting organizations in Hong Kong. The most widely recognized model of burnout, comprising emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and diminished professional efficacy was found to be valid. The sample in this study scored highest in all three dimensions of burnout among nine other occupations in national samples, with engineers working within contracting organizations reporting higher levels of burnout than their fellow engineers working within consulting organizations. The results of the study also showed that burnout attributed largely to stressors associated with job conditions and working environments. In particular, qualitative overload and lack of promotion prospects were found to be the major predictors of job burnout among engineers working within consulting organizations; whereas long working hours, role conflict, role ambiguity, and lack of job security accounted mostly for the burnout among engineers within contracting organizations. This suggested that intervention strategies targeting minimizing burnout, such as job redesign, should be devised with reference to the type of the engineering organizations.     

Relations between parental control and warmth and child well-being in stepfamilies.

Examined type-of-stepfamily differences in child well-being and parenting behaviors and how child well-being in stepfamilies relates to parenting behaviors. Data were drawn from the National Survey of Families and Households (J. A. Sweet et al, 1988) and included fathers and mothers in 448 stepfather, 76 stepmother, and 41 complex stepfamilies. Biological parents in stepfamilies perceived themselves as having higher quality relationships with their children than stepparents reported having with their stepchildren. Although stepfathers reported behaving less positively toward their children than did other fathers, stepmothers reported responding as positively to their stepchildren as did biological mothers in stepfamilies. In general, child well-being was positively related to perceptions of parental warmth. The relations between parental control and child well-being varied for different dimensions of well-being and in different types of stepfamilies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Making the connection between research and reality: Strategies teachers use to read and evaluate journal articles.

This investigation of domain-specific professional reading clarifies the way 12 teachers who are professionally active select and read the journals and research articles in their fields. Using verbal protocol analysis and interviews, the authors identified and classified reading think-aloud reports into 5 categories: using strategies, connecting to practice, monitoring, questioning, and evaluating. The teachers in this study created meaning in complex and personal ways as they read. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Context framing to enhance HIV-antibody-testing messages targeted to African American women.

African American women (N?=?100) recruited from an urban clinic were randomly assigned to view 1 of 3 experimental videotapes promoting HIV testing: (a) an ethnicity-matched information control videotape; (b) the same ethnicity-matched videotape presented by an African American woman (gender-ethnicity-matched control condition), or (c) an experimental videotape with a culturally relevant context that embedded HIV-testing information within a frame of reference emphasizing personal loss. Consistent with D. Kahneman and A. Tversky's (1979) prospect theory, women who viewed the context-framing videotape were most likely to have been tested during a 2-wk follow-up interval. Among women who expressed intentions to get tested after viewing the videotapes, 63% of those in the message-framing condition were tested for HIV during a 2-wk period compared with 23% in the gender-ethnicity-matched condition, and none in the ethnicity matched condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationships between normal aging, frontal lobe function, and memory for temporal and spatial information.

Young and old participants were evaluated on tests of frontal lobe function, recognition memory, and memory for temporal and spatial information. Older participants showed significant impairments on memory for temporal order, and this impairment was found to correlate with deficits on frontal lobe tests measuring spontaneous flexibility but not reactive flexibility. However, spatial memory showed no evidence of an age effect. An interpretation of this latter finding based on the differential availability of contextual cues is ruled out because similar results were obtained when spatial memory was assessed in a different context to that used during learning. The researchers concluded that memory for temporal order and spatial memory are affected differentially by age. Theoretical interpretations of this difference are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How pronutrition television programming affects children's dietary habits.

Investigated the effects of pro-nutrition TV programming on kindergarten-age children's nutritional knowledge, food preferences, and eating habits using a hierarchy of effects model as a conceptual basis. This model presents 4 levels (recall, information, preference, and behavior) that may be affected by pro-nutrition food advertisements and are sequenced by degree of complexity. A pretest–posttest control-group design was used. 59 children from 6 kindergarten classes (average age 6.2 yrs) were exposed to a series of 10 20-min videotapes over 10 class days. The videotapes were compiled from popular children's programming and public service announcements with themes stressing healthy eating habits and nutritional concepts. 50 control Ss did not view the tapes. Effects were measured using recall, information, preference, and behavioral assessments (i.e., the Behavioral Eating Test and the Pretend Eating Test). Significant results were obtained on the recall and information measures only, indicating that Ss attended to the TV programming and learned the nutrition concepts that were presented in the tapes but failed to change in terms of preference or consumption. Results are discussed in terms of their suggested support for the hierarchy-of-effects model and the implications for further research regarding the effects of pro-nutritional TV programming. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inspecting the emperor's clothes: Evidence that random selection of leaders can enhance group performance.

This article tests the hypothesis that group performance might be superior when leaders are randomly rather than systematically selected. In Experiment 1 groups with randomly selected leaders performed a survival task better than groups whose leaders were systematically selected. This effect was replicated in Experiment 2: Groups with a random leader also performed better than groups with no appointed leader and followers adhered more strongly to the group decision. In Experiment 3, naive participants' experimental expectations confirmed the counterintuitive nature of these findings. Results suggest that systematically selected leaders can undermine group goals and group maintenance. The possibility that this occurs because leaders assert their personal superiority at the expense of shared social identity is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of marine biofilms on corrosion: A concise review

The following is a concise review of the literature that addresses the impact of marine biofilms on two phenomena—ennoblement of corrosion potential and sulfide derivitization due to sulfate-reducing bacteria. A universally defined mechanism of potential ennoblement has not been established. Extent of ennoblement varies among locations and the extent of ennoblement for a particular material cannot be used to predict an increased likelihood of localized corrosion. There is some controversy as to the susceptibility of low- and medium-grade stainless steels. Carbon steel and copper alloys are susceptible to sulfide derivitization but thermodynamic models cannot predict the susceptibility of these materials. Laboratory experiments designed to provide data on susceptibility to sulfide derivitization have produced conflicting results because of the following: (1) laboratory media can contain anions that inhibit localized corrosion, (2) laboratory media can contain yeast extract that interferes with electrochemical measurements, and (3) deaeration procedures can produce environments that are not conducive for the growth of sulfate-reducing bacteria. In general, alloys that undergo ennoblement are not vulnerable to sulfide derivitization and conversely, alloys that are subject to sulfide derivitization do not become ennobled.     

All letters are not equal: Subgraphemic texture in orthographic working memory.

A central issue in the study of reading and spelling has been to understand how the consistency or frequency of letter-sound relationships affects written language processing. We present, for the first time, evidence that the sound–spelling frequency of subgraphemic elements of words (letters within digraphs) contributes to the accuracy with which these letters are produced in spelling. We report findings from 2 studies that demonstrate that letters within digraphs display differential susceptibility to error under conditions of disruption to orthographic working memory (O-WM). In the 1st, O-WM was disrupted as a result of neurological damage; in the 2nd, O-WM disruption was produced in neurologically intact, skilled spellers under dual task conditions with a shadowing task carried out during spelling. In both studies, segments with low versus high levels of sound–letter convergence, a measure of the frequency of sublexical mappings, were more vulnerable to disruption even when factors such as letter position, consonant–vowel context, and phoneme-to-grapheme mapping probability of the digraphs were controlled. These results contribute to our understanding of the internal texture of orthographic representations, providing evidence that individual letters differ in their activation strength and, as a result, in their susceptibility to error. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maternal intervention in toddler peer conflict: The socialization of principles of justice.

The focus of this research was mothers' interventions in object conflicts between toddler peers. Maternal consistency in endorsing principles of ownership and possession was evaluated. 32 20- or 30-mo-old children were observed playing with same-aged, same-sex peers for 18 40-min sessions. Mothers of both children were present and free to respond to their children but were asked not to organize or direct the children's play. We found that mothers frequently intervened and that they overwhelmingly favored the other child; however, mothers of boys supported their own children more than mothers of girls. Additionally, mothers were not consistent in endorsing rights of either ownership or possession and thus did not provide coherent information for the children's acquisition of principles of entitlement. Rather, mothers' interventions appeared to be aimed at restoring harmony between the children by urging their own children to yield to their peers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)