Braille literacy as a human right: A challenge to the "inefficiency" argument against braille instruction.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) affirms a right to education for disabled persons and aims to ensure braille instruction for blind individuals. However, there is evidence that braille instruction is often circumvented or abandoned early in CRPD nations because it is perceived as an inefficient learning medium for blind students. This perception persists despite insufficient empirical evidence and a lack of understanding of the efficiency of reading versus listening for learning in sighted individuals. We therefore investigated the efficiency of learning written versus spoken words in blind and sighted samples. Participants (23 blind, 20 sighted) studied the written definitions of 70 rare English words in successive rounds, presented in conjunction with written or spoken wordforms. Blind participants learned with equal efficiency across modalities, whereas sighted participants learned spoken words more efficiently. The findings indicate the inefficiency argument against teaching braille is groundless, both because braille word learning is not less efficient than auditory word learning for blind individuals, and because reading is valued in the education of sighted individuals despite its apparent inefficiency in that population.

Relationships between task awareness, comprehension strategies, and literacy outcomes.

Reading is typically guided by a task or goal (e.g., studying for a test, writing a paper). A reader's task awareness arises from their mental representation of the task and plays an important role in guiding reading processes, ultimately influencing comprehension outcomes and task success. As such, a better understanding of how task awareness arises and how it affects comprehension is needed. The present study tested the Task Awareness Mediation Hypothesis. This hypothesis assumes that the strategies that support reading comprehension (e.g., paraphrasing, bridging, and elaborative strategies) also support a reader's task awareness while engaged in a literacy task. Further, it assumes that the reader's level of task awareness partially mediates the relationship between these comprehension strategies and a comprehension outcome. At two different time points in a semester, college students completed an assessment of their propensity to engage in comprehension strategies and a complex academic literacy task that provided a measure of comprehension outcomes and an assessment of task awareness. Indirect effects analyses provided evidence for the Task Awareness Mediation Hypothesis showing that the propensity to engage in paraphrasing and elaboration was positively predictive of task awareness, and that task awareness mediated the relationships between these comprehension strategies and performance on the complex academic literacy task. These results indicate that task awareness has complex relationships with comprehension strategies and performance on academic literacy tasks and warrants further consideration as a possible malleable factor to improve student success.

Examining daily parent involvement in caregivers of children with ADHD using electronic diaries.

Limited research has examined the associations between child ADHD symptoms and parent involvement and has generally relied on the use of parents' retrospective reports of parent involvement and ADHD symptoms. Using daily reports, the current study explored the pathways between child ADHD symptoms and home-based parental involvement beliefs and behaviors. Data were collected daily from 26 parent participants over a 2-week period for a total of 315 time points. Daily surveys asked parents to report on child ADHD symptoms, parental self-efficacy, parental time/energy, and home-based involvement quality. Results indicated that parental self-efficacy mediated the association between children's inattentive symptoms and parental home-based involvement quality. Children's hyperactive/impulsive symptoms moderated the association between parental time/energy and parental home-based involvement quality. These results suggest that parental self-efficacy is an important factor in explaining how children's inattention is associated with parental quality of home-based involvement. In addition, the association between parental time/energy and home-based involvement quality was lower when parents perceived their child to have higher levels of symptoms.

Assessing how students value learning communication skills in an undergraduate anatomy and physiology course.

Students, particularly those in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and healthcare-related programs, should develop proficient interpersonal skills, including communication. To help students develop effective communication skills, instructors need to consider the value students give to learning these skills. The Student Attitudes Toward Communication Skills Survey (SATCSS) was developed to measure how undergraduate students value learning communication skills based on Expectancy-Value Theory across three modes of communication (verbal, written, non-verbal). The survey was given to students interested in healthcare professions and enrolled in an undergraduate anatomy and physiology (A&P) course (n = 233) at a Midwest research active university. The survey showed evidence of validity, measuring two components: (1) "Value to Profession" (attainment and utility value) and (2) "Value to Self" (intrinsic value and cost). There was a significant difference in sub-scores among the four task values such that students thought that learning communication skills was important and relevant (high attainment and utility value) but not interesting (low intrinsic value) and costly. Students with high total scores valued communication skills across all four task values. As total value scores decreased, it was first due to students finding learning communication skills to be time prohibitive and then a lack of interest in learning communication skills. Based on these results, it is recommended that instructors incorporate communication skills training into content that is already part of their A&P course to reduce time concerns. Additional recommendations include using reflective activities and humor to increase student interest.

Associations among bullying role behaviors and academic performance over the course of an academic year for boys and girls.

Although some research has evidenced a negative association between involvement in bullying and academic performance, more work is needed to understand the associations between academic performance and involvement in a more comprehensive range of bully role behaviors. The goals of the current study were to determine (a) the associations among a broader range of bully role behaviors (i.e., bullying, assisting, victimization, defending, and outsider behavior) and academic performance (i.e., grade point average; GPA), and (b) gender differences within these associations. The current study investigated these issues over the course of an academic year with 7794 students in middle through high school. Bullying behaviors were assessed in the fall and GPA data were gathered from school records from the spring of the same academic year. The results identified significant negative associations between bullying (b = -0.07, p = .001), assisting (b = -0.16, p < .001), victimization (b = -0.06, p < .001), and defending (b = -0.04, p < .001) with student GPA, whereas no significant association emerged for outsider behavior and GPA (b = -0.02, p = .13). In addition, several gender differences were found in these associations, including a stronger negative association between assisting and GPA for girls (b = -0.23, p = .001) than for boys (b = -0.08, p = .014) and a significant negative association between victimization and GPA for girls (b = -0.09, p < .001), but not boys (b = -0.02, p = .117). Differences in results across schools were also examined in an exploratory manner. The educational impact associated with bullying behaviors, limitations of the current study, and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Validation of the Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire with momentary assessments of symptoms and functional limitations in patient daily life.

BACKGROUND: The ecological momentary assessment method may collect more accurate data about a patient's symptoms and functioning during the patient's normal daily life than does a retrospective measurement method such as the standardized Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (AQLQ-S), which relies on the patient's recollections of symptoms and functioning. OBJECTIVE: To determine how well the AQLQ-S predicts actual asthma symptoms and functional limitations in patients' daily lives. METHODS: With 91 patients with asthma, we measured quality of life at baseline with the AQLQ-S. Each participant then carried a palm-top computer for 1 week, which signaled the patient 5 times a day to complete a momentary assessment of his or her asthma symptoms, mood, activities, and peak expiratory flow. Once a day, upon awakening, the participants were asked to enter data on their sleep and nocturnal asthma symptoms. RESULTS: The AQLQ-S scores were strongly associated with the momentary assessments of asthma symptoms and patient functioning. The unstandardized slope value indicates, for each 1-unit increase in quality of life, the corresponding change in the outcome variable (in the original units of measurement). Specifically, each 1-unit increase in quality of life was associated with better ambulatory outcomes (assessed on a 7-point scale): fewer coughing and wheezing symptoms (unstandardized slope = -0.44, P < .001); less symptom interference with sleep (unstandardized slope = -0.48, P < .001); less negative affect (unstandardized slope = -0.65, P = .04); and fewer activity restrictions (unstandardized slope = -0.54, P < .001). An increase in quality of life did not significantly predict peak expiratory flow (unstandardized slope = 11.53 L/min, P = .10). CONCLUSIONS: With ecological momentary assessment we found that the AQLQ-S is a valid tool for assessing asthma symptoms and functional limitations. The AQLQ-S scores correctly predicted asthma symptoms, mood, sleep-interference, and activity restrictions in asthma patients' daily lives over a 1-week interval. These data support the AQLQ-S in the clinical management of asthma.

Do healthy people worry? Modern health worries, subjective health complaints, perceived health, and health care utilization.

BACKGROUND: Modern health worries (MHW) are concerns related to modern or technological features of daily life (e.g., air pollution, x-rays, food additives, etc.), and have been associated with subjective health complaints (SHC) and health care use. PURPOSE: The MHW scale was expected to predict aspects of health status in healthy individuals (e.g., health care visits, health perceptions, and medication use). SHC was thought to mediate the relationship between MHW and health care use. Likewise, negative affect was considered to mediate the relationship between MHW and SHC. METHOD: University students (n = 432) completed assessments for MHW, SHC, perceptions of health, medication use, and health care visits. RESULTS: MHW were positively related to the number of subjective health complaints with negative affect partially driving this relationship. MHW were negatively related to reports of present health and medication use. MHW were marginally related, whereas SHC were significantly associated with health care utilization. CONCLUSION: Concerns over modern technology appear to influence symptom reporting, perceptions of current health, medication use, and, to a degree, visits to health care providers even in young healthy samples.

Parent and peer social support compensation and internalizing problems in adolescence.

The general benefits of social support are well-documented; however, little is understood about the unique contributions of social support from specific sources, such as parents and peers. In addition, it is unknown whether social support from some sources might buffer against a lack of social support from another source for the outcome of internalizing problems. The current study investigated two research questions: (a) What is the association between social support from mothers, fathers, classmates, and close friends and internalizing problems for adolescent boys and girls? and (b) Can social support from one source (e.g., mothers) buffer against internalizing problems when social support from another source (e.g., fathers) may be lacking? Do these associations vary by gender? These research questions were examined with a sample of 364 middle school students (61.3% female). Students completed a series of self-report questionnaires assessing social support and internalizing symptoms. Multiple group structural equation models indicated that social support provided general benefits from all sources for early adolescent boys and girls. Regarding stress-buffering with low support as a stressor, no evidence was found for compensation between mothers and fathers. Mother support compensated for low classmate support for both boys and girls and father support compensated for low classmate support for boys. Classmate support compensated for low close friend support for boys. Implications in the context of the school environment for both boys and girls are discussed.

Workplace telepressure and work-life balance outcomes: The role of work recovery experiences.

Workplace technology has posed some challenges to worker well-being. This research examined how workplace telepressure-a preoccupation and urge to respond quickly to message-based communications-is related to work life balance evaluations, as well as how work recovery experiences might explain this relationship. Using an online survey design, Study 1 (N = 254) and Study 2 (N = 409) demonstrated that employees' workplace telepressure negatively related to satisfaction with work-life balance. Study 1 showed that psychological detachment may explain the relationship between workplace telepressure and satisfaction with work-life balance. In Study 2, psychological detachment and control over leisure time explained the relationship between workplace telepressure and global evaluations of work-life balance (satisfaction and effectiveness). Mastery and control experiences explained the relationship between workplace telepressure and work-family enrichment. Lastly, three recovery mechanisms (detachment, relaxation, and control) explained the link between workplace telepressure and work-family conflict. The evidence suggests that workplace telepressure is negatively associated with various employee evaluations of work-life balance, but the role of recovery experiences may depend on how work-life balance is measured.

Social anxiety and employment interviews: does nonverbal feedback differentially predict cortisol and performance?

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES: Interviewers often provide positive nonverbal feedback to reduce interviewees' anxiety. Socially anxious individuals typically harbor negative self-views discrepant with positive feedback. We examined whether nonverbal feedback and social anxiety jointly influence cortisol responses to, and performance during, interviews. DESIGN: An experimental between-subjects design randomly assigned participants to feedback condition. METHODS: Undergraduate students (N = 130) provided saliva and completed social anxiety, interview anxiety, and affective measures before a simulated interview. Following a standardized script, a confederate interviewer provided positive, ambiguous, or negative nonverbal feedback. Participants then provided saliva and completed self-focused attention and self-awareness measures. Confederate interviewers and an external rater evaluated participants' anxiety displays, assertive behavior, and performance. RESULTS: Positive feedback decreased cortisol and improved performance for low social anxiety participants. Socially anxious participants exhibited higher cortisol but did not exhibit significant differences in performance after positive compared to negative feedback. CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with previous findings, positive feedback did not benefit socially anxious interviewees. Positive feedback increased physiological arousal relative to negative feedback but did not hinder performance among people high in social anxiety. These results provide novel information about the interactive influence of social anxiety and nonverbal interviewer feedback on arousal, self-focus, and interview performance.

How do you feel? Self-esteem predicts affect, stress, social interaction, and symptom severity during daily life in patients with chronic illness.

Self-esteem has been demonstrated to predict health and well-being in a number of samples and domains using retrospective reports, but little is known about the effect of self-esteem in daily life. A community sample with asthma (n = 97) or rheumatoid arthritis (n = 31) completed a self-esteem measure and collected Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) data 5x/day for one week using a palmtop computer. Low self-esteem predicted more negative affect, less positive affect, greater stress severity, and greater symptom severity in daily life. Naturalistic exploration of mechanisms relating self-esteem to physiological and/or psychological components in illness may clarify causal relationships and inform theoretical models of self-care, well-being, and disease management.

Telepressure and College Student Employment: The Costs of Staying Connected Across Social Contexts.

Telepressure is a psychological state consisting of the preoccupation and urge to respond quickly to message-based communications from others. Telepressure has been linked with negative stress and health outcomes, but the existing measure focuses on experiences specific to the workplace. The current study explores whether an adapted version of the workplace telepressure measure is relevant to general social interactions that rely on information and communication technologies. We validated a general telepressure measure in a sample of college students and found psychometric properties similar to the original workplace measure. Also, general telepressure was related to, but distinct from, the fear of missing out, self-control and technology use. Using a predictive validity design, we also found that telepressure at the beginning of the semester was related to student reports of burnout, perceived stress and poor sleep hygiene 1 month later (but not work-life balance or general life satisfaction). Moreover, telepressure was more strongly related to more negative outcomes (burnout, stress and poor sleep hygiene) and less positive outcomes (work-life balance and life satisfaction) among employed compared with non-employed students. Thus, the costs of staying connected to one's social network may be more detrimental to college students with additional employment obligations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Please respond ASAP: workplace telepressure and employee recovery.

Organizations rely heavily on asynchronous message-based technologies (e.g., e-mail) for the purposes of work-related communications. These technologies are primary means of knowledge transfer and building social networks. As a by-product, workers might feel varying levels of preoccupations with and urges for responding quickly to messages from clients, coworkers, or supervisors--an experience we label as workplace telepressure. This experience can lead to fast response times and thus faster decisions and other outcomes initially. However, research from the stress and recovery literature suggests that the defining features of workplace telepressure interfere with needed work recovery time and stress-related outcomes. The present set of studies defined and validated a new scale to measure telepressure. Study 1 tested an initial pool of items and found some support for a single-factor structure after problematic items were removed. As expected, public self-consciousness, techno-overload, and response expectations were moderately associated with telepressure in Study 1. Study 2 demonstrated that workplace telepressure was distinct from other personal (job involvement, affective commitment) and work environment (general and ICT work demands) factors and also predicted burnout (physical and cognitive), absenteeism, sleep quality, and e-mail responding beyond those factors. Implications for future research and workplace practices are discussed.

Social anxiety and the ironic effects of positive interviewer feedback.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Positive interviewer feedback should encourage positive experiences and outcomes for interviewees. Yet, positive feedback is inconsistent with socially anxious interviewees' negative self-views. Socially anxious interviewees might experience increased self-focus while attempting to reconcile the inconsistency between their self-perceptions and that feedback. This could interfere with successful interview performance. DESIGN: This study used a 3 (feedback: positive, negative, no) × 2 (social anxiety: high, low) between-subjects design. METHOD: Undergraduate students (N = 88) completed a measure of dispositional social anxiety. They then engaged in a simulated interview with a White confederate trained to adhere to a standardized script. Interviewees received positive, negative, or no interviewer feedback. Each interview was video recorded to code anxiety displays, impression management tactics, and interview success. RESULTS: Following positive feedback, socially anxious interviewees displayed more anxiety, less assertiveness, and received lower success ratings. Among anxious interviewees, increased self-focus provided an indirect path between positive feedback and lower success. CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with self-verification theory, anxious interviewees had poorer interview performance following positive feedback that contradicted their negative self-views. Thus, socially anxious interviewees might be at a disadvantage when interviewing, especially following positive feedback. Implications for interviewees and interviewers are discussed.

Shared impression formation in the cognitively interdependent dyad.

We examined the role of cognitive interdependence in determining how close friends form shared impressions of another person. Cognitive interdependence should provide a processing advantage, such that close friends are more efficient in forming shared impressions and are more successful at doing so. Under normal circumstances, the conversations of close friends should be marked by little necessity to make explicit requests for information, mutual recognition of who currently is controlling the flow of conversation, and willingness to express differences in opinion. Given these advantages, close friends also should be able to form complex shared impressions that go beyond mere one-sided stereotypic judgments and that instead resolve apparent discrepancies in the target's personality. However, if the cognitive interdependence system is disrupted by mutual distraction, these advantages should attenuate or even reverse. Dyads of varying degrees of closeness were mutually distracted or not while discussing their impressions of another female college student. Results supported predictions and are discussed with reference to how cognitive interdependence may help close dyads function within their mutual social networks.

Trajectories of depressive symptoms in foster youth transitioning into adulthood: the roles of emotion dysregulation and PTSD.

Foster youth often experience considerable adversity both in and out of foster care, including histories of abuse and/or neglect, and further stressors within the foster system. These adverse experiences often occur at key developmental periods that can compromise emotional functioning and lead to posttraumatic symptomatology, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and emotion dysregulation. In the face of difficult histories and ongoing mental health challenges, youth transitioning into adulthood may be particularly vulnerable to increases in depressive symptoms. We explored the trajectory of depressive symptoms in foster youth from age 17 to 19 using a piecewise linear growth model, examining the effects of PTSD and emotion dysregulation on youth's depressive symptoms over time. Results revealed depressive symptoms decreased from age 17 to 18 but increased from 18 to 19. PTSD and emotion dysregulation predicted greater baseline depressive symptoms and decreases in symptoms from age 17 to 18, whereas only PTSD predicted increases in depressive symptoms from 18 to 19. Females reported higher levels of depressive symptoms compared to males. Additionally, emotion dysregulation was a stronger predictor of depressive symptoms for females than males. Implications for service delivery for foster youth transitioning into adulthood are discussed.

Examining the effects of perceived social support on momentary mood and symptom reports in asthma and arthritis patients.

OBJECTIVE: Social support has been linked to beneficial effects on health directly (main effect) and as a buffer to stress. Most research, however, has examined these relationships using global and retrospective assessments of health and stress, which may be subject to recall biases. This study used ambulatory ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods to test the main and stress-buffering effects of social support on the daily health and well-being of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. DESIGN: Community volunteers with asthma (n = 97) or RA (n = 31) responded to EMA prompts five times daily for one week. MAIN OUTCOMES: Baseline perceived social support was obtained, and then, participants reported mood, stress and symptoms using EMA. Multilevel mixed-modelling examined whether social support predicted mood and symptoms directly or via stress-reducing effects. RESULTS: Supporting a main effect, more perceived social support predicted decreased negative mood and stress severity. Supporting a stress-buffering effect, more perceived social support resulted in fewer reported symptoms when stress was present. CONCLUSION: Results suggest perceived social support directly relates to better ambulatory status and dynamically buffers individuals against the negative effects of stressors, and highlight the importance of studying social support across different temporal and contextual levels.

Anticipating evaluative social interactions involving persons with disabilities.

PURPOSE: Similar to other types of social interactions, the expected outcomes of interactions between persons with and without disabilities likely are influenced by global self-esteem such that individuals with high self-esteem should fare better than those with low self-esteem. The present set of laboratory studies examined whether simple and complex evaluative situations affect the role of self-esteem when anticipating interactions with individuals who have a physical disability. DESIGN: In Study 1, participants completed a measure of global self-esteem and then were randomly assigned to expect either a brief (5 minutes) or extended (45 minutes) interaction with a confederate in a wheelchair. Participants then completed measures of state affect and meta-evaluations (expected evaluations from the partner). Study 2 replicated the design of Study 1 and additionally randomly assigned participants to be outcome-dependent on the partner or not. RESULTS: Study 1 found that individuals reported affective experiences and expected meta-evaluations that were consistent with global self-esteem when expecting a brief interaction but not an extended interaction with the partner. Study 2 replicated and extended the results from Study 1, demonstrating that self-esteem resumed a priority when participants expected an extended interaction that also placed the participant in an outcome-dependent role. IMPLICATIONS: Taken together, the results seem to support a dilution of the role of self-esteem in simple evaluative situations but not in situations that are nonevaluative or situations with combined evaluative factors.