Personal Growth Interpretation of Goal Attainment as a New Construct Relevant to Well-being

AbstractPersonal growth interpretation (PGI) of attained goals is one kind of positive cognition that contributes to well-being. We identify five facets of PGI: Concordance Competence, Specific Competence, Efficacy Competence, Cumulative Competence, and Facilitated Competence. We report on the development of a tool, the Personal Growth Interpretation Scale (PGI Scale), which measures these five facets. Analyses provided initial descriptive statistics and indicated adequate construct validity. It is recommended that the PGI Scale is utilized in future research investigating the relationship between PGI, need satisfaction and well-being

Critical reading and writing (CRW) in first year psychology: Mass screening and targeted assistance

Many beginning students struggle with their university study because their high-school experience did not yield the basic or academic literacy skills essential to tertiary learning activities. A diagnostic program was designed to identify and assist students in developing psychology-specific academic literacy skills in the large Introductory Psychology 1A course at The University of New South Wales. In an early lecture period, all students were required to make a written response to a text passage (CRW test). This test required them to take and argue a position. Trained assessors marked their responses according to a number of criteria that ranged from spelling and grammar to the logic of their argument (the position taken was irrelevant). The bottom-scoring 50 students were then contacted and offered special tutorials to assist them with writing their laboratory report. Following these, a second CRW test was offered to the assisted group of students as well as to a control group of students (a second chance to make up percentage points). Students who participated in the tutorials showed improvement on some, but not all, assessment criteria. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of discipline- vs. non-discipline-specific assessment criteria, and in terms of a cost-benefit analysis of the exercise

Portfolio tools: learning and teaching strategies to facilitate development of graduate attributes

Background and Aims: Based on previous developments at UNSW of an electronic Graduate Attributes Portfolio (Brawley et al. 2003), and the increasing body of evidence on the educational use of portfolios, this project embedded the Portfolio into a Bachelor of Psychology course, with a particular emphasis on professional development and employability skills of students. The primary aim of this project was to encourage and support students in taking responsibility for identifying their own goals, identifying the qualities required to achieve those goals, and reflecting upon and documenting their own career-relevant achievements. Method: The Portfolio required students to record anecdotal evidence of their academic, extracurricular, and employment-related activities relevant to each of the UNSW graduate attributes. Specific strategies were implemented to (a) assist students to become aware of their current level of achievement in each of the graduate attributes and how these attributes relate to the employability skills, (b) provide structured development of specific attributes within the course, and (c) encourage further development of these attributes prior to graduation and associated job interviews. Results and Conclusions: To date, the specific outcomes of this project have been (a) the development of learning and teaching strategies that enable students to see the relevance of documenting and further planning the development of graduate attributes and career-related achievements, (b) the development of a portfolio support website that can assist any current and future students in these activities, and (c) the development of teaching resources that can be implemented in assisting students develop these skills

Automatic evaluation of body-related words among young women: an experimental study

Background: Sociocultural models of body image disturbance have linked the development of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders to exposure to media messages depicting the unrealistically slender female physique. Previous research has demonstrated that exposure to images depicting the thin female ideal has negative effects on some females’ levels of body dissatisfaction. Much of this research, however, has utilised relatively long stimulus exposure times; thereby focusing on effortful and conscious processing of body-related stimuli. Relatively little is known about the nature of females’ affective responses to the textual components of body-related stimuli, especially when these stimuli are only briefly encountered. The primary aim of the current research was to determine whether young women automatically evaluate body-related words and whether these responses are associated with body image concerns, including self-reported levels of appearance schematicity, thin internalisation, body dissatisfaction, and dietary restraint. Methods: An affective priming task was used to investigate whether females automatically evaluate body-related words, and whether this is associated with self-reported body image concerns. In a within-participants experimental design, the valence congruence of the prime and target pairs was manipulated. Participants selected body words as primes in Experiment 1 (N = 27), while normatively selected body words were primes in Experiment 2 (N = 50). Each prime was presented briefly, followed by a target word which participants judged as “good” or “bad”. The dependent variable was response latency to the target. Results: Automatic evaluation was evident: responding to congruent pairs was faster than responding to incongruent pairs. Body image concerns were unrelated to automaticity. Conclusions: The findings suggest that brief encounters with body words are likely to prompt automatic evaluation in all young women, and that this process proceeds unintentionally and efficiently, without conscious guidance. The potential implications for higher order, conscious information processing is discussed

Witelson's dichhaptic task as a measure of hemispheric asymmetry in deaf and hearing populations

Specialization of the right hemisphere for spatial processing was examined in adults and in hearing and deaf children using Witelson's dichhaptic task. Right- and left-hand performance did not differ for any of the groups although a significant age difference in overall performance of hearing subjects was found. The former result calls into question the validity of Witelson's task

Preexposure to contextual stimuli: Effects on startle responding in humans

Previous research with rats has shown that preexposure to the contextual stimuli of the experimental situation results in facilitated habituation of the startle reflex. These findings support the predictions of nonrepresentational theories of habituation (e.g., Groves & Thompson, 1970), and oppose the predictions of representational theories (e.g., Wagner, 1976). The current experiment was designed to test whether the same results could be obtained with humans. Twentyfour hours prior to the habituation test, one group of subjects (E-P) was exposed to the contextual stimuli of the experimental situation, a second group (C-E) was exposed to different contextual stimuli, and a third group (C-N) received no pretreatment. The habituation test consisted of two sessions of 15 startle-eliciting noise bursts. The P-E group responded less on the first trial of Session 2. This finding is suggestive of greater long-term response decrements in this group, and thus supports the nonrepresentational theories of habituation

Students' experience of the psychology fourth year in Australia.

In Australia, the fourth year program, usually an Honours year, in psychology incorporates training in scientific methodology in the form of a thesis and training in applied topics relevant to professional psychology in the form of coursework. Little research has been conducted investigating the fourth year experience in psychology, or indeed in any discipline in Australia. Current pressures on the fourth year model indicated a necessity to investigate the view of students on their fourth year experience. Two surveys were conducted over a two year period, in which the views of fourth year students were collected regarding their views of the fourth year experience. Fourth year students generally enjoyed the experience of fourth year. Overall fourth year students found the fourth year experience valuable but were more satisfied with their research experience than with their development of skills required in professional psychology or with their understanding of the application of psychology suggesting a desire for more skills training and application of psychological principles to be incorporated into fourth year psychology programs