Perceived institutional support and small venture performance: The mediating role of entrepreneurial persistence

YesThis article examines the entrepreneurial persistence of opportunity-motivated entrepreneurs in Ghana. Specifically, it develops a theoretical model focusing on the relationships among perceived institutional support, entrepreneurial persistence and small venture performance, including how entrepreneurial networks condition the relationship between institutional support and entrepreneurial persistence. Using time-lagged data from 373 opportunity-motivated entrepreneurs leading small ventures in Ghana, we find broad support for our hypotheses. The insights from our study provide an integrative understanding of the relationships among perceived institutional support, entrepreneurial persistence and venture performance in an adverse environment. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

The Study of Rule-Governed Behavior and Derived Stimulus Relations: Bridging the Gap

The concept of rule-governed behavior or instructional control has been widely recognized for many decades within the behavior-analytic literature. It has also been argued that the human capacity to formulate and follow increasingly complex rules may undermine sensitivity to direct contingencies of reinforcement, and that excessive reliance upon rules may be an important variable in human psychological suffering. Although the concept of rules would appear to have been relatively useful within behavior analysis, it seems wise from time to time to reflect upon the utility of even well-established concepts within a scientific discipline. Doing so may be particularly important if it begins to emerge that the existing concept does not readily orient researchers toward potentially important variables associated with that very concept. The primary purpose of this article is to engage in this reflection. In particular, we will focus on the link that has been made between rule-governed behavior and derived relational responding, and consider the extent to which it might be useful to supplement talk of rules or instructions with terms that refer to the dynamics of derived relational responding

Uptake of home-based voluntary HIV testing in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Improving access to HIV testing is a key priority in scaling up HIV treatment and prevention services. Home-based voluntary counselling and testing (HBT) as an approach to delivering wide-scale HIV testing is explored here

Attribution-based motivation treatment efficacy in an online learning environment for students who differ in cognitive elaboration

Attribution-based motivation treatments can boost performance in competitive achievement settings (Perry and Hamm 2017), yet their efficacy relative to mediating processes and affect-based treatments remains largely unexamined. In a two-semester, pre-post, randomized treatment study (n = 806), attributional retraining (AR) and stress-reduction (SR) treatments were administered in an online learning environment to first-year college students who differed in cognitive elaboration (low, high). Low elaborators who received AR outperformed their SR peers by nearly a letter grade on a class test assessed 5 months post-treatment. Path analysis revealed this AR-performance linkage was mediated by causal attributions, perceived control, and positive and negative achievement emotions in a hypothesized causal sequence. Results advance the literature by showing AR (vs. SR) improved performance indirectly via cognitive and affective process variables specified by Weiner’s (1985a, 2012) attribution theory of motivation and emotion

Low Fidelity Imitation of Atypical Biological Kinematics in Autism Spectrum Disorders Is Modulated by Self-Generated Selective Attention.

We examined whether adults with autism had difficulty imitating atypical biological kinematics. To reduce the impact that higher-order processes have on imitation we used a non-human agent model to control social attention, and removed end-state target goals in half of the trials to minimise goal-directed attention. Findings showed that only neurotypical adults imitated atypical biological kinematics. Adults with autism did, however, become significantly more accurate at imitating movement time. This confirmed they engaged in the task, and that sensorimotor adaptation was self-regulated. The attentional bias to movement time suggests the attenuation in imitating kinematics might be a compensatory strategy due to deficits in lower-level visuomotor processes associated with self-other mapping, or selective attention modulated the processes that represent biological kinematics

Empowerment and Parent Gain as Mediators and Moderators of Distress in Mothers of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Mothers of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) experience considerable amounts of distress and experiences of crisis. The Family Adjustment and Adaptation Response model provides a theory for understanding the experience of distress and family crisis in families, and the purpose of the present study was to examine experiences of distress in mothers of individuals with ASD using this framework. We specifically investigated how parent empowerment and positive gain are related to their experiences of distress, whether as mediators or as moderators of child aggression. Participants included 156 mothers of children with ASD ranging in age from 4 – 21 years. Mothers completed an online survey of demographics, problem behaviors, family empowerment, positive gain, and distress. We conducted path analyses of multiple mediation and moderation. Results indicated that greater child problem behavior was related to less parent empowerment, which was related to greater maternal distress, supporting empowerment as a partial mediator. At the same time, greater child aggression was not related to maternal distress in mothers who report high rates of positive gain, suggesting that parent gain functions as a moderator. The implications for how and when clinicians intervene with families of children with ASD are discussed

The merger that led to the formation of the Milky Way's inner stellar halo and thick disk

The assembly process of our Galaxy can be retrieved using the motions and chemistry of individual stars. Chemo-dynamical studies of the nearby halo have long hinted at the presence of multiple components such as streams, clumps, duality and correlations between the stars' chemical abundances and orbital parameters. More recently, the analysis of two large stellar surveys have revealed the presence of a well-populated chemical elemental abundance sequence, of two distinct sequences in the colour-magnitude diagram, and of a prominent slightly retrograde kinematic structure all in the nearby halo, which may trace an important accretion event experienced by the Galaxy. Here report an analysis of the kinematics, chemistry, age and spatial distribution of stars in a relatively large volume around the Sun that are mainly linked to two major Galactic components, the thick disk and the stellar halo. We demonstrate that the inner halo is dominated by debris from an object which at infall was slightly more massive than the Small Magellanic Cloud, and which we refer to as Gaia-Enceladus. The stars originating in Gaia-Enceladus cover nearly the full sky, their motions reveal the presence of streams and slightly retrograde and elongated trajectories. Hundreds of RR Lyrae stars and thirteen globular clusters following a consistent age-metallicity relation can be associated to Gaia-Enceladus on the basis of their orbits. With an estimated 4:1 mass-ratio, the merger with Gaia-Enceladus must have led to the dynamical heating of the precursor of the Galactic thick disk and therefore contributed to the formation of this component approximately 10 Gyr ago. These findings are in line with simulations of galaxy formation, which predict that the inner stellar halo should be dominated by debris from just a few massive progenitors.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures. Published in Nature in the issue of Nov. 1st, 2018. This is the authors' version before final edit

Associations between school-level disadvantage, bullying involvement and children’s mental health

This is the final version. Available from MDPI via the DOI in this record. Data Availability Statement: The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to sensitive nature of the data.Bullying is a modifiable risk factor for poor mental health across childhood and adolescence. It is also socially patterned, with increased prevalence rates in more disadvantaged settings. The current study aimed to better understand whether school-level disadvantage is associated with different types of bullying roles, and whether it is a moderator in the association between bullying and children’s mental health. Cross-sectional data were used from 4727 children aged 6–11 years, from 57 primary schools across England and Wales. The child data included previous bullying involvement and bullying role characteristics (bully, victim, bully–victim, reinforcer, defender, outsider), and the teacher-reported data included each child’s mental health (emotional symptoms and externalizing) problems. School-level disadvantage was calculated from the proportion of children in the school eligible to receive free school meals (an indicator of disadvantage). Children in more disadvantaged schools were more likely to report being bully perpetrators, bully–victims, and engage less in defending behaviors during a bullying incident. Children from more disadvantaged schools who reported bullying others showed fewer emotional symptoms than those from less disadvantaged schools. There was no other evidence of moderation by school-level disadvantage between bullying roles and emotional and externalizing problems. The findings highlight the potential for school-based interventions targeting children’s emotional and social development, targeting bullying, and promoting defending behaviors, particularly in more disadvantaged settings.National Institute for Health Researc

Vitamin D in the general population of young adults with autism in the Faroe Islands

Vitamin D deficiency has been proposed as a possible risk factor for developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD). 25-Hydroxyvitamin D3 (25(OH)D3) levels were examined in a cross-sectional population-based study in the Faroe Islands. The case group consisting of a total population cohort of 40 individuals with ASD (aged 15–24 years) had significantly lower 25(OH)D3 than their 62 typically-developing siblings and their 77 parents, and also significantly lower than 40 healthy age and gender matched comparisons. There was a trend for males having lower 25(OH)D3 than females. Effects of age, month/season of birth, IQ, various subcategories of ASD and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule score were also investigated, however, no association was found. The very low 25(OH)D3 in the ASD group suggests some underlying pathogenic mechanism