Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Although emerging evidence suggests that developmental dyslexia shows deficits in visual-spatial attention, previous studies have also confirmed that visual-spatial attention may be particularly important for reading among Chinese children with dyslexia. However, the visual-spatial attention deficit of dyslexic Chinese children has not been fully investigated. Therefore, the present study employed the cue-target paradigm and examined whether the earlier processing of visual-spatial attention deficit would be found in Chinese children with dyslexia. More importantly, we combined read level match design to determine the process of visual-spatial attention in Chinese children with dyslexia related to developmental delay or cognitive deficits. Results showed that developmental dyslexia (DD) group exhibited no cueing effect in the cue-target tasks when the stimulus onset synchronies (SOAs) were set to 100 ms, as compared with the children’s chronological age (CA). With the cueing effect as the index, we also observed that the CA group had a robust facilitation effect in early processing of visual-spatial attention. Importantly, the DD group presented an impaired facilitation effect as the same reading level (RL) group controls when SOAs were 100 ms and 350 ms. These findings suggested that impaired facilitation effect in Chinese dyslexic children is due to a developmental delay.

The aim of this article is to explore how the dimensions of psychological distance and motivation impact the left-digit effect in consumer price evaluation. The left-digit effect occurs when the leftmost digit of the prices being compared changes (e.g., $499 vs. $500); the difference between the prices is perceived as larger than if the leftmost digit does not change (e.g., $569 vs. $570). Furthermore, a nine-ending price may be perceived as larger than a price that is actually one dollar higher, when the motivation to process the price information is high and the psychological distance (temporal distance) is near. Likewise, when the motivation to process information is low, regardless of whether the temporal distance is near or far, consumers are also more likely to process information heuristically, strengthening the left-digit effect. However, when the motivation to deal with information is high and the temporal distance is distant, consumers are more likely to process information systematically which tends to diminish the perceived magnitude of the difference due to the left-digit effect.

Plautus’ Roman comedy Menaechmi (The Two Menaechmuses) of c. 200 BC anticipates in fictional form the famous Rosenhan experiment of 1973, a landmark critique of psychiatric diagnosis. An analysis of the scenes of feigned madness and psychiatric examination suggests that the play (and the earlier Greek play from which it was adapted) offers two related ethical reflections, one on the validity of psychiatric diagnoses, the other on the validity of the entire medical model of insanity—that is, of the popular notion and political truth that mental illness is a (bodily) disease “like any other.” This essay is offered as a contribution to the interpretation of the play as well as to the history of psychiatry.

Given the crucial importance of engagement in learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and the increasing interest in its psychological dimensions, this study was an attempt to examine the effect of teacher support on engagement by considering the serial mediating roles of learning experience and motivated learning behaviour. Participants were 384 EFL learners chosen through multi-stage cluster sampling. The SEM results demonstrated that teacher support directly and positively predicted engagement. Additionally, teacher support affected engagement through the serial mediating roles of learning experience and motivated learning behaviour. Teachers can provide learners with substantial support and encouragement to enhance their learning experience, which could in turn considerably affect their motivated learning behaviour. Consequently, EFL learners who are motivated and willing to exert effort in learning and classroom activities would be more engaged in their learning process. Finally, important implications and suggestions for future research are presented.

This study investigated the link between three leadership styles (transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire) and followers’ job crafting, representing the set of changes regarding job demands and job resources that employees proactively make. Based on the Conservation of Resources Theory, we expected that leaders who create both personal and job resources for their subordinates will motivate them to invest these existing resources in order to gain new ones, leading to increases in followers’ job crafting behaviours. A quantitative analysis was conducted among a sample of 479 subordinates. Participants reported the way they perceive their leaders’ behaviours and rated their own job autonomy, self-efficacy, work engagement, and job crafting. Both transformational and transactional leadership were positively associated with followers’ increasing resources and demands. Contrary to our expectations, followers’ work engagement was a suppressor variable in the positive relations between both transformational and transactional leadership and decreasing hindering demands. Laissez-faire leadership was negatively associated with increasing resources and positively with decreasing hindering demands. Job autonomy, self-efficacy, and work engagement have mediated most of the studied relationships. Another unexpected finding was that all three mediators were suppressing the positive relation between laissez-faire leadership and increasing challenging job demands. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

In Chinese language and culture, there are many metaphorical habits that use upright or skew shapes to express morality. Three experiments were conducted to determine whether there is a psychological metaphor in the cognition of Chinese people. To explore the psychological metaphorical associations between moral concepts and upright/skew shapes, the Stroop-like paradigm was used in Experiment 1, which showed that participants responded faster to positive moral words. There are some disputes regarding whether the metaphorical association is unidirectional or bidirectional in mapping. In Experiment 2, the priming paradigm was adopted, and the results showed that the priming of upright/skew shapes affected the judgment of moral words, and the priming of moral words also affected the judgment of upright/skew shapes, indicating bidirectional mapping between moral concepts and upright/skew shapes. We also wanted to determine whether this metaphorical association had any effect on face recognition. In Experiment 3, participants were asked to judge neutral faces presented with quadrilateral or oblique quadrilateral faces. We found that participants tended to think that upright faces were more moral, while skew faces were more immoral. Our study found a psychological metaphorical association between moral concepts and upright/skew shapes, bidirectional mapping, and its effect on face cognition.

The comprehensive, twofold goal of this paper is to investigate how social identities in a multilayered social platform of a public hospital are shaped, and to explain the impact of these identities on staff interrelations, patients, and the organization’s overall ability to meet challenges. We conducted a qualitative study, collecting data from 30 employees working in a medium-sized public hospital in Israel using a semi-structured interview guide. Using a thematic analysis approach and drawing on social identity theory, we found that departmental identity is the most prominent social identity associated with the hospital staff. This identity was strengthened by strong in-group management, but little influenced by senior out-group management; its importance also caused organizational goals to be overlooked. We discuss these findings and offer recommendations for addressing the adverse impacts of departmental identity on staff, patients, and the organization’s ability to meet challenges. This study has clarified sources and impacts of SI in a hospital context. It has also demonstrated the need for a more unified hospital identity to improve the hospital’s daily work and achieve the organization’s goals in a dynamic, competitive environment. Most literature on social identity has addressed personal- and group-level antecedents of social identity, neglecting the potential participation of in-group and out-group management in shaping these identities, as well as management’s contribution to the achievement or nonachievement of organizational goals. By adopting a qualitative approach, the current study provides a deeper understanding of how senior management and direct in-group management can shape social identities—a perspective heretofore missing from the research. Recognizing these identity-shaping forces is essential for understanding the challenges that hospitals face, and the various (at times, life-or-death) consequences of these forces.

Researchers are increasingly interested in how personal characteristics are related to academic performance and whether study engagement has an impact on different experiences in student life. Drawing on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this study examines the relationship between psychological capital (PsyCap) and engagement, and, further, the relationship between engagement and performance, boredom, and burnout among university students. Using data gathered from 420 university students (242 responses from India and 178 from Romania), partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) methods showed that study engagement partially mediates the relation between PsyCap and academic performance, and also between PsyCap and burnout or boredom. The present study advances our knowledge about PsyCap and engagement as possible antecedents of university students’ performance, burnout, and boredom, across both samples. Results suggest that developing interventions that strengthen students’ resources by increasing their hope, resilience, self-efficacy, and optimism could foster their study engagement and academic performance and protect them from burnout and boredom.