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To measure what determines people's attitudes, definitions, or decisions, surveys increasingly ask respondents to judge vignettes. A vignette typically describes a hypothetical situation or object as having various attributes (dimensions). In factorial surveys, the values (levels) of dimensions are experimentally varied, so that their impact on respondents' judgments can be estimated. Drawing on the literature in cognitive psychology and survey methodology, we examine two research questions: Does the order in which dimensions are presented impact the vignette evaluations and change substantive conclusions? Under which conditions are order effects mostly likely to occur? Using data from a web survey of 300 students, we analyze several possible moderators: features of the vignette design, characteristics of respondents, and interactions between these features. Results show that strong order effects can occur, but only when the vignettes are of a minimum complexity or respondents show a low attitude certainty.

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact factor of cognitive psychology journals indexed in the Science and Social Sciences edition of "Journal Citation Reports" ("JCR") database over a period of 10 consecutive years. Cognitive psychology journals were indexed in 11 different subject categories of the database. Their mean impact factor ranged from 1.580 to 2.526. In relation to the subject categories of the Social Sciences edition, cognitive psychology journals were placed between the fourth and the sixth position for the years 2007-2009. Lower positions were observed in relation to the categories in the Science edition. Calculation of the intraclass correlation coefficient showed that cognitive psychology journals were relatively stable in the examined period. (Contains 2 tables.)

This article is about missed opportunities for promoting learning and growth in our increasingly diverse classrooms and the fundamental affective and social questions we need to address if we are to teach about diversity effectively. It is about the need to develop trust within diverse groups, so that students can learn from each others' differences, confront their own assumptions and biases and prepare for engaged citizenship. To address the affective dimensions of this pedagogical work, this article synthesizes educational research on the impact of diversity, social science research on the impact of trust, and psychoanalytic literature on how we respond to and negotiate difference.

Recent research shows that research programmes (quantitative, qualitative and mixed) in education are not displaced (as suggested by Kuhn) but rather lead to integration. The objective of this study is to present a rationale for mixed methods (integrative) research programs based on contemporary philosophy of science (Lakatos, Giere, Cartwright, Holton, Laudan). This historical reconstruction of episodes from physical science (spanning a period of almost 300 years, 17th to 20th century) does not agree with the positivist image of science. Quantitative data (empirical evidence) by itself, does not facilitate progress (despite widespread belief to the contrary), neither in the physical sciences nor in the social sciences (education). A historical reconstruction shows that both Piaget and Pascual-Leone's research programs in cognitive psychology, follow the Galilean idealisation quite closely, similar to the research programs of Newton, Mendeleev, Einstein, Thomson, Rutherford, Millikan and Perl in the physical sciences. This relationship does not imply that researchers in education have to emulate research in the physical sciences. A major argument in favor of mixed methods (integrative) research programs is that it provides a rationale for hypotheses, theories, guiding assumptions and presuppositions to compete and provide alternatives. Similar to the physical sciences, this proliferation of hypotheses leads to controversies and rivalries, and thus facilitates the decision making process of the scientific community. It is concluded that mixed methods research programs (not paradigms) in education can facilitate the construction of robust strategies, provided we let the problem situation (as studied by practicing researchers) decide the methodology.

Critics have charged that American advertisers have often portrayed the elderly with negative stereotypes. These negative portrayals, they suggest, not only offend elderly consumers but also contribute to ageism. This study examined whether American advertisers have indeed used a great deal of negative stereotyping of the elderly, as the critics have suggested. Employing a concept of stereotypes found in cognitive psychology, the authors examined trends in the portrayal of the elderly in television commercials produced in the United States from the 1950s through the 1990s. Results of the study do not support the contentions of the critics. Very little negative stereotyping was discovered. Analysis indicated trends in the appearance of several positive stereotypes, and differences in the stereotyping of gender groups and age segments within the elderly group. Results are interpreted from both marketing and social science perspectives.

Presents the initial ideas produced by Think Groups of the American Society for Information Science (ASIS), who are developing a vision for the year 2000 in the disciplines that comprise information science. In the areas discussed, suggestions are made for the roles of ASIS and special interest groups, research directions, and issues needing consideration. (CLB)

AbstractOver the last decade, rapid advances in information systems (ISs) have greatly reshaped and changed the nature of doing business and how its performance is measured, with Electronic Auditing (E-auditing) emerging as a pivotal element in improving organizational efficiency. This study addresses the challenges faced in manually implementing audits and underscores the necessity for transitioning to electronic audit systems. The manual approach has limitations regarding the accuracy of operations, so to enhance performance, E-auditing is now imperative. The purpose of the study is to evaluate E-auditing in the public sector of Saudi Arabia, utilizing DeLone and McLean’s information system model (DM ISM). The focus is on vital factors including information quality, system quality, service quality, system usage and user satisfaction and their influence on the performance of internal audit departments, particularly during the challenges posed by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. This research employs a quantitative approach, utilizing a self-administered survey questionnaire to collect data from E-auditing users in the Saudi public sector. The study applies partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to validate the gathered data. Findings reveal that information quality and system quality significantly influence E-auditing usage. While service quality exhibits no marked effect on usage, the study establishes a strong relationship between E-auditing usage and user satisfaction. Effective E-auditing usage and satisfied users contribute convincingly to the improved performance of internal audit departments. The paper concludes with implications, limitations, and suggestions for future studies.

Music plays a significant role in various celebratory occasions and is integral to the human experience. This article focuses on six components of music perception: pitch, melody and contour, harmony, timbre, structure, and temporal events. By examining studies on infant music perception, it becomes evident that these components are innately present rather than acquired through learning. The findings of this research contribute to a better understanding of these innate qualities and provide insights into human musicality and language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L'objectif du présent article est d'aboutir à une conceptualisation du terme d'agent qui apparaît à plusieurs reprises dans l'enseignement de Lacan. L'enjeu est de produire une théorisation cohérente dudit terme afin de pouvoir le situer dans la praxis psychanalytique et d'étudier l'influence du culturalisme nord-américain sur cette praxis. Notre examen consiste à retracer l'évolution de cette notion d'agent à travers l'enseignement de Lacan. Ce trajet commence officiellement en 1956 mais s'estompe à partir de 1959 afin de faire son retour en 1969 de manière radicalement différente. Il s'agit alors de préciser ce que Lacan entend par « agent » à chacune de ces périodes, et de montrer comment, à chaque fois, il s'appuie sur cette notion non pas pour la conceptualiser en tant que telle, mais pour la faire dialoguer avec les autres concepts psychanalytiques. En retraçant l'évolution du terme, nous arrivons à une conceptualisation de l'agent comme étant équivalent au statut du signifiant comme tel. Il est important donc de distinguer le statut de l'agent de celui du sujet et du moi qui, eux, ne font pas preuve d'une véritable activité. Le signifiant, en revanche, est celui qui permet à l'action d'avoir lieu. Cette équivalence est ainsi implicite mais constante tout au long de l'enseignement lacanien, d'abord en tant que fonction dans l'équation œdipienne et ensuite en tant que place dans la théorie des discours. Nous faisons l'hypothèse que les notions d'agent et d'agentivité sont malmenées dans les écrits psychanalytiques actuels. Cela est dû à une influence culturaliste d'un côté, mais surtout à une interdisciplinarité hâtive, c'est-à-dire qui cherche à nouer la psychanalyse avec d'autres disciplines sans prendre le temps de redéfinir les concepts. L'agentivité est l'exemple parfait : elle est définie du côté des sciences cognitives et sociales puis reprise comme telle par certains psychanalystes sans qu'ils la redéfinissent, ce qui mène à une confusion théorique entre le sujet et l'agent. Une véritable conceptualisation de l'agent à l'intérieur du champ psychanalytique permet d'éviter les confusions théoriques dues à une interdisciplinarité qui ne prend pas le temps de redéfinir les concepts. Il est alors important de faire dialoguer la psychanalyse avec les autres disciplines sans pour autant faire perdre à celle-ci sa particularité. The aim of this paper is to conceptualize the term "agent" which appears multiple times throughout Lacan's teaching. The challenge is to produce a coherent theorization of the term in order to properly situate it in the psychoanalytic praxis and to study the influence of North American culturalism on this praxis. We will examine the evolution of the notion of agent throughout Lacan's teaching. This trajectory begins officially in 1956, then disappears in 1959, only to re-emerge in 1969 in a radically different fashion. It is then a question of specifying what Lacan means by "agent" at each of these periods, and to show how each time he relies on this notion not to conceptualize it as such, but rather to build a dialogue with other psychoanalytic concepts. By following the evolution of the term, we arrive at a conceptualization of the agent as being equivalent to the status of the signifier as such. It is therefore important to distinguish the status of the agent from that of the subject and of the ego, which both seem to not manifest any real activity. The signifier, on the other hand, is that which allows the action to take place. This equivalence is thus implicit yet constant throughout the Lacanian teaching, first as a function in the Oedipal equation and then as an occupation in the theory of discourse. Our hypothesis is that the notions of agent and agency are misused in today's psychoanalytic writings. This is due to an American culturalist influence on one hand, but mostly to a hasty interdisciplinarity, which attempts to link psychoanalysis with other disciplines without taking the necessary time to redefine the concepts at hand. Agency is the perfect example: it is defined by cognitive and social sciences and then reused as such by some analysts without redefining it, which leads to a theoretic confusion between the subject and the agent. A thorough conceptualization of the agent within the field of psychoanalysis allows us to avoid theoretic confusions due to an interdisciplinarity that doesn't take the time to redefine concepts. It is therefore important to establish a dialogue between psychoanalysis and other disciplines without it losing its particularities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, esports (the competitive video game industry) have evolved significantly, revolutionizing not only the competitive scene but also the teams and their professional staff. Sports psychologists need to face with cognitive demands related to this activity primarily mental, to respond to the specific needs of the sector (e.g., high performance interventions). The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between cognitive performance in tests and the MOBA League of Legends (LOL) game scores. A group of 36 pure-genre LOL players was evaluated with behavioral tests of fluid intelligence, attentional control inhibition, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and decision making. Furthermore, their in-game performance (rank percentile, kills death assists, minions per minute, and vision score) was recorded during a complete season (approximately 1 year). Data was analyzed by means of correlation and multiple regression analysis. Results showed that cognitive flexibility was positively related to the "rank percentile" (p <.001; R =.442; 95% CI [2.97, 74.76]). Besides, a positive relationship was found between decision making and the in-game performance variable "minions per minute" (p =.009; R =.236; 95% CI [−8.46, 5.26]). These findings point that it is possible predict performance on specific variables, in esports with high cognitive impact throughout neuropsychological assessment. These results provide a starting point for research in the field of esports, sports psychology, and high-performance-oriented intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pretend play, one that involves the creation of an imaginary situation, has been a privileged object of study in developmental psychology framed in the linguistic turn. Its important role in the development of complex psychological functions, such as language, theory of mind or narrative capacity, has been pointed out. In recent years, there has been a change in focus in the human sciences that has been dubbed the corporal turn: a re-focus on the analysis and conceptualization of bodily aspects that are at the base of various cognitive capacities. Thanks to the use of analysis tools typical of the temporal arts -such as music and dance- to the field of cognitive psychology, a new form of play has been documented in early childhood: the forms of vitality play. It recovers the idea of forms of vitality from Stern (2010), which refers to affects that cannot be reflected in the lexicon of Darwinian emotions. The forms of vitality are a Gestalt, an emergent property where movement, time, force, space and directionality/intentionality are integrated; they are a fundamental property of multimodal exchanges in the adult-baby dyad as well as of the experience, as spectator or performer, of non-figurative temporal arts such as dance and music. The forms of vitality play arise as a reconceptualization of the notion of musical play and is considered a reissue of early social play with a symmetrical participation of the child in the composition of play. It is defined as any pleasant or self-remunerative activity, in which motifs of movements and/or sounds are elaborated according to the repetition-variation form, at the expense of any figurative content. The forms of vitality play have been observed in the third year of the child's life and it has been pointed out that it can manifest in a simple way or in combination with the pretend play. Likewise, it was suggested that when the pretend play is presented in combination with the forms of vitality play, the latter could be scaffolding the pretend play, although how this happens has not been clearly specified. The objective of the present study is to carry out a microanalysis of the sounds and movements of a pretend play scene combined with forms of vitality play of a girl of 1 year and 11 months of age and an adult, in order to know how such scaffolding is produced. The sound envelope was analyzed in order to identify and describe the timing of the sounds. Regarding movement, specialized software was used to graph its trajectory and for the analysis of the expression of movements, the basic categories "Shape and Effort" of the Laban-Bartenieff system of movement analysis were used (Laban, 1971). The results indicate the presence of interactive synchrony based on an underlying pulse that sustains mutuality between the players and provides a temporal structure on which the synchrony of the self can be anchored. Furthermore, it allows the sharing of continuity and contrast in the quality of sounds and movements and thus provides the dyad with a primary level of understanding with non-mediated meanings; promotes the exploration of the play space and the expansion of the potential of the fictional scene; it favors the maintenance of joint attention and mutual understanding through ontogenetically pre-fiction semiotic mechanisms, which favor the interactive fluidity of play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual selective attention acts as a filter on perceptual information, facilitating learning and inference about important events in an agent's environment. A role for visual attention in reward-based decisions has previously been demonstrated, but it remains unclear how visual attention is recruited during aversive learning, particularly when learning about multiple stimuli concurrently. This question is of particular importance in psychopathology, where enhanced attention to threat is a putative feature of pathological anxiety. Using an aversive reversal learning task that required subjects to learn, and exploit, predictions about multiple stimuli, we show that the allocation of visual attention is influenced significantly by aversive value but not by uncertainty. Moreover, this relationship is bidirectional in that attention biases value updates for attended stimuli, resulting in heightened value estimates. Our findings have implications for understanding biased attention in psychopathology and support a role for learning in the expression of threat-related attentional biases in anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the influence of linear perspective cues and texture gradients in the perceptual rescaling of stimuli over a highly-salient Ponzo illusion of a corridor. We performed two experiments using the Method of Constant Stimuli where participants judged the size of one of two rings. In experiment 1, one ring was presented in the upper visual-field at the end of the corridor and the other in the lower visual-field at the front of the corridor. The perceived size of the top and bottom rings changed as a function of the availability of linear perspective and textures. In experiment 2, only one ring was presented either at the top or the bottom of the image. The perceived size of the top but not the bottom ring changed as a function of the availability of linear perspective and textures. In both experiments, the effects of the cues were additive. Perceptual rescaling was also stronger for the top compared to the bottom ring. Additional eye-tracking revealed that participants tended to gaze more in the upper than the lower visual-field. These findings indicate that top-down mechanisms provide an important contribution to the Ponzo illusion. Nonetheless, additional maximum likelihood estimation analyses revealed that linear perspective fulfilled a greater contribution in experiment 2, which is suggestive of a bottom-up mechanism. We conclude that both top-down and bottom-up mechanisms play important roles. However, the former seems to fulfil a more prominent role when both stimuli are presented in the image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Honey bees, Apis mellifera, are a globally significant pollinator species and are currently in decline, with losses attributed to an array of interacting environmental stressors. Extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields (ELF EMFs) are a lesser-known abiotic environmental factor that are emitted from a variety of anthropogenic sources, including power lines, and have recently been shown to have a significant impact on the cognitive abilities and behaviour of honey bees. Here we have investigated the effects of field-realistic levels of ELF EMFs on aversive learning and aggression levels, which are critical factors for bees to maintain colony strength. Bees were exposed for 17 h to 100 μT or 1000 μT ELF EMFs, or a sham control. A sting extension response (SER) assay was conducted to determine the effects of ELF EMFs on aversive learning, while an intruder assay was conducted to determine the effects of ELF EMFs on aggression levels. Exposure to both 100 μT and 1000 μT ELF EMF reduced aversive learning performance by over 20%. Exposure to 100 μT ELF EMFs also increased aggression scores by 60%, in response to intruder bees from foreign hives. These results indicate that short-term exposure to ELF EMFs, at levels that could be encountered in bee hives placed under power lines, reduced aversive learning and increased aggression levels. These behavioural changes could have wider ecological implications in terms of the ability of bees to interact with, and respond appropriately to, threats and negative environmental stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Episodic memory impairments have been described as initial clinical findings in the Alzheimer's Disease (AD) spectrum, which could be associated with the presence of early hippocampal dysfunction. However, correlates between performances in neuropsychological tests and hippocampal volumes in AD were inconclusive in the literature. Divergent methods to assess episodic memory have been depicted as a major source of heterogeneity across studies. Methods: We examined correlates among performances in three different delayed-recall tasks (Rey-Auditory Verbal-Learning Test–RAVLT, Logical Memory and Visual Reproduction subtests from the Wechsler Memory Scale) and fully-automated volumetric measurements of the hippocampus (estimated using Neuroquant®) of 83 older subjects (47 controls, 27 Mild Cognitive Impairment individuals and 9 participants with Dementia due to AD). Results: Inter-method correlations of episodic memory performances were at most moderate. Scores in the RAVLT predicted up to 48% of variance in HOC (Hippocampal Occupancy Score) among subjects in the AD spectrum. Discussion: Tests using different stimuli (verbal or visual) and presenting distinct designs (word list, story or figure learning) may assess divergent aspects in episodic memory, with heterogeneous anatomical correlates. Conclusions: Different episodic memory tests might not assess the same construct and should not be used interchangeably. Scores in RAVLT may correlate with the presence of neurodegeneration in AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The aim of the present work is to analyze the modulation of the brain activity within the areas involved in lipreading when an additional visual stimulus is included. Methods: The experiment consisted of two fMRI runs (lipreading_only and lipreading+picture) where two conditions were considered in each one (oral speech sentences condition [OSS] and oral speech syllables condition [OSSY]). Results: During lipreading-only, higher activity in the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) was identified for OSS than OSSY; during lipreading+picture, apart from the left MTG, higher activity was also present in the supplementary motor area (SMA), the left precentral gyrus (PreCG) and the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). The comparison between these two runs revealed higher activity for lipreading-only in the SMA and the left IFG. Conclusion: The presence of a visual reference during a lipreading task leads to a decrease in activity in frontal areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breaks filled with different break activities often interrupt cognitive performance in everyday life. Previous studies have reported that both enhancing and deteriorating effects on challenging ongoing tasks such as working memory updating, depend on the type of break activity. However, neural mechanisms of these break-related alterations in working memory performance have not been studied, to date. Therefore, we conducted a brain imaging study to identify the neurobiological correlates of effects on the n-back working memory task related to different break activities. Before performing the n-back task in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, young adults were exposed to break activities in the MRI scanner involving (i) eyes-open resting, (ii) listening to music, and (iii) playing the video game "Angry Birds". Heart rate was measured by a pulse oximeter during the experiment. We found that increased heart rate during gaming as well as decreased relaxation levels after a video gaming break was related to poorer n-back task performance, as compared to listening to music. On the neural level, video gaming reduced supplementary motor area activation during working memory performance. These results may indicate that video gaming during a break may affect working memory performance by interfering with arousal state and frontal cognitive control functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Self-Determination Theory has been applied to explain behaviour in numerous contexts and cultures. In the exercise context, causality orientations (autonomy, control, impersonal) are important to describe individual differences in initiation and maintenance of health behaviour. The assessment of exercise causality orientations can be a key element to improve predictions of motivated health and exercise behaviour. Nevertheless, a scale to measure exercise causality orientations has not been established in German yet. Thus, it was the aim of the present work to translate the Exercise Causality Orientations Scale to German and to test it throughout three studies. The German G-ECOS questionnaire was cross-validated via confirmatory factor analyses in two separate samples. Both Study 1 (n = 306, 72.60% female, age M = 26.00, SD = 5.66; CFI = .96) and Study 2 (n = 320, 70.94% female, age M = 29.00, SD = 3.54; CFI = .95) indicated good model fits. In a further Study 3 (n = 548, 62.50% female, age M = 30.17, SD = 11.91), the relations between exercise causality orientations and other SDT related constructs were examined. The correlations indicated positive associations between autonomy causality orientation and intrinsic regulation, intrinsic exercise participation goals, and exercise basic needs satisfaction. Overall, the assessment of exercise causality orientations can be useful in analysing and potentially predicting motivated exercise behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fundamental question regarding music processing is its degree of independence from speech processing, in terms of their underlying neuroanatomy and influence of cognitive traits and abilities. Although a straight answer to that question is still lacking, a large number of studies have described where in the brain and in which contexts (tasks, stimuli, populations) this independence is, or is not, observed. We examined the independence between music and speech processing using functional magnetic resonance imagining and a stimulation paradigm with different human vocal sounds produced by the same voice. The stimuli were grouped as Speech (spoken sentences), Hum (hummed melodies), and Song (sung sentences); the sentences used in Speech and Song categories were the same, as well as the melodies used in the two musical categories. Each category had a scrambled counterpart which allowed us to render speech and melody unintelligible, while preserving global amplitude and frequency characteristics. Finally, we included a group of musicians to evaluate the influence of musical expertise. Similar global patterns of cortical activity were related to all sound categories compared to baseline, but important differences were evident. Regions more sensitive to musical sounds were located bilaterally in the anterior and posterior superior temporal gyrus (planum polare and temporale), the right supplementary and premotor areas, and the inferior frontal gyrus. However, only temporal areas and supplementary motor cortex remained music-selective after subtracting brain activity related to the scrambled stimuli. Speech-selective regions mainly affected by intelligibility of the stimuli were observed on the left pars opecularis and the anterior portion of the medial temporal gyrus. We did not find differences between musicians and non-musicians Our results confirmed music-selective cortical regions in associative cortices, independent of previous musical training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Women's reproductive health decision-making is indispensable for improving their reproductive health and achieving Sustainable Development Goal three. This study explored the association between reproductive health decision-making capacity and unintended pregnancy among women in Ghana. Materials and methods: We used data from the 2014 version of the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey. The unit of analysis for this study was pregnant women at the time of the survey (679). Bivariate and multivariable analyses were conducted using Pearson chi-square tests and binary logistic regression respectively. Results: We found that women who had the capacity to make reproductive health decision [AOR = 0.61; CI = 0.51–0.89] were less likely to experience unintended pregnancies, compared to those who did not have the capacity. Age was found to have a statistically significant influence on unintended pregnancy, with women aged 25–29 years [AOR = 0.29; CI = 0.13–0.63], 30–34 years [AOR = 0.18; CI = 0.08–0.45], and 35–39 years [AOR = 0.26; CI = 0.10–0.68] being less likely to experience unintended pregnancy compared to those aged 15–19 years. Women with primary level of education were more likely to have unintended pregnancies, compared to those with no education [AOR = 2.07; CI = 1.12–3.84]. Conclusion: This study has filled the gap in the already existing literature on the association between reproductive health decision making capacity and unintended pregnancy in Ghana and has created a room for specific interventions geared towards reducing unintended pregnancies, especially among women who are not capable of making reproductive health decisions, women aged 15–19 years, those with primary education, Traditionalists and unmarried women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slope one is a popular recommendation algorithm due to its simplicity and high efficiency for sparse data. However, it often suffers from under-fitting since the global information of all relevant users/items are considered. In this paper, we propose a new scheme called enhanced slope one recommendation through local information embedding. First, we employ clustering algorithms to obtain the user clusters as well as item clusters to represent local information. Second, we predict ratings using the local information of users and items in the same cluster. The local information can detect strong localized associations shared within clusters. Third, we design different fusion approaches based on the local information embedding. In this way, both under-fitting and over-fitting problems are alleviated. Experiment results on the real datasets show that our approaches defeats slope one in terms of both mean absolute error and root mean square error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In patients with chronic disorders, control self-efficacy is the confidence with managing symptoms and coping with the demands of illness. Can do treatment (CDT) is an intensive, 3-day, social cognitive theory-based, multidisciplinary treatment that focuses on identification of stressors, goal setting, exploration of boundaries, and establishment of new boundaries. An uncontrolled study showed that patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) and low-disability had improved control self-efficacy six months after CDT. Hence, in a 6-month, single-centre, randomized (1:1), unmasked, controlled trial in RRMS patients with Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score ≤4.0, we compared CDT with no intervention and the option to receive CDT after completion of study participation. Follow-up assessments were at one, three and six months. Primary endpoint was control self-efficacy (Multiple Sclerosis Self-Efficacy Scale Control [MSSES-C] (minimum 90, maximum 900) at six months. Secondary endpoints were functional self-efficacy (MSSES-F), participation and autonomy (Impact on Participation and Autonomy questionnaire [IPA]), health-related quality of life (MS Quality of Life-54 Items questionnaire [MSQoL-54]), anxiety, depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale [HADS]) and coping skills (Utrecht Coping List [UCL]) at six months. Tertiary endpoint was care-related strain on support partners (Caregiver Strain Index) at six months. Of the 158 patients that were included, 79 were assigned to CDT and 79 to the control group. Two CDT patients discontinued treatment prematurely. Sixty-one (77%) control patients chose to receive CDT after study participation. Intention-to-treat ANCOVA analyses were performed with follow-up values as dependent, and condition, baseline values, disease duration and gender as independent variables. The mean (standard deviation [SD]) MSSES-C score in the CDT group vs. control group at baseline was 468 (162) vs. 477 (136), and at six months 578 (166) vs. 540 (135) (p = 0.100). Secondary and tertiary endpoints did not differ between groups, except for the UCL palliative reaction score being slightly higher in the CDT group (p = 0.039). On post hoc analyses the MSSES-C score at one and three months was higher in the CDT vs. control group: 597 (114) vs. 491 (131) (p<0.0001) and 561 (160) vs. 514 (143) (p = 0.018), respectively; and at one month the MSSES-F, IPA Limitations, HADS Anxiety and Depression, and MSQoL-54 Mental and Physical scores were also in favour of the CDT group. We conclude that in low-disability RRMS patients, the intensive 3-day social cognitive theory-based CDT did not improve control self-efficacy at six months follow-up compared to waitlist controls. The absence of a between-group difference at six months relates to a gradual improvement in the control group. In all, this social cognitive theory-based approach for improving self-efficacy needs further investigation before being broadly applied in RRMS patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by self-determination theory, we investigated the potential impact of work climate on employee motivation, and pro-environmental behavior (PEB) inside and outside of the workplace. We found that in workplaces with stronger pro-environmental climates and at least moderate levels of autonomy support, employees reported higher levels of autonomous motivation to engage in PEB. In turn, autonomously motivated employees engaged in more PEBs, both inside and outside the workplace. Controlled motivation played a more limited role in predicting employee PEBs. Overall, our findings suggest work climates that support pro-environmental actions and employee autonomy may not only foster PEBs within the workplace but also lay the foundation for PEBs in other non-workplace settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]