Strategies to Reduce Procrastination in College Students

College students’ procrastination patterns and strategies to decrease procrastination were investigated. Each week, participants alternated between two schedules of delivery of practice quizzes while preparing for weekly quizzes. In Study 1, one practice quiz was available per day in the noncontingent condition. In the contingent condition, participants had to submit one practice quiz per day to access the subsequent practice quiz. In Study 2, two practice quizzes were available every other day in the noncontingent condition. In the contingent condition, participants had to submit two practice quizzes every other day to access subsequent practice quizzes. Six of 25 participants stopped procrastinating at the end of the contingent condition. Both conditions yielded high scores on weekly quizzes even when participants procrastinated. These results indicate that college students’ procrastination patterns can be changed, although it does not necessarily lead to increased quiz scores.

The Role of Multiple Articulatory Channels of Sign-Supported Speech Revealed by Visual Processing

Purpose The use of sign-supported speech (SSS) in the education of deaf students has been recently discussed in relation to its usefulness with deaf children using cochlear implants. To clarify the benefits of SSS for comprehension, 2 eye-tracking experiments aimed to detect the extent to which signs are actively processed in this mode of communication. Method Participants were 36 deaf adolescents, including cochlear implant users and native deaf signers. Experiment 1 attempted to shift observers' foveal attention to the linguistic source in SSS from which most information is extracted, lip movements or signs, by magnifying the face area, thus modifying lip movements perceptual accessibility (magnified condition), and by constraining the visual field to either the face or the sign through a moving window paradigm (gaze contingent condition). Experiment 2 aimed to explore the reliance on signs in SSS by occasionally producing a mismatch between sign and speech. Participants were required to concentrate upon the orally transmitted message. Results In Experiment 1, analyses revealed a greater number of fixations toward the signs and a reduction in accuracy in the gaze contingent condition across all participants. Fixations toward signs were also increased in the magnified condition. In Experiment 2, results indicated less accuracy in the mismatching condition across all participants. Participants looked more at the sign when it was inconsistent with speech. Conclusions All participants, even those with residual hearing, rely on signs when attending SSS, either peripherally or through overt attention, depending on the perceptual conditions. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8121191

The performance implications of collaborative activities in international buyer–seller exchanges: a contingency approach

PurposeThe study aims to investigate how the collaborative activities of joint action and knowledge-sharing between cross-border buyers and sellers influence the affect-state of buyers and eventually develop their strategic performance under the contingent condition of psychic distance.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data collected from 235 Taiwanese importers were analyzed using partial least squares to test the proposed conceptual framework.FindingsJoint action and knowledge-sharing are found to increase buyer’s engagement and affective commitment. Psychic distance is found to weaken the effect of collaborative activities on engagement and affective commitment. Both engagement and affective commitment are found to increase strategic performance, and the findings confirm their intervening role in the collaborative activities-strategic performance relationship.Originality/valueThe study offers insights into the under researched areas of collaborative activities and strategic performance in international exchanges and highlights the role of psychic distance in the success or failure of relational exchanges in international environments. The study introduces the concept of engagement and advances the theoretical understanding of the concept’s significance and application in international buyer–seller exchanges.

A Comparison of Signal- and Event-Contingent Ambulatory Assessment of Interpersonal Behavior and Affect in Social Situations

Ambulatory assessment (e.g., ecological momentary assessment) is now widely used in psychological research, yet key design decisions remain largely informed by methodological lore as opposed to systematic inquiry. The present study experimentally tested whether signal- (e.g., random prompt) and event-contingent (e.g., complete a survey every time a target event occurs) recording procedures of interpersonal behavior and affect in social situations yield equivalent quality and quantity of data. Participants (N = 286) completed baseline questionnaires, underwent cluster randomization to either a signal- or event-contingent condition, then completed one week of ambulatory assessment during which participants answered questions about their social behavior and affect tied to their social interactions. Conditions were compared on response frequency, means and variances of interpersonal behavior and affect, correlations between interpersonal behavior and affect within-person, and associations between momentary behavior and affect and baseline variables (e.g., big-five traits). Results indicated that signal- and event-contingent recording techniques provided equivalent data quality, suggesting that researchers can use the two methodologies interchangeably to draw conclusions about means, variances, and associations when examining social interactions. However, results also showed that event-contingent recording returned, on average, a higher number of reported social interactions per individual and this was true for most time-periods of the day. Thus, event-contingent recording may hold advantages for studying frequency and timing of social interactions.

Gender versus Culture Debates andDébâcles: Feminisms, Interculturalism and the Quebec Charter of Values

Quebec's Bill 60 (or Charter of Values), legislation prohibiting public officials from wearing religious symbols and garb, provides a complicated case of a minority nation grappling with culture and gender, while also illustrating the more contingent condition of Canadian multiculturalism, equality and feminisms. Quebec has adoptedinterculturalismversusmulticulturalism; moreover, its multilayered women's movement remains a legitimate force, unlike in the rest of Canada. Despite the intricacies of these distinctive developments, this article reveals how Charter of Values justifications asserted the Quebec nation's distinctiveness and alleged egalitarian pre-eminence over others, not only homogenizing and instrumentalizing multiple cultures, but also various feminisms. Yet, when culture, gender equality and feminisms become reified and essentialized through a strategic depiction of certain minority women's rights, Canada's already well-worn claims to diversity and equality are further frayed both subnationally and nationally.

Collusions In Chinese Family Firms: An Informal Institution-Based View Of Multiple Large Shareholders

Informal institutions such as culture is contingent condition affecting opportunism in large shareholders' relationships (Sauerwald and Peng, 2013). Using the data from 2003 to 2012 of Chinese family firms, our research finds that the collusions of multiple large shareholders (MLS) caused by Chinese family-oriented collectivism culture lead to firms investment inefficiency, including overinvestment and underinvestment. Unlike prior literature focusing merely on the agency problems of management or controlling shareholders, this study provides evidence of the agency problems of MLS. From examining the relations and allocations of shareholders ownership, we provide shareholders collusions, a new theoretical perspective to explain the investment inefficiency in Chinese family firms.

Von der Kulturkritik der „Menge“ zur existenzialen Analytik des „Man“

The article examines the influence of Kierkegaard’s understanding of “the crowd” (Mængden) on Heidegger’s conception of “the one” (das Man). Even though a detailed analysis reveals striking similarities in their phenomenological descriptions, a fundamental difference between the two accounts can hardly be overlooked. Whereas Kierkegaard considers “the crowd” a contingent condition of his own authorship, Heidegger takes “the one” to be a necessary component of the structure of Dasein as such. This not only leads to divergent understandings of the relation between authentic and inauthentic existence, but it also and ultimately points to a fundamental difference in terms of the basic anthropological premises underlying and guiding Kierkegaard’s and Heidegger’s work as a whole. In order to historically contextualize the present study, the crucial intermediary role of the translator, critic and author Theodor Haecker will also be specified

Much Ado about Nothing: Steele v Serepisos and a Notice Requirement for Contingent Conditions

In the 2006 case of Steele v Serepisos, the Supreme Court had an opportunity to clarify the law on contingent conditions. The issue was whether a party seeking to cancel a contract for its failure to fulfil a contingent condition first had to give notice to the other party. The purpose of the notice would be to give the other party an opportunity to fulfil the condition. A majority held, correctly in the author's view, that such a notice was not required. However, the majority went to some lengths to distinguish Cooke J's judgment in the 1978 case of Hunt v Wilson. This paper revisits Hunt v Wilson and argues that Cooke J's judgment was wrong. It further argues that the majority's failure to recognise this, coupled with general judicial confusion with respect to contingent conditions, made a simple issue much more difficult than it need have been.

The detection of intentional contingencies in simple animations in patients with delusions of persecution

Background. It has been proposed that delusions of persecution are caused by the tendency to over-attribute malevolent intentions to other people's actions. One aspect of intention attribution is detecting contingencies between an agent's actions and intentions. Here, we used simplified stimuli to test the hypothesis that patients with persecutory delusions over-attribute contingency to agents' movements.Method. Short animations were presented to three groups of subjects: (1) schizophrenic patients; (2) patients with affective disorders; and (3) normal control subjects. Patients were divided on the basis of the presence or absence of delusions of persecution. Participants watched four types of film featuring two shapes. In half the films one shape's movement was contingent on the other shape. Contingency was either ‘intentional’: one shape moved when it ‘saw’ another shape; or ‘mechanical’: one shape was launched by the other shape. Subjects were asked to rate the strength of the relationship between the movement of the shapes.Results. Normal control subjects and patients without delusions of persecution rated the relationship between the movement of the shapes as stronger in both mechanical and intentional contingent conditions than in non-contingent conditions. In contrast, there was no significant difference between the ratings of patients with delusions of persecution for the conditions in which movement was animate. Patients with delusions of persecution perceived contingency when there was none in the animate non-contingent condition.Conclusions. The results suggest that delusions of persecution may be associated with the over-attribution of contingency to the actions of agents.

Effects of Random and Response Contingent Noise upon Disfluencies of Normal Speakers

Twenty normal speakers read a passage during a 30-min session divided into Baserate (5 min), Conditioning (15 min), and Extinction (10 min). Each read in Random Condition and Contingent Condition. During Conditioning in Random Condition, subjects received 0.75 sec, 95 dB bursts of white noise according to a random schedule. During Conditioning in Contingent Condition, subjects received a burst of 95 dB white noise each time they were disfluent. Ten subjects (Group RC) read in Random Condition on one day and in Contingent Condition on a subsequent day. The other 10 subjects read in the opposite order of conditions on the two days. Results indicated that the effects of random and contingent noise were influenced by the order of conditions. Random aversive stimuli caused increases in disfluency for subjects in both groups. Response contingent aversive stimuli caused a decrement in disfluency for subjects in Group CR, but not for subjects in Group RC. Analysis of poststimulus disfluency indicated that random aversive stimuli caused disorganization of the speech of subjects in Group RC.