This paper examined the effects of distance priming on test anxiety and judgment. Research suggests that individuals’ perceived distance can impact their affect and judgments, which sheds light on the principle of “distance equals safety” (Williams & Bargh, 2008). Taking an exam invokes both cognitive and emotional anxiety, such as worry, panic, and tension. It is hypothesized that the distance priming may reduce test anxiety—particularly, the emotionality aspect—as well as perceived test difficulty. The results showed that, counter to the hypotheses, there was no significant difference among the three priming groups in their emotional test anxiety or perceived test difficulty. There is a significant correlation between ACT score and cognitive test anxiety, supporting past literature that as one’s intellectual ability increases, their cognitive test anxiety decreases. Further research needs to be conducted to replicate the efficacy of the priming method by Williams and Bargh (2008) and to use more effective ways of provoking performance anxiety.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Psychology

Not available / text

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

The literature claims that, whilst hindering normal narcissistic development, a family of origin characterised by high levels of cohesion and low levels of adaptability, promotes individual proficiency in interpersonal skills. Coupled with unconscious motivations for interpersonal need gratification, a subsequent predisposition towards a career choice in psychotherapy is likely. This study set out to test these assumptions by comparing family of origin types, levels of narcissism and career self-efficacy in postgraduate Masters psychology students, postgraduate final year law students and final year electronic engineering students currently enroled in University of Natal training programmes (N=85). Informed by the literature, this study hypothesised that trainee psychotherapists would report more extreme family of origin types, predict career self-efficacy in the direction of social occupations and display higher levels of narcissism than students in other fields of specialisation. The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Raskin & Terry, 1988), FACES III of the Circumplex Model (Olson, McCubbin, Barnes, Larsen, Muxen & Wilson, 1985) and the Career Self-Efficacy Scale (Matsui & Tsukamoto, 1991) were utilised to assess the dimensions of narcissism, family of origin and career self-efficacy respectively. This study was unable to find significant connections between family of origin, narcissism and career self-efficacy, thereby failing to provide empirical support for the literature's claims. Results have been discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications and attempts have been made to account for the general lack of significant findings. Limitations of this study's research design and recommendations for future research in this area have been offered. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1996.

This study explored the perceptions of post-secondary students and counsellors towards the use of antidepressants and counselling to manage depression. Student depression is increasing and antidepressants appear to be the most frequently used treatment by students. The literature reveals that most depressed students are not accessing campus mental health centres, and counsellors are noting increased severity of illness for those that do seek help. Therefore, in an attempt to gain increased understanding of students who use antidepressants as well as counselling, the student and counsellor perspective is essential. In this study, 10 students and 6 counsellors were interviewed by the researcher. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis guided by van Manen’s (1990) hermeneutic phenomenology was used. Overall, the themes identified aim to represent the lived experience of the students who are living with depression and to better assist counsellors in understanding and developing interventions suited to student need. / ix, 129 leaves ; 29 cm

FOR MY MOTHER I love you I hate you I abuse And appreciate you You feed my guilty conscious I fuel your shattered soul Your misguided love and affection Have turned my heart into stone You are nothing You are everything You stole my voice You made me sing In this separation we create We grow together In love And in hate ……..Saron. The above poem is written by a learner who comes from a broken home. There are many children like Saron in our classrooms who have suffered consequences of parental separation and divorce. This study investigates the experiences of children from a secondary school in the Durban South Region. Their parents are either separated or divorced. The study was undertaken to ascertain how these learners are psychologically affected by their family situations. The rationale for the research study is grounded by statistics and a wide variety of literature that indicates that children from separated and divorced families experience multiple problems, develop abnormal behavioural patterns and seek attention and release from alternate sources. The research study is framed within the social constructivist paradigm to indicate how social phenomena develop in particular social contexts. In order to answer the research questions and gain clarity on the topic, data was gathered using narrative stories, personal narrative diary entries, time line representations and interviews. The narrative diary entries and time line representations were used as prompts for the interviews, whereby the researcher not only allowed the participants to discuss their experiences but also spent a prolonged period of time with them. The research study was qualitative in nature and aimed to achieve a greater level of depth by studying four participants. This was accomplished using the method of purposive sampling. The data obtained from the participants was transcribed and analysed using the open-coding technique and thematic analysis. The results revealed that even though the effects of the divorce and separation varied, the participants shared similarities with regard to their emotional state. They all experienced feelings of sadness, distress, abandonment, anger, helplessness, and stress. The results also indicated that the effects of divorce were on the participant’s behaviour, their families’ financial and economic situation, their academic school lives and integration at school. The participants reported both positive and negative effects of their parents’ separation and divorce. Taking all the data collected into consideration, the researcher was then able to make recommendations which would prove beneficial to all stakeholders. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Edgewood, 2010.

This study is based on a semester-long qualitative study that investigates student perceptions of and interactions with social software and mobile technologies, particularly as they move between digital and physical spaces. As digital technologies become more ubiquitous, both within the classroom and without, it becomes increasingly important to investigate the ways these technologies are influencing lived writing practices, particularly if instructors are incorporating these technologies into their teaching. In particular, this dissertation investigates constructions of student identities in technology-rich environments, and the ways that digital, mobile, social, and spatial factors both afford and constrain student identities. This dissertation focuses on movement—of students and information—between academic and non-academic spaces. The research focuses on the lived practices of students as they use mobile technologies and social software as a part of their writing practices and habitus, and this study explores in depth both their physical contexts and their habits and attitudes towards the ways the digital meets the physical. This study is based on 10 semester-long qualitative case studies which followed students as they engaged in writing activities, both within class and without. The findings from this study point to the ways that contemporary students are rapidly embracing an existence which incorporates machines into their self constructions: their identities and their physical bodies. These students have adapted their writing styles to incorporate multiple kinds of physical technologies, and almost all interactions in their social sphere are mediated through social software and digital technology. This dissertation presents the findings from this study, arguing for a conceptualization of student as cyborg. / Methods and methodologies -- Findings : cyborg bodies -- Findings : cyborg identities. / Department of English

Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Evidence suggests that routine screening of primary care patients for exposure to traumatic life events, and particularly assaultive trauma, may yield both clinical and cost benefits for healthcare systems (e.g., Green, Epstein, Krupnick, & Rowland, 1997; Lecrubier, 2004). However, although advocated by authorities, such screening has yet to be widely adopted. A sample of female university healthcare patients (N = 339) was assessed for exposure to trauma in order to examine several unaddressed issues that may diminish the clinical utility of screening for trauma in primary care patients. First, because the length of the traditional trauma history assessment makes it less acceptable for use in time-pressured primary care settings, the discriminative validity of a brief, self-administered screening question about exposure to trauma, the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) module's screening question (First, Spitzer, Williams & Gibbon, 1997) was compared to a longer, inventory method of assessment, the Traumatic Life Events Questionnaire (TLEQ, Kubany et al., 2000). Second, because it is unclear whether patients who have experienced assaultive trauma will disclose these experiences when asked in a primary care setting, the relative predictive efficacy of informing respondents that their responses would, or would not be, disclosed to health center personnel was evaluated. Two versions of the brief screening question were assessed across two instructional sets regarding disclosure, to determine each condition's relative classification accuracy for identifying respondents who reported experiences of sexual or physical assault, and/or symptoms of PTSD. The brief screen identified more than three-quarters of the survivors of traumatic assault; and more importantly, identified almost all of the women who reported significant PTSD symptomatology: the inventory method identified only 2 additional women of the 47 who met criteria for PTSD. Although survivors of sexual assault were significantly less likely to disclose their history to their provider, no differences were found for those assault survivors who also reported symptoms of PTSD. Results suggest that a brief screening question about traumatic life events may be an acceptable option in settings where more time-consuming assessment procedures are not practical. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-98). / Electronic reproduction. / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / x, 98 leaves, bound 29 cm

Medical students experience elevated levels of psychological distress and they are reluctant to seek professional help for mental health problems. They are also reticent to notify authorities about colleagues experiencing psychological distress. Yet, young people are more likely to seek help from peers than from any other source and we know very little about the help that these peers provide to their distressed colleagues. The current research explored medical students’ approaches to colleagues experiencing psychological distress: firstly, to determine whether they notice the distress of colleagues; secondly, to explore what determines consideration to intervene and help colleagues; and thirdly, the range of helping behaviours provided. Comparisons were made with students from other professional tertiary disciplines. Students from all six years of an undergraduate medical course were compared with convenience samples from Psychology, Law and Mechanical Engineering at The University of Adelaide. Students were recruited for one of three studies which employed a variety of measures, including the Kessler Measure of Psychological Distress (K10), a Retrospective Helping Behaviour Instrument (RHBI) and a Hypothetical Helping Behaviour Instrument (HHBI). Psychological distress (as determined by the K10) among the disciplines surveyed (N = 949) was 4.4 times that of age-matched population normative data. Despite this high rate of distress, students consistently rated the distress of their colleagues as significantly lower than the colleagues’ own self ratings. All disciplines were equally inaccurate in detecting the distress of their colleagues. Analysis of hypothetical helping behaviours, in response to a vignette, indicated that medical students offered more help to non-medical students than they did to fellow medical students; however, the quality of help delivered to fellow medical students was superior. Non-medical students offered more help to medical students than they did to students from their own discipline, but the quality of help they offered did not change between the two disciplines. Analysis of the mixed method RHBI indicated that discipline had an effect on the types of help provided to distressed colleagues, the reasons for and for not helping a colleague, and general helping concerns. Three main types of help were provided: social support, academic assistance and therapeutic assistance. Medical students from Year 3 onwards offered a diverse array of helping behaviours, whilst law and mechanical engineering students primarily offered academic support. Help was considered more frequently than it was actually given and reasons for and against providing help were associated with belief or doubt about the benefit of helping, positive or detrimental effects for the helper, the closeness or lack of friendship with the helpee, and confidence to help. This research has improved our understanding of the mechanisms that produce helping behaviour. It has also provided a rich inventory of the type of help offered by the medical students and by other tertiary students. This knowledge is crucial in the development of effective approaches to assisting distressed students, particularly in regards to the theoretical and practical development of peer support programmes. Peer support programmes take into account young peoples’ preferences to speak to peers. Peer support programmes that build on the students’ existing behaviours and resources (those behaviours identified in this research) have an increased chance of acceptance and validity. Such programmes may offer a viable adjunct to formal support services and, more importantly, may have far reaching effects in breaking down the stigma of mental health problems within professions such as Medicine. / Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Population Health and Clinical Practice, 2009