Digital Commons Network^™

Work-Family Balance As A Mediator Of Relationships Between Family-Supportive Organizational Perceptions And Employee And Organization Outcomes, Jaimie Bell

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Work-family balance is a common term used in organizations with important implications for employees. The purpose of this research was to determine if the antecedent variable family-supportive organizational perceptions were related to four positive outcomes: engagement, intent to quit, physical health, and job tension/strain. More specifically, this research focused on determining whether or not work-family balance was the mediating variable in these four relationships. A 12 item survey was issued to those individuals who met specific inclusion criteria. This criteria stated that respondents had to have at least one dependent child currently living at home as well as work at …

Not Giving Back: The Social Exchange Concern Hypothesis Of Physical Disability Stigma, Thomas P. Dirth

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The phenomenon of physical disability stigma has been examined from many different perspectives, but a comprehensive theory of its functionality has yet to be tested. The evolutionary theory of stigma provides two compelling hypotheses, for stigma in general, and physical disability stigma in particular. The pathogen avoidance hypothesis maintains that stigma is an evolved response for protection against infectious diseases, whereas the social exchange concern hypothesis proposes that stigma serves to maximize fitness by cueing which interaction partners will contribute or detract most from one's well-being. The social exchange concern hypothesis frames physical disability stigma, especially, in a way that …

Spiritual Stress And Coping Model Of Divorce: A Longitudinal Study., Elizabeth J. Krumrei-Mancuso, Annette Mahoney, Kenneth I. Pargament

All Faculty Open Access Publications

This study represents the first longitudinal effort to use a spiritual stress and coping model to predict adults' psychosocial adjustment following divorce. A community sample of 89 participants completed measures at the time of their divorce and 1 year later. Though the sample endorsed slightly lower levels of religiosity than the general U.S. population, most reported spiritual appraisals and positive and negative religious coping tied to divorce. Hierarchical regression analyses controlling general religiousness and nonreligious forms of coping indicated that (a) appraising divorce as a sacred loss or desecration at the time it occurred predicted more depressive symptoms and dysfunctional …

Perceptions Of Five Low-Income Parents On School Readiness, Roanne Eugenia Malm

Theses and Dissertations

This small-scale qualitative study explored the perceptions of five low-income mothers regarding their child's readiness for kindergarten. The study has the potential to help early childhood advocates and other stakeholders (a) understand how low-income environments influence school readiness, (b) understand the aspirations low-income parents have for their children, (c) discover ways to improve the transition to school for economically disadvantaged children, and (d) engage parents in a more equitable manner--ultimately helping all children start kindergarten with success.

Parents selected for this study had a child age 4-5 who was the oldest child in the family, on a Head Start waiting …

Enrolling And Engaging High-Risk Youths And Families In Community-Based, Brief Intervention Services, Richard Dembo, Laura M. Gulledge, Rhissa Briones-Robinson, Ken C. Winters

Faculty Publications

Increasing interest has been shown in brief interventions for troubled persons, including those with substance abuse problems. Most of the published literature on this topic has focused on adults, and on the efficacy of these interventions. Few of these studies have examined the critical issues of enrollment and engagement in brief intervention services. The present article seeks to address the shortcomings in the current literature by reporting on our experiences implementing National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded brief intervention projects involving truant and diversion program youths.

Quality Of Work Life: A Review Of Literature, Maynard R. Bagtasos

DLSU Business & Economics Review

The Quality of Work Life (QWL) is a multi-faceted concept, having multi-dimensional constructs brought about by the variation of interest of the researchers and/or its users. The issue of QWL has become critical due to the increasing demands of today’s business environment and of the family structure. This gave rise to an increased interest in QWL not only in business but also for many professions and fields. Determining QWL always involves the interplay between and among the worker, job content, and job context. Furthermore, the determination of the extent of QWL in an organization is a perceptual undertaking. As such, …

Modeling The Development Of Goal-Specificity In Mirror Neurons, S Thill, H Svensson, T Ziemke

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Neurophysiological studies have shown that parietal mirror neurons encode not only actions but also the goal of these actions. Although some mirror neurons will fire whenever a certain action is perceived (goal-independently), most will only fire if the motion is perceived as part of an action with a specific goal. This result is important for the action-understanding hypothesis as it provides a potential neurological basis for such a cognitive ability. It is also relevant for the design of artificial cognitive systems, in particular robotic systems that rely on computational models of the mirror system in their interaction with other agents. …

The Mechanics Of Embodiment: A Dialogue On Embodiment And Computational Modeling, G Pezzulo, Lw Barsalou, A Cangelosi, Et Al

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Embodied theories are increasingly challenging traditional views of cognition by arguing that conceptual representations that constitute our knowledge are grounded in sensory and motor experiences, and processed at this sensorimotor level, rather than being represented and processed abstractly in an amodal conceptual system. Given the established empirical foundation, and the relatively underspecified theories to date, many researchers are extremely interested in embodied cognition but are clamouring for more mechanistic implementations. What is needed at this stage is a push toward explicit computational models that implement sensory-motor grounding as intrinsic to cognitive processes. In this article, six authors from varying backgrounds …

Solutions And Open Challenges For The Symbol Grounding Problem, A Cangelosi

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

This article discusses the current progress and solutions to the symbol grounding problem and specifically identifies which aspects of the problem have been addressed and issues and scientific challenges that still require investigation. In particular, the paper suggests that of the various aspects of the symbol grounding problem, the transition from indexical representations to symbol-symbol relationships requires the most research. This analysis initiated a debate and solicited commentaries from experts in the field to gather consensus on progress and achievements and identify the challenges still open in the symbol grounding problem.

The Psychology Of Stroke In Young Adults: The Roles Of Service Provision And Return To Work, Reg Morris

School of Psychology

Literature about the psychological consequences of stroke in those under 65 is reviewed focussing on services and work. Despite similarities, young and old survivors have different experiences and needs. These are attributable to the effects of stroke on age-normative roles and activities, self-image, and the young person's stage in the life-cycle, especially family and work. “Hidden” cognitive impairments, a disrupted sense of self, and the incongruity of suffering an “older person's” disease are salient. Young survivors benefit from services, but experience lack of congruence between their needs and service philosophy, methods, and aims, and consequently have unmet needs. Employment is …

Modeling The Development Of Pronunciation In Infant Speech Acquisition., Is Howard, P Messum

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Pronunciation is an important part of speech acquisition, but little attention has been given to the mechanism or mechanisms by which it develops. Speech sound qualities, for example, have just been assumed to develop by simple imitation. In most accounts this is then assumed to be by acoustic matching, with the infant comparing his output to that of his caregiver. There are theoretical and empirical problems with both of these assumptions, and we present a computational model- Elija-that does not learn to pronounce speech sounds this way. Elija starts by exploring the sound making capabilities of his vocal apparatus. Then …

Cooperating Teacher's Expectations For Student Teachers During The Student Teaching Experience In Physical Education, Robert Christenson, David C. Barney

Faculty Publications

The student teaching experience is important. The student teacher wants to be successful during their student teaching experience. Part of working successfully with the cooperating teacher can greatly impact a student teacher's success. The purpose of this study was to investigate school based cooperative teachers' experiences with student teachers for the purpose of better preparing physical education teacher education majors for their student teaching. For this study 100 experienced physical educators were surveyed to find out what student teachers should expect to do to be successful when student teaching. One of the main findings from this study was for student …

Drilling For Micro-Foundations Of Human Capital Based Competitive Advantages, Russell Coff, David Kryscynski

Faculty Publications

From the origins of the Resource Based View, scholars have emphasized the importance of human capital as a source of sustained competitive advantage and recently there has been great interest in gaining a better understanding of the micro-foundations of strategic capabilities. Along these lines, there is little doubt that heterogeneous human capital is often a critical underlying mechanism for capabilities. Here, we explore how individual level phenomena underpin isolating mechanisms that sustain human capital-based advantages but also create management dilemmas that must be resolved in order to create value. The solutions to these challenges cannot be found purely in generic …