Negative Emotional Arousal Research Articles

Give Me a Chance! Sense of Opportunity Inequality Affects Brain Responses to Outcome Evaluation in a Social Competitive Context: An Event-Related Potential Study.

People are strongly motivated to pursue social equality during social interactions. Previous studies have shown that outcome equality influences the neural activities of monetary feedback processing in socioeconomic games; however, it remains unclear whether perception of opportunity equality affects outcome evaluation even when outcomes are maintained equal. The current study investigated the electrophysiological activities of outcome evaluation in different instructed opportunity equality conditions with event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants were asked to play a competitive dice game against an opponent to win money. Opportunity equality was manipulated in three conditions, depending on whether participants were allowed the opportunity to throw less, equal, or more dice compared to their opponents. Although participants received a winning outcome with approximately 50% chance in all equality conditions, they selectively exhibited sensitivity to the less-dice condition by reporting stronger feelings of unfairness and unpleasantness than in the equal and more-dice conditions. In line with the behavioral results, larger reward positivity amplitudes were elicited by the monetary outcome in the less-dice condition than in the other two conditions, reflecting intensified reward prediction error (RPE) signals under negative emotional arousal. Further, P3 amplitudes were enhanced following reward feedback only in the unequal conditions, perhaps due to the high-level motivational and affective processing associated with resolving conflict between social norms and self-interest. The present findings elucidate the complex temporal course of outcome evaluation processes in different opportunity equality conditions.

Self-efficacy of Osteopathic Medical Students in a Rural-Urban Underserved Pathway Program.

Self-efficacy has been shown to play a role in medical students' choice of practice location. More physicians are needed in rural and urban underserved communities. Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine has a co-curricular training program in rural and urban underserved practice to address this shortage. To assess whether participation in the co-curricular program in rural and urban underserved practice affects self-efficacy related to rural and underserved urban practice. This cross-sectional study explored self-efficacy using Bandura's 5 sources of self-efficacy (vicarious learning, verbal persuasion, positive emotional arousal, negative emotional arousal, and performance accomplishments). A validated scale on self-efficacy for rural practice was expanded to include self-efficacy for urban underserved practice and e-mailed to all 707 medical students across 4 years of medical school. Composite rural and urban underserved self-efficacy scores were calculated. Scores from participants in the rural and urban underserved training program were compared with those who were not in the program. Data were obtained from 277 students. In the overall sample, students who indicated that they grew up in a rural community reported significantly higher rural self-efficacy scores than those who did not grow up in a rural community (F1,250=27.56, P<.001). Conversely, students who indicated that they grew up in a nonrural community reported significantly higher urban underserved self-efficacy scores than those who grew up in a rural community (F1,237=7.50, P=.007). The participants who stated primary care as their career interest (n=122) had higher rural self-efficacy scores than the participants who reported a preference for generalist specialties (general surgery, general psychiatry, and general obstetrics and gynecology) or other specialties (n=155) (F2,249=7.16, P=.001). Students who participated in the rural and urban underserved training program (n=49) reported higher rural self-efficacy scores (mean [SD], 21.06 [5.06]) than those who were not in the program (19.22 [4.22]) (t65=2.36; P=.022; equal variances not assumed). The weakest source of self-efficacy for rural practice in participants was vicarious experience. The weakest source of urban underserved self-efficacy was verbal persuasion. Opportunities exist for strengthening weaker sources of self-efficacy for rural practice, including vicarious experience and verbal persuasion. The findings suggest a need for longitudinal research into self-efficacy and practice type interest in osteopathic medical students.

Shaping Self-efficacy: Tracking a Group of Early Childhood Education Students for Four Years, from College to Employment in the Field

A “sense of self-efficacy” is defined as the process of linking knowledge to action, as the assessment of the ability to execute a behavior leading to a certain outcome. A person’s perception of self-efficacy has behavioral and emotional implications. When people doubt their own abilities, they tend not to persevere, give up rapidly when encountering difficulties, and feel anxiety and negative emotional arousal when they believe they cannot cope. In terms of self-efficacy, the functions of educators, teachers, and pre-school teachers touch on at least three domains: Task, Interpersonal, and Organizational. This article documents supervision of a group of students in the Early Childhood training track including the work of novice pre-school teachers. It demonstrates what the students undergo, from the beginning of their training to employment as pre-school teachers. Based on the findings, the article reaches conclusions regarding the factors associated with student-pre-school teachers’ sense of self efficacy, how each group member learns to form her own sense of self-efficacy, group interactions and achievements, whether self-efficacy is a personality trait or a formative belief, and the nature of the profiles of student-pre-school teachers with a high and low sense of self-efficacy. The article concludes that a person has varying levels of self-efficacy regarding different aspects of both his general and professional life. A person learns by dialogue with his environment and those around him, as well as with himself. Dialogue allows every teacher to further expand and improve his knowledge.

Intercultural Understanding through Intergroup Dialogue between Japanese and Chinese University Students.

This study had two purposes: (1) to develop university classes in which students can participate in intercultural dialogue by exchanging letters focusing on a topic about everyday norms implicit in each culture, and (2) to examine how students develop their intercultural understanding through participating in these classes. Twenty-two Japanese and six Chinese university students (each group in their own country) participated in three class sessions. At the beginning of the first class, students were given a dialogue theme that focused on cultural differences. The selected theme was mobile phone use while riding on public transportation, as this practice is prohibited in Tokyo but not in Beijing. Students discussed their opinions in small groups, wrote questions to their counterparts in the other country, and then reflected on and discussed the answers received. Analysis of the Japanese students' written reflections showed that their understanding of different cultural values and beliefs changed from one based only on a Japanese cultural perspective to one that respected the relativity of cultural norms. The results suggested that the arousal of negative emotions when students are exposed to the perspectives of other cultures is closely related to their understanding of cultural relativity.

"Help Yourself!" What Can Toddlers' Helping Failures Tell Us About the Development of Prosocial Behavior?

Prosocial behavior emerges in the second year of life, yet it is typical for children in this period not to share, comfort, or help. We compared toddlers (18, 30months) who helped with those who did not help on two tasks (instrumental helping; empathic helping). More than half of children failed to help on one or both tasks. Nonhelpers engaged in more hypothesis testing on the instrumental helping task, but more security-seeking, wariness, and playing on the empathic helping task. Across tasks, children who tended to engage in nonhelping behaviors associated with negative emotional arousal also tended to seek comfort from a parent. In contrast, children who tended to play instead of helping were less likely to exhibit negative emotional arousal or hypothesis testing, suggesting a focus on their own interests. Parents of 18-month-old nonhelpers on the instrumental task were less engaged in socializing prosocial behavior in their toddlers than were the parents of helpers. On the empathic helping task, 18-month-old nonhelpers had less mature self-other understanding than did helpers. By examining how the predominant reasons for failing to help vary with age and task, we gain a fuller perspective on the factors involved in the early development of prosocial behavior.

Lust for violence: Appetitive aggression as a fundamental part of human nature

AbstractAppetitive aggression describes a biologically-driven form of aggressive behaviour and violence characterized by positive affect. In contrast to reactive aggression, which has the function of resisting a threat, and reducing concomitant negative emotional arousal and anger, appetitive aggression underlies the pleasure of violence. A prototypical example is hunting, which can in turn transfer to the hunting of humans and can even result in bloodlust, and killing for its own sake. At the physiological level, this morally illicit pleasure is accompanied by an adrenalin surge, the release of cortisol and endorphins. In order to activate reward systems via appetitive aggression, their moral and cultural restraints need to be overridden. For example, armed groups work to dehumanize the enemy. Once initiated, a positive feedback loop is generated: As the individual commits more acts of violence with elements of positive affect, the tendency to commit them grows, and they begin to be perceived more positively. A latent passion for fighting and dominance can probably be evoked in almost all men and in some women. The cumulative outcome of whole groups, tribes, or communities enacting this aggression is war and destruction, to the point of trying to extinguish entire ethnic groups:“… and yes, human beings, hundreds of thousands of otherwise normal people, not professional killers, did it.”(from “The Killers in Rwanda Speak” by Jean Hatzfeld, 2005). Thus, appetitive aggression, the disposition towards a lust for violence, is by no means a psychopathological anomaly but an intrinsic part of the human behavioural repertoire. Morality, culture and the state monopoly on violence constitute the guards that regulate aggression potential and to channel it into socially useful forms.

Differentiating the Sources of Taiwanese High School Students’ Multidimensional Science Learning Self-Efficacy: An Examination of Gender Differences

The main purpose of this study was to investigate Taiwanese high school students’ multi-dimensional self-efficacy and its sources in the domain of science. Two instruments, Sources of Science Learning Self-Efficacy (SSLSE) and Science Learning Self-Efficacy (SLSE), were used. By means of correlation and regression analyses, the relationships between students’ science learning self-efficacy and the sources of their science learning self-efficacy were examined. The findings revealed that the four sources of the students’ self-efficacy were found to play significant roles in their science learning self-efficacy. By and large, Mastery Experience and Vicarious Experience were found to be the two salient influencing sources. Several gender differences were also revealed. For example, the female students regarded Social Persuasion as the most influential source in the “Science Communication” dimension, while the male students considered Vicarious Experience as the main efficacy source. Physiological and Affective States, in particular, was a crucial antecedent of the female students’ various SLSE dimensions, including “Conceptual Understanding,” “Higher-Order Cognitive Skills,” and “Science Communication.” In addition, the variations between male and female students’ responses to both instruments were also unraveled. The results suggest that, first, the male students perceived themselves as having more mastery experience, vicarious experience and social persuasion than their female counterparts. Meanwhile, the female students experienced more negative emotional arousal than the male students. Additionally, the male students were more self-efficacious than the females in the five SLSE dimensions of “Conceptual Understanding,” “Higher-Order Cognitive Skills,” “Practical Work,” “Everyday Application,” and “Science Communication.”

Post-encoding emotional arousal enhances consolidation of item memory, but not reality-monitoring source memory.

The current study examined whether the effect of post-encoding emotional arousal on item memory extends to reality-monitoring source memory and, if so, whether the effect depends on emotionality of learning stimuli and testing format. In Experiment 1, participants encoded neutral words and imagined or viewed their corresponding object pictures. Then they watched a neutral, positive, or negative video. The 24-hour delayed test showed that emotional arousal had little effect on both item memory and reality-monitoring source memory. Experiment 2 was similar except that participants encoded neutral, positive, and negative words and imagined or viewed their corresponding object pictures. The results showed that positive and negative emotional arousal induced after encoding enhanced consolidation of item memory, but not reality-monitoring source memory, regardless of emotionality of learning stimuli. Experiment 3, identical to Experiment 2 except that participants were tested only on source memory for all the encoded items, still showed that post-encoding emotional arousal had little effect on consolidation of reality-monitoring source memory. Taken together, regardless of emotionality of learning stimuli and regardless of testing format of source memory (conjunction test vs. independent test), the facilitatory effect of post-encoding emotional arousal on item memory does not generalize to reality-monitoring source memory.

The Role of Impulsivity Dimensions in the Relation Between Probable Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Aggressive Behavior Among Substance Users

ABSTRACTObjective: Individuals with co-occurring posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorder report heightened levels of numerous risky and health-compromising behaviors, including aggressive behaviors. Given evidence that aggressive behavior is associated with negative substance use disorder treatment outcomes, research is needed to identify the factors that may account for the association between PTSD and aggressive behavior among patients with substance use disorder. Thus, the goal of this study was to examine the role of impulsivity dimensions (i.e., negative urgency, lack of premeditation, lack of perseverance, and sensation seeking) in the relations between probable PTSD status and both verbal and physical aggression. Methods: Participants were 92 patients in residential substance use disorder treatment (75% male; 59% African American; M age = 40.25) who completed self-report questionnaires. Results: Patients with co-occurring PTSD–substance use disorder (vs. substance use disorder alone) reported significantly greater verbal and physical aggression as well as higher levels of negative urgency and lack of premeditation. Lack of premeditation and lack of perseverance were significantly positively associated with verbal aggression, whereas negative urgency, lack of premeditation, and lack of perseverance were significantly positively associated with physical aggression. The indirect relation of probable PTSD status to physical aggression through negative urgency was significant. Conclusions: Results highlight the potential utility of incorporating skills focused on controlling impulsive behaviors in the context of negative emotional arousal in interventions for physical aggression among patients with co-occurring PTSD–substance use disorder.

EP 23. Bilateral epidural prefrontal cortical stimulation (EpCS) over fronto-polar and mid-frontal gyrus accesses mood regulation networks: Evidence from diffusion tensor imaging

Introduction The functional neuroanatomy of depression involves the prefrontal, cingulate and insular cortices, the amygdala, the nucleus accumbens and the hippocampus. The anterior and lateral prefrontal cortices are different in their cognitive and emotional integration roles and their modulation of sub-cortical regions. Both offer a distinct opportunity for targeted antidepressant treatments. Epidural prefrontal cortical stimulation (EpCS) is a unique therapeutic approach. It is more direct than transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) or vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), safer than deep brain stimulation (DBS) and, when applied chronically can reduce negative emotional arousal, increases stress tolerance and possibly lead to fewer relapses than observed with antidepressant pharmacotherapy Question Document the direct anatomical connections accessed with bilateral EpCS over fronto-polar and mid-frontal gyrus using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Methods Five patients treatment-resistant depression were implanted with bilateral EpCS leads over fronto-polar and mid-frontal gyrus. Patients underwent structural imaging (high resolution T1-weighted (T1w) MRI image and a DTI with 32 gradient directions) before surgery and a CT scan post-implantation. Image analysis was performed using the FMRIB Software Library. BA25, BA10 and BA46 areas, and Amygdala were extracted from the Broadmann area template to serve as guides for tractography. Similarly, individual EpCS paddles identified on CT scan were also transformed. First, an affine (12 parameter model) registration was applied to register Broadmann template onto T1w images and then T1w onto DTI data. Transformations were then applied to the guides. Second, a binary mask of the brain was extracted and applied to all images after correction for eddy currents. BedpostX was then run on the preprocessed data to generate the basis for probabilistic tractography using ProbtrackX. Estimation of tracts was done probabilistically, using a dual-fiber model with 5000 tract-following samples at each voxel. All tractography was done in each subject’s native space. Eight tractography combinations (left & right) were performed: BA10/BA46 as seeds for tractography and Amygdala/BA25 as waypoints masks. Similar approached was applied with EpCS actual lead masks. The resulting fibers were then thresholded at 0.01 (99% likelihood of connectivity) and then binarized, and transferred into MNI152 standard space for cross-subject analysis using a non-linear registration. To generate population-based probability fibers, all subjects’ individual fibers were added up and used as a basis for calculation of a mean image. Finally, the resulting mean fiber was thresholded to show voxels common to 80% or more of the subjects. Results All patients showed robust connections of different pathways in both left and right hemispheres. The resulting pathways connected to each seed combination are shown in Fig. 1 . Electrodes implanted over both BA10 and BA46 areas resulted in direct activation of axons that primarily project from BA10 or BA46 to BA25 and Amygdala, and extend to the cingulum bundle and to the middle occipital gyrus. Conclusion This is the first demonstration of EpCS direct anatomical access to the medial and lateral mood regulation networks. Encouraging clinical data have been reported elsewhere with 3 patients out of 5 showing remission at 7 months (Nahas et al., 2010) and at 5 years (Williams et al., under review). Bilateral anterior and lateral EpCS promises to be an innovative new treatment for a highly morbid disease through adaptive cortical governance of limbic structures but larger studies are needed.

“I fear, therefore, I shop!” exploring anxiety sensitivity in relation to compulsive buying

Compulsive buying involves a preoccupation with, or urges to, buy, that are experienced as intrusive and uncontrollable. Compulsive buying is associated with impaired functioning and serves to alleviate negative emotional arousal. Anxiety sensitivity (AS: fear of arousal-related somatic sensations) is a known risk factor for negative emotional arousal. The present study investigated whether AS was linked to compulsive buying, over and above negative affect (depression, anxiety, stress), in a sample of Canadian undergraduates. Results showed that females (vs. males) were more likely to report spending in the moment and experiencing guilt after shopping. Males were more apt to report experiencing negative feelings about shopping. Anxiety predicted the tendency to spend in the moment and to buy compulsively, while stress and depression predicted post-purchase guilt. AS-Physical and AS-Cognitive concerns predicted compulsive buying over and above negative affect. No role was found for AS-Social concerns. The findings are discussed in terms of clinical implications and directions for future research.

Vietnamese teachers’ self-efficacy in teaching English as a Foreign Language

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of culture on the sense of self-efficacy in teaching English as a Foreign Language of a group of university teachers in Vietnam. Research exploring the relationship between culture and self-efficacy is extremely rare despite the acknowledged importance of culture in the formation of self-efficacy beliefs.Design/methodology/approachThis study took the form of qualitative research with diverse, data collection instruments: individual interviews, focus group discussions, observations and journaling.FindingsFindings indicate that certain features of the Vietnamese cultural context impacted on the way the study teachers constructed their sense of self-efficacy. Specifically, under the influence of a Vietnamese sense of belonging, the study teachers tended to rely more on efficacy-building information from other people rather than from themselves. The perception of inequality in power may have heightened negative emotional arousal, thus contributing to a negative sense of self-efficacy among the teachers. The Vietnamese concept of face and the high status of teachers in the social hierarchy in part mediated teachers’ sense of self-efficacy.Social implicationsThe perceived burden of performing both parenting and teaching roles and responsibilities may have diminished the self-efficacy in teaching of female teachers.Originality/valueThe contribution and implications of the study are discussed.

Emotional Competence and Anxiety in Childhood and Adolescence: A Meta-Analytic Review.

Anxiety is conceptualized as a state of negative emotional arousal that is accompanied by concern about future threat. The purpose of this meta-analytic review was to evaluate the evidence of associations between emotional competence and anxiety by examining how specific emotional competence domains (emotion recognition, emotion expression, emotion awareness, emotion understanding, acceptance of emotion, emotional self-efficacy, sympathetic/empathic responses to others' emotions, recognition of how emotion communication and self-presentation affect relationships, and emotion regulatory processes) relate to anxiety in childhood and adolescence. A total of 185 studies were included in a series of meta-analyses (N's ranged from 573 to 25,711). Results showed that anxious youth are less effective at expressing (r=-0.15) and understanding emotions (r=-0.20), less aware of (r=-0.28) and less accepting of their own emotions (r=-0.49), and report less emotional self-efficacy (r=-0.36). More anxious children use more support-seeking coping strategies (r=0.07) and are more likely to use less adaptive coping strategies including avoidant coping (r=0.18), externalizing (r=0.18), and maladaptive cognitive coping (r=0.34). Emotion acceptance and awareness, emotional self-efficacy, and maladaptive cognitive coping yielded the largest effect sizes. Some effects varied with children's age. The findings inform intervention and treatment programs of anxiety in youth and identify several areas for future research.

Discomfort-related changes in pup ultrasonic calls of fat-tailed gerbils Pachyuromys duprasi

Rodent pups vocalize when placed in social isolation. We apply a method of “joint calls” for examining discomfort in rodent pup ultrasonic (>20 kHz) calls. Previously, this method has been developed for audible calls of fur farm mammals. Using a repeated measures design to exclude effects of individual identity and age on the analysed variables, we compared the ultrasonic call variables produced by 8–40-day pups of fat-tailed gerbils Pachyuromys duprasi during two subsequent experimental stages, the Isolation Stage and the Handling Stage. We considered that discomfort-related negative emotional arousal increased towards the Handling Stage compared to the Isolation Stage because of cumulative effects of handling and time of pup isolation from the nest. At the Isolation Stage, the call rate (calls/s) was higher from 10 to 18 days of age, whereas both the maximum amplitude frequency and power quartiles of joint calls were lower than at the Handling Stage from 20 to 32 days of age. At the same time, in audible (<20 kHz) vocalizations of a wide range of mammalian species, both the higher call rate and the upward shift of the maximum amplitude frequency and power quartiles indicate the discomfort-related increase of negative emotional arousal. We discuss the advantages of the method of joint calls for express-analyses of power variables for large sequences of ultrasonic vocalizations of complex acoustic structure during experimental trials.

When Is an Adolescent an Adult? Assessing Cognitive Control in Emotional and Nonemotional Contexts

An individual is typically considered an adult at age 18, although the age of adulthood varies for different legal and social policies. A key question is how cognitive capacities relevant to these policies change with development. The current study used an emotional go/no-go paradigm and functional neuroimaging to assess cognitive control under sustained states of negative and positive arousal in a community sample of one hundred ten 13- to 25-year-olds from New York City and Los Angeles. The results showed diminished cognitive performance under brief and prolonged negative emotional arousal in 18- to 21-year-olds relative to adults over 21. This reduction in performance was paralleled by decreased activity in fronto-parietal circuitry, implicated in cognitive control, and increased sustained activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, involved in emotional processes. The findings suggest a developmental shift in cognitive capacity in emotional situations that coincides with dynamic changes in prefrontal circuitry. These findings may inform age-related social policies.

Aberrant Parasympathetic Stress Responsivity in Pure and Co-Occurring Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) are highly comorbid; we know little, however, about the shared physiological features of these disorders. In the present study, we examined whether aberrant parasympathetic stress responsivity represents a transdiagnostic process in MDD, GAD, and co-occurring MDD-GAD. Adult women diagnosed with MDD only, GAD only, and co-occurring MDD-GAD and never-disordered controls (CTLs) completed a standardized laboratory task that involved anticipating, confronting, and recovering from a social stressor. Participants’ levels of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were measured to index parasympathetic responses. The three clinical groups combined (participants with MDD only, GAD only, and co-occurring MDD-GAD) exhibited a similar pattern of RSA responsivity that differed significantly from that of the CTL group. Specifically, whereas CTL participants exhibited a sharp decrease in RSA when confronting the stressor and a sharp increase in RSA when recovering immediately following the stressor, the clinical participants exhibited a blunted response pattern that involved weaker fluctuations in RSA when confronting and recovering from the stressor. There were no significant differences among the three clinical groups in RSA responses. Interestingly, clinical and CTL participants did not differ in self-reported fluctuations in negative emotional arousal. Finally, for clinical participants patterns of RSA reactivity to the acute stressor were associated differentially with trait rumination and worry as maladaptive forms of emotion regulation. These findings support the formulation that aberrant parasympathetic stress responsivity is a shared feature of MDD, GAD, and co-occurring MDD-GAD that is characterized by diminished reactivity to and recovery from stress.

Do Children Behave Better When Parents’ Emotion Coaching Practices are Stimulated? A Micro-Trial Study

The links between parents’ emotion regulation practices and children’s behavioral outcomes are well established. The aim of the current study designed as a randomized micro-trial was to test experimentally if and to what extent stimulating parents’ emotion coaching practices improves preschoolers’ behavioral outcomes, i.e. positive affect, irritability, non-compliance, persistence and enthusiasm. In line with this objective, the emotion coaching practices of parents of 4-to-5-year-old children were stimulated in a brief 15-min lab session. Immediately afterwards, parents and children were observed during a free-play session and frustration laboratory tasks designed to elicit negative emotions in children. The results indicated that, compared to the control group, parents whose emotion coaching practices had been stimulated displayed higher positive affect and were more emotionally sensitive during free play. Positive behaviors persisted in frustration tasks; parents were more behaviorally and emotionally responsive towards their children. In turn, children of these parents displayed higher persistence and enthusiasm but only when they had to deal with negative emotional arousal during frustration tasks. Mediation analyses also confirmed that the influence of the stimulation of parents’ emotion coaching practices on children’s outcomes, i.e. persistence and enthusiasm, was mediated by the parents’ behavior.

Geostatistical Analysis for the Study of Relationships between the Emotional Responses of Urban Walkers to Urban Spaces

The described study aims to find correlations between urban spatial configurations and human emotions. To this end, the authors measured people's emotions while they walk along a path in an urban area using an instrument that measures skin conductance and skin temperature. The corresponding locations of the test persons were measured recorded by using a GPS-tracker (n=13). The results are interpreted and categorized as measures for positive and negative emotional arousal. To evaluate the technical and methodological process. The test results offer initial evidence that certain spaces or spatial sequences do cause positive or negative emotional arousal while others are relatively neutral. To achieve the goal of the study, the outcome was used as a basis for the study of testing correlations between people's emotional responses and urban spatial configurations represented by Isovist properties of the urban form. By using their model the authors can explain negative emotional arousal for certain places, but they couldn't find a model to predict emotional responses for individual spatial configurations.

The relative importance of specific self‐efficacy sources in pretraining self‐efficacy beliefs

Self‐efficacy is clearly important for learning. Research identifying the most important sources of self‐efficacy beliefs, however, has been somewhat limited to date in that different disciplines focus largely on different sources of self‐efficacy. Whereas education researchers focus on Bandura's original sources of enactive mastery, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and negative emotional arousal, organizational researchers focus on learning, performance prove and performance avoid achievement goal orientations. To date, however, little research has examined the importance of a specific set of self‐efficacy sources after fully accounting for the influence of other sources. Data were obtained from 278 adult trainees who completed online Microsoft Excel training. Results suggest that once accounting for achievement goal orientation, Bandura's sources of vicarious experience and negative emotional arousal are still important contributors to pretraining self‐efficacy beliefs. As such, organizations seeking to maximize training effectiveness may wish to consider pretraining interventions simultaneously targeting achievement goal orientation, vicarious experience and negative emotional arousal.

Abstract 13428: Unveiling the Predictive Mechanisms of Care-seeking Delay in Patients With Acute Myocardial Infarction

Introduction: Despite decades of research has been conducted to examine the phenomenon of care-seeking delay in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI), such delay remains the most significant limiting factor for effective disease management. Objectives: This study aimed to develop and test an integrative theoretical model to unveil the predictive mechanism for explaining the care-seeking behaviors of patients who experiencing an attack of AMI. Methods: Based on several major theories which explain the illness behaviors of patients with chronic diseases and the research evidence on the care-seeking behaviors of AMI patients, we hypothesized that AMI patients’ care-seeking decision was determined by two sequential perceptual-cognitive processes and the immediate context of symptom occurrence. A total of 301 patients with a recent AMI were recruited from the cardiac units of three regional hospitals in Hong Kong. Structural equation modeling was used to test the validity of the hypothesized model. Results: The results indicated the decision-making process of AMI patients was driven by two sequential perceptual-cognitive processes, by which a successful action relied on whether the patients could correctly attribute the symptoms to AMI. Such correct symptom attribution depended upon whether they were aware of their own susceptibility to this condition and had a good understanding about the nature of the disease manifestation. A perception of severe illness consequences and the associated negative emotional arousal motivated patients to seek care. The immediate context in which the symptoms occurred also played a role in influencing their decision making, with the favorable roles of lower level of perceived barriers to seek care and positive cues from others in advising care-seeking. This model explained 46% of the variance of care-seeking behaviors with a good data-model fit (χ2 = 38.48, df=30, p=0.72; RMSEA=0.03, NFI=0.96, NNFI=0.98 and CFI=0.99). Conclusions: The integrative theoretical model is valid to explain the care-seeking decisions in AMI patients. This model provides important insights to inform the development of innovative empowerment strategies to enhance appropriate care-seeking decisions and behaviors among AMI patients.