Given the heterogeneity of autism spectrum disorder, an important limitation of much autism spectrum disorder research is that outcome measures are statistically modeled as separate dependent variables. Often, their multivariate structure is either ignored or treated as a nuisance. This study aims to lift this limitation by applying network…

Data in the United States shows that perceptions of student well-being are low, childhood mental health disorders are rising, and performance on high-stakes tests in reading is stagnant across the early grades. Substantial effort, time, and money have been invested in school improvement policies, high-stakes school climates, and literacy…

In the 21st century, business settings are more dynamic and more thought provoking than in previous years because lately information technology (IT) has dominated all aspects of the business field. For this reason, this study involved examining job satisfaction of IT professionals paying particular attention to the opportunity for advancement and…

Two previous studies indicated that students at evangelical institutions report the highest levels of religious struggle in comparison to their peers at other institutions. However, patterns and predictors of religious struggle for students attending evangelical institutions have not been thoroughly explored. This study fills that gap in the…

This pilot study studied the impact of brief mindfulness meditation training with adolescents. Whereas adult mindfulness training programs typically entail weekly 2.5 hour sessions over an eight week period, this program delivered four 50-minute sessions within a three week period. Each session was comprised of two mindfulness exercises delivered…

This pilot study asked graduate students enrolled in higher education programs at two institutions to ascertain whether and to what extent they experienced nine flow-related conditions in two settings: (1) online courses or (2) surfing or gaming online. In both settings, flow was experienced "sometimes," although no significant…

Romantic love is considered a necessary ingredient in marriage. In this study, the experience of falling out of romantic love with one's spouse was examined. Eight individuals who had fallen out of romantic love with their spouse were interviewed. By using Moustakas' Transcendental Phenomenological method, several themes emerged which provided a…

We examined whether illusory self-motion perception ("vection") induced by viewing upward and downward grating motion stimuli can alter the emotional valence of recollected autobiographical episodic memories. We found that participants recollected positive episodes more often while perceiving upward vection. However, when we tested a small moving…

Previous studies suggest in line with dual process models that interoceptive skills affect controlled decisions via automatic or implicit processing. The "framing effect" is considered to capture implicit effects of task-irrelevant emotional stimuli on decision-making. We hypothesized that cardiac awareness, as a measure of interoceptive…

Background: There is a large and expanding body of research on Objectification Theory. Central to the theory is the proposition that self-objectification results in shame and anxiety surrounding the body, and as a consequence, the development of eating disorders. However, the theory and research have been developed and reported in the gender and…

The author argues that in its focus on finding positive outcomes, bereavement research has neglected or denigrated central phenomena in intense and long-term grief: sorrow and solace. Sorrow has two elements: yearning for the dead person and grief's depression. Consolation comes into sorrow in human relationships and from inner resources. The…

This paper looks into the significance emotions and feelings can have in a collaborative dance-making process. This is done by introducing a narrative based on a dance pedagogy student's writings. They contain observations of her experiences on being the facilitating choreographer in a dance-making process involving a cross-artistic group of…

The author has been thinking a lot about happiness lately. This started in earnest when she watched researcher Shawn Achor's 7-minute TEDX talk, entitled "The Happy Secret to Better Work," with parents and staff. Afterward, she was compelled to buy his book to learn more. "The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That…

The traditional view of satiation is that repeated consumption produces an unavoidable decline in liking according to the quantity and recency of consumption. We challenge this deterministic view by showing that satiation is instead partially constructed in the moment based on contextual cues. More specifically, while satiation is a function of…

Affective processes appraise the salience of external stimuli preparing the agent for action. So far, the relationship between stimuli, affect, and action has been mainly studied in highly controlled laboratory conditions. In order to find the generalization of this relationship to social interaction, we assess the influence of the salience of…