Psychology

Appreciation of the importance of statistics literacy for citizens of a democracy has resulted in an increasing number of degree programs making statistics courses mandatory for university students. Unfortunately, empirical evidence suggests that students in nonmathematical disciplines (e.g., social sciences) regard statistics courses as the most anxiety-inducing course in their degree programs. Although a literature review exists for statistics anxiety, it was done over a decade ago, and newer studies have since added findings for consideration. This paper provides a current review of the statistics anxiety literature. Specifically, related variables, definitions, and measures of statistics anxiety are reviewed with the goal of refining the statistics anxiety construct. Antecedents, effects, and interventions of statistics anxiety are also reviewed to provide recommendations for statistics instructors and for a new research agenda.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between statistics anxiety and the Big Five personality factors using a multivariate approach. Participants were 83 students (69% female) enrolled in one of three statistics courses. A canonical correlation analysis revealed that Neuroticism was positively correlated whereas Openness to Experience and Agreeableness was negatively correlated with Worth of Statistics, Fear of Asking for Help, and Fear of Statistics Teachers. Extraversion was positively correlated with Interpretation Anxiety, Test and Class Anxiety, and Fear of Asking for Help. Conscientiousness was not correlated with statistics anxiety. Practical implications include advising statistics instructors to adjust teaching in order to cater to students with different personalities. Limitations include the possibility of social desirability bias and non-generalizabilty of results.

The role of attentional bias in statistics anxiety was explored through cognitive and affective tasks. Participants consisted of 76 (73.7% females) students in the James Cook University Psychology programs at the Australia (35.5%) and Singapore campuses (64.5%). Participants completed the emotional Stroop task and the dot probe task, and measures of statistics anxiety and social desirability. No evidence of attentional bias was found. This could be due several methodological reasons. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between statistics anxiety and the Big Five personality factors using a multivariate approach. Participants were 83 students (69% female) enrolled in three statistics courses. A canonical correlation analysis revealed that Neuroticism was positively correlated whereas Openness to Experience and Agreeableness was negatively correlated with Worth of Statistics, Fear of Asking for Help,

The present study investigated differences in statistics anxiety levels based on students' gender and age. Using the statistics anxiety scores of 246 college students, a 2Â3 between-subjects factorial multivariate analysis of covariance was performed on the six dependent variables (worth of statistics, interpretation anxiety, test and class anxiety, computational self-concept, fear of asking for help, and fear of statistics teachers) that were hypothesized to be six dimensions of statistics anxiety. Independent variables were gender and age. Previous mathematics experience (PME) was entered as a covariate. The results showed that PME was significant and accounted for 17% of the variance in the combined dependent variables. There was no significant interaction effect and no significant main effect for gender. After adjusting for the effects of the covariate, a significant main effect for age was found. Older students showed significantly higher statistics test and class anxiety than younger students, even though older students showed the most positive attitudes toward the usefulness of statistics. #

The financial and health burdens of stress associated with increased urbanization have led to a demand for mental health enhancement strategies. While some extant literature details mental health benefits of community gardening, a coherent narrative on the construct of resilience and its relationship with the mental health benefits of community gardening is lacking. The present study examined the relationship between community gardening and a number of mental health benefits, in the forms of subjective well-being, stress, resilience potentials, and resilience factors (self-esteem, optimism, and openness). A total of 111 residents in Singapore completed a survey. Results from Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) and Pearson’s correlation analyses show that, after controlling for age and levels of connection to nature, community gardeners reported significantly higher levels of subjective well-being than individual/home gardeners and non-gardeners, indicating that engagement ...

In Western thought and literature, a terrestrial bias is considered a phenomenological primacy for notions such as wilderness. This ecocritical review draws on nineteenth-century South Seas literature with its influences from frontierism and the literary movements of romanticism, realism and naturism to consider a more fluid appreciation and reconceptualisation of wilderness as non-terrestrial and an oceanic touchstone for freedom. American terrestrial frontierism, that drove colonial settlement of the North American continent, is used as both counterpoint and important embarkation point for ventures into the Pacific Ocean following ‘fulfilment’ of the ‘manifest destiny’ to overspread the continent. For American, British and Australian writers, the Pacific represented an opportunity to apply literary techniques to capture new encounters. South Seas works by Melville, Stevenson, Becke and Conrad offer glimpses of seascapes that provide perceptions of heterotopias, archetypes and depictions of dispossessed itinerants at a moral frontier and wilderness that is both sublime and liberating, liminal and phenomenological.

Nature exposure has been renowned for its positive physiological and psychological benefits. Recent years have seen a rise in nature immersion programs that make use of Guided Forest Therapy walks in a standard sequence of sensory awareness activities to expose participants to natural environments in a safe but effective manner. The study aimed to compare the efficacy of guided versus unguided nature immersion, upon three dependent variables of mood, nature connectedness and heartrate. 51 participants were assigned to either guided or unguided nature immersion. Nature connectedness (Connectedness to Nature Scale, CNS), Environmental Identity Scale, EID short form) and mood (Positive and Negative Affect Scale, PANAS) were assessed before and after nature immersion, while heart rate was tracked continuously by a wristwatch heart rate tracker throughout the 2-h experience. Demographics and general health practice (GHP) information were also collected. A mixed model ANOVA revealed that ...

Research on attention restoration theory has provided consistent results over the years, and exposure to nature has been found to significantly improve and restore directed attention fatigue. However, rapid urbanisation has made it increasingly difficult for human beings to interact with unpolluted nature. Countries such as Singapore began to integrate nature into city planning and into the designs of buildings to help resident satisfaction and well-being. Local studies have had contradictory outcomes; residents report significantly higher restoration and affect towards vertical integrated greeneries, but many would still prefer traditional on-the-ground foliage. Interest in outdoor greenspaces is variable because Singapore’s high heat and humid climate make it uncomfortable to interact with outside nature for prolonged periods. The current study tested alternative modalities that can provide residents with on-the-ground foliage interactions, without the discomfort of being outdoors...

People often use the same word while meaning very different things. Text analysis procedures can be applied to determine something of the meaning of words, typically from a single author. Rarely, however, have these procedures been used to explore the differences between individuals with different backgrounds and agendas, who nonetheless ostensibly claim to be talking about the same thing. In the current study, we explored the way in which an abstract word, 'values', was used by three interest groups in relation to the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, in Australia. Documents about the Wet Tropics produced by three environmental organisations, involved in either research, management, or conservation activism, were compared for their use of the word 'values'. Using WordStat text processing software, distributional information in the localised sentence context (keyword frequencies by group and proximal co-occurrence) was explored for clues to differences in the applied meanings of 'values'. Type-token identities showed that vocabulary diversity was similar for all groups. Cluster analyses revealed group differences in word associations and conceptual themes surrounding 'values'. The research group tended towards operational terms, in contrast with the management group themes which related to links with Indigenous landowners and their cultural ties to the land, and conservation group themes which related to economics and community development. As examples of language 'slippage', keywords associated with 'values' showed that presence of the expression can predict connotations of economic worth (ECONOMIC, VALUE, RESOURCE), positive and negative attributions (QUALITY, POTENTIAL, THREAT), and physical substance (FOREST, SPECIES, HABITAT). Values are additionally associated with environmentally relevant behaviours (CONTROL, PROTECTION, MANAGEMENT). It is essential for effective communication and credible environmental science that such core terms and considerations as environmental 'values' convey clear and shared meanings.

In her speculative fiction novel, Oryx and Crake, Atwood explores and challenges readers with visions of loss: the extinction of life forms, of culture, and loss of human control over various systems including those of language, economy and ecology. All such systems are prone to human manipulative influence and sensitive to minor alterations that result in major disruptions and ultimately to extinction, disappearance (both forms of loss) or, at best, altered forms of survival. I consider here McKibben’s suggestion that we live in a “postnatural world” because human activity has altered things as fundamental as the weather, and explore Atwood’s depiction of some of the consequences of a human-altered future in which a great city transforms into a harsh, tropical wilderness. I also apply Buell’s notion that apocalyptic rhetoric serves to alert people to global environmental threats by arousing their imagination to a “sense of crisis,” through this “master metaphor”. If only perception...

The purpose of the current study was to examine the internal consistency and structure of the English version of the Statistical Anxiety Rating Scale (STARS). Participants were 202 (79% females) psychology undergraduates was recruited from James Cook University's Singapore (71%) and Australia (29%) campuses. Acceptable internal consistency reliabilities, ranging from .81 to .94, were found in this sample. Approximate fit indices suggest that a correlated six first-order factor model best describes the data in contrast to theoretical considerations suggesting that a six factor model with two correlated superordinate factors (i.e., statistics anxiety and attitudes toward statistics) best describes the data. Researchers are recommended to use part one of the STARS to assess statistics anxiety and part two to assess attitudes toward statistics.

The study explores the influence of relative pronouns WHO or THAT on attributions of humanness across four categories of entities (unnamed nonhuman animals, named animals, machines, and people). Eighty-three university students performed an attribution task where they saw a priming phrase containing one category item with either WHO or THAT (e.g., deer who are …) and then two trait attribute items (Uniquely Human UH/Human Nature HN word pairs; e.g., distant-nervous), from which they selected the trait attribute most meaningfully suited to the phrase. Data were analyzed with a repeated measures 2 (humanness: HN traits, UH traits) × 2 (pronoun: WHO, THAT) × 4 (category: unnamed animals, named animals, machines, people) ANOVA. Participants responded relatively faster to HN trait attributes than to UH traits, and responded faster to named animals than to all other entities. Faster responses also ensued for people-WHO pairings than people-THAT pairings, and vice versa for named animals.

While authorial omniscience is denied the biographer, I argue that Lim as novelist takes this advantage in Sister Swing as a tool through which to explore the development of self-identity through characterizations of three sisters that in combination form the tripartite self as proposed by Freud. Autobiographical memories of familial, social and cultural life experiences are the source from which Lim draws and fleshes out, in her novel, portrayals of family members seeking freedom through different ways and means. As a self-analyst probing deep within the psyche, Lim employs linguistic stylizations to express contrastive and yet complementary points of view in a polyphonic unity of expression that echoes the id, ego and superego in Freud’s topographic model of personality. This psychoanalytic reading of the novel provides an opening through which to explore the deeper meanings within the novel and how the characters are interrelated beyond the level of sisterhood.

The study explored the fluctuations of statistics anxiety over four time periods during a semester. Participants were 37 students enrolled in statistics modules. Results revealed significant reductions in anxiety for students who had completed at least one statistics course before. This underscores the need for control groups in future research.

The intention-behaviour gap has been a barrier to health behavioural change. A total of 85 participants (aged 18–56 years) were recruited for a study that examined how two types of planning (Action and Coping) could bridge the intention-behaviour gap and increase physical exercise behaviours. The online study took place over two weeks, with participants completing pre- and post- measures of past exercise habits, intentions to exercise, subsequent physical exercise behaviours, intrinsic motivation levels, and engagement in action and coping planning. A hierarchical regression analysis showed that intentions, past exercise habits and action planning were significant predictors of change in physical exercise behaviours. Positive correlations were observed between participants’ past habits and their exercise behaviours during the study. 71.8% of participants met the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended guidelines for physical activity at the end of the study compared to the ini...

In Western thought and literature, a terrestrial bias is considered a phenomenological primacy for notions such as wilderness. This ecocritical review draws on nineteenth-century South Seas literature with its influences from frontierism and the literary movements of romanticism, realism and naturism to consider a more fluid appreciation and reconceptualisation of wilderness as non-terrestrial and an oceanic touchstone for freedom. American terrestrial frontierism, that drove colonial settlement of the North American continent, is used as both counterpoint and important embarkation point for ventures into the Pacific Ocean following ‘fulfilment’ of the ‘manifest destiny’ to overspread the continent. For American, British and Australian writers, the Pacific represented an opportunity to apply literary techniques to capture new encounters. South Seas works by Melville, Stevenson, Becke and Conrad offer glimpses of seascapes that provide perceptions of heterotopias, archetypes and depi...

The first purpose of the project was to examine the internal consistency and structure of the English version of the Statistical Anxiety Rating Scale (STARS). Participants were 202 (79% females) psychology undergraduates at James Cook University. Participants completed the STARS, the Statistical Anxiety Scale, and the Attitudes toward Statistics scale. Acceptable internal consistency reliabilities, ranging from .81 to .94, were found in this sample. Approximate fit indices suggest that a correlated six first-order factor model best describes the data in contrast to theoretical considerations suggesting that a six factor model with two correlated superordinate factors (i.e. statistics anxiety and attitudes toward statistics) best describes the data. The second purpose of the project was to examine the role of attentional bias in statistics anxiety in three experiments. Participants were 94 (73% females), 99 (68% females), and 104 (67% females) psychology undergraduates at James Cook ...