A sense of belonging-the subjective feeling of deep connection with social groups, physical places, and individual and collective experiences-is a fundamental human need that predicts numerous mental, physical, social, economic, and behavioural outcomes. However, varying perspectives on how belonging should be conceptualised, assessed, and cultivated has hampered much-needed progress on this timely and important topic. To address these critical issues, we conducted a narrative review that summarizes existing perspectives on belonging, describes a new integrative framework for understanding and studying belonging, and identifies several key avenues for future research and practice.

With the increasing amount of information presented on current human-computer interfaces, eye-controlled highlighting has been proposed, as a new display technique, to optimise users' task performances. However, it is unknown to what extent the eye-controlled highlighting display facilitates visual search performance. The current study examined the facilitative effect of eye-controlled highlighting display technique on visual search with two major attributes of visual stimuli: stimulus type and the visual similarity between targets and distractors.

This study used matched samples from schools in the states of Victoria, Australia and Washington, United States (US), to compare sexual behaviour in early adolescence. It was hypothesised that the contrasting dominant policy objectives of harm minimisation in Australia and abstinence in the US would result in state differences for markers of sexual risk, mirroring prior cross-national findings in substance use.

Anxiety and depression are highly prevalent disorders in adolescence. They are associated with deficits in working memory (WM), which also appears to increase rumination, worry, and negative mood. WM training, especially in an emotional context, might help in reducing or preventing these disorders. The current study investigated the direct effects of online emotional WM training on WM capacity, and short- and long-term effects on symptoms of anxiety and depression, and secondary measures of emotional functioning.

Early maltreatment increases lifetime risk of psychopathology. Emerging models suggest that exposure to maltreatment leads to changes in cognitive processes associated with the processing of threat, including processes of selective attention. Existing data may be interpreted to suggest that maltreatment is associated with an automatic attentional engagement with threatening cues, or that maltreatment is associated with generally poorer attention control. Using a pair of attention tasks, this study sought to examine whether maltreatment was associated with threat-related interference on attention processing and if this could be explained by poorer attentional control capacity.

The messages mothers communicate to their children about coping may play an important role in children's emotional development by shaping children's responses to stress. Building on prior research demonstrating associations between maternal socialization of coping (SOC) and children's self-reported coping and emotional functioning (Abaied & Rudolph, 2010; 2011), we examined the contribution of SOC to children's physiological responses to stress. Mothers completed a measure of SOC with peer victimization. Children ( = 118; age = 9.46 years, = 0.33) completed a measure of peer victimization and participated in a laboratory social challenge task. Saliva samples were collected prior to and following the task and were assayed for alpha-amylase (sAA), a marker of autonomic nervous system (ANS) activation. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed that SOC contributed to sAA reactivity. Peer victimization predicted greater sAA reactivity when mothers made few engagement suggestions (orienting toward stress and associated emotions and cognitions) but not when mothers made many engagement suggestions. Mothers' distress responses predicted greater sAA reactivity. These findings provide novel evidence that the messages parents communicate about coping have implications for children's physiological reactivity to stress during middle childhood.

Processes of coping with stress and the regulation of emotion reflect basic aspects of development and play an important role in models of risk for psychopathology and the development of preventive interventions and psychological treatments. However, research on these two constructs has been represented in two separate and disconnected bodies of work. We examine possible points of convergence and divergence between these constructs with regard to definitions and conceptualization, research methods and measurement, and interventions to prevent and treat psychopathology. There is clear evidence that coping and emotion regulation are distinct but closely related constructs in all of these areas. The field will benefit from greater integration of methods and findings in future research.

Temperament, appraisal, and coping are known to underlie emotion regulation, yet less is known about how these processes relate to each other across time. We examined temperamental fear, frustration, effortful control, and impulsivity, positive and threat appraisals, and active and avoidant coping as processes underpinning the emotion regulation of pre-adolescent children managing stressful events. Appraisal and coping styles were tested as mediators of the longitudinal effects of temperamental emotionality and self-regulation on adjustment using a community sample (=316) of preadolescent children (8-12 years at T1) studied across one year. High threat appraisals were concurrently related to high fear and impulsivity, whereas effortful control predicted relative decreases in threat appraisal. High fear was concurrently related to high positive appraisal, and impulsivity predicted increases in positive appraisal. Fear was concurrently related to greater avoidant coping, and impulsivity predicted increases in avoidance. Frustration predicted decreases in active coping. These findings suggest temperament, or dispositional aspects of reactivity and regulation, relates to concurrent appraisal and coping processes and additionally predicts change in these processes. Significant indirect effects indicated that appraisal and coping mediated the effects of temperament on adjustment. Threat appraisal mediated the effects of fear and effortful control on internalizing and externalizing problems, and avoidant coping mediated the effect of impulsivity on internalizing problems. These mediated effects suggest that one pathway through which temperament influences adjustment is pre-adolescents' appraisal and coping. Findings highlight temperament, appraisal and coping as emotion regulation processes relevant to children's adjustment in response to stress.

School suspension has been not only associated with negative behaviours but is predictive of future poor outcomes. The current study investigates a) whether school suspension is a unique predictor of youth nonviolent antisocial behaviour (NVAB) relative to other established predictors, and b) whether the predictors of NVAB are similar in Australia and the United States (U.S.). The data analysed here draws on two state-wide representative samples of Grade 7 and 9 students in Victoria, Australia and Washington State, U.S., resurveyed at 12-month follow-up (N = 3,677, 99% retention). School suspension did not uniquely predict NVAB in the final model. The predictors of NVAB, similar across states, included previous student NVAB; current alcohol and tobacco use; poor family management; association with antisocial friends; and low commitment to school. An implication of the findings is that U.S. evidence-based prevention programs targeting the influences investigated here could be trialled in Australia.

These abstracts form the collection of papers that were presented at the 4th UQ Symposium on Organisational Psychology held at Emmanuel College, University of Queensland, Brisbane on Saturday 24th July, 2004. The UQ Symposium on Organisational Psychology is an annual even organised by the Centre for Organisational Psychology at the University of Queensland. The aim of the symposium is for academic psychologists to present their latest research to fellow academics and practitioners. Papers were accepted for either paper presentation or poster presentation following a peer-review process. The 100 delegates who attended consisted of practitioners and academics. The invited speaker was Dr Sally Carless (Monash University, Melbourne) who presented her latest research on selection procedures. The 5th Symposium will take place on Saturday 4th June, 2005. For more information about the UQ Symposium on Organisational Psychology series please contact Robin Martin (r.martin@psy.uq.edu.au).

This study investigated the relationships among education, liberal sex-role values, gender-role orientation (masculinity/femininity), career commitment, and employment level for a sample of 302 married Indonesian women. All participants were tertiary educated and currently employed either as teachers in tertiary institutions or as managers in government or private enterprise. Multiple regression analysis revealed that liberal sex-role values and masculinity were significant predictors of career commitment, whereas education was the only variable to significantly predict employment level. Results are compared with previous research on predictors of career commitment and employment level in both Asian and Western cultures. Directions for further research are discussed.