It has been suggested that social withdrawal (NEET/Hikikomori behaviour) occurs as a result of an individual’s difficulty to adapt to social norms and pressures within given cultures (marginalisation), and is present in collectivistic cultures with high social pressures and expectations. Since most of the NEET/Hikikomori studies have been conducted in Japan, we examine its applicability in Singapore with the NEET/Hikikomori Risk scale. We collected data from university students, and were able to confirm its convergent validity. To better understand its social and psychological context, we conducted an exploratory analysis to find associations with perceived deficits in social relationships, self-esteem and competence, as well as personality, anxiety, depression, and cultural self-construal. Consistent with previous findings in Japan, the evidence supports the risks of NEET/Hikikomori tendencies in Singapore as concurrent with cultural marginalisation, perceived social rejection and low views of self.

Previous studies on the Think/No-Think (TNT) paradigm have demonstrated that retrieval stopping causes later forgetting. Although precise mechanisms of this retrieval stopping effect have come under scrutiny, a recent study (Hertel & Hayes, 2015) has provided a signpost finding; that is, in a flanker task subsequent to a TNT task, ratings of words flanked by cues for retrieval stopping were slower among those who stopped retrieval by pushing memories out of awareness (i.e., direct suppression), but not among those who did so by thinking of another memory (i.e., thought substitution). This result is attributable to two possible mechanisms: cues for direct suppression triggered some inhibitory mechanisms (inhibition transfer) or they drew more attention than other cues (attentional capture). The present study clarifies the aftereffect of direct suppression by conducting a TNT experiment with a dot-probe task, wherein probes appear following TNT cues, including suppression ones. Participants who engaged in thought substitution showed attentional capture by TNT cues; faster responses to probes presented in the same position of TNT cues, and slower responses to probes presented in the opposite position. However, those who engaged in direct suppression did not show attentional capture. These results are clearly inconsistent with the attentional capture account for the aftereffect of direct suppression, which, in turn, favours inhibition transfer account. Correlation analyses also supported inhibition transfer. Repeated direct suppression might associate suppression cues with inhibitory mechanisms, resulting in inhibition exerted automatically by the presentation of suppression cues.

In China, learning weariness is the focus of attention, but few studies have explored the potential impact of bullying victimization on learning weariness. This study examines their relationship by exploring the mediating effect of two collectivism factors, attitude toward school and social alienation. One thousand one hundred and thirty-two students from 9 middle schools in rural China (11–15 years, 51.4% boys) participated in this study. Results show that bullying victimization has a significant impact on Chinese students’ learning weariness. Both negative attitudes toward school and social alienation have significant mediate effects, and the indirect result of negative school attitude is significantly higher than social alienation.

Most psychiatric nurses do not implement cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) after training. We examined the experience of psychiatric nurses from Hong Kong (HK) in learning and implementing CBT in clinical practice and elucidated the reasons for discontinuing and continuing CBT using a qualitative interview and evaluation survey. We interviewed 13 Chinese psychiatric nurses trained in CBT and reviewed 35 evaluation forms from nurses not implementing CBT. The survey response rate was 100%. Among eligible participants, >70% were recruited from different psychiatric settings to minimize the bias. The overarching theme was the “challenges of psychiatric nurses in CBT learning and implementation and reasons to continue learning CBT without a clear role in CBT delivery.” The main themes were challenges in learning and implementing CBT and positive CBT experience. The psychiatric nurses’ role in HK needs a clear definition for delivering CBT.

Leadership is a competency that every leader should possess to continuously develop his/her organisation or members. Studies have examined relation-oriented authentic leadership and goal-oriented transformational leadership in the field of sport; however, scant studies have addressed the quality and effectiveness of the interrelationship between these two leadership styles. This study attempted to empirically verify the structural relationship between golf coaches’ authentic leadership and transformational leadership and leader-member exchange (LMX) and perceived athlete performance. Participants were 205 golfers who had participated in an amateur golf championship and who were selected from 10 private golf academies located in Daejeon and the Chungcheongbuk Province in South Korea. Data were collected using a questionnaire, and frequency, confirmatory factor, reliability, correlation, hierarchical regression and structural equation model analyses were conducted using SPSS version 20.0 and AMOS 20.0. Results showed that both authentic and transformational leadership had a positive effect on LMX, while authentic leadership and not transformational leadership had a positive effect on athlete’s perceived performance. Results also showed that LMX had no significant effect on athlete’s perceived performance. The implications of the effect of authentic and transformational leadership on LMX and perceived athlete performance are discussed.