Moods and Quality of Life

In modern society, flow and stress are well-known terms in the theoretical discussions of the good life, subjective well-being and quality of life. The purpose of this article is to present the results of a phenomenological analysis of flow and stress experiences in everyday life. The analysis yielded a distinction between different phenomenological dimensions identified as arising in different combinations within concrete experience of flow and stress. These different dimensions were characterised by different feelings, different experiences of time and different experiences of the world. The results are discussed and interpreted in the light of Martin Heidegger's, Otto Friedrich Bollnow's and F.C.J. Buytendijk's theories of moods and feelings. Flow and stress experiences are phenomenologically interpreted as moods and classified as a modern version of basic polarities of moods as described by Bollnow and Buytendijk. Lastly, the concept of mood is emphasised as a specific entrance to the subjective and experienced dimensions involved in the complex concepts of quality of life, the good life and happiness.     

Exploring the Boundaries of Sublexical Word Identification Units: The Use of Onsets and Rimes and Reading Ability

Four priming experiments investigating the functional use of onsets and rimes as identification units in normally and poorly reading children, matched on reading age level, are reported. Experiments 1 (onsets) and 2 (rimes) used monosyllabic words. High- and low-frequency bigram letter clusters were primed. Primes turned out to be more effective when they coincided with the rimes of target words then when they did not. For onsets this was not the case. The effect of priming was stronger in low-frequency letter clusters. For rime units there was a significant prime by rime coincidence interaction, consistent with data presented by Bowey (1990). A differential effect of rime priming was obtained for the ability groups in high-frequency letter clusters. Only in the normal reader control group were response latencies negatively affected by noncoinciding primes in high-frequency rime units. This finding suggests that these subjects probably had better access to letter information in the final part of words. In Experiments 3 (onsets) and 4 (rimes) bisyllabic compound nouns were used. Elements of the second syllable were used as primes. Main group effects were found in both experiments, but the effects obtained with monosyllabic words were not replicated. It is concluded that onset/rime mechanisms primarily operate within the boundaries of monosyllabic words and/or in stressed syllables.     

The layman's use of trait and behavioral information to predict behavior

This study investigated conditions that determine subjects' preferences for information about another person's traits versus his specific past behavior in order to predict his future behavior. The similarity-dissimilarity between the situation for which past behavior was available and the one to which predictions had to be made strongly influenced the choice of specific behavioral information versus more general trait information. As expected, behavioral information was preferred most when the situation to which behavior had to be predicted was highly similar to the one for which the past behavioral data were available. On the other hand, more general trait information was preferred in predicting to situations that were not directly similar to those for which past behavioral information was available. The effect of the temporal span covered by available information was also explored.     

State work engagement and state affect: Similar yet distinct concepts

State work engagement (SWE), a multidimensional construct of work-related well-being, was originally conceptualized as a trait, but diary studies have revealed substantial within-person fluctuations. Given that SWE is conceptualized as a work-related affective-motivational construct, the question arises as to whether SWE can be differentiated from other affective constructs. Thus, the goal of the present study was to compare SWE and state affect with respect to their degree of within-person variability and to examine their distinct relationships with health and performance variables (i.e., sleep quality and job performance). Fifty-two employees (44% female) participated in the study, which included 3 assessments per day over the course of 2 weeks. Our results revealed that energetic arousal and tense arousal fluctuated more strongly within days than vigor and absorption. Multilevel analyses demonstrated that high sleep quality predicted higher state affect but not higher SWE. In addition, vigor exhibited an inverted U-shaped relation with performance. In sum, SWE as a time-varying construct showed some overlap with state affect but also demonstrated discriminant validity.     

Understanding the contribution of target repetition and target expectation to the emergence of the prevalence effect in visual search

Behavior in visual search tasks is influenced by the proportion of trials on which a target is presented (the target prevalence). Previous research has shown that when target prevalence is low (2 % prevalence), participants tend to miss targets, as compared with higher prevalence levels (e.g., 50 % prevalence). There is an ongoing debate regarding the relative contributions of target repetition and the expectation that a target will occur in the emergence of prevalence effects. In order to disentangle these two factors, we went beyond previous studies by directly manipulating participants’ expectations regarding how likely a target was to appear on a given trial. This we achieved without using cues or feedback. Our results indicated that both target repetition and target expectation contribute to the emergence of the prevalence effect.     

Effects of environmental enrichment on cognitive performance of pigs in a spatial holeboard discrimination task

This study investigated the effects of environmental enrichment on the cognitive performance of female conventional farm (growing) pigs in a spatial holeboard task. Ten pairs of littermates matched for weight were used. From each litter, one piglet was randomly assigned to a barren environment; the other was assigned to an enriched environment from 4 weeks of age. The enriched environment was double the size of the barren environment, had a floor covered with straw, a rooting area filled with peat, and one of the four different enrichment toys which were exchanged daily. Starting at 11 weeks of age, all pigs were tested in a spatial holeboard discrimination task in which 4 out of 16 holes were baited. Furthermore, basal salivary cortisol levels of all pigs were determined after the end of all testing. All pigs were able to acquire the pattern of baited holes (acquisition phase, 40 trials) and the diagonally mirrored pattern (reversal phase, 20 trials). During the acquisition phase, the reference memory performance of the enriched-housed pigs was better than that of their barren-housed littermates, i.e. they reduced visits to the unbaited set of holes. During the reversal phase, enriched-housed pigs had a better general working memory performance than the barren-housed pigs as indicated by reduced revisits to holes already visited during a trial, irrespective of whether they were of the baited or the unbaited set. The enriched-housed pigs also searched for the hidden bait faster during both phases. The environments did not affect basal salivary cortisol levels. In conclusion, environmental enrichment slightly improved the cognitive performance of pigs in a spatial learning task. We hypothesise that the long period of habituation to and testing in the holeboard acted as enrichment that partially reduced the effects of barren housing.