Workplace and family support and work–life balance: Implications for individual psychological availability and energy at work

This study presents three studies that explore the ways in which multiple support sources (workplace and family social support) help individuals to experience work–life balance (WLB) and thereby develop a sense psychological availability and positive energy at work. We examine this serial mediation model across three population groups in Israel using time-lagged data from part-time students (sample 1), as well cross-sectional data from workers in the industrial sector (sample 2) and physicians in public hospitals (sample 3). The results indicate a complex process in which workplace and family support augment employee positive energy through WLB and psychological availability. The findings shed light on the importance of support from work and nonwork sources for the pursuit of employees to achieve balance in the spheres of work and life and suggest that the WLB helps in the development of psychological availability and augmenting employee positive energy.     

Chased by the Past: The Relation Between Childhood Maltreatment and Fear of Childbirth

Sex Roles - Although childbirth is a normative physiological experience, it may be challenging for some women and especially for those who were exposed to childhood maltreatment. The aim of the...     

Working memory updating occurs independently of the need to maintain task-context: accounting for triggering updating in the AX-CPT paradigm

Psychological Research - Theoretical models suggest that maintenance and updating are two functional states of working memory (WM), which are controlled by a gate between perceptual information and...     

High school bullying as a risk for later depression and suicidality

This is the first study to examine whether high school students experiencing frequent bullying behaviors are at risk for later depression and suicidality. A total of 236 students who reported frequent bullying behavior without depression or suicidality during a suicide screening were interviewed 4 years later to reassess depression, suicidal ideation, attempts, substance problems, and functional impairment and were compared to at‐risk youth identified during the screen, including 96 youth who also experienced bullying behavior. Youth who only reported frequent bullying behaviors (as bullies, victims, or both) did not develop later depression or suicidality and continued to have fewer psychiatric problems than students identified as at‐risk for suicide. Students who experienced bullying behaviors and depression or suicidality were more impaired 4 years later than those who had only reported depression or suicidality. Thus, assessment of bullying behaviors in screening protocols is recommended.     

“Feeling” the pain of those who are different from us: Modulation of EEG in the mu/alpha range

We explored how apparently painful stimuli and the ability to identify with the person on whom the pain is inflicted modulate EEG suppression in the mu/alpha range (8–12 Hz). In a 2 × 2 design, we presented pictures of hands either experiencing needle pricks or being touched by a Q-tip. In the dissimilar-other condition, the hand was assigned to a patient suffering from a neurological disease in which Q-tips inflicted pain, whereas needle pricks did not. In the similar-other condition, the hand was assigned to a patient who responded to stimulation in the same way as the healthy participant. Participants were instructed to imagine the feeling of the person whose hand was shown and to evaluate his or her affective state. Pain conditions elicited greater EEG suppression than did nonpain conditions, particularly over frontocentral regions. Moreover, an interaction between pain and similarity revealed that for similar others, the pain effect was significant, whereas in the dissimilar-other group, suppression was equally large in the pain and no-pain conditions. We conclude that mu/alpha suppression is elicited both automatically, by observing a situation that is potentially painful for the observer, and by empathy for pain, even if the other person is different from oneself.     

Gender differences in global-local perception? Evidence from orientation and shape judgments

Direct examinations of gender differences in global-local processing are sparse, and the results are inconsistent. We examined this issue with a visuospatial judgment task and with a shape judgment task. Women and men were presented with hierarchical stimuli that varied in closure (open or closed shape) or in line orientation (oblique or horizontal/vertical) at the global or local level. The task was to classify the stimuli on the basis of the variation at the global level (global classification) or at the local level (local classification). Women’s classification by closure (global or local) was more accurate than men’s for stimuli that varied in closure on both levels, suggesting a female advantage in discriminating shape properties. No gender differences were observed in global-local processing bias. Women and men exhibited a global advantage, and they did not differ in their speed of global or local classification, with only one exception. Women were slower than men in local classification by orientation when the to-be-classified lines were embedded in a global line with a different orientation. This finding suggests that women are more distracted than men by misleading global oriented context when performing local orientation judgments, perhaps because women and men differ in their ability to use cognitive schemes to compensate for the distracting effects of the global context. Our findings further suggest that whether or not gender differences arise depends not only on the nature of the visual task but also on the visual context.     

Spatio-temporal organization during group formation in rats

In the present study, the dynamic process of group formation in eight unfamiliar rats was followed in order to reveal how the group becomes oriented together in time and space, in light of the complexity that accompanies grouping. The focus was on who, where, and when joined together. We found that rats preferred to be in companionship over remaining alone, with all the rats gradually shifting to share the same location as a resting place. Group formation can be viewed as a tri-phasic process, with some rats gradually becoming more social than others, and thus playing a key role in group formation. Starting with seemingly independent traveling, the rats gradually converged to share the same location as a terminal (home base) for roundtrips in the arena. Because such a terminal is considered as the organizer of an individual’s spatial behavior, the shared home-base location may be viewed as the organizer of spatial behavior of the entire group. Despite huddling together, the rats continued to travel alone or in duos throughout the 3 h of testing. We suggest that resting together and traveling alone or in duos enabled the maintenance of communal relationship while reducing the complexity involved in traveling in relatively large groups. Taken together, the present results demonstrate the dynamic process during which unfamiliar rats shift from independent to group spatial behavior.     

Incidental formation of episodic associations: The importance of sentential context

The influence of relevant semantic context on the incidental formation of episodic associations between words was probed in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we examined the influence of associations formed incidentally between unrelated words presented either in isolation or embedded in a sentential context on subsequent explicit paired-associate leaning tested by cued recall. The results of Experiment 1 showed that the cued-recall rate of words studied in sentential context was higher than that of words co-occurring in isolated pairs. A subsequent single-items recognition test showed equal item memory for words studied in sentences than for words studied in isolated pairs, suggesting that the sentential context effect in cued recall indeed reflected stronger associations between paired words rather than better memory for single words. In Experiment 2, we ruled out memory for the entire sentence as an alternative explanation for the results of Experiment 1. We suggest two possible mechanisms to account for this advantage: First, pairs embedded in a sentence undergo semantic elaboration that might lead to the incidental formation of an association between them. Second, words embedded in a sentence enjoy the conjoint activation of compatible semantic features, a fact that may also facilitate the formation of an episodic association between them. The implications of these results for computational models using word representations based on co-occurrence data are discussed.     

Age-related accelerated tapping response in healthy population

Different types of rapid tapping responses were described in the finger-tapping test. The "Hastening phenomenon" was described as an abnormal motor response in patients with Parkinson's disease. Accelerated tapping has been shown in a healthy elderly sample. It is not clear whether accelerated tapping relates to the hastening phenomenon or characterizes normal aging. We hypothesized that this sample of 21 healthy elderly people showed increased accelerated tapping but not hastening phenomenon. To assess this hypothesis, 20 healthy young and 21 elderly subjects performed a tapping test, requiring responses from 1 to 6 Hz. The healthy elderly sample showed increased accelerated tapping but not increased "hastening phenomenon." We conclude that Accelerated tapping may represent age-related motor processes unlike the hastening phenomenon characterizing Parkinson's disease.     

Nothing New Under the Sun? A Comparison of Images of Women in Israeli Advertisements in 1979 and 1994

The changing role of women in society hascreated a challenging task for advertisers — howto portray women in advertisements. The subject of thisarticle is a comparison of two studies undertaken in1979 and 1994 of the portrayal of women and men inprinted Israeli advertisements. These studies respond,in part, to the need articulated by Durkin (1985) forthe analysis of advertisements from countries other than the United States. While Durkin focused ontelevision, however, this study concentrates onadvertisements in the print media because Israelicommercial television is very young, having made itsdebut only at the beginning of the 1990s. The purposeof this paper is essentially twofold: first, to provideevidence about gender display in advertising in Israel— a non-English speaking, capitalist, Western democracy that nevertheless possesses strongtraditional normsand second, to provide a comprehensivepicture of Israel's advertising print output byanalyzing various daily newspapers andmagazines.