TASK-RELEVANT CONTROL IN ORGANIZATIONS1

Studies of organizational power using questionnaire measures of perceived control have usually asked respondents, “How much influence do (various groups in the hierarchy) have on what goes on in your organization?” The present study measured such general control, plus control over specific task-relevant responsibilities. Data were obtained from 526 individuals at four hierarchical levels in 20 regional offices of an insurance company. Predicted relationships between total general control and task-relevant control and an independent measure of effectiveness were only partially supported. The general manager's control was more important than expected. However, measuring task-relevant control could be a useful management tool, and could help future research explicate relationships between control and effectiveness.     

Children's attention to stimulus components with variation in relative salience of components and degree of stimulus integration

A total of 400 children at ages 5, 9, and 12 years were given a component selection task with stimuli differing in color and shape. Relative salience of these two stimulus components was manipulated across subjects in two ways: the standard shapes and colors from previous studies were compared with standard shapes in fluorescent colors, and the latter materials were compared with nonsense shapes in fluorescent colors. While fluorescence of color had little effect, the replacement of standard shapes with nonsense figures caused attention to be redirected from shape to color as the primary cue for learning. This effect was more pronounced at age 9 than at age 5. Apparently there is a greater tendency for older than for younger children to withdraw attention from a normally dominant component such as shape, when it is advantageous to adopt another feature such as color as the primary functional cue. An additional variable was integration of components (color within shape vs color as background for shape). Integration produced generally greater attention to color but did not affect the general pattern of salience effects.     

Influence of linguistic complexity,rate of presentation,and interphrase pause time on auditory-verbal comprehension of adult aphasic patients

Among the variables affecting comprehension of linguistic stimuli by aphasic subjects are syntactic complexity and processing time. Comprehension performance of 15 aphasic adults was studied while altering the rate of speech presentation and varying the pause time between the major phrases within sentences of increasing grammatical complexity.Simple Active Affirmative Declarative Sentences, Negative, and Passive sentences were presented (1) at the rate of 150 words per minute (wpm) with 1-sec interphrase pause time (IPT); (2) 150 wpm with no pauses; (3) 120 wpm with 1-sec IPT; (4) 120 wpm with no pauses added.Performance was seen to vary with increasing syntactical complexity and as a function of processing time. Greater comprehension was seen with active affirmative than negative; greater with passive affirmative than with active negative. Clinical implications are discussed. Subjects demonstrated greater comprehension when sentences were presented at slower than normal rate; addition of interphrase pause time intervals aided comprehension. Combining slower rate of presentation and IPT intervals provided greatest increase in auditory processing time and showed concomitant increase in comprehension performance.     

Counterfactual Logic and the Necessity of Mathematics

Journal of Philosophical Logic - This paper is concerned with counterfactual logic and its implications for the modal status of mathematical claims. It is most directly a response to an ambitious...     

Various relationships between predatory dominance and aggressive behavior in Pairs of cats

The experiments were performed on adult male cats selected initially as good mousekillers. Cats were tested in pairs and each pair was introduced separately to the experimental compartment. The attitude toward the partner before and during the predatory competition test as well as superiority in catching and killing the mice, considered as an index of dominance, were registered. In the course of experiment five types of relations between the predatory dominance and aggressive behavior were observed. The concept of dominance as an outcome of several factors was discussed. It was concluded that predatory dominance is not based exclusively on aggressive mechanisms, as it may be formed and sustained without overt aggression.     

Defensive reactions of “wild-type” and “Domesticated” wild rats to approach and contact by a threat stimulus

Selective breeding of wild rats over many generations on the basis of low or high defensive threat and attack to human approach and contact has produced highly polarized “domesticated” and “wild-type” animals. Because the selection procedure selectively involves these two defense patterns, and these clearly differ in the two groups, it is of interest to determine if other, nonselected, defensive behaviors to threat stimuli also change. “Domesticated” and “wild-type” rats of the thirty-fifth generation were run in a fear defense test battery (F/DTB) to systematically evaluate defensive behaviors to a variety of present threat stimuli. “Domesticated” rats showed reduced avoidance and slower flight speed to an approaching experimenter, reduced jump/startle response to handelap and dorsal contact, less vocalization and boxing to vibrissae stimulation or to an anesthetized conspecific, and reduced defensiveness to an attempted pickup by the experimenter. These results indicate that selective bi-directional breeding for defensive threat and attack to human approach and contact produces group differences in a variety of defensive behaviors, and in defensiveness to stimuli other than those on which the selection was based. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.