interview practice u.s. style: a workshop for international students

The author describes a practice interview workshop customized for international graduate students. The session covered cultural and communication dynamics in the interview process, practice exercises, and a question‐and‐answer period.     

Who is dominating the Dutch neighbourhood? On the role of subsyllabic units in Dutch nonword reading

To assess the role of the subsyllabic units onset-nucleus (ON; spark) and rime (spark) in Dutch visual word recognition, we compared lexical decisions to four groups of nonwords in which the existence of ONs and rimes was orthogonally manipulated. Nonwords with existent ONs and/or rimes were rejected more slowly and less accurately. ON and rime neighbours thus influence Dutch nonword reading to the same extent. Simulations with the interactive activation model (McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981) revealed that this model with left-to-right coded representations could not replicate the effects found in the lexical decision data whereas an adapted version with representations of onset, nucleus, and coda could. Effects of the larger units ON and rime emerged from activation patterns created by the smaller units onset, nucleus, and coda.     

Contextual fear conditioning predicts subsequent avoidance behaviour in a virtual reality environment

Avoidance behaviour is a crucial component of fear and is importantly involved in the maintenance of anxiety disorders. Presumably, fear conditioning leads to avoidance of the feared object or context. A virtual reality contextual fear conditioning paradigm was used to investigate the association between explicit conditioning effects and subsequent avoidance behaviour. Mild electric shocks were administered in one context (anxiety context), but never in a second context (safety context). Subsequent avoidance behaviour was assessed by asking participants to choose two out of three contexts (a neutral context was added) to visit again. Participants avoided the anxiety context, but did not prefer the safety over the neutral context. Participants with substantial conditioning effects, as reflected in differential valence, arousal and anxiety ratings, avoided the anxiety context but not the safety context. In sum, we demonstrated an association between context conditioning effects on an explicit level and later avoidance behaviour.     

Go/NoGo Performance in Boys with Tourette Syndrome

This study compared performance and performance monitoring in 19 boys with Tourette syndrome (TS) (12.64 years, ± 2.05) and 19 age-matched controls (13.16 years, ± 2.29) using a Go/NoGo task. The results indicated similar performance accuracy in the TS group and the control group. TS participants showed slower correct responses than the control group, whereas error response times were not different between the groups. The results are discussed with reference to inhibitory adaptive effects that may be employed by TS participants to maintain high accuracy at the cost of overall slower performance. These effects may be suspended prior to errors.     

Seeking security or growth: a regulatory focus perspective on motivations in romantic relationships

Using a multimethod approach, we examined how regulatory focus shapes people's perceptual, behavioral, and emotional responses in different situations in romantic relationships. We first examined how chronic regulatory focus affects romantic partners' support perceptions and problem-solving behaviors while they were engaged in a conflict resolution discussion (Study 1). Next, we experimentally manipulated regulatory focus and tested its effects on partner perceptions when individuals recalled a prior conflict resolution discussion (Study 2). We then examined how chronic regulatory focus influences individuals' emotional responses to hypothetical relationship events (Study 3) and identified specific partner behaviors to which people should respond with regulatory goal-congruent emotions (Study 4). Strongly prevention-focused people perceived their partners as more distancing and less supportive during conflict (Studies 1 and 2), approached conflict resolution by discussing the details related to the conflict (Study 1), and experienced a negative relationship outcome with more agitation (Study 3). Strongly promotion-focused people perceived their partners as more supportive and less distancing (Studies 1 and 2), displayed more creative conflict resolution behavior (Study 1), and experienced a negative relationship outcome with more sadness and a favorable outcome with more positive emotions (Study 3). In Study 4, recalling irresponsible and responsible partner behaviors was associated with experiencing more prevention-focused emotions, whereas recalling affectionate and neglectful partner behaviors was associated with more promotion-focused emotions. The findings show that regulatory focus and approach-avoidance motivations influence certain interpersonal processes in similar ways, but regulatory focus theory also generates novel predictions on which approach-avoidance models are silent.     

Maternal sensitivity assessed during the strange situation procedure predicts child's attachment quality and reunion behaviors

The 72-item version maternal behavior Q-set (MBQS; Pederson & Moran, 1995) was used to assess maternal behaviors (N = 74) during the Strange Situation Procedure. Results indicated that the MBQS scores significantly differentiated infant attachment categories and were significantly associated with a series of infants’ reunion behaviors.     

An improved algorithm for automatic detection of saccades in eye movement data and for calculating saccade parameters

This analysis of time series of eye movements is a saccade-detection algorithm that is based on an earlier algorithm. It achieves substantial improvements by using an adaptive-threshold model instead of fixed thresholds and using the eye-movement acceleration signal. This has four advantages: (1) Adaptive thresholds are calculated automatically from the preceding acceleration data for detecting the beginning of a saccade, and thresholds are modified during the saccade. (2) The monotonicity of the position signal during the saccade, together with the acceleration with respect to the thresholds, is used to reliably determine the end of the saccade. (3) This allows differentiation between saccades following the main-sequence and non-main-sequence saccades. (4) Artifacts of various kinds can be detected and eliminated. The algorithm is demonstrated by applying it to human eye movement data (obtained by EOG) recorded during driving a car. A second demonstration of the algorithm detects microsleep episodes in eye movement data.     

A self-regulation account of the job performance–job satisfaction relationship

We present a self-regulation account of the job performance–job satisfaction relationship according to which job performance leads to job satisfaction, if it involves optimal expectancies for successful performance. Using response surface methodology (n = 747 employees), we found that employees who held overly negative (self-effacement) or overly positive self-perceptions of performance (self-enhancement) gained less satisfaction from their jobs. As hypothesized by self-discrepancy theory, self-effacement promoted fear-related negative emotions, whereas self-enhancement was linked to disappointment. Self-enhancers also reported lower trust and reduced satisfaction with interpersonal relationships, which may partly explain why self-enhancement had particularly detrimental effects. Furthermore, among employees high in performance-goal orientation, attaining high normative performance, as indicated by above-average supervisor evaluations, rather than optimal expectancies for success, explained job satisfaction. Our findings support the conclusion that need satisfaction and the ensuing self-regulatory processes determine the shape and the size of the performance–satisfaction relationship.     

Orthographic learning in children with isolated and combined reading and spelling deficits

Dissociations between reading and spelling problems are likely to be associated with different underlying cognitive deficits, and with different deficits in orthographic learning. In order to understand these differences, the current study examined orthographic learning using a printed-word learning paradigm. Children (4th grade) with isolated reading, isolated spelling and combined reading and spelling problems were compared to children with age appropriate reading and spelling skills on their performance during learning novel words and symbols (non-verbal control condition), and during immediate and delayed reading and spelling recall tasks. No group differences occurred in the non-verbal control condition. In the verbal condition, initial learning was intact in all groups, but differences occurred during recall tasks. Children with reading fluency deficits showed slower reading times, while children with spelling deficits were less accurate, both in reading and spelling recall. Children with isolated spelling problems showed no difficulties in immediate spelling recall, but had problems in remembering the spellings 2 hours later. The results suggest that different orthographic learning deficits underlie reading fluency and spelling problems: Children with isolated reading fluency deficits have no difficulties in building-up orthographic representations, but access to these representations is slowed down while children with isolated spelling deficits have problems in storing precise orthographic representations in long-term memory.