Frames of reference and cooperative social decision-making

Cooperative decision-making was studied as a function of the decision-makers' own, and the interdependent other party's gain or loss frame. As expected, results showed that (a) an own gain frame produced less cognitive activity than an own loss frame and (b) other's loss frame caused more cooperation than other's gain frame, but only in case of an own gain frame.     

Empowerment praxis in community coalitions

Community coalitions address a wide variety of community problems, espousing a community development processes that promotes individual and collective self-determination. They offer a promising venue for the study of empowerment of individuals and organizations. This study utilizes data from members of 35 community coalitions organized for the prevention of alcohol and other drug problems to address the following questions: What individual characteristics are related to the psychological empowerment of coalition members? What organizational characteristics are related to the collective empowering of members? What organization characteristics are related to a coalition being organizationally empowered to succeed in achieving its objectives? At the individual level, psychological empowerment was most strongly related to individuals' participation levels, sense of community, and perceptions of a positive organizational climate. At the group level, the strongest predictors of collective empowering (our operationalization of the empowering organization) were net benefits of participation, commitment, and positive organization climate. Psychological empowerment and positive organizational climate were the two predictors of organizational effectiveness (the empowered organization). Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.     

Blocking of the response-reinforcer association: Additional evidence

Response rates maintained by free-operant schedules are sometimes reduced when a brief signal is interposed between the response and reinforcer. Early interpretations of this rate reduction were in terms of associative competition between the response and signal, analogous to blocking and overshadowing effects obtained in Pavlovian conditioning. But subsequent evidence has disputed this interpretation by showing that the signal enhances response rate in several circumstances. The present study attempted to define the conditions determining the different effects by investigating the role of signal location in the delay-of-reinforcement interval. When it occurred immediately after a response, response rate was enhanced. When it occurred at the end of the delay interval, immediately preceding the reinforcer, the signal decreased response rate. A similar decremental effect occurred when the signal occurred in the middle of the delay interval, contiguous with neither the response nor the reinforcer. Similar blocking effects occurred with a response acquisition procedure. The results demonstrate that blocking effects do indeed occur in instrumental conditioning but that the usual procedure of using signals immediately contingent on responding confounds such blocking effects with the competing effects of conditioned reinforcement/marking.     

Progamming time in serial tapping responses as a function of pathway constraint

Summary This study varied the accuracy demand within a linear series of targets to investigate the effect of movement-pathway constraints on response-programming time. Sidaway, Christina, and Shea (1988) have suggested that constraints placed upon movement initiation by the demand for response precision may play an important role in determining the length of the programming process. By varying the subtended angles of a series of three targets, this experiment tested the specific prediction of Sidaway et al. that programming time may be a function of the target, within a line of targets, that subtends the smallest angle at the start position. It is this target that demands the greatest precision in the movement pathway. Subjects participated in a series of conditions in which the size and placement of the target that imposed the maximal constraint was varied. In each condition the subjects were required to strike a series of three targets with a stylus in a simple reaction-time paradigm. Analysis of the reaction-time results revealed a significant effect of size of constraint, but no effect of position of constraint. Analysis of the movementtime data dispelled movement-duration and movement-velocity interpretations of the results and intimated a possible online trajectory-correction process.Portions of these data were first presented at the Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society in Atlanta, Georgia, November 1989.     

Job demands,supports, and constraints as predictors of psychological strain among schoolteachers

The literature on occupational stress contains two relatively independent bodies of literature, one of which shows that stress results from high work demands and the other which indicates that stress is associated with low levels of autonomy/discretion. Recent work has also shown that social support moderates the relationship between environmental stress and psychological strain. This paper uses a model of stress which assumes that stress is a function of the balance of demands, supports, and job constraints. The model is tested on a homogeneous professional group of workers because a previous study had suggested that models of this kind are powerful enough to detect differences in psychological strain when unskilled groups are compared with managers, but not when managers are compared with managers. The empirical results of this study of teachers show very modest support for the model, but confirm that the percentage of variance accounted for by these sorts of measures is rather small.     

The role of category information in word identification: A parallel decision model

Four experiments consider the role of semantic category information in word identification using a serial classification reaction time paradigm. Experimental variables were manipulated by varying the semantic properties of blocks of trials and the target search instructions. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 investigated the facilitation on target word recognition of manipulating the categorical homogeneity of the nontarget words. An homogeneous nontarget set facilitated the classification of unrelated target words. This category contrast effect was obtained in all conditions, although its magnitude depended upon target search instructions. Experiment 3 also investigated whether word identification was inhibited if subjects were prevented from utilizing the category information to distinguish target from nontarget words. Target and nontarget word identification was slower under such conditions. Experiment 4 demonstratd that both the category contrast and category interference effects were dependent upon the use of short response-stimulus intervals to define a functional semantic background. This suggests the category effects are perceptual in nature. Current models of word recognition cannot easily explain the findings. A committee decision model is outlined to accommodate the data; the model proposes that visual analysis, identification, and categorization proceed in parallel.     

The chicken and the egg: a hindsight view of therapy

In this paper the authors suggest that instead of holding the view that the sequence of therapy follows the path of first interviewing and gathering data, then understanding and finally intervening on the basis of what is thought to be the cause of the problem, we could benefit from recognizing that the reverse view is equally plausible. According to this reverse view, which the authors call hindsight, therapists, unaware of it themselves, first come up with interventions and then, in hindsight, create explanations or particular ways of understanding problems in order to make their interventions seem rational and justifiable. A number of factors influencing therapists' choice of interventions are explored. Finally some potential advantages of the hindsight view are examined.     

Motivated changes of auditory sensitivity in a simple detection task

Recently both neurophysiological and psychophysical theories have suggested that the sensitivity of receptors, or of the whole organism, may change through “efferent control” or as a result of “motivation.” A psychophysical method has been devised to investigate changes in a listener’s ability to detect signals in a noisy background, which are elicited “on demand” by the E, and when the time course of the changes may be in the order of seconds rather than minutes orhours. Observed effects, which are consistent with the hypotheses of active control of sensitivity, are found to be orderly but quite small, generally less than that associated with a 1–2 dB increase in the level of a tonal signal. While the average increment in performance is thus slight, it is found that the variance between Ss is significantly reduced when strong motivating stimuli are introduced. This reduction in variance may reflect an upper limit on the performance of real listeners, which might be fruitfully compared with the theoretical limits proposed in the theory of signal detectability.