Imagery limitations in totally congenitally blind subjects

Research on totally blind subjects performing tasks that involve visual imagery has often shown that they do not behave differently from matched sighted subjects, even when their blindness is congenital. If visual imagery is based on visual perception, such tasks may not required visual imagery. In the present article visual images are considered as representations maintaining some properties of visible objects and constructed on the basis of information from various sources. Owing to the absence of visual experience, the limitations of such representations are explored in a series of experiments requiring memorization of single nouns, pairs of nouns, or triplets of nouns associated with a cue noun. Recall by blind subjects was impaired when multiple interactive images (with noun pairs and triplets) are formed. The poorer recall of blind subjects reflected also loss of order information. Recall was better for both groups with locative noun cues and high-imagery targets.     

Occlusion cues contribute to orientation judgments of occlusion-defined contours

Occlusion cues defining a contour in a 2-D stimulus pattern were shown to contribute to the accuracy of orientation judgments of that contour. The stimulus pattern was altered so that the occlusion cues became ambiguous, by introducing a textured background suggesting transparency of the stimulus pattern. Orientation judgments then became significantly less accurate. This finding shows that occlusion cues in 2-D patterns can be behaviorally relevant, in addition to generating the subjective percept commonly known as an illusory contour. The disruptive effect of the textured background on orientation judgments remained when no texture elements were present in the vicinity of the contour. This suggests that the generation of occlusion-defined contours relies as much on an evaluation of the surfaces at either side of the contour as being opaque as it does on local encoding of occlusion cues close to the contour. Finally, orientation sensitivity measured with contours defined by other than occlusion cues was not altered after the introduction of a textured background.     

Cross-modal slant and curvature matching of stereo- and motion-induced surfaces

In many laboratory setups and in many day-to-day situations, a unique solution of the structure-fromtwo-views problem is unobtainable. Yet, when the visual system is presented with two projections in a sequence, it nevertheless appears to generate a reasonably stable percept of structure. In the research reported here, we examined whether the same surface would be perceived when subjects were presented with a pair of views that alternated in time monocularly (two-frame motion) or were shown simultaneously to both eyes (stereo). In Experiment 1, we studiedslant perception: human observers were asked to match the slant of a motion-induced planar surface with its stereo-induced counterpart. In Experiment 2, the perceivedcurvature of parabolic surfaces was matched in a similar way. The results show that motion-induced slant is matched with ahigher value of the stereo-induced slant. However, the curvature experiment showed that motion-induced curvature is matched with alower stereo-induced curvature. One possible explanation may be that the slant and curvature are internally inconsistent in at least one of the modalities.     

When ethics create misfit: Combined effects of despotic leadership and Islamic work ethic on job performance,job satisfaction,and psychological well-being

This study applies social exchange and person–environment fit theories to predict that despotic leaders tend to hinder employee job performance, job satisfaction, and psychological well-being, whereas employees' own Islamic work ethic (IWE) enhances these outcomes. Also, IWE moderates the relationship of despotic leadership with the three outcomes, such that it heightens the negative impacts, because employees with a strong IWE find despotic leadership particularly troubling. A multi-source, two-wave, time-lagged study design, with a sample (303 paired responses) of employees working in various organisations, largely supports these predictions. Despotic leadership and IWE relate significantly to job performance, job satisfaction and psychological well-being in the predicted directions, except that there is no significant relationship between IWE and job satisfaction. A test of moderation shows that the negative relationships of despotic leadership with job outcomes are stronger when IWE is high. These findings have pertinent implications for theory, as well as for organisational practice.     

Moral Responsibility and the Moral Community: Another Reply to Zimmerman

Michael Zimmerman has recently argued against the twofold Strawsonian claim that there can be no moral responsibility without a moral community and that, as a result, moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. I offered a number of objections to Zimmerman’s view, to which Zimmerman responded. In this article, I respond to Zimmerman’s responses to my criticisms.     

Effects of Trait Self‐Control on Response Conflict About Healthy and Unhealthy Food

Self‐control leads to positive life outcomes, but it is poorly understood. While previous research has focused on self‐control failure, self‐control success remains unexplored. The current studies aim to shed more light on the mechanisms of self‐control by focusing on the resolution of response conflict as a key component in self‐control success. Trait self‐control was measured, and participants reported on the magnitude of response conflict they experienced about healthy and unhealthy foods in Study 1 (N = 146; M_age = 33.03; 59 females, 83 males, 4 unknown). The response conflict process was assessed in Study 2 (N = 118; M_age = 21.45; 68 females, 41 males, 9 unknown). Outcomes showed that self‐reported evaluative response conflict about food items was smaller for people high in trait self‐control. Study 2 revealed that higher trait self‐control predicted faster resolution of self‐control conflict, and an earlier peak of the response conflict. Taken together, these results provide insight into what makes people with high trait self‐control successful, namely, how they handle response conflict. Implications for self‐control theories and future directions are discussed.     

How Job Insecurity Affects Political Attitudes: Identity Threat Plays a Role

This study tests the assumption that job insecurity threatens people’s work-related identities and thereby affects their political attitudes. Work-related identity threat in times of job insecurity is proposed to happen in two ways: people will fear to lose an important part of their identity (their identity as employed people), and they can also be afraid to gain a negative identity (their feared future self of becoming unemployed). Both identity threats are proposed to lead to more antiegalitarian attitudes and more political leaning to the right. A four-wave study among 969 employed British employees delivers support for some of the assumptions. In line with the expectations, results of time-stable structural equation modeling show that job insecurity indeed threatens the identity as an employed person, which leads to an increase in antiegalitarian attitudes over time. Different than expected, identity threat in the form of a heightened identification with the unemployed was not found. Also, people who identified more as unemployed people actually reported fewer antiegalitarian attitudes and shifted their political standing more to the left.     

The role of proactive interference in mnemonic techniques

The success of many mnemonic techniques, such as the method of loci, is based on the use of specific well-known anchors, which are mentally combined with to-be-learned items and subsequently facilitate their retrieval. In our studies we intended to answer the question of whether the repeated application of the method of loci may result in proactive interference effects, as might be expected due to the applied association of items with the same loci each time the method is used. To this end, we manipulated list similarity in a typical proactive interference design and compared the method of loci with the link method and the rehearsal method, which do not involve the use of a specified set of anchors. Our results replicate those from other studies, which have shown that the use of a mnemonic technique leads to superior recall of list items compared to a simple rehearsal strategy. We were further able to show that the repeated learning of items from different categories results in moderate practice effects over three list-learning trials, whereas this effect is superimposed by an effect of proactive interference if different lists are composed of items from the same category. However, this effect of proactive interference was not increased for the method of loci, and we discuss this finding with regard to its practical implications.