How Body Asymmetries Determine Accessibility in Spatial Frameworks

Spatial frameworks are a class of spatial mentalmodel that code locations of objects relative to the body axes. Spatial frameworks predict accessibility of spatial relations from memory primarily on the basis of the relative asymmetry of the body axes, such that highly asymmetric axes lead to faster retrieval of information. The present research examined how bodily asymmetries affect retrieval. Experiment 1 contrasted two theoretical accounts. The Salience Account proposes that relative degrees of asymmetry render axes differentially salient, and hence differentially foregrounded in one's mental model. The Direction Decision Account proposes that an explicit decision process is necessary to access specific locations along body axes. The ease of the decision process presumably depends on the degree of asymmetry that exists to discriminate poles along a body axis. The spatial framework pattern of accessibility was observed both when subjects identified specific directions of objects and when subjects identified just the axis to which objects were associated, supporting the Salience Account. Experiment 2 investigated whether lateralization affects accessibility from spatial frameworks. Performance of highly lateralized individuals did not differ from that of weakly lateralized individuals.     

Increasing self-efficacy reduces visual intrusions to a trauma-film paradigm

Background and Objectives: It has been proposed that self-efficacy plays a critical role in the onset and maintenance of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This study aimed to test if increasing perceptions of self-efficacy using a false feedback technique about coping abilities prior to a trauma-film paradigm lead to a reduction of visual intrusions over the course of 6 days.

Design and Methods: Healthy participants recruited from the community were randomized to a high self-efficacy (HSE, N?=?18), low self-efficacy (LSE, N?=?21), or neutral self-efficacy (NSE, N?=?23) conditions.

Results: Participants in the HSE condition reported higher levels of self-efficacy. In addition, individuals in the HSE conditions reported significantly fewer intrusions over 6 days. Unexpectedly, individuals in the LSE condition reported fewer intrusions on the final day of the study compared to those in the NSE condition. The LSE group was also the only group showing a significant linear decline in intrusion across the 6 days.

Discussion: These findings provide further support that perceptions of self-efficacy are modifiable and may contribute to clinically-relevant processes underlying PTSD. Future prospective research with individuals exposed to trauma will help to shed light on the potential role of self-efficacy to buffer the negative impacts of traumatic stress.     

Individual Participation in Organizational Information Commons

This research extended earlier public goods research on individual incentives to use an organizational information commons that was based in Marwell and Oliver's (1993) collective action model. A revised theoretical model that incorporated team‐level social influence and technology‐specific competence was proposed. The model was tested using online survey data from 150 individuals in 13 work groups across 5 organizations. The research demonstrated that perceived team member behavior and technology‐specific competence were positively related to individual use of intranets, over and above the collective level influences modeled in earlier research. These findings supported a more “socialized” model of individuals' motivations to participate in organizational information sharing via collective repositories and suggested that management could boost levels of intranet usage through group level social influence and technology‐specific training.     

Touch and vision in normal and Down's syndrome babies

Two experiments are reported with young Down's syndrome and normal children matched for mental age, sex, and social class. In one, Down's syndrome children performed at chance level on two tactual--visual cross-modal tasks, and only the oldest succeeded with one of two visual--visual within-modal tasks. The modal children performed at above chance level on the visual--visual tasks, and on the tactual--visual tasks the oldest succeeded on two and the youngest on one of the tasks. These results suggest that Down's syndrome children may have some sort of difficulty involving tactual perception. The second experiment examined the effect of touch on visual behaviour. Down's syndrome children and their matched controls looked at pairs of shapes which sometimes could be touched and sometimes could not. In the former condition the Down's syndrome children touched less, and looking and touching was less coordinated than that of normal children. However, both groups made fewer but longer looks when they could touch the shapes. In the light of these results the role of tactual perception in Down's syndrome children is discussed.