Effect of arousal on internal clock speed in real action and mental imagery.

The possible implication of an internal clock as a mechanism accounting for the temporal homology between actual and mental walking is studied. To observe this phenomenon, stressful sound stimuli were used to increase arousal, which is known to activate the internal clock. Seventeen participants performed three tasks: (1) a time production task, used as a reference task reflecting the internal clock speed; (2) an actual walking task; and (3) a mental walking task, all three in two sound conditions (no noise and noise). The results showed a significant effect of arousal on time in each task. The effect of noise, increasing the arousal level, was greater in time production and mental imagery tasks than in real action. In addition, the percentages of change between the two sound conditions for actual and mental walking time were not statistically different. These findings are further evidence of the existence of a timing process common to actual and mental walking. The data are consistent with the implication of an internal clock in both actual and mental walking.     

Memory distortion: an adaptive perspective

Memory is prone to distortions that can have serious consequences in everyday life. Here we integrate emerging evidence that several types of memory distortions - imagination inflation, gist-based and associative memory errors, and post-event misinformation - reflect adaptive cognitive processes that contribute to the efficient functioning of memory, but produce distortions as a consequence of doing so. We consider recent cognitive and neuroimaging studies that link these distortions with adaptive processes, including simulation of future events, semantic and contextual encoding, creativity, and memory updating. We also discuss new evidence concerning factors that can influence the occurrence of memory distortions, such as sleep and retrieval conditions, as well as conceptual issues related to the development of an adaptive perspective.     

A dynamic computational model of employees goal transformation: Using self-determination theory

Following self-determination theory, this paper investigates the relations of employees’ perceptions of supervisors’ autonomy-supportive or controlling environments to their intrinsic or extrinsic work goals using both a field study and a computational dynamics model (Vancouver and Weinhardt in Org Res Methods 15(4):602–623, 2012), which is a recent and innovative technique. In Study 1, we did an empirical study with 128 employees over a half-year period and found that employees’ perceptions of supervisors’ autonomy-supportive environments satisfied employees’ basic psychological needs and promoted their intrinsic goals; controlling environments frustrated their basic needs and promoted their extrinsic goals. In Study 2, we used a system dynamics model to simulate the change in employees’ extrinsic goals, and the results showed that perceptions of supervisors’ autonomy-supportive environments related to the transformation of employees’ extrinsic goals. The study contributes by demonstrating that employees’ perception of supervisors’ environments could be a reason for employees’ different goal orientations, and it contributes by simulating the use of the dynamic process of goal transformation in research.

     

Judgment of conceptual identity in monkeys

Baboons (Papio anubis) were tested on categorization tasks at two different conceptual levels. The monkeys showed their ability (1) to judge as identical or different the objects belonging to two categories, on a perceptual basis, and (2) to perform a judgment of conceptual identity—that is, to use the same/different relation between two previously learned categories. This latter experiment represents the first demonstration of judgment of conceptual identity in a monkey species.     

What Criminals’ Tattoos Symbolize: Drawing on Darwin,Durkheim, and Lombroso

Criminals’ tattoos have many meanings. A limitation of prior research is that these meanings have not been organized into an elegant yet exhaustive typology that is theoretically informed. To address that gap, this article analyzes “Russian criminal tattoos” in light of classic conceptions of tattoos—namely those of Darwin, Durkheim, and Lombroso. The benefits of the analysis include (1) an expanded conception of what tattoos symbolize from Darwinian and Durkheimian perspectives and (2) the formation of a simple but comprehensive typology of what criminals’ tattoos represent. The article concludes by considering implications for future research.