Serial reversal learning in bumblebees (Bombus impatiens)

Bumblebees are capable of rapidly learning discriminations, but flexibility in bumblebee learning is less well understood. We tested bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) on a serial reversal learning task. A serial reversal task requires learning of an initial discrimination between two differentially rewarded stimuli, followed by multiple reversals of the reward contingency between stimuli. A reduction in errors with repeated reversals in a serial reversal task is an indicator of behavioural flexibility. Bees were housed in a large indoor environment and tested during foraging flights. Testing free-flying bees allowed for large numbers of trials and reversals. All bees were trained to perform a simultaneous discrimination between two colours for a nectar reward, followed by nine reversals of this discrimination. Results showed that bumblebees reduced errors and improved their performance across successive reversals. A reduction in perseverative errors was the major cause of the improvement in performance. Bees showed a slight increase in error rate in their final trials, perhaps as a consequence of increasing proactive interference, but proactive interference may also have contributed to the overall improvement in performance across reversals. Bumblebees are thus capable of behavioural flexibility comparable to that of other animals and may use proactive interference as a mechanism of behavioural flexibility in varying environments.     

“It's Only Other People Who Make Me Feel Black”: Acculturation,Identity, and Agency in a Multicultural Community

This article explores identity work and acculturation work in the lives of British mixed‐heritage children and adults. Children, teenagers, and parents with mixed heritage participated in a community arts project that invited them to deliberate, construct, and reconstruct their cultural identities and cultural relations. We found that acculturation, cultural and raced identities, are constructed through a series of oppositional themes: cultural maintenance versus cultural contact; identity as inclusion versus identity as exclusion; institutionalized ideologies versus agency. The findings point towards an understanding of acculturation as a dynamic, situated, and multifaceted process: acculturation in movement. To investigate this, we argue that acculturation research needs to develop a more dynamic and situated approach to the study of identity, representation, and culture. The article concludes with a discussion on the need for political psychologists to develop methods attuned to the tensions and politics of acculturation that are capable of highlighting the possibilities for resistance and social change.     

Flow experience and team performance: The role of team goal commitment and information exchange

While a number of studies show that the flow experience is related to different outcomes at the individual level, the role of flow in work teams remains unclear. This study contributes to the advancement of knowledge on flow by testing the relationships between this psychological state, team goal commitment and team performance. Data were gathered from 85 teams comprised of graduate and undergraduate students who participated in a project management simulation. The results show that the flow experience is positively related to team performance. This relationship is mediated by team goal commitment and moderated by the level of information exchange between team members. In practical terms, the results of this study show that managers should implement interventions fostering the flow experience in their teams, while at the same time encouraging information exchange between members.     

Cross‐examination: The Testimony of Children With and Without Intellectual Disabilities

The present study assessed how children with a range of cognitive abilities fared during a mock cross‐examination. Ninety children (aged 4 to 11 years; 18 with intellectual disabilities, 13 with borderline intellectual disabilities and 59 who were typically developing) witnessed a staged event, participated in an initial forensic interview (a few days later) and were cross‐examined by a barrister‐in‐training (10 months later). During cross‐examination, 98% of all children changed at least one response from their initial interview when challenged. However, group differences in performance (total number of changed responses, ‘resistance’ to challenges), controlling for age and memory for event details, were not significant or did not prove reliable at the level of individual group contrasts. Overall, little robust evidence for group differences in performance on cross‐examination could be identified, and memory for event details was the most reliable predictor of performance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Working With Clients Who Self‐Injure: A Grounded Theory Approach

This article presents the findings of a qualitative study examining the experiences of counselors in their work with clients who self‐injure. Using grounded theory methodology, the authors established 6 categories to explain the counselors’ conceptualization of self‐injury and their process of working with these clients: (a) external factors to self‐injury, (b) defining self‐injury, (c) potential for harm, (d) conditions for treatment, (e) counselors’ reactions to working with clients who self‐injure, and (f) clients’ response to treatment.     

La perception de la responsabilité sociale des Entreprises : adaptation et validation française de l’échelle de Maignan et Ferrell, 1999

This study proposes to apply the paradigm of Churchill in the case of the adaptation in french and validation of the Maignan and Ferrell scale (1999) based on the model developed by Carroll (1979). This model proposes to distinguish four principles of social responsibility: economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibility. Four factors were highlighted in a first exploratory study conducted among 320 workers. This structure was confirmed during a second confirmatory investigation among 287others workers. If the four identified factors do not match exactly to the theoretical chosen model, they bring value to support the differences in social responsibility between the internal actors and external actors.     

Neither by global nor local cues alone: evidence for a unified orientation process

A substantial amount of empirical and theoretical debate remains concerning the extent to which an ability to orient with respect to the environment is determined by global (i.e., principal axis of space), local (i.e., wall lengths, angles), and/or view-based (i.e., stored representation) accounts. We developed an orientation task that allowed the manipulation of the reliability of the principal axis of space (i.e., searching at the egocentric left- and/or right-hand side of the principal axis) between groups while maintaining goal distance from the principal axis, local cues specifying the goal location (i.e., short wall left, short wall right, and obtuse angle), and visual aspects of the goal location consistent across groups. Control and test trials revealed that participants trained with a reliable principal axis of space utilized both global and local geometric cues, whereas those trained with an unreliable principal axis of space utilized only local geometric cues. Results suggest that both global and local geometric cues are utilized for reorientation and that the reliability of the principal axis of an enclosure differentially influences the use of geometric cues. Such results have implications for purely global-based, purely local-based, and purely view-based matching theoretical accounts of geometry learning and provide evidence for a unified orientation process.     

Perceptual learning and perceptual search are altered in male university students with higher Autism Quotient scores

Two experiments investigated the validity of the Autism Quotient (AQ) scale for measuring traits associated with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in a population of male university students. Both studies found evidence that individuals who scored higher on the AQ questionnaire performed in a similar way to individuals with ASD on tasks with a perceptual component. Experiment 1 demonstrated a difference in the degree to which higher scoring AQ individuals performed on a perceptual learning task; with higher AQ scorers showing no advantage for familiar over novel items less. In Experiment 2, higher scorers showed fewer errors when judging the elements, as opposed to the global configuration, of a Navon task letter. Both of these patterns of results had previously been noted in individuals with ASD. These results suggest that the AQ may have some validity in identifying individuals in the nonclinical population with similar performance profiles to those with ASD.