The impact of an implementation intention to improve mealtimes and reduce jet lag in long-haul cabin crew

Objective: Jet lag is common place amongst long-haul cabin crew. Timed food has been shown to reset the circadian rhythm in rodents. Implementation intentions have been used to change eating behaviour. Mealtimes could therefore be used as a countermeasure to reduce jet lag and improve alertness in long-haul cabin crew through forming an implementation intention to improve the regularity of meals on days off.

Design: Sixty long-haul crew took part in a randomised controlled trial, with two conditions: forming an implementation intention to eat regular meals on days off vs. no implementation intention. Pre-intervention measurements were taken at baseline (before a long-haul trip) and post-intervention measures were taken on the first and second days off post-trip.

Main outcome measures: Subjective jet lag (unidimensional and multidimensional) and objective alertness (Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT)).

Results: Mixed ANOVA showed a significant condition x time interaction for unidimensional jet lag but not for multidimensional jet lag and objective alertness. In particular, the formation of an implementation intention to alter mealtimes resulted in a reduction of unidimensional jet lag.

Conclusion: Implementation intentions can be used to alleviate jet lag in long-haul crew through promoting a change in mealtimes.     

Predicting jet lag in long-haul cabin crew: The role of illness cognitions and behaviour

Objective: Established risk factors for jet lag are mostly physiological including circadian preference, age, gender, the number of flight zones crossed and to some extent direction of travel. Some research has also highlighted a role for psychosocial factors including sleep, diet and ‘circadian’ health behaviours and illness cognitions although this remains relatively untested. The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of sleep, diet and illness cognitions in predicting perceived jet lag amongst long-haul crew.

Design: Sixty long-haul crew took part in a longitudinal study. Profile characteristics (including chronotype), preparation strategies (sleep, eating and ‘circadian’ behaviours) and illness cognitions were measured at baseline (before a trip).

Main outcome measures: Subjective jet lag (unidimensional and multidimensional) was measured on the crews’ second day off (post-trip).

Results: Hierarchical regression analyses showed that unidimensional jet lag was predicted by the belief in a cyclical timeline, whereas multidimensional jet lag was predicted by multidimensional jet lag at baseline and to a lesser extent by identity. No role was found for profile characteristics and preparation strategies.

Conclusion: Illness cognitions partly explain the experience of perceived jet lag in long-haul cabin crew indicating that jet lag is in part a psycho-social construct, not just a biological one.     

Act Expediently,with Autonomy: Vicarious Learning,Empowered Behaviors,and Performance

Purpose

The purpose of this research is to investigate how organizations can best facilitate an empowered workforce that makes autonomous decisions and acts expediently, which the literature on high performing organizations posits will increase the likelihood of sustained performance and retaining competitive advantages. We introduce a novel mechanism for encouraging such behaviors and pursuant outcomes: vicarious learning from a supervisor who demonstrates autonomy and expediency.

Design/Methodology/Approach

We drew experimental data from a sample of participants who underwent a managerial simulation, and used these data to investigate relationships between the vicarious learning of empowered behaviors and individual task performance (n = 100).

Findings

Results indicate that when supervisors behave with autonomy and expediency this both increases the extent to which individuals behave similarly, and is associated with enhanced individual performance. Further, we find that expedient behavior fully mediates the relationship between empowered supervisor behavior and performance.

Implications

Findings show that supervisors need not necessarily engage directly in empowering others. Rather, by modeling behaviors, supervisors can craft a context where employees may act with autonomy and efficiency. This provides an opportunity for empowerment that is both actionable and cost-effective.

Originality/Value

This is the first study to consider empowerment as a managerial phenomenon that can be vicariously learned, integrating theories of social learning and empowerment, and extending existing empowerment constructs (including psychological and structural) to develop an indirect, yet potent means of encouraging empowered behavior.

     

A Kid-Friendly Tool to Assess Rumination in Children and Early Adolescents: Relationships with Mother Psychopathology and Family Functioning

The early identification of ruminative processes in children and early adolescents is particularly important to prevent the development of a stable ruminative style in later stages of development. The present study first aimed at validating a child-friendly tool, Kid Rumination Interview (KRI), to be used in a sample aged 7–12 years (n?=?100; 50% females). Second, we hypothesized that maternal depression, family functioning and participants’ emotion regulation skills would be associated with children’ levels of rumination. Factor analysis on KRI scores yielded two main factors: personal life-related rumination and school-related rumination. Older and female participants showed higher tendencies to ruminate about school issues compared to their younger and male counterparts. A low-to-moderate correlation emerged between school-related rumination and child/early adolescent’s emotion regulation capacities. Mothers’ depressive rumination and mothers’ depressive symptoms were positively associated with children/early adolescents’ rumination about personal life and rumination about school issues. Conversely, an adequate and positive family functioning was negatively correlated with both school-related rumination and rumination about personal life. Hierarchical regression analyses pointed to a crucial role of maternal rumination and familiar rigidity in both types of rumination. Personal life-related rumination was also specifically predicted by maternal depression and family enmeshment, whereas school-related rumination was significantly associated with children/early adolescents’ emotional control and gender. Overall, the KRI appears as a promising tool to assess rumination in children/early adolescents. Results suggests partially different pathways to specific forms of ruminative thoughts.     

Body language and metaphors revealed through applications of Movement Psychotherapy in a hospice: A clinical case of refractory pruritis

Movement psychotherapy (MP), and dance/movement therapy (DMT), are body-orientated psychotherapy approaches that use movement for the integration of emotional, cognitive, physical, social and spiritual aspects of self (European Association Dance Movement Therapy, 2010). It is distinctively a combination of moving and sensing the body with verbal self-reflection (Bloom, 2006). Several papers have presented DMT as a treatment in general medical care and cancer care, but there is still a paucity of evidence-based studies. The authors describe a clinical case illustrative of many of the situations in which facing death was particularly tormenting. The emotional pressure can produce a barrier of communication with the risk of rupturing the therapeutic relationship. The movement therapist’s function is to clarify the elements of body language and this has important implications for clinical practice because the end-of-life decisions are difficult, like palliative sedation therapy (PST). Even if procedural guidelines for PST help physicians and care teams through the decision-making process and make them more comfortable when responding to physical suffering, physicians more frequently report an emotional pressure when their patients experience psychological symptoms, with the risk that PST could become a potential “counterphobic defence to treat”.     

Common region wins the competition between extrinsic grouping cues: Evidence from a task without explicit attention to grouping

The competition between perceptual grouping factors is a relatively ignored topic, especially in the case of extrinsic grouping cues (e.g., common region or connectedness). Recent studies have examined the integration of extrinsic cues using tasks that induce selective attention to groups based on different grouping cues. However, this procedure could generate alternative strategies for task performance, which are non-related to the perceptual grouping operations. In the current work, we used an indirect task, i.e. repetition discrimination task, without explicit attention to grouping cues to further examine the rules that govern dominance between competing extrinsic grouping factors. This procedure allowed us to obtain an unbiased measure of the competition between common region and connectedness cues acting within the same display. The results corroborate previous data showing that grouping by common region dominated the perceived organization of the display, even though the phenomenological strength of the grouping cues was equated for each participant by means of a preliminary scaling task. Our results highlight the relevance of using indirect tasks as an essential tool for the systematic study of the integration of extrinsic grouping cues.     

The Relationship Between Parental Variables,Empathy and Prosocial-Flow with Prosocial Behavior Toward Strangers,Friends, and Family

The goal of this study was to explore the relationship between two different aspects of the parent–child relationship (parental challenge and authoritative parental style) and empathy as well as prosocial flow with prosocial behavior toward strangers, friends, and family. The participants were 422 young adults who were enrolled in undergraduate social responsibility courses at a University. The results show that the combination of parental support and parental challenge has an important influence on prosocial flow and on positive behavior such as prosocial behavior toward friends and family, but no influence on that toward strangers. Moreover, in the same way, empathy and prosocial flow promote prosocial behavior toward these three targets. The interpretations of these findings are delineated in the discussion.     

Acting and planning on the basis of a false belief: its effects on 3-year-old children's reasoning about their own false beliefs

This study examined 3-year-olds' explanations for actions of theirs that were premised on a false belief. In Experiment 1, children stated what they thought was inside a crayon box. After stating "crayons," they went to retrieve some paper to draw on. Children were then shown that the box contained candles and were asked to (a) state their initial belief and (b) explain their action of getting paper. Children who were unable to retrieve their false belief were unable to correctly explain their action. Experiments 2 and 3 ruled out several alternative interpretations for these findings. In Experiment 4, children planned and acted on their false belief. Again, children who were unable to retrieve their false belief were unable to correctly explain their action.     

Regularity and/or consistency in the production of the past participle?

In the present study we have investigated the acquisition of the past participle of Italian verbs of the second (including mostly irregular verbs) and third (including mostly regular verbs) conjugations in school age children, and with simulations with an artificial neural network. We aimed to verify the extent to which children are sensitive to regularity, as opposed to the consistency in the mapping from the infinitive to the past participle. In particular, we predicted that children would learn at some point that verbs of the second conjugation tend to be irregular, and therefore they would be more likely to produce irregularizations for verbs of this class, compared to the verbs of the third conjugation. However, they should also show sensitivity to the phonological mapping consistency within each subclass, learning to produce correct forms on the basis of phonological similarity. In contrast, children should be more likely to produce regular forms for verbs of the third conjugation. Thus, a larger regularity effect would be expected for verbs of the third than of the second conjugation, leading to the prediction of a regularity by conjugation interaction.