On the role of goal relevance in emotional attention: disgust evokes early attention to cleanliness

Prior evidence has shown that aversive emotional states are characterised by an attentional bias towards aversive events. The present study investigated whether aversive emotions also bias attention towards stimuli that represent means by which the emotion can be alleviated. We induced disgust by having participants touch fake disgusting objects. Participants in the control condition touched non-disgusting objects. The results of a subsequent dot-probe task revealed that attention was oriented to disgusting pictures irrespective of condition. However, participants in the disgust condition also oriented towards pictures representing cleanliness. These findings suggest that the deployment of attention in aversive emotional states is not purely stimulus driven but is also guided by the goal to alleviate this emotional state.     

Is the emotional modulation of the attentional blink driven by response bias?

Several studies have shown that the attentional blink (AB; Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992) is diminished for highly arousing T2 stimuli (e.g., Anderson, 2005). Whereas this effect is most often interpreted as evidence for a more efficient processing of arousing information, it could be due also to a bias to report more arousing stimuli than neutral stimuli. We introduce a paradigm that allows one to control for such a response bias. Using this paradigm, we obtained evidence that the diminished AB for taboo words cannot be explained by a response bias. This supports the idea that the emotional modulation of the AB is caused by attentional processes.     

A Curvilinear Relationship Between Work Engagement and Job Performance: the Roles of Feedback-Seeking Behavior and Personal Resources

Drawing from conservation of resources theory, this study examines the curvilinear relationship between employees’ work engagement and their job performance; the authors also hypothesize that employees’ feedback-seeking behavior is a pertinent boundary condition that mitigates this curvilinear relationship. Personal resources likely mediate the work engagement–job performance relationship too. Data gathered from 190 employees and their supervisors in Ukraine (study 1) and from 171 employees and their supervisors in Pakistan (study 2) reveal that although work engagement enhances job performance, the effect occurs at a declining rate as work engagement increases. Feedback-seeking behavior moderates this curvilinear relationship, so the decline in the rate at which work engagement enhances job performance is mitigated by higher levels of feedback-seeking behavior. Furthermore, after controlling for the role of feedback-seeking behavior, the curvilinear effect of work engagement on job performance is mediated by personal resources (i.e., self-efficacy, optimism, and resilience). These findings have significant implications for research and practice.

     

Bold and bright: shy and supple? The effect of habitat type on personality–cognition covariance in the Aegean wall lizard (Podarcis erhardii)

Animal Cognition - Animals exhibit considerable and consistent among-individual variation in cognitive abilities, even within a population. Recent studies have attempted to address this variation...     

Effects of verbal ability and fluid intelligence on children's emotion understanding

This study investigated the role of verbal ability and fluid intelligence on children's emotion understanding, testing the hypothesis that fluid intelligence predicts the development of emotion comprehension over and above age and verbal ability. One hundred and two children (48 girls) aged 3.6–6 years completed the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) that comprised external and mental components, the Coloured Progressive Matrices and the Test for Reception of Grammar. Regression analysis showed that fluid intelligence was not equally related to the external and mental components of the TEC (Pons & Harris, 2000). Specifically, the results indicated that the external component was related to age and verbal ability only, whereas recognition of mental emotional patterns required abstract reasoning skills more than age and verbal ability. It is concluded that the development of fluid intelligence has a significant role in the development of mental component of emotion comprehension.     

A General and Maladaptive Personality Perspective on Youth Obsessive–Compulsive Symptoms

Based on Krueger's (2005) conceptual model of the personality-psychopathology relationship, this study examines how personality predicts different youth obsessive–compulsive symptoms, comparing the relative contribution of general and maladaptive personality traits. Three-hundred forty-four adolescents provided self-reports on an obsessive–compulsive scale, and their mothers rated their child's general and maladaptive personality. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that personality differentially predicts obsessive–compulsive symptomatology, and that the relative significance of general versus maladaptive personality predictors differs across various forms of obsessive–compulsive pathology. The results are discussed in terms of the value of including both general and maladaptive personality measures in the assessment of early obsessive–compulsive difficulties.     

Confabulating reasons for behaving bad: The psychological consequences of unconsciously activated behaviour that violates one's standards

Numerous studies have been conducted to demonstrate that behaviours are frequently activated unconsciously. The present studies investigate the downstream psychological consequences of such unconscious behaviour activation, building on work on the explanatory vacuum and post‐priming misattribution. It was hypothesized that unconsciously activated behaviours trigger a negative affective response if the behaviour violates a personal standard and that this negative affect subsequently motivates people to confabulate a reason for the behaviour. Results provided evidence for this mediated moderation model. Study 1 showed that participants who were primed to act less prosocially indeed reported increased levels of negative affect and, as a result, were inclined to confabulate a reason for their behaviour. Study 2 replicated these findings in the domain of eating and provided evidence for the moderating role of personal standards as well as the entire mediated moderation model. These findings have relevant theoretical implications as they add to the modest number of studies that demonstrate that the effect of unconscious priming may extend well beyond performing the primed behaviour itself to influence subsequent affect and attribution processes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Positive experiences of doctoral-level supervisors-in-training conducting group-format supervision: a qualitative investigation

Experiential learning opportunities are powerful in shaping positive supervisor behaviours. We were interested in examining the positive experiences of supervisors-in-training during their first practice experience as supervisors. Our study was guided by two research questions: (a) what are the experiences that supervisors-in-training viewed as positive during the course of providing clinical supervision to master's-level counselling trainees? and (b) how did these positive experiences contribute to their professional development? We employed a variation of the consensual qualitative research method developed by Hill, Thompson, and Nutt-Williams (1997) and interviewed 10 supervisors-in-training regarding their positive experiences in supervising master's-level counselling trainees. The results included five major categories of positive experiences: (a) the positive value of feedback; (b) enhanced confidence in using a wider variety of supervision tasks and procedures; (c) the impact of the experience on other aspects of professional practice; (d) increased familiarity with the multiple roles of the supervisor; and (e) for some, increased comfort navigating co-supervision dynamics. Each of these categories included subcategories. We discuss our findings within the context of supervision training in graduate education.     

Is motor knowledge part and parcel of the concepts of manipulable artifacts? Clues from a case of upper limb aplasia

The sensory-motor theory of conceptual representations assumes that motor knowledge of how an artifact is manipulated is constitutive of its conceptual representation. Accordingly, if we assume that the richer the conceptual representation of an object is, the easier that object is identified, manipulable artifacts that are associated with motor knowledge should be identified more accurately and/or faster than manipulable artifacts that are not (everything else being equal). In this study, we tested this prediction by investigating the identification of manipulable artifacts in an individual, DC, who was totally deprived of hand motor experience due to upper limb aplasia. This condition prevents him from interacting with most manipulable artifacts, for which he thus has no motor knowledge at all. However, he had motor knowledge for some of them, which he routinely uses with his feet. We contrasted DC’s performance in a timed picture naming task for manipulable artifacts for which he had motor knowledge versus those for which he had no motor knowledge. No detectable advantage on DC’s naming performance was found for artifacts for which he had motor knowledge compared to those for which he did not. This finding suggests that motor knowledge is not part of the concepts of manipulable artifacts.