Workplace Innovations in Large, Unionized Canadian Organizations

The study reports workplace innovations in 112 large, unionized Canadian organizations from data collected in 1994 by the Bureau of Labour Information. The frequency of specific workplace innovations and the relationship to organization and bargaining unit characteristics are reported.     

Specificity of practice in a ball interception task.

Learning of an aiming task has been shown to be specific to the sources of afferent information available during practice. However, this has not been the case when a one-hand ball-catching task has been used. The goal of the present study was to determine the cause of these conflicting results. Participants practiced an interception task in either a normal vision condition or a ball-only condition. They were all then transferred to the ball-only condition, using either the same ball trajectories as in acquisition or different ones. Being transferred from a normal vision condition to a ball-only condition resulted in a significant increase in spatial interception errors, thus supporting the specificity of practice hypothesis. Using new ball trajectories in transfer caused a significant increase in error for all participants. The pattern of errors observed when new ball trajectories were used suggests that participants had difficulty correlating information about the location of their arm via proprioception and a combination of retinal and extra-retinal information about the ball trajectory.     

An isolation effect in serial memory for spatial information

This paper reports the first demonstration of an isolation effect or von Restorff effect (von Restorff, 1933) in the context of a spatial-memory task: Short-term serial recall was enhanced for both the location and the serial position of one red dot presented amongst a sequence of otherwise black dots. When the serial position of the isolate was fixed, the spatial isolation effect only emerged when participants received a control block of trials before the block of isolation trials (Experiment 1). However, when the serial position of the isolate was varied across isolation trials, an isolation effect was still produced regardless of condition order (Experiment 2). It is suggested that both temporal grouping strategies and greater item-specific processing may have contributed to the enhanced retention of the isolate.     

Visual similarity in short-term recall for where and when

Two experiments examined the effects of visual similarity on short-term recall for where and when in the visual spatial domain. A series of squares of similar or dissimilar colours were serially presented at various locations on the screen. At recall, all coloured squares were simultaneously presented in a random order at the bottom of the screen, and the locations used for presentation were indicated by white squares. Participants were asked to place the colours at their appropriate location in their presentation order. Performance for location (where) and order (when) was assessed separately. Results revealed that similarity severely hinders both memory for what was where and memory for what was when, under quiet and articulatory suppression conditions. These results provide further evidence that similarity has a major impact on processing relational information in memory.     

Money, Work–Life Balance and Autonomy: Why do IT Professionals Choose Self-Employment?

This article deals with the reasons why IT professionals chose self-employment, as well as advantages and drawbacks of this form of employment. A growing number of workers in industrialized countries are now self-employed, most notably in the IT sector. In order to understand this trend better, we carried out a quantitative survey in collaboration with a professional association of independent IT workers in Quebec (Canada). We examined the different reasons why self-employment is attractive for IT professionals, the advantages they experience and the disadvantages they point out. While some authors postulate that self-employment is attractive because it facilitates work–life balance, our results show a strong predominance of the financial advantages and a weak impact of factors related to work–life balance. We also find high levels of job satisfaction, but the effects on work–life balance remain indirect.     

Can we Build on Social Movement Theories to Develop and Improve Community‐Based Participatory Research? A Framework Synthesis Review

A long‐standing challenge in community‐based participatory research (CBPR) has been to anchor practice and evaluation in a relevant and comprehensive theoretical framework of community change. This study describes the development of a multidimensional conceptual framework that builds on social movement theories to identify key components of CBPR processes. Framework synthesis was used as a general literature search and analysis strategy. An initial conceptual framework was developed from the theoretical literature on social movement. A literature search performed to identify illustrative CBPR projects yielded 635 potentially relevant documents, from which eight projects (corresponding to 58 publications) were retained after record and full‐text screening. Framework synthesis was used to code and organize data from these projects, ultimately providing a refined framework. The final conceptual framework maps key concepts of CBPR mobilization processes, such as the pivotal role of the partnership; resources and opportunities as necessary components feeding the partnership's development; the importance of framing processes; and a tight alignment between the cause (partnership's goal), the collective action strategy, and the system changes targeted. The revised framework provides a context‐specific model to generate a new, innovative understanding of CBPR mobilization processes, drawing on existing theoretical foundations.     

Fatherhood and Delinquency: An Examination of Risk Factors and Offending Patterns Associated with Fatherhood Status among Serious Juvenile Offenders

Despite a large body of literature across multiple disciplines on adolescent motherhood, adolescent fathers have been largely absent from empirical research. Previous findings suggest that young men who experience multiple risk factors across a range of life domains have a high likelihood of becoming fathers at an early age, which can negatively impact their developmental trajectories and age-normative transitions (e.g. from school to work). However, little is known about the risk factors for fatherhood among high-risk juvenile offenders; nor is it well understood how fatherhood is related to criminal behavior in this population. The current study investigated risk factors and offending patterns associated with adolescent fatherhood status in a sample of serious juvenile offenders (N?=?1170). Consistent with previous studies, fatherhood status was associated with greater risk exposure among serious juvenile offenders. Furthermore, change in fatherhood status was associated with higher levels of overall offending, aggressive offending, income-related offending, and non-drug-related income offending. In light of these findings, we propose that supports and resources are needed to facilitate juvenile offenders in their role as fathers during this time.     

Exploring the suffix effect in serial visuospatial short-term memory

The suffix effect—the loss of recency induced by a redundant end-of-list item—was studied in a visuospatial serial recall task involving the memory for the position of dots on a screen. A visuospatial suffix markedly impaired recall of the last to-be-remembered dot. The impact on recall was roughly of equal magnitude whether the suffix shared attributes with the to-be-remembered dots (Experiment 1) or was visually distinct (Experiments 2 and 3). Although the presence of a tone suffix also impaired serial memory for the last items in the sequence, the impact of a visuospatial suffix was more marked, implying a specific as well as a possible general effect of suffix in the visuospatial domain (Experiment 4). The suffix effect seems not to be a phenomenon confined to verbal material but rather a universal phenomenon possibly related to grouping.     

Exploring the characteristics of the visuospatial hebb repetition effect

Using the dot task (see Jones, Farrand, Stuart, & Morris, 1995)--regarded as a good visuospatial analogue of the verbal serial recall task--we examined whether the Hebb repetition effect and its characteristics can be extended to visuospatial material. Classically, the Hebb effect has been associated with serial verbal memory: Repetition of a to-be-remembered sequence of verbal items every third trial markedly improves serial recall of that sequence. In the present study, Hebb effects were observed with visuospatial information, and a direct comparison between verbal and spatialsequence learning revealed that the Hebb repetition effect for visuospatial information shares similar characteristics with its verbal analogue. Our results cast some doubt regarding the parsimony of the view that the classical verbal Hebb effect is driven by a store specialized for phonological information and impose some further constraints on modeling serial memory and implicit sequence learning.     

Do Early Difficult Temperament and Harsh Parenting Differentially Predict Reactive and Proactive Aggression?

The goal of this study was to examine the links between difficult temperament (i.e., negative emotionality) and harsh parental discipline during toddlerhood, and reactive and proactive aggression in kindergarten. These links were assessed on a longitudinal population-based study of 1516 boys and girls followed longitudinally from the age of 17 months through the age of 72 months. Two possible models were tested to examine the interplay between negative emotionality and harsh parenting in predicting later reactive aggression compared to proactive aggression. The first was an additive model where both aspects make unique contributions in predicting later reactive aggression. The second model was an interactive model where harsh parenting exacerbates the link between negative emotionality and reactive aggression. Results showed a specific contribution of negative emotionality to reactive aggression. The results relative to harsh parenting are more mixed but nonetheless in line with developmental models stressing different pathways to reactive and proactive aggression.