Effects of workaholism on volunteer firefighters’ performance: a moderated mediation model including supervisor recognition and emotional exhaustion

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives: Although workaholism has been associated with job performance, the mechanisms that explain this relationship remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the conditional indirect effects of workaholism on performance via emotional exhaustion, across low and high levels of supervisor recognition.

Methods: We conducted an empirical cross-sectional study using a sample of 1028 volunteer firefighters who completed a self-report questionnaire assessing workaholism, emotional exhaustion, work performance, and supervisor recognition.

Results: Tests of latent interactions were performed using the latent moderated structural equation modeling approach. Consistent with our predictions, results revealed that the negative indirect effects of workaholism on performance, through emotional exhaustion, were stronger when supervisor recognition was low.

Conclusions: Theorical contributions and perspectives, as well as implications for practice are discussed.     

(Non)words, (non)words, (non)words: evidence for a protolexicon during the first year of life

Previous research with artificial language learning paradigms has shown that infants are sensitive to statistical cues to word boundaries (Saffran, Aslin & Newport, 1996) and that they can use these cues to extract word‐like units (Saffran, 2001). However, it is unknown whether infants use statistical information to construct a receptive lexicon when acquiring their native language. In order to investigate this issue, we rely on the fact that besides real words a statistical algorithm extracts sound sequences that are highly frequent in infant‐directed speech but constitute nonwords. In three experiments, we use a preferential listening paradigm to test French‐learning 11‐month‐old infants' recognition of highly frequent disyllabic sequences from their native language. In Experiments 1 and 2, we use nonword stimuli and find that infants listen longer to high‐frequency than to low‐frequency sequences. In Experiment 3, we compare high‐frequency nonwords to real words in the same frequency range, and find that infants show no preference. Thus, at 11 months, French‐learning infants recognize highly frequent sound sequences from their native language and fail to differentiate between words and nonwords among these sequences. These results are evidence that they have used statistical information to extract word candidates from their input and stored them in a ‘protolexicon’, containing both words and nonwords.     

Towards a better use of psychoanalytic concepts: A model illustrated using the concept of enactment

It is well known that there is a lack of consensus about how to decide between competing and sometimes mutually contradictory theories, and how to integrate divergent concepts and theories. In view of this situation the IPA Project Committee on Conceptual Integration developed a method that allows comparison between different versions of concepts, their underlying theories and basic assumptions. Only when placed in a frame of reference can similarities and differences be seen in a methodically comprehensible and reproducible way. We used “enactment” to study the problems of comparing concepts systematically. Almost all psychoanalytic schools have developed a conceptualization of it. We made a sort of provisional canon of relevant papers we have chosen from the different schools. The five steps of our method for analyzing the concept of enactment will be presented. The first step is the history of the concept; the second the phenomenology; the third a methodological analysis of the construction of the concept. In order to compare different conceptualizations we must know the main dimensions of the meaning space of the concept, this is the fourth step. Finally, in step five we discuss if and to what extent an integration of the different versions of enactment is possible.     

Attentional engagement is not sufficient to prevent spatial capture

What conditions, if any, can fully prevent attentional capture (i.e., involuntary allocation of spatial attention to an irrelevant object) has been a matter of debate. In a previous study, Folk, Ester, and Troemel (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 16:127–132, 2009) suggested that attentional capture can be blocked entirely when attention is already engaged in a different object. This conclusion relied on the finding that in a search for a known-color target in a rapid serial visual presentation stream, a peripheral distractor with the target color did not further impair target identification performance when a distractor also with the target color that appeared in the stream had already captured attention. In the present study, we argue that this conclusion is unwarranted, because the effects of the central and peripheral distractors could not be disentangled. In order to isolate the effect of the peripheral distractor, we introduced a distractor–target letter compatibility manipulation. Our results showed that the peripheral distractor summoned attention, irrespective of whether attention had just been engaged. We conclude that neither spatially focused attention nor attentional engagement is sufficient to prevent attentional capture.     

Impacts of Non-Driving Related License Suspensions on Quality of Life: a Qualitative Study

Applied Research in Quality of Life - The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine if and how non-driving related license suspensions impact affected individuals’ quality of life....     

Unconscious phantasy and its conceptualizations: An attempt at conceptual integration

That there is a lack of consensus as to how to decide between competing, at times even contradictory theories, and about how to integrate divergent concepts and theories is well known. In view of this situation, the IPA Committee on Conceptual Integration (2009–2013) developed a method for comparing the different versions of any given concept, together with the underlying theories and fundamental assumptions on which they are based. Only when situated in the same frame of reference do similarities and differences begin to appear in a methodically comprehensible and reproducible form. After having studied the concept of enactment followed by the publication of a paper in this Journal in 2013, we proceeded to analyze the concept of unconscious phantasy while at the same time continuing to improve our method. Unconscious phantasy counts among the central concepts in psychoanalysis. We identified a wide range of definitions along with their various theoretical backgrounds. Our primary concern in the present paper addresses the dimensional analysis of the semantic space occupied by the various conceptualizations. By way of deconstructing the concepts we endeavoured to establish the extent to which the integration of the different conceptualizations of unconscious phantasy might be achieved.     

Two-to-three-year-old children's interactions with peers in child-care centres: Effects of spatial distance to caregivers

In child-care centres, the influence of caregivers on the development of peer interactions seems ambivalent and mixed results are reported in the literature. Adopting an environmental approach, we examined the effects of the caregivers’ spatial proximity on children's social behaviour. The study was carried out with 175 children (18-40 months) in 12 child-care-centre groups. Children's behaviours were observed during free plays, and both children and caregivers’ locations were recorded. When peers were nearby, children's social behaviours were compared when they were in the immediate proximity (within 2 m) and out of the immediate proximity of a caregiver. Results show that in the latter situation children spend substantially more time addressing social overture to peers and interacting with them; positive interactions with peers show a particularly marked difference. This pattern of results is exhibited by the greater part of the children. Whatever the child-care-centre group, the age subgroup or the gender considered similar results are found. Results also demonstrate that when children are in the immediate proximity of caregivers they are socially oriented towards the attractive adult partners rather than towards peers.     

Emotional encounter: Researching young people's intimate spaces in their information & communication technology practices

This article discusses the role and place of emotions in research and, particularly, in researching young people's intimate spaces in their information and communication technology (ICT) practices. It echoes Harris and Hutington's remarks (2001) that we cannot claim to explore and understand people's social life, without taking into account the potentially powerful role played by emotion. In this paper, I show how adopting a relational position in terms of theoretical framework, such as I have developed it, has two main implications: First, it considers the exploration of young people's intimate sphere of emotion as a central task; second, it involves discussing the methodological tools that render such an exploration possible. I present how I translated these implications, by means of an ethnography of young people's practices in Montreal and, notably, by recursive interviews. Finally, I show how emotions cross over, and are imbricated in, both young people's practices and in my relationship with the young people themselves, showing all the great wealth of this emotional encounter.     

Coaction and upward social comparison reduce the illusory conjunction effect: Support for distraction-conflict theory

This article proposes an integration of Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory and Baron’s (1986) distraction-conflict theory of the social facilitation-inhibition effect, which successfully predicts attentional focusing in coaction when social comparison represents a distraction. Two experiments confronted participants with the illusory conjunction task (Treisman, 1998), where illusions occur because of the lack of attentional processing of central cues. If coaction, like upward comparison, is distracting and thereby enhances the attention allocated to central cues (here the target’s features) at the expense of peripheral cues (here distractors), then a reduction should be found in the illusions. Experiment 1 indeed showed a lower rate of conjunctive errors under upward comparison than under downward comparison. Experiment 2 specified that this effect was due to downward comparison effectively reducing distraction, with upward comparison only maintaining it, as compared to mere coaction.