Tenacious goal pursuit and flexible goal adjustment: explication and age-related analysis of assimilative and accommodative strategies of coping

Crises and critical life transitions activate 2 distinct but complementary modes of coping, (a) transforming developmental circumstances in accordance with personal preferences (assimilative tendency) and (b) adjusting personal preferences to situational constraints (accommodative tendency). Assimilative and accommodative tendencies were measured by a questionnaire comprising 2 independent scales (Tenacious Goal Pursuit and Flexible Goal Adjustment). Both scales predict high life satisfaction and low depression and are positively related to generalized internal control beliefs. The scales evinced an opposite relation to age: Cross-sectional analyses on a sample of 890 Ss in the age range from 34 to 63 years revealed a gradual shift from an assimilative to an accommodative mode of coping. Implications for theories of depression and successful aging are discussed.     

PIGEONS ARE SENSITIVE TO THE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF COMPLEX VISUAL STIMULI

Abstract— Two experiments investigated the role of spatial organisation in the discrimination and generalization of complex visual stimuli by pigeons. In Experiment 1, after pigeons had been trained to discriminate line drawings of four objects, they were tested with novel pictures in which the same component parts of the objects were spatially rearranged. The spatially scrambled pictures led to a dramatic drop in recognition accuracy, hut responding remained above chance. In Experiment 2, pigeons reached a high level of discriminative performance when required to choose among four different spatial arrangements of the same object parts. These results confirm Cerella's (1980) conclusion that pigeons discriminate the component parts of complex visual stimuli, but. unless it is assumed that the scrambling deleted or created emergent features, the results disconfirm his conclusion that spatial organization plays no role in pigeons' picture perception.     

Factors Affecting Stayers’ Job Satisfaction in Response to a Coworker Who Departs for a Better Job1

Two studies examined the consequences of turnover, by investigating factors affecting the job satisfaction of people who remain (i. e., stayers) in response to a coworker (i. e., leaver) who departed for a better job. Consistent with Tesser and Campbell's (1983) self-esteem maintenance model, three factors were found to influence the job satisfaction level of stayers: (a) the extent to which they compared their job situation to the leaver's new one, which was negatively related to stayers’ level of satisfaction, (b) the relevance of the leaver to the stayer for social comparison purposes, which was negatively related to the stayers’ level of satisfaction, and (c) the stayers’ trait self-esteem, which was positively related to the stayers’ level of job satisfaction. Theoretical implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.     

The influence of perceptual and motor factors on bimanual coordination in a polyrhythmic tapping task

Summary In this study the role of perceptual and motor factors on the motor organization (integrated versus parallel) adopted by musically skilled and unskilled subjects in a polyrhythmic tapping task was investigated. Subjects tapped a 3:2 polyrhythm to match the timing of two isochronous tone trains, one tone train for each hand. Perceptual factors were examined by the manipulation of the frequency difference between the tone trains to produce either an integrated or a streamed percept. Motor factors were examined by comparison of performance on two versions of the 3:2 polyrhythm. In one (simultaneous) version, each cycle of the polyrhythm began with a simultaneous left- and right-hand tap. In the other (shifted) version a 100-ms interval was introduced between the initial left and right taps in each cycle. Examination of the pattern of variances and covariances among intertap intervals suggested that most of the subjects in this study adopted an integrated motor organization that involved interleaving the timing of the two hands. Further analysis revealed that a serial chained model described the pattern of covariances best for the simultaneous pattern, whereas a hierarchical organization described the pattern of covariances for the shifted pattern best. The finding that performance was more accurate with integrated tones than with streamed tones provides some support for a perceptual-motor facilitation hypothesis.     

Preload and isometric force variability

Two experiments are reported, which examined the relative contributions of preload (resting force level), change of force, and the time taken to achieve the force in determining isometric force variability. The findings showed that change of force is the strongest determiner of peak force variability but that preload and time to peak force have smaller though systematic effects. A formula that predicts peak force variability is proposed, with preload as an additive effect to the ratio between the change of force level and the square root of time to peak force. These findings confirm that these three impulse variables are significant in predicting force variability and that the impact of rate of force on peak force variability is nonlinear.     

Behavior at 10 and 13 years of age for children with low birth weight

This study was based on data from a longitudinal research program. The cohort consisted of 874 normal children in an entire school grade in a Swedish community. The aim of the study was to investigate the relation between birth weight and behavior at school, for all children and for each sex separately. The results identified specific aspects of behaviour disorder significantly related to low birth weight (LBW) for children at the age of 10 but not at the age of 13. When the sexes were separated, there were no relations between birth weight and deviant behaviour for boys of low birth weight as compared to boys of normal birth weight, while girls of low birth weight showed specific behavioural disorders at age 10 as compared to girls of normal birth weight. For girls reared in families of low parental socioeconomic status, aggressiveness and motor restlessness at age 10 but not at age 13 was also present. Further analyses showed that girls born small-for-gestational age showed lack of school motivation and concentration difficulties both at age 10 and age 13.