Using robots at work during the COVID-19 crisis evokes passion decay: Evidence from field and experimental studies

The growing trend of introducing robots into employees' work lives has become increasingly salient during the global COVID-19 pandemic. In light of this pandemic, it is likely that organisational decision-makers are seeing value in coupling employees with robots for both efficiency- and health-related reasons. An unintended consequence of this coupling, however, may be an increased level of work routinisation and standardisation. We draw primarily from the model of passion decay from the relationship and clinical psychology literature to develop theory and test a model arguing that passion decays as employees increasingly interact with robots for their work activities. We demonstrate that this passion decay leads to an increase of withdrawal behaviour from both the domains of work and family. Drawing further from the model of passion decay, we reveal that employees higher in openness to experience are less likely to suffer from passion decay upon more frequent interactions with robots in the course of work. Across a multi-source, multi-wave field study conducted in Hong Kong (Study 1) and a simulation-based experiment conducted in the United States (Study 2), our hypotheses received support. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Young children attribute normativity to novel actions without pedagogy or normative language

Young children interpret some acts performed by adults as normatively governed, that is, as capable of being performed either rightly or wrongly. In previous experiments, children have made this interpretation when adults introduced them to novel acts with normative language (e.g. 'this is the way it goes'), along with pedagogical cues signaling culturally important information, and with social-pragmatic marking that this action is a token of a familiar type. In the current experiment, we exposed children to novel actions with no normative language, and we systematically varied pedagogical and social-pragmatic cues in an attempt to identify which of them, if either, would lead children to normative interpretations. We found that young 3-year-old children inferred normativity without any normative language and without any pedagogical cues. The only cue they used was adult social-pragmatic marking of the action as familiar, as if it were a token of a well-known type (as opposed to performing it, as if inventing it on the spot). These results suggest that - in the absence of explicit normative language - young children interpret adult actions as normatively governed based mainly on the intentionality (perhaps signaling conventionality) with which they are performed.     

Influencing Learning States to Enhance Trainee Motivation and Improve Training Transfer

Purpose  

This study examines a pretraining intervention to enhance transfer of training. The learning-state analog of locus of control was the target for intervention designed to impact motivation to learn which in turn would affect knowledge acquisition and the amount of posttraining practice.     

Low-level temporal coding impairments in psychosis: preliminary findings and recommendations for further studies

The authors investigated whether difficulties with temporal event coding, previously reported in patients with schizophrenia, are already present during first-episode psychosis (FEP). In this experiment, the subjective judgments of the simultaneity of visually presented stimuli were compared between 11 healthy controls, 9 patients with chronic schizophrenia (CSZ), and a sample of 11 FEP patients. Participants were asked to indicate whether 2 vertical bars appeared at the same time or at different times on a computer monitor. CSZ patients' thresholds were elevated, and the FEP sample showed higher thresholds relative to controls. Although preliminary, these findings indicate a generalized disturbance in event-structure coding at early stages of psychosis and question the specificity of its disturbance. Considering the proposed relationship between event-structure coding and the experience of time in general, this study recommends that future studies refocus on psychosis in general, rather than on schizophrenia as a particular case of abnormal temporal processing. In addition, it is suggested that the relevant psychopathology will be best determined by means of a comprehensive analysis of low-level temporal coding performance in different types of psychosis.     

Attentional control moderates fearful responding to a 35% CO(2) challenge

Attentional control (AC) is an individual difference variable indexing the ability to voluntarily focus attention and shift attention when desired. AC is thought to impact the experience of fear by facilitating the disengagement of attention from threat and promoting the deployment of attentional resources toward regulatory or coping strategies. Whereas previous research has focused on visual threat cues, in the current study we examined whether this model also applies to interoceptive threat by evaluating the extent to which individual differences in AC moderated the relationship between trait anxiety and self-reported fear in response to a single vital capacity inhalation of a 35% CO(2), 65% balanced O(2) gas mixture. The sample comprised a large nonclinical group of young adults (N=128). Results indicated that AC moderated the relationship between trait anxiety and fearful responding to the challenge. Findings suggest that AC plays a significant and clinically important role in modulating self-reported fear.     

Randomized controlled trial of false safety behavior elimination therapy: a unified cognitive behavioral treatment for anxiety psychopathology

We tested the efficacy of a unified cognitive-behavioral therapy protocol for anxiety disorders. This group treatment protocol, termed false safety behavior elimination therapy (F-SET), is a cognitive-behavioral approach designed for use across various anxiety disorders such as panic disorder (PD), social anxiety disorder (SAD), and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). F-SET simplifies, as well as broadens, key therapeutic elements of empirically validated treatments for anxiety disorders to allow for easier delivery to heterogeneous groups of patients with anxiety psychopathology. Patients with a primary anxiety disorder diagnosis (N=96) were randomly assigned to F-SET or a wait-list control. Data indicate that F-SET shows good efficacy and durability when delivered to mixed groups of patients with anxieties (i.e., PD, SAD, GAD) by relatively inexperienced clinicians. Findings are discussed in the context of balancing treatment efficacy and clinical utility.     

Young children enforce social norms selectively depending on the violator's group affiliation

To become cooperative members of their cultural groups, developing children must follow their group's social norms. But young children are not just blind norm followers, they are also active norm enforcers, for example, protesting and correcting when someone plays a conventional game the "wrong" way. In two studies, we asked whether young children enforce social norms on all people equally, or only on ingroup members who presumably know and respect the norm. We looked at both moral norms involving harm and conventional game norms involving rule violations. Three-year-old children actively protested violation of moral norms equally for ingroup and outgroup individuals, but they enforced conventional game norms for ingroup members only. Despite their ingroup favoritism, young children nevertheless hold ingroup members to standards whose violation they tolerate from outsiders.     

Basic numerical capacities and prevalence of developmental dyscalculia: the Havana Survey

The association of enumeration and number comparison capacities with arithmetical competence was examined in a large sample of children from 2nd to 9th grades. It was found that efficiency on numerical capacities predicted separately more than 25% of the variance in the individual differences on a timed arithmetical test, and this occurred for both younger and older learners. These capacities were also significant predictors of individual variations in an untimed curriculum-based math achievement test and on the teacher scores of math performance over developmental time. Based on these findings, these numerical capacities were used for estimating the prevalence and gender ratio of basic numerical deficits and developmental dyscalculia (DD) over the grade range defined above (N = 11,652 children). The extent to which DD affects the population with poor ability on calculation was also examined. For this purpose, the prevalence and gender ratio of arithmetical dysfluency (AD) were estimated in the same cohort. The estimated prevalence of DD was 3.4%, and the male:female ratio was 4:1. However, the prevalence of AD was almost 3 times as high (9.35%), and no gender differences were found (male:female ratio = 1.07:1). Basic numerical deficits affect 4.54% of school-age population and affect more boys than girls (2.4:1). The differences between the corresponding estimates were highly significant (α < .01). Based on these contrastive findings, it is concluded that DD, defined as a defective sense of numerosity, could be a distinctive disorder that affects only a portion of children with AD.     

Integrity tests predict counterproductive work behaviors and job performance well: comment on Van Iddekinge, Roth, Raymark, and Odle-Dusseau (2012)

Examination of the Van Iddekinge, Roth, Raymark, and Odle-Dusseau (2012) meta-analysis reveals a number of problems. They meta-analyzed a partial database of integrity test validities. An examination of their coded database revealed that measures coded as integrity tests and meta-analyzed as such often included scales that are not in fact integrity tests. In addition, there were important deficiencies in their analytic approach relating to application of range restriction corrections and identification of moderators. We found the absence of fully hierarchical moderator analyses to be a serious weakness. We also explain why empirical comparisons between test publishers versus non-publishers cannot unambiguously lead to inferences of bias, as alternate explanations are possible, even likely. In light of the problems identified, it appears that the conclusions about integrity test validity drawn by Van Iddekinge et al. cannot be considered accurate or reliable.     

Memory for emotional words in sentences: the importance of emotional contrast

Numerous researchers have demonstrated that emotional words are remembered better than neutral words. However, the effect has been attributed to factors other than emotion because it is somewhat fragile and influenced by variables such as the experimental designs employed. To investigate the role of emotion per se in memory for emotional words, negative-affect but low arousal emotional words were placed in sentence contexts that either activated high emotional meanings of the words (Shane died in his car last night.), or low emotional meanings of the words (Shane's old car died last night). The high-emotional contexts led to better memory than the low-emotional contexts, but only in mixed lists of emotional and neutral words. Additionally, the traditional emotional memory effect was also limited to mixed lists. The results are consistent with the idea that an emotional contrast is responsible for the emotional memory effect with low arousal emotional words.