Token Majority: The Work Attitudes of Male Flight Attendants

This study examined the work experiences of men, a traditional workplace majority, as minority members of a female-dominated occupation. We used tokenism and social categorization theories to propose and test a set of hypotheses that link token status (a less than 15% minority) with male flight attendants' work attitudes through intervening psychological and job factors. Survey data from a sample of 236 male and female flight attendants supported a model in which a negative relationship between token status and the work attitudes of job satisfaction and organizational attachment was mediated by low self-esteem, increased role ambiguity, and poor job fit. The uncovering of these previously unmeasured intervening variables strengthens theoretical connections between demography and work outcomes and suggests leverage points for improving the work attitudes of individuals in the minority.     

Sidman avoidance in the fish

Goldfish trained in a shuttle box under conditions in which changing compartments postponed shock for 20 sec showed a substantial, negatively accelerated increase in rate of crossing. That the avoidance-contingency was responsible for the change in behavior is suggested by the fact that no significant increase in rate of crossing appeared in control animals which were paired with the experimentals and shocked whenever the experimental animals were shocked; there is some evidence, indeed, that the control animals were handicapped in their subsequent adjustment to the avoidance condition. The introduction of a warning stimulus (light) in the last 5 sec of the response-shock interval decreased the rate of crossing in the first 15 sec and increased the rate of crossing in the last 5 sec. Reducing the shock-shock interval from 20 sec to 2.5 sec had no marked effect. The results are compared with those obtained in analogous experiments with higher animals.     

The influence of pubertal maturation on antisaccade performance

Adolescence is a period characterized by continued improvements in inhibitory control, and this persisting immaturity is believed to interact with affective/motivational behavior to generate the impulsive and risk‐taking behavior evidenced at this time. Puberty is a central event of adolescence that has been shown to influence affective/motivational behavior. However, despite plausible mechanisms by which puberty might influence inhibitory control, researchers have yet to test this possibility rigorously. Thus, we designed a study to examine the unique role of pubertal maturation, independent of age, in the development of inhibitory control. In order to minimize age‐related variability while maximizing pubertal status variability, we recruited 78 participants (34 F) whose ages narrowly spanned the mean age of gonadarche for each sex (F: ages 11–13, M: ages 12–14). Two complementary measures were used to assess pubertal status: (1) circulating blood serum testosterone and estradiol levels reflecting internal manifestations of pubertal maturation, and (2) Tanner staging by a trained nurse reflecting pubertal maturation's external manifestations. Inhibitory control was assessed using the antisaccade task, and findings were adjusted for the potential effect of age. Results revealed no association between testosterone levels and error rates or response latencies in either sex. In girls, estradiol levels were not associated with error rates, but were associated with faster response latencies. There was similarly no association between Tanner status and error rates, although girls in more advanced pubertal stages showed faster response latencies. Power analyses indicate that findings of a lack of association did not reflect limited statistical power. Thus, in a study designed to isolate the effects of pubertal maturation independent of age, both external and internal indices of pubertal maturation converged to indicate that age‐related improvements in cold antisaccade performance are independent of pubertal maturation.     

What explains the correlation between growth in vocabulary and grammar? New evidence from latent change score analyses of simultaneous bilingual development

A close relationship between children's vocabulary size and the grammatical complexity of their speech is well attested but not well understood. The present study used latent change score modeling to examine the dynamic relationships between vocabulary and grammar growth within and across languages in longitudinal data from 90 simultaneous Spanish–English bilingual children who were assessed at 6‐month intervals between 30 and 48 months. Slopes of vocabulary and grammar growth were strongly correlated within each language and showed moderate or nonsignificant relationships across languages. There was no evidence that vocabulary level predicted subsequent grammar growth or that the level of grammatical development predicted subsequent vocabulary growth. We propose that a common influence of properties of input on vocabulary and grammatical development is the source of their correlated but uncoupled growth. An unanticipated across‐language finding was a negative relationship between level of English skill and subsequent Spanish growth. We propose that the cultural context of Spanish–English bilingualism in the US is the reason that strong English skills jeopardize Spanish language growth, while Spanish skills do not affect English growth. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/qEHSQ0yRre0     

��Does Plagiarism Mean anything? LOL.�� Students�� Conceptions of Writing and Citing

This study focuses on the intersection of research ethics and academic writing, i.e. the use of sources, assignment of credit to the contributors in the research, and the dissemination of research findings. The study utilized a set of semi-structured and open-ended questions. The sample consisted of 269 undergraduate (BA) and graduate (MA) students at a U.S. university department of psychology including major and non-major students. The data showed that although an overwhelming number of the students’ examples related to ethical issues in citation dealt with plagiarism, a broad range of examples of other types of issues were also provided. Understandably, students tended to view the questions about both the assignment of credit to those involved in conducting the research and the dissemination of research findings from the research participant’s perspective, which is more familiar to them than the researcher perspective. In order to help the students to expand their notions beyond the immediate own experience to a broader understanding for the ethical principles that ought to guide a researcher in his or her work, it is desirable that students be provided with opportunities to participate in authentic research projects. With a deeper understanding of the students’ conceptions of ethics in research and academic writing, we can become more attuned to the common limitations and misconceptions that students harbor, and thus better equipped to support students in their learning process.     

A dissociation between the sense of familiarity and access to semantic information concerning familiar people

In the current study we examined the relationship between working memory capacity, inhibition/susceptibility to interference and fluid intelligence, measured by the Raven's Progressive Matrices (PM38), comparing groups of young (aged 18–35), young-old (aged 65–74), and old-old (aged 75–86) participants. Groups were administered two working memory tasks tapping into different mechanisms involved in working memory. The ability to control for irrelevant information was measured both considering memory errors (intrusion errors) in a working memory task and an index of susceptibility to interference obtained with a variant of the Brown-Peterson task. Regression analyses showed that the classical working memory measure was the most potent predictors of the Raven's score. Susceptibility to interference and intrusions errors contributed, but to a lower extent, to the Raven explained variance. These results confirm that working memory shares cognitive aspects with the fluid intelligence measure considered, whereas the role of inhibition to Raven scores is still in need of better evidence.     

Challenges of organizational learning: perpetuation of discrimination against employees with disabilities

This article examines why organizations struggle with learning how to prevent discrimination against their employees with disabilities. To explore this issue, qualitative archival data were collected and analyzed from 53 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) lawsuits filed against 44 organizations. Theoretical analysis of the qualitative data suggests that several organizationally based learning theories explain the difficulty organizations have with creating a disability-friendly work environment. These barriers to learning are embedded in complex defense mechanisms and discriminatory organizational routines. Furthermore, organizations have difficulties engaging in higher-order and vicarious learning. We conclude the article with examples of successful learning practices as they relate to barriers identified in the qualitative analysis.