Rewarding leadership and fair procedures as determinants of self-esteem

In the present research, the authors examined the effect of procedural fairness and rewarding leadership style on an important variable for employees: self-esteem. The authors predicted that procedural fairness would positively influence people's reported self-esteem if the leader adopted a style of rewarding behavior for a job well done. Results from a scenario experiment, a laboratory experiment, and an organizational survey indeed show that procedural fairness and rewarding leadership style interacted to influence followers' self-esteem, such that the positive relationship between procedural fairness and self-esteem was more pronounced when the leadership style was high in rewarding behavior. Implications in terms of integrating the leadership and procedural fairness literature are discussed.     

Animal ethical evaluation: an observational study of Canadian IACUCs

Three Canadian institutional animal care and use committees were observed over a 1-year period to investigate animal ethical evaluation. While each protocol was evaluated, the observer collected information about the final decision, the type of protocol (research vs. teaching), and the category of invasiveness. The observer also wrote down verbatim all verbal interventions, which were coded according to the following categories: scientific, technical, politics, human analog, reduction, refinement, and replacement. The data revealed that only 16% of the comments were devoted to the 3 explicit ethical categories (i.e., reduction, refinement, and replacement) and that most of the comments were technical. However, the analysis revealed that ethical concerns were implicit in both scientific and technical language, or some of the scientific and technical comments had an impact on the ethical treatment of animals. The results are discussed in relation to previous nonobservational research that identified potential pitfalls and bias in animal ethical evaluation.     

Encoding and Maintaining Reference in Oral Discourse

This study deals with information management and reference encoding modes in oral discourse production. Three potentially influential factors were the distance between the first occurrence of an item and its later occurrences, a topic change that takes the focus off that item, and the span of the conceptual information available for verbalization. French-speaking adult subjects were asked to tell stories from comic strips to a listener who was unfamiliar with them. The frames in each strip were presented simultaneously or in succession. Four versions were generated for each comic strip: a given version was either short (three frames) or long (eight frames), and either did or did not have a topic change. The results showed that the target character was usually marked as a given, regardless of the version. This was more often true, however, when the topic did not change. When the character was treated as a given, referent accessibility marking was dependent on (1) topic change alone when the frames were presented simultaneously, and (2) topic change and comic strip length when the frames were presented in succession. The discussion analyzes the results in terms of the allocation of cognitive resources to maintaining coreference and to assisting addressees in their processing.     

A typical interaction behaviour between fathers and toddlers: Teasing

The purpose of this article is threefold. First, it presents teasing behaviours towards the infant through the notion of ‘expectancy violation’, and defines what parental teasing may consist of. Secondly, the paper summarizes empirical data which show that teasing concerns more paternal than maternal behaviours. Thirdly, we speculate about a positive impact of this kind of typical paternal behaviour on cognitive and social development, as it introduces novelty and ambiguity, which must be processed, as well as negotiation of a struggle.     

Strategies in processing new versus old information by children

This study investigated how children linguistically encode new versus old information as a function of age on a Receptive and an Expressive Task. Kindergarteners and third-graders were presented with picture pairs. Members of each picture pair were identical except for one obvious detail, the new information. While there was little difference between the two age groups on the Receptive Task, statistically significant differences were found on the Expressive Task. Results were discussed in terms of children's cognitive/perceptual strategies in encoding new versus old information.     

What do parents talk about to infants?

The content of parents' talk is studied here as expressing their conception of their developing infant, from the initial symbiotic fusion to an individual situtated in space, time and society. The topics parents introduce in their speech to their infant reflect the perception and expectations they have of their baby. The social and parental status of fathers and mothers, and the anticipated role and status of the child- and adult-to-be, and in particular the age and gender of the infant, mediate the choice of topics. Parents' spontaneous speech to 3-month- and 9-month-old infants was studied during a diapering episode, before leaving the day-care centre. Five minutes of such a speech was recorded, and each utterance was assigned to a semantic category (e. g. greetings, comments on diapering, on mood). Sex-typing is already noticeable as early as 3 months of age: comments on the present situation and state are more frequent for girls, and comments about absent persons or events more frequent with boys. Both parents contribute to this effect, fathers more than mothers. With age parents become less concerned with immediate problems and more aware of the infant's own performances. First names are used more for boys than for gilrs. As a whole, boys are considered as individuals earlier than girls.     

Hyperactivity and the Fragile X Syndrome

Workers who have claimed an association between Fragile X [fra(x)] Syndrome and Hyperactivity and aggressive behavior have done so despite the lack of controlled studies using standard diagnostic criteria. Accordingly, we provided a controlled test of the hypothesis that individuals with the fra(x) Syndrome are more hyperactive and have more symptoms of aggression than other mentally retarded individuals. The test formed part of a study to assess autistic behavior in fra(x) individuals. A sample of fra(x) individuals was obtained from the register of a clinical genetics unit and individually matched for age, sex, and IQ with mentally retarded individuals selected from assessment centres. Fortyfive pairs of fra(x) cases and control individuals were compared on criteria which reflected DSM-III concepts of hyperactivity and on criteria reflecting aggressive behavior. The comparison failed to find a higher prevalence of these symptoms in the fra(x) group. An analysis of the study's statistical power suggested that it is unlikely that the investigation failed to detect a large to medium difference between fra(x) individuals and control individuals in the symptoms investigated.     

Cognitive development in kittens (Felis catus): an observational study of object permanence and sensorimotor intelligence.

Spontaneous behavior of kittens (Felis catus) was filmed from birth until the end of Month 5 and coded according to Piagetian criteria of sensorimotor intelligence (SI) and object permanence (OP). Data revealed that Stages 2, 3, and 4 of SI were reached at Days 10, 26, and 45, respectively, whereas Stages 2, 3, and 4 of OP were reached at Days 31, 37, and 41, respectively. Spontaneous search behavior was exhibited both in searching for an object that disappeared and in hiding while moving toward a target object. From Day 45 on, search behavior was integrated into a playful social interaction in the form of hide-and-seek. Hence, kittens' spontaneous activity provided them with contexts in which OP was necessary for activity. Lastly, it is proposed that the mobility of both social and physical objects triggered circular activity in this species.     

Continued Evolution of Family Therapy: The Last Twenty Years

There have been numerous accounts of the history and major trends and issues in family therapy during the field's first three decades in the literature (see for example: Broderick & Shrader, 1981; Framo, 1972; Guerin, 1976; Kaslow, 1973, 1977, 1980; Nichols, 1986, 1999 for some varied depictions, written from each respective author's unique lens). Viewed as a set, packaged with different, yet interrelated contents, they offer a multihued portrait of the emerging field during its infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Now it is time to move on and look at the adulthood era as it has unfolded.     

Using telehealth to teach valued skills to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities

Telehealth uses electronic information and telecommunication technologies to deliver long-distance clinical services. It has successfully been used by clinical professionals to teach family and staff members to provide evidence-based assessment and treatment procedures. There is no research to date, however, evaluating the use of telehealth to directly teach individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Thus, we evaluated the efficacy of a telehealth intervention using total task chaining with least-to-most prompting delivered via videoconference to 2 adults with IDD. Both participants demonstrated low independent responding during baseline with enhanced written instructions present. During intervention, which included vocal and model prompting, both participants met the mastery criterion for each skill in fewer than 15 sessions, which maintained after 2 weeks. Finally, both participants expressed satisfaction with the goals, procedures, and effects of the intervention. We discuss the broader scope of the intervention for individuals with disabilities when face-to-face services may not be feasible.