Should We Agree to Disagree? The Multilevel Moderated Relationship Between Safety Climate Strength And Individual Safety Motivation

Organisational research investigating climate perceptions often use constructs reflecting dispersion and disagreement, termed ‘climate strength’, to investigate situational pressures on behaviour expression. Within safety-specific contexts, research has tended to emphasise the prediction of climate strength rather than an examination of its effects on behaviour. The present paper investigates the important first pathway in the prediction of safety behaviour by investigating the influence of safety climate strength on the relationship between safety climate perceptions and individual safety motivation in a safety critical context using multilevel analyses. Contrary to expectations, results initially indicated that safety climate strength negatively influenced the relationship between safety climate perceptions and safety motivation, such that greater variability was associated with greater motivation. Post hoc analysis re-grouping responses into broader functional levels found support for an interaction, suggesting a difference in the scope of influence for safety climate strength between the two levels of analysis. These findings are discussed in light of self-determination theory, and suggestions for future research and practice made.

     

Characteristics of implicit chaining in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus)

In human cognition there has been considerable interest in observing the conditions under which subjects learn material without explicit instructions to learn. In the present experiments, we adapted this issue to nonhumans by asking what subjects learn in the absence of explicit reinforcement for correct responses. Two experiments examined the acquisition of sequence information by cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) when such learning was not demanded by the experimental contingencies. An implicit chaining procedure was used in which visual stimuli were presented serially on a touchscreen. Subjects were required to touch one stimulus to advance to the next stimulus. Stimulus presentations followed a pattern, but learning the pattern was not necessary for reinforcement. In Experiment 1 the chain consisted of five different visual stimuli that were presented in the same order on each trial. Each stimulus could occur at any one of six touchscreen positions. In Experiment 2 the same visual element was presented serially in the same five locations on each trial, thereby allowing a behavioral pattern to be correlated with the visual pattern. In this experiment two new tests, a Wild-Card test and a Running-Start test, were used to assess what was learned in this procedure. Results from both experiments indicated that tamarins acquired more information from an implicit chain than was required by the contingencies of reinforcement. These results contribute to the developing literature on nonhuman analogs of implicit learning.     

患者知情同意权实现的伦理思考与法律保护

随着医学科学的发展,患者的知情同意已是医学实践的一个基本伦理观念和原则,但是,它的实现不仅需要道德规范的约束,而且还需要法律的保护.     

Performance on patterned string problems by common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus)

This experiment examined the performance of common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) on a series of patterned string problems to assess the marmosets’ understanding of means–ends relationships. One marmoset, Jet, was exposed to a series of problems that were ordered in terms of perceived difficulty during two testings that were separated by 1 year. In the second testing, Jet received problems that had been used during the first testing along with three new problems. Each of the new problems was designed to be an exemplar of the type of problem that Jet had experienced difficulty with in the first testing. A second marmoset, Peaches, was tested on the same set of problems given to Jet in the second testing. Results indicated that the marmosets’ performance on these problems fell into three categories. In one category, some problems were solved without evidence of trial-and-error learning. In a second category, there were problems in which the marmosets responded at chance levels initially but evidenced improvement as a function of extended testing. In a third category, some problems appeared to be virtually unsolvable even with extended testing. Taken together, these results indicate that the marmosets were able to learn the means–ends connection between pulling a string and obtaining food. This learning was best characterized as a trial-and-error process for some problem forms, while for others there appeared to be rapid learning that did not require extensive practice. The instances of rapid learning may be the result of the application of a simple spatial proximity rule in which the marmosets chose the string that was closest to an imaginary line drawn between the marmoset and the reinforcer.     

Early—but modest—gender differences in focal aspects of childhood temperament

The best evidence for gender differences in child temperament is in the broad areas of effortful control and surgency, and to an extent negative affectivity, domains that encompass temperament dimensions of inhibitory control, activity level, and shyness. We examined the influence of child gender in a methodologically comprehensively assessed twin sample. We used mother, father, and Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB) ratings to assess temperament in 3 year-olds. Boys had higher levels of activity level and lower levels of shyness and inhibitory control than girls across all methods of assessment. Then, more rigorous testing showed that patterns of mean gender differences for opposite-sex twin pairs in our sample were very consistent with overall sample gender differences and the magnitude of these gender differences was consistent across assessment methodology. We then asked: are these more gendered dimensions of temperament associated with one another, and are associations different across gender? The answer to both questions is, yes. Shyer children have lower activity level and higher inhibitory control, and those with higher inhibitory control are less active. Gender differences did appear in the intercorrelations between parent ratings of shyness and inhibitory control with only girls showing significant associations within and across these dimensions.     

Self-regulated reading in adulthood

Young and older adults read a series of passages of 3 different genres for an immediate assessment of text memory (measured by recall and true/false questions). Word-by-word reading times were measured and decomposed into components reflecting resource allocation to particular linguistic processes using regression. Allocation to word and textbase processes showed some consistency across the 3 text types and was predictive of memory performance. Older adults allocated more time to word and textbase processes than the young adults did but showed enhanced contextual facilitation. Structural equation modeling showed that greater resource allocation to word processes was required among readers with relatively low working memory spans and poorer verbal ability and that greater resource allocation to textbase processes was engendered by higher verbal ability. Results are discussed in terms of a model of self-regulated language processing suggesting that older readers may compensate for processing deficiencies through greater reliance on discourse context and on increases in resource allocation that are enabled through growth in crystallized ability.     

Deriving childhood temperament measures from emotion-eliciting behavioral episodes: scale construction and initial validation

The authors describe the development and initial validation of a home-based version of the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB), which was designed to assess childhood temperament with a comprehensive series of emotion-eliciting behavioral episodes. This article provides researchers with general guidelines for assessing specific behaviors using the Lab-TAB and for forming behavioral composites that correspond to commonly researched temperament dimensions. We used mother ratings and independent postvisit observer ratings to provide validity evidence in a community sample of 4.5-year-old children. 12 Lab-TAB behavioral episodes were employed, yielding 24 within-episode temperament components that collapsed into 9 higher level composites (Anger, Sadness, Fear, Shyness, Positive Expression, Approach, Active Engagement, Persistence, and Inhibitory Control). These dimensions of temperament are similar to those found in questionnaire-based assessments. Correlations among the 9 composites were low to moderate, suggesting relative independence. As expected, agreement between Lab-TAB measures and postvisit observer ratings was stronger than agreement between the Lab-TAB and mother questionnaire. However, for Active Engagement and Shyness, mother ratings did predict child behavior in the Lab-TAB quite well. Findings demonstrate the feasibility of emotion-eliciting temperament assessment methodologies, suggest appropriate methods for data aggregation into trait-level constructs and set some expectations for associations between Lab-TAB dimensions and the degree of cross-method convergence between the Lab-TAB and other commonly used temperament assessments.