The experience of outsourcing transfer: implications for guidance and counselling

Outsourcing can involve the forced transfer of employees to another organisation. During or after the transfer they may find their jobs have changed or go through a process of downsizing. They also often have to maintain a relationship with their previous employer as they continue to work on joint projects. In this paper we review relevant research literature and identify important psychological and organisational processes involved in this process, which are of specific interest to guidance and counselling. We also present data from a longitudinal research study in which employees undergoing an outsourcing transfer discussed their experiences. A number of these employees required career counselling and some were undergoing psychological counselling to reduce depression and anxiety. In conclusion, we summarise important issues to be considered by the counsellor when advising individuals going through this process.     

Shorter articles and notes conservation of quantity in children: The effect of vocabulary and participation

In this pilot experiment some new tests for conservation of quantity were devised. The experimental group given these tests was able to make correct judgements, while a control group, matched for age and intelligence, failed to show conservation of quantity in the standard tests used by Piaget. The difference between the tests was analysed, and some factors emerged which, it is suggested, can serve to facilitate the child's performance.     

It’s not just average faces that are attractive: Computer-manipulated averageness makes birds,fish, and automobiles attractive

Average faces are attractive. We sought to distinguish whether this preference is an adaptation for finding high-quality mates (thedirect selectionaccount) or whether it reflects more general informationprocessing mechanisms. In three experiments, we examined the attractiveness of birds, fish, and automobiles whose averageness had been manipulated using digital image manipulation techniques common in research on facial attractiveness. Both manipulated averageness and rated averageness were strongly associated with attractiveness in all three stimulus categories. In addition, for birds and fish, but not for automobiles, the correlation between subjective averageness and attractiveness remained significant when the effect of subjective familiarity was partialled out. The results suggest that at least two mechanisms contribute to the attractiveness of average exemplars. One is a general preference for familiar stimuli, which contributes to the appeal of averageness in all three categories. The other is a preference for averageness per se, which was found for birds and fish, but not for automobiles, and may reflect a preference for features signaling genetic quality in living organisms, including conspecifics.     

Search times for combinations of visual,phonemic, and semantic targets in reading prose

Subjects read passages of prose, canceling targets that were visual (letters), acoustic (phonemes), or semantic (words of a specified category). Each of the targets occurred singly and in all possible double and triple combinations. Comparison of the search times reveals that semantic processing adds little or no extra time when combined with acoustic or with visual and acoustic searches, i.e., it occurs in parallel. Other combinations of processing yield search times that are slightly faster than a serial model would predict and are best interpreted as reflecting an overlapping sequence of operations.     

Perceptual load affects change blindness in a real‐world interaction

Change blindness is the striking inability to detect seemingly obvious changes that occur between views of a scene. The current study assessed perceptual load as a factor that may affect change blindness for human faces. The study had participants (n = 103) interact with a researcher in a testing room that imposed low or high perceptual load. Midway through the conversation, the researcher was replaced by another person. Thirty‐nine percent of participants failed to detect the change. There was a significant effect of perceptual load, with greater change detection under low load (71%) than high load (52%). This research suggests that the perceptual load imposed by a task may have a significant effect on the likelihood of change blindness and ought to be considered in future research.