Sensory and affective judgments of skin during inter- and intrapersonal touch

Here we report two experiments that investigated the tactile perception of one’s own skin (intrapersonal touch) versus the skin of other individuals (interpersonal touch). In the first experiment, thirteen female participants rated, along four perceptual attributes, the skin of their own palm and volar forearm, then that of several of the other participants. Ratings were made using visual analogue scales for perceived smoothness, softness, stickiness, and pleasantness. One’s own skin was rated less pleasant than the skin of others. For both intra- and interpersonal touch, the forearm skin was rated smoother, softer, less sticky and more pleasant than the palmar skin. In the second experiment, ten pairs of female participants rated each other’s palm and volar forearm skin, with the skin of the touched individual being assessed before and after the application of skin emollients that alter skin feel. As in the first experiment, the untreated skin of others was rated more pleasant than the participants’ own skin, and the forearm versus palm differences were replicated. However, the emollient had generally larger effects on self-assessments than the assessments of others, and the site effect showed greater positive sensory and pleasantness increases for palm versus volar forearm. The disparate results of the two experiments suggest that attention, influenced by the ecological importance of the stimulus, is more important to assessment of touched skin than ownership of the skin or the contribution to self-touch made by the additional receptors in the passively touched skin. In both experiments, the pleasantness of touched skin was associated with the skin’s perceived smoothness and softness, with weak trends toward negative associations with its perceived stickiness, consistent with prior research using inanimate surfaces (e.g., textiles and sandpapers).     

《心理学报》2007年第39卷总目录

1认知和实验心理学汉语词汇习得的年龄效应:语义假设的证据…………………………………………陈宝国尤文平周会霞(9)彝族、白族和纳西族大学生的基本颜色词分类………………………………………张启睿和秀梅张积家(18)目标包含结构的文本阅读中目标信息的激活……………………………………冷英莫雷吴俊等(27)工作记忆对动态范式中基于客体的返回抑制的影响………………………………张明张阳付佳(35)错误记忆的产生是否依赖对词表的有意加工:无意识激活的证据…………………周楚杨治良秦金亮(43)图形项目记忆与位置来源提取的ERP研究…………     

Don't leave me this way! A qualitative study of influences on the organisational commitment and turnover intentions of graduates early in their career

While the demand for graduate recruits is growing, organisations still have little insight into how best to retain those graduates who join them. This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study which explored what factors were most likely to influence graduates' decisions to stay with or leave their first employer in the early years of their career. It does so within a conceptual framework built around organisational commitment and its antecedents and consequences.The results are used to propose how employers might take action to maximise retention, and to discuss the importance of career guidance in helping graduates to develop realistic and practical notions of what they can expect from work and what will be expected of them.     

Intense classification training to increase the detection of drowning swimmers

Lifeguards engage in a continuous process of deciding whether swimmers are in danger or not. The variety of behaviours that distressed swimmers show makes it difficult to impart declarative knowledge to this effect during lifeguard training. As an alternative, we propose a novel training tool that requires novice participants to rapidly categorise 3-s video clips of real-life swimmers as either ‘safe’ or ‘drowning’. A control group also completed a sham intervention, with surfers that may ‘fall’. Due to the complex nature of swimming pools, a scaffolded training approach was employed, which gradually increased the amount of background information over subsequent training rounds. Results demonstrated that the drowning classification training improved responses in a subsequent drowning detection test, compared with the active control-group. The scaffolded approach appeared to prepare participants for processing swimmers in the drowning-detection test. The results provide a foundation for a novel training protocol to improve lifeguard skills.