Surface‐ and deep‐level dissimilarity effects on social integration and individual effectiveness related outcomes in work groups: A meta‐analytic integration

Prior research linking demographic (e.g., age, ethnicity/race, gender, and tenure) and underlying psychological (e.g., personality, attitudes, and values) dissimilarity variables to individual group member's work‐related outcomes produced mixed and contradictory results. To account for these findings, this study develops a contingency framework and tests it using meta‐analytic and structural equation modelling techniques. In line with this framework, results showed different effects of surface‐level (i.e., demographic) dissimilarity and deep‐level (i.e., underlying psychological) dissimilarity on social integration, and ultimately on individual effectiveness related outcomes (i.e., turnover, task, and contextual performance). Specifically, surface‐level dissimilarity had a negative effect on social integration under low but not under high team interdependence. In return, social integration fully mediated the negative relationship between surface‐level dissimilarity and individual effectiveness related outcomes under low interdependence. In contrast, deep‐level dissimilarity had a negative effect on social integration, which was stronger under high and weaker under low team interdependence. Contrary to our predictions, social integration did not mediate the negative relationship between deep‐level dissimilarity and individual effectiveness related outcomes but suppressed positive direct effects of deep‐level dissimilarity on individual effectiveness related outcomes. Possible explanations for these counterintuitive findings are discussed.     

Achieving a Maximum Level of Vaccination for Medical Students: a Rigourous Ethical and Legal Framework Procedure

The Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS) of the University of Sherbrooke has observed year after year, that certain students have not started and or completed their immunizations for common infectious diseases, which in effect makes them inadmissible for their clinical internships in healthcare establishments. The program administrators have posed a series of questions on the best way to proceed with these students as, a certain number remain reluctant to vaccination. They are often confronted with ethical dilemmas, are not necessarily comfortable with their rights and responsibilities and wish to be guided throughout the process. This article aims to put forth a procedure that would be put in place to support the administrators in a way for them to obtain a more favorable vaccination level for all of their students in the most reasonable amount of time possible. The interest of the procedure is to move forward in a few simple and well defined steps that are supported by a rigorous legal framework, while respecting the rights and freedoms of the students. It is also designed so that it could be replicated in other faculties of medicine.     

Getting a tool gives wings: overestimation of tool-related benefits in a motor imagery task and a decision task

Two experiments examine whether people overestimate the benefits provided by tool use in motor tasks. Participants had to move different quantities of objects by hand (two at a time) or with a tool (four at a time). The tool was not within reach so participants had to get it before moving the objects. In Experiment 1, the task was performed in a real and an imagined situation. In Experiment 2, participants had to decide for each quantity, whether they preferred moving the objects by hand or with the tool. Our findings indicated that people perceive tool actions as less costly in terms of movement time than they actually are (Experiment 1) and decide to use a tool even when it objectively provides less time-based benefits than using the hands (Experiment 2). Taken together, the data suggest that people overestimate the benefits provided by tool use.     

Functional connectivity changes in second language vocabulary learning

Functional connectivity changes in the language network (Price, 2010), and in a control network involved in second language (L2) processing (Abutalebi & Green, 2007) were examined in a group of Persian (L1) speakers learning French (L2) words. Measures of network integration that characterize the global integrative state of a network (Marrelec, Bellec et al., 2008) were gathered, in the shallow and consolidation phases of L2 vocabulary learning. Functional connectivity remained unchanged across learning phases for L1, whereas total, between- and within-network integration levels decreased as proficiency for L2 increased.The results of this study provide the first functional connectivity evidence regarding the dynamic role of the language processing and cognitive control networks in L2 learning (Abutalebi et al., 2005, Altarriba and Heredia, 2008, Leonard et al., 2011, Parker-Jones et al., 2011). Thus, increased proficiency results in a higher degree of automaticity and lower cognitive effort (Segalowitz & Hulstijn, 2005).     

Antiferromagnetic order and the structural order–disorder transition in the Cd6Ho quasicrystal approximant

It has generally been accepted that the orientational ordering of the Cd₄ tetrahedron within the Cd₆ R quasicrystal approximants is kinetically inhibited for R?=?Ho, Er, Tm and Lu by steric constraints. Our high-resolution X-ray scattering measurements of the Cd₆Ho quasicrystal approximant, however, reveal an abrupt (first-order) transition to a monoclinic structure below T _S?=?178?K for samples that have ‘aged’ at room temperature for approximately one year, reopening this question. Using X-ray resonant magnetic scattering at the Ho L ₃-edge we have elucidated the nature of the antiferromagnetic ordering below T _N?=?8.5?K in Cd₆Ho. The magnetic Bragg peaks are found at the charge forbidden H?+?K?+?L?=?2n?+?1 positions, referenced to the high-temperature body-centred cubic structure. In general terms, this corresponds to antiferromagnetic arrangements of the Ho moments on adjacent clusters in the unit cell as previously found for Cd₆Tb.     

When motion improves working memory

ABSTRACT

In the present study, we used a complex span task to explore how memory traces resulting from Self-Performed Task (SPT) and Verbal Task (VT) are maintained in working memory. Participants memorised series of five sentences describing an action either through SPT or VT. Between pairs of sentences, participants performed a concurrent task that varied according to its nature and its cognitive load. The concurrent task was either a verbal task, a low cognitive load motor task or a high cognitive load motor task. A control condition served as a baseline. First, we observed that performance in SPT and VT did not decrease with verbal or motor suppression, but was lower with an increase of the cognitive load. This suggests that memory traces are maintained through attentional refreshing whatever the encoding (SPT or VT). Second, while the enactment effect was replicated in the control condition, it tended to vanish with a verbal concurrent task; moreover, it was reversed with motor concurrent tasks. Surprisingly, the latter effect resulted from an increase of VT memory performance when participants repeated the same gesture between sentences. Finally, our results provide additional evidence that the enactment effect does not rely on attention.     

How long to get to the “gist” of real-world natural scenes?

This study aimed at assessing the processing time of a natural scene in a fast categorization task of its context or “gist”. In Experiment 1, human subjects performed 4 go/no-go categorization tasks in succession with colour pictures of real-world scenes belonging to 2 natural categories: “Sea” and “mountain”, and 2 artificial categories: “Indoor” and “urban”. Experiment 2 used colour and grey-level scenes in the same tasks to assess the role of colour cues on performance. Pictures were flashed for 26 ms. Both experiments showed that the gist of real-world scenes can be extracted with high accuracy (>90%), short median RT (400-460 ms) and early responses triggered with latencies as short as 260-300 ms. Natural scenes were processed faster than artificial scenes. Categories for which colour could have a diagnostic value were processed faster in colour than in grey. Finally, processing speed is compared for scene and object categorization tasks.     

Development and evaluation of the psychometric properties of the parents' Perceptions of Physical Activity Importance and their Children's Ability Questionnaire (PPPAICAQ)

ObjectivesThe purpose of the present study was to develop and psychometrically evaluate a new measure of parental perceptions grounded in the Eccles' parental socialization framework: the Parents' Perceptions of Physical Activity Importance and their Children's Ability Questionnaire (PPPAICAQ).DesignCross-sectional with self-reported questionnaires.MethodThe total sample comprised 1100 parents of children (6–11 years old) and was randomly divided in third (one calibration and two validation samples). Data were analyzed with reliability, confirmatory factor analyses (CFA), multi-group CFAs as well as with correlational analyses.ResultsResults of the initial confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) of the 2-factor 12-item model on the calibration sample resulted in a poor fit to the data. Re-estimation of the PPPAICAQ resulted in the deletion of 4 initial items. The 2-factor 8-item model revealed a good fit to the data for the three samples. Results of two multiple-group CFAs showed that the final model was partially invariant across the father and mother as well as the boy and girl samples. The patterns of relationships between parents' motivation, parents' support and the PPPAICAQ subscales provided evidence for the criterion-related validity of the PPPAICAQ.ConclusionThis study provided support for the reliability and validity of the PPPAICAQ. The PPPAICAQ is an instrument that will be useful for theoretically-driven research on parental socialization influence on children’ PA.     

A cluster analysis of perfectionism among competitive athletes

In the present study, the ways in which athletes may experience perfectionism in a sport context were examined. The question of interest was whether self-confidence, intensity, and direction of cognitive and somatic precompetitive anxiety would differ across identifiable profiles of perfectionism. Competitive athletes (N= 166) completed the Sport-Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, the French-Canadian Hewitt Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, and the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 Revised, including a Direction scale. Results of the cluster analysis indicated that athletes could be classified into three groups labelled Nonperfectionists, Adaptive perfectionists, and Maladaptive perfectionists. Perfectionism profiles differed significantly on Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety Intensity and on Cognitive Anxiety Direction. The importance of considering all dimensions of perfectionism simultaneously when examining the functional nature of this construct in sport is discussed.