Imitation improves language comprehension

Humans imitate each other during social interaction. This imitative behavior streamlines social interaction and aids in learning to replicate actions. However, the effect of imitation on action comprehension is unclear. This study investigated whether vocal imitation of an unfamiliar accent improved spoken-language comprehension. Following a pretraining accent comprehension test, participants were assigned to one of six groups. The baseline group received no training, but participants in the other five groups listened to accented sentences, listened to and repeated accented sentences in their own accent, listened to and transcribed accented sentences, listened to and imitated accented sentences, or listened to and imitated accented sentences without being able to hear their own vocalizations. Posttraining measures showed that accent comprehension was most improved for participants who imitated the speaker's accent. These results show that imitation may aid in streamlining interaction by improving spoken-language comprehension under adverse listening conditions.     

The gap effect for eye and hand movements

A temporal gap between fixation point offset and stimulus onset typically yields shorter saccadic latencies to the stimulus than if the fixation stimulus remained on. Several researchers have explored the extent to which this gap also reduces latencies of other responses but have failed to find a gap effect isolated from general warning effects. Experiment 1, however, showed a robust gap effect for aimed hand movements (which required determination of a precise spatial location), regardless of whether the hand moved alone or was accompanied by a saccadic eye movement. Experiment 2 replicated this aimed hand gap effect and also showed a smaller effect for choice manual keypress responses (which required determination of the direction of response only). Experiment 3 showed no gap effect for simple manual keypress responses (which required no spatial determination). The results are consistent with an interpretation of the gap effect in terms of facilitation of spatially oriented responses.     

Imitation of Gestures in Children is Goal-directed

The view that the motor program activated during imitation is organized by goals was investigated by asking pre-school children to imitate a set of hand gestures of varying complexity that were made by an experimenter sitting in front of them. In Experiments 1 and 3, children reached for the correct object (one of their own ears or one of two dots on a table) but preferred to use the ipsilateral hand. This ipsilateral preference was not observed when hand movements were made to only one ear (Experiment 2), or when movements were diercted at space rather than physical objects (Experiment 3). The results are consistent with the notion that imitation is guided by goals and provide insights about how these goals are organized.     

The Doctoral Degree in Counselor Education and Supervision

The doctoral degree in Counselor Education and Supervision (CES) is a terminal or final degree in the field of counseling. This article, provides an abbreviated look at the development of the CES doctoral degree, reviews the development of accreditation standards, reports on current status of the doctoral degree, and comments on the possible future of the CES doctoral degree.     

Investigating the Effects of Applicant Justice Perceptions on Job Offer Acceptance

Drawing on extant recruitment and organizational justice theory, this research examines the effects of justice perceptions on job acceptance decisions across 2 samples (n = 332 and 2,974) of applicants to jobs within the U.S. military. More specifically, we examine justice–job offer acceptance relations relative to other pertinent recruitment predictors including, organizational image, familiarity, person–organization (P–O) fit perceptions, and recruiter behaviors. Findings from both studies support the importance of justice perceptions in influencing job offer acceptance. Fairness perceptions accounted for 29.37% and 19.22% of the unique variance in job offer acceptance, in Studies 1 and 2, respectively. The results of this research provide much needed empirical evidence to the scant literature on actual job acceptance and highlight important practical implications for employers.     

Lebensqualität von ärztlichen und psychologischen Psychotherapeuten

In a large empirical cross-sectional study the quality of life of medical and psychological psychotherapists ( n =71, respectively n =103) was examined as well as the influence of the different therapeutic methods used. Instruments used were the Questionnaire on Quality of Life of Physicians (Reimer and Jurkat 2003) respectively the Questionnaire on Quality of Life of Psychologists (Jurkat and Reimer 2003) as well as the SF-36 Health Survey (Bullinger and Kirchberger 1998). The majority of participants in both samples are satisfied with their life. Psychological psychotherapists are comparatively more content with their work situation and judge their own health more positively than their medical colleagues do. Both groups feel their income situation to be a loss in quality of life. A common fear is an even greater bureaucratic burden and financial deterioration. Thus it seems that psychohygienic measures and secure job perspectives may contribute to raising the quality of life of psychotherapists.     

How green defaults promote environmentally friendly decisions: Attitude‐conditional default acceptance but attitude‐unconditional effects on actual choices

Defaults (i.e., options that become effective without an active choice) have been found to be powerful tools to influence decision‐making in a range of behavioral domains. However, seemingly conflicting assumptions have been expressed regarding the interplay of defaults with individual attitudes. Whereas some expect attitude‐conditional effects (i.e., a statistical default‐by‐attitude interaction), others assume an attitude‐unconditional effectiveness of defaults (i.e., statistically additive effects). Integrating both assumptions, we argue that the interplay of defaults and attitudes depends on what is considered a default effect. Specifically, whereas default acceptance is likely to be attitude‐conditional, we predicted that defaults and attitudes would add up in explaining people's actual choices. We tested these hypotheses in an online shopping scenario presenting environmentally friendly or conventional default products to 231 participants. Participants’ environmental attitude was assessed with the General Ecological Behavior scale and actual product choices were identified if participants rejected a given default product. In line with our hypotheses, default acceptance was predicted by a default‐by‐attitude interaction. In contrast, actual environmentally friendly product choices were found to be an additive function of defaults and participants’ environmental attitude. From an applied perspective, our findings suggest that defaults can readily be applied even in attitude‐heterogeneous target populations. Concurrently, however, our findings also speak of the importance of people's attitudes for understanding individual decision‐making.