The benefit of forgetting

Recent research using change-detection tasks has shown that a directed-forgetting cue, indicating that a subset of the information stored in memory can be forgotten, significantly benefits the other information stored in visual working memory. How do these directed-forgetting cues aid the memory representations that are retained? We addressed this question in the present study by using a recall paradigm to measure the nature of the retained memory representations. Our results demonstrated that a directed-forgetting cue leads to higher-fidelity representations of the remaining items and a lower probability of dropping these representations from memory. Next, we showed that this is made possible by the to-be-forgotten item being expelled from visual working memory following the cue, allowing maintenance mechanisms to be focused on only the items that remain in visual working memory. Thus, the present findings show that cues to forget benefit the remaining information in visual working memory by fundamentally improving their quality relative to conditions in which just as many items are encoded but no cue is provided.     

Exploring Why and How Journal Editors Retract Articles: Findings From a Qualitative Study

Editors have a responsibility to retract seriously flawed articles from their journals. However, there appears to be little consistency in journals’ policies or procedures for this. In a qualitative study, we therefore interviewed editors of science journals using semi-structured interviews to investigate their experience of retracting articles. We identified potential barriers to retraction, difficulties in the process and also sources of support and encouragement. Our findings have been used as the basis for guidelines developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics.     

A review of young people's vulnerabilities to online grooming

This review explores risk factors that may make a young person vulnerable to being groomed online. Even though research in this area is extremely limited, adolescents appear to be the age group most vulnerable to online grooming. Other vulnerabilities appear to be consistent with those associated with offline sexual abuse. The review suggests that behaviors specific to online grooming include: engaging in risk taking behavior online, high levels of internet access, and lack of parental involvement in the young person's internet use. Vulnerabilities to carry out these types of behavior and be more exposed to the risk of online grooming, are set within the context of the Ecological Model of child protection, consisting of: individual, family, community, and cultural risk factors. Patterns of vulnerability regarding living environment, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and personality are tentative, but are often interconnected. The more risk taking behaviors the young person carries out, plus greater levels of vulnerability factors, the less resilient they are likely to be towards protecting themselves against online grooming. A protective factor appears to be parental involvement in their child's use of the internet. Therefore, this, in combination with internet safety education at school, is encouraged.     

Studying employee well-being: moving forward

In this article, we attempt to integrate the commentaries to our position paper on intra-individual models of employee well-being (EWB; Ilies, R., Aw, S. S. Y., & Pluut, H. (2015). Intraindividual models of employee well-being: What have we learned and where do we go from here? European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Advance online publication) of Bakker (2015. Towards a multilevel approach of employee well-being. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Advance online publication) and Cropanzano and Dasborough (2015. Dynamic models of well-being: Implications of affective events theory for expanding current views on personality and climate. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Advance online publication) with our original suggestions into a discussion and a set of recommendations aimed at moving theory and research on EWB forward. We hope that this effort, along with our position paper and the two commentaries, will lead to the development of a more comprehensive model of EWB and will stimulate new and interesting research on the topic.     

Managing diversity in organizations: An integrative model and agenda for future research

The literature on policies, procedures, and practices of diversity management in organizations is currently fragmented and often contradictory in highlighting what is effective diversity management, and which organizational and societal factors facilitate or hinder its implementation. In order to provide a comprehensive and cohesive view of diversity management in organizations, we develop a multilevel model informed by the social identity approach that explains, on the basis of a work motivation logic, the processes by, and the conditions under which employee dissimilarity within diverse work groups is related to innovation, effectiveness, and well-being. Building on this new model, we then identify those work group factors (e.g., climate for inclusion and supervisory leadership), organizational factors (e.g., diversity management policies and procedures, and top management's diversity beliefs), and societal factors (e.g., legislation, socioeconomic situation, and culture) that are likely to contribute to the effective management of diversity in organizations. In our discussion of the theoretical implications of the proposed model, we offer a set of propositions to serve as a guide for future research. We conclude with a discussion of possible limitations of the model and practical implications for managing diversity in organizations.     

The path and price of personal development

Personal development follows an inevitable path. The initial focus is upon social factors which gives way to emphasis on ‘self’, and ultimately enters a spiritual phase. It is a one-way process, and initial social gains may be lost as the process unfolds.     

Understanding and awareness of dementia in the Sikh community

Previous literature confirms that older black minority ethnic populations are less likely than white populations to contact dementia services in the UK. However, it is unknown whether this is due to a higher or lower prevalence of dementia or due to different needs or coping strategies within these communities. The aim of this study was to explore the understanding and perceptions of dementia amongst Sikhs living in the UK. Six focus groups were involved with 28 Sikh participants who were recruited from Gurdware (Sikh places of worship). Data were analysed using constant comparative methodology. The themes reported in this paper include “awareness and interpretation of the characteristics of dementia”, “multiple perspectives of the same symptoms” and “causes of dementia”. The findings have been discussed in the context of existing research and provide an introductory insight into informing culturally appropriate interventions.     

Event Timing and Age Deficits in Higher-Order Sequence Learning

ABSTRACT

Recent studies have reported age deficits in learning sequences that contain subtle sequential regularities [e.g., Curran (1997) Curran, T. 1997. Effects of aging on implicit sequence learning: Accounting for sequence structure and explicit knowledge. Psychological Research, 60(1–2): 24–41.  [Google Scholar] Psychological Research, 60(1–2), 24; D. V. Howard et al. (2004) Howard, D. V., Howard, J. H. Jr, Japikse, K., DiYanni, C., Thompson, A. and Somberg, R. 2004. Implicit sequence learning: Effects of level of structure, adult age, and extended practice. Psychology and Aging, 19(1): 79–92. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] Psychology and Aging, 19(1), 79; Howard, J. H. Jr, & Howard, D. V. (1997) Howard, J. H. Jr and Howard, D. V. 1997. Age differences in implicit learning of higher order dependencies in serial patterns. Psychololgy and Aging, 12(4): 634–656. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. Psychololgy and Aging, 12(4), 634]. This finding is of potential theoretical interest, but the contribution of sequence event timing to this deficit has not been investigated. This study used an alternating serial reaction time task to examine implicit sequence learning in young adults when event timing mimicked that experienced by older adults in previous research. We varied the response-to-stimulus interval directly in Experiment 1 and indirectly by degrading the stimuli to influence response time in Experiment 2. Results indicate that these “aged” young adults learned the higher-order sequence structure implicitly, but they learned less than young controls and more than old adults on some measures of implicit learning in both experiments. In addition, these two different experimental manipulations produced distinct patterns of deficits despite having nearly identical effects on event sequence timing. These findings suggest that event timing alone cannot explain the age deficits observed in high-order implicit sequence learning.     

Level of Education and Category Fluency Task among Spanish Speaking Elders: Number of Words,Clustering, and Switching Strategies

ABSTRACT

It has been well documented that education influences the individual's performance on category fluency tasks but it is still unclear how this effect may differ across the different types of category tasks (i.e., animals, fruits, vegetables and clothing). This study aims (1) to analyze the effect of the level of education on four different types of category fluency tasks among elder Hispanic Americans and (2) to provide normative information on a population with different education levels that was previously screened for neurological and psychiatric conditions. In addition this study examines the semantic strategies used by these individuals to complete the fluency tasks. The sample included 105 healthy Hispanic individuals (age 55–98; 29 males and 76 females) divided into three education groups (<6, 6–11 and >11 years of education). Results showed that after controlling for age and gender, education has a main effect and is a strong predictor of performance in verbal fluency for the categories animals and clothing with increasing educational attainment being associated with higher category fluency scores and with more switches between categories. These findings suggest that the category fruit is less influenced by level of education than the other three semantic categories and may be a more appropriate test across different educational groups. Results from this study provide a reference for clinicians assessing verbal fluency in Spanish speaking populations.