Workplace Friendship in the Electronically Connected Organization

This study examined information communication technologies and workplace friendship dynamics. Employees reported factors that influenced their initiation of friendship with a coworker and reported patterns and perceptions of communication with their workplace friend via different communication methods. Results indicated that personality, shared tasks, and perceived similarity are the most important factors to coworker friendship initiation, and the importance of physical proximity to workplace friendship is diminishing in the electronically connected workplace. Results confirm the primacy of face‐to‐face interaction for workplace friendship initiation and maintenance. E‐mail, phone, and texting were also central to communication among workplace friends. The amount of time spent telecommuting affected workplace friendship initiation and communication. Finally, generational differences were identified with respect to Internet‐based communication methods.     

Spatial compatibility of signal-response position in pointing

Two experiments are reported in which, by means of a pointing task, we studied the stimulus-position effect, i.e. the inverted U-shape form of the reaction-time function in relation to stimulus position in tasks in which stimuli and/or responses are arranged in a horizontal array. The response consisted of aiming the index finger from a central starting point at a target area on a screen. Reaction time was the main dependent variable. The spatial relation between the position of the imperative signal and the position of the response was manipulated by varying the spatial S-R compatibility and physical distance that separated the positions of stimulus and response. The stimulus-position effect was shown to depend on the compatibility of the S-R relation (Exp. 1). In Exp. 2 it was found that the modulation of the stimulus-position effect by spatial compatibility disappeared completely when the distance between the positions of stimulus and response was reduced. None of the experiments revealed that the stimulus position effect depended on signal discriminability, which renders an interpretation of this effect in terms of perceptual processes unlikely. We argue that the attentional model of spatial coding provides the most reasonable explanation of the obtained reaction-time patterns.     

Determinants and Predictive Value of Clinician Assessment of Short‐Term Suicide Risk

We examine the interrelations among clinicians' judgment of patients' suicide risk, clinicians' emotional responses, and standard risk factors in the short‐term prediction of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Psychiatric outpatients (n = 153) with a lifetime history of suicide ideation/attempt and their treating clinicians (n = 67) were evaluated at intake. Clinicians completed a standard suicide risk instrument (modified SAD PERSONS scale), a 10‐point Likert scale assessment of judgment of patient suicide risk (Clinician Prediction Scale), and a measure of their emotional responses to the patient (Therapist Response Questionnaire‐Suicide Form). The Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale and the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation were administered at a one‐month follow‐up assessment (n = 114, 74.5%). Clinician judgment of risk significantly predicted suicidal thoughts and behaviors at follow‐up. Both the standard suicide risk instrument and clinician emotional responses contributed independently to the clinician assessment of risk, which, in turn, mediated their relationships with suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Our findings validate the importance of clinical judgment in assessing suicide risk. Clinical judgment appears to be informed both by concrete risk factors and clinicians' emotional responses to suicidal patients, highlighting emotional awareness as a promising area for research and training.     

Working Memory in Pediatric Epilepsy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Neuropsychology Review - Working memory is a multicomponent system that is supported by overlapping specialized networks in the brain. Baddeley’s working memory model includes four...     

Defensive reactions of “wild-type” and “Domesticated” wild rats to approach and contact by a threat stimulus

Selective breeding of wild rats over many generations on the basis of low or high defensive threat and attack to human approach and contact has produced highly polarized “domesticated” and “wild-type” animals. Because the selection procedure selectively involves these two defense patterns, and these clearly differ in the two groups, it is of interest to determine if other, nonselected, defensive behaviors to threat stimuli also change. “Domesticated” and “wild-type” rats of the thirty-fifth generation were run in a fear defense test battery (F/DTB) to systematically evaluate defensive behaviors to a variety of present threat stimuli. “Domesticated” rats showed reduced avoidance and slower flight speed to an approaching experimenter, reduced jump/startle response to handelap and dorsal contact, less vocalization and boxing to vibrissae stimulation or to an anesthetized conspecific, and reduced defensiveness to an attempted pickup by the experimenter. These results indicate that selective bi-directional breeding for defensive threat and attack to human approach and contact produces group differences in a variety of defensive behaviors, and in defensiveness to stimuli other than those on which the selection was based. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Regression II. Development through regression

As shown in our previous paper (‘Regression I. Experimental approaches to regression’, JAP, 65, 2, 345-65), the common mechanism of regression can be described as reversible dedifferentiation, which is understood as a relative increase of the proportion of low-differentiated (older) systems in actualized experience. Experimental data show that regression following disease (chronic tension headache) is followed by adaptation and an increase in system differentiation in that experience domain which contains systems responsible for that adaptation. The results of mathematical modelling support the idea that reversible dedifferentiation can be one of the mechanisms for increasing the effectiveness of adaptation through learning. Reversible dedifferentiation, which is phenomenologically described as regression, is a general mechanism for restructuring the organism-environment interactions in situations where behaviours that were effective in the past become ineffective. Reversible dedifferentiation has evolved as a component of adaptation when new behaviours are formed and large-scale modifications in the existing behaviours are required in the face of changes in the external and/or internal environment. Thus, the authors believe that this article provides evidence for Jung’s view that regression is not only a ‘return’ to past forms of thinking, affects and behaviour, but that regressive processes provide a significant impetus for psychological growth and development.     

‘The Russian Silver Age’: invention or intention? Review of Vyacheslav P. Shestakov: Russkii Serebrjanyi vek: zapozdavshii renessans [The Russian Silver Age: The belated Renaissance] St. Petersburg,Aleteia, 2017, 218 pp,ISBN: 978-5-906980-06-9

In his book, Vyacheslav P. Shestakov conducts a theoretical reconstruction of the concept of the ‘Silver Age’ of Russian culture. He highlights three typical features that this phenomenon has in common with the European Renaissance: Hellenism, aestheticism and eroticism. In an effort to disprove Omry Ronen’s claim that the Silver Age was an unsuccessful invention of literary scholars, Shestakov calls the Silver Age “a certain intention, viz. a project of the future.” The monograph includes sections on Russian philosophy, painting and ballet.