Unsatisfactory Supervisory Experiences Reported by South Korean Supervisors: Types,Responses, and Cultural Context

Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy - Eleven Korean supervisors were interviewed about their unsatisfactory supervisory experiences (USEs) and the interview data were analyzed using a grounded...     

When leader–member exchange differentiation improves work group functioning: The combined roles of differentiation bases and reward interdependence

Drawing on social hierarchy theory, we develop a contingency model of leader–member exchange (LMX) differentiation in which LMX differentiation is positively and negatively related to group cooperation and group social undermining, respectively, when it is based on the group members’ performance, but the relations are reversed (i.e., negative and positive, respectively) when it stems from a leader's personal liking of the members. In addition, we propose that the moderating effects of the performance and personal liking bases of LMX differentiation are magnified by the levels of reward interdependence. Specifically, under a high (vs. low) level of reward interdependence, LMX differentiation based on performance more strongly relates to high group cooperation and low group social undermining, whereas LMX differentiation with a personal liking basis is more likely to decrease group cooperation and increase group social undermining. Group cooperation and social undermining are then hypothesized to convey the three‐way interactive effects of LMX differentiation, its two bases, and reward interdependence on subsequent group performance. Analyses of data from 328 sales groups of a large retailer support the core part of our contingency model of LMX differentiation.     

Mothers' and Fathers' Parenting Quality and Toddlers' Interactive Behaviours in Dyadic and Triadic Family Contexts

Based on a family systems perspective, this research examined the role of parental gender and family play context in parent–toddler interactions and how behaviours of family members influence each other. Sixty‐seven mostly White, middle‐class families consisting of a mother, father and toddler were videotaped in three separate sessions: mother–child, father–child and both parents–child at a university laboratory setting. The results indicated that there were significant main effects of both parent gender (mother versus father) and context (dyadic versus triadic) on parents' positive and negative parenting and children's engagement and negativity toward parents. Higher levels of mutual engagement between mothers and toddlers were associated with lower levels of fathers' positive parenting and children's engagement with fathers, when moving from the dyadic to the triadic play context. However, fathers' mutual engagement with toddlers was not associated with mothers' parenting quality and child interactive behaviours with mothers. There were also interaction effects of parent gender and context on parents' negative parenting and children's engagement and negativity toward parents. This study adds unique insights to the differences and similarities of parent–child dyadic and triadic interactions during toddlerhood. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children’s Play with a Forest Diorama as a Window into Ecological Cognition

This study examined the play of 4-year-old children with a forest diorama that included toy representations of plants and animals. To examine the potential role of culture and expertise in diorama play, children from 3 samples participated: rural Native American, urban Native American, and urban non-Native American. Children’s playtime was divided into time segments, which were coded for types of actions and for types of talk. Children from all 3 samples actively engaged with the diorama in both realistic and imaginative play. Furthermore, children from all samples were sensitive to ecological relations. In addition, Native American children talked at least as much as the non-Native American children, a finding that challenges widespread characterizations of Native American children as less talkative and possessing smaller vocabularies. The most striking finding was that Native American children (both urban and rural) were more than twice as likely as non-Native American children to take the perspective of an animal in their play. These results demonstrate the value of dioramas for assessing young children’s biological cognition.     

Ethnicity, Acculturation, and Religiosity as Predictors of Female College Students' Role Expectations

The present study was designed to examine ethnicity, acculturation, and religiosity as predictors of European American and Korean American evangelical female college students' role expectations. Fifty-seven European American and 37 Korean American single women, who ranged in age from 17 to 24 years, completed a demographic questionnaire, a role expectation measure, three religiosity measures, and an acculturation measure. The results indicated a significant negative correlation between fundamentalism and role-sharing expectations for European American women and a significant positive correlation between level of acculturation and role-sharing expectations for Korean American women. The results suggest that fundamentalism is a stronger predictor of role expectations than religious commitment in European American women and that acculturation is a more accurate predictor of role expectations than generation in the United States among Korean American women.     

Visual working memory for line orientations and face identities

Previous studies have shown that the number of objects we can actively hold in visual working memory is smaller for more complex objects. However, complex objects are not just more complex but are often more similar to other complex objects used as test probes. To separate effects of complexity from effects of similarity, we measured visual memory following a 1-sec delay for complex and simple objects at several levels of memory-to-test similarity. When memory load was one object, memory accuracy for a face (a complex attribute) was similar to a line orientation (a simple attribute) when the face changed in steps of 10% along a morphing continuum and the line changed in steps of 5° in orientation. Performance declined with increasing memory load and increasing memory-to-test similarity. Remarkably, when memory load was three or four objects, face memory was better than orientation memory at similar changed steps. These results held when memory for line orientations was compared with that for inverted faces. We conclude that complex objects do not always exhaust visual memory more quickly than simple objects do.     

Testing unidimensionality in polytomous Rasch models

A fundamental assumption of most IRT models is that items measure the same unidimensional latent construct. For the polytomous Rasch model two ways of testing this assumption against specific multidimensional alternatives are discussed. One, a marginal approach assuming a multidimensional parametric latent variable distribution, and, two, a conditional approach with no distributional assumptions about the latent variable. The second approach generalizes the Martin-Löf test for the dichotomous Rasch model in two ways: to polytomous items and to a test against an alternative that may have more than two dimensions. A study on occupational health is used to motivate and illustrate the methods.The authors would like to thank Niels Keiding, Klaus Larsen and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments to a previous version of this paper. This research was supported by a grant from the Danish Research Academy and by a general research grant from Quality Metric, Inc.     

Visual search proceeds concurrently during the attentional blink and response selection bottleneck

It is well known that human information processing comprises several distinct subprocesses—namely, the perceptual, central, and motor stage. In each stage, attention plays an important role. Specifically, a type of attention—perceptual attention—operates to detect and identify a sensory input. Following this, another class of attention—central attention—is involved in working memory encoding and response selection at the central stage. While perceptual attention and central attention are known to be separate, distinct processes, some researchers reported findings that loading central attention postponed the deployment of perceptual attention needed to perform a spatial configuration search. We tested whether a similar pattern of results would emerge when a different kind of search task is used. To do so, we had participants perform a visual-search task of searching for a feature conjunction target, taxing perceptual attention while they are engaged in central processes, such as working memory encoding and response selection. The results showed that perceptual processing of conjunction search stimuli could be carried out concurrently with central processes. These results suggest that the nature of the concurrent visual search process is a determinant responsible for the dynamic relationship between perceptual attention deployed for visual search and central attention needed for working memory encoding and response selection.