The effects of team strategic orientation on team process and information search

We tested the effects of team strategic orientation on team member perceptions, work strategy and information search. In Experiment 1, 80 teams worked on a hidden profile decision-making task. A defensive team strategic orientation increased members’ perceptions of the problem’s scope, leading to a more process-focused work strategy and broader information search compared to an offensive team strategic orientation. When teams needed critical information from the environment, defensive teams outperformed offensive teams; offensive teams performed better when critical information resided within the team. In Experiment 2, these findings were replicated with 92 teams performing a different decision task. When making a second decision, half of the teams were led to change their strategic orientation; teams shifting from offense to defense altered their information search behavior more readily than did teams shifting in the opposite direction, suggesting an asymmetric adaptation effect.     

Fractal Structure of Event Segmentation: Lessons From Reel and Real Events

We investigated fractality in the segmentation of cinematic and live events. Four movies from distinct genres were first analyzed and found to be fractal, albeit in different regions of the fractal range. In Experiment 1, viewers parsed the films' events, attending to short or long timescales, using a button box to indicate break points. The temporal structure of film viewing was found to be fractal regardless of the scale of attention and to reflect the differing fractal editing structure of the films. Experiment 2 found event segmentation to be fractal in a natural setting, a basketball game, as well. An additional parallel between reel and real events was uncovered: fractal indices were at the higher end of the range for both the film genre intended to be anxiogenic and the more suspenseful portion of the basketball game. We argue that the fractal structure of perception reflects the fractal structure of events whether the events are in film or in nature. We speculate that fractal structure has implications for understanding subjective experience and, ultimately, the correspondence between films and the world.     

Ferenczi’s Ethics for Our Time: The Possibility of Being Alongside

Ferenczi’s practice and therapeutic ethics as exemplified in the Clinical Diary reveal a profound sensitivity to the questions of authority and freedom. This paper will engage with the ways in which these questions have been taken up elsewhere and have become central to post-war extensions of the psychoanalytic field, such as group analysis. A particular comparison will be made with group analytic notions of leadership and horizontal ways of relating, that is, how to be alongside one another. It will be suggested that the translatability of Ferenczi for our time reveals the adaptability of psychoanalysis to different and changing socio-political contexts.     

Central inhibition ability modulates attention-induced motion blindness

Impaired motion perception can be induced in normal observers in a rapid serial visual presentation task. Essential for this effect is the presence of motion distractors prior to the motion target, and we proposed that this attention-induced motion blindness results from high-level inhibition produced by the distractors. To investigate this, we compared the extent of the attention-induced motion blindness effect with performance on central inhibition tasks: Stroop colour naming and negative priming. A negative correlation between Stroop interference and motion performance reflected that low Stroop scores, indicative of strong inhibition ability, was associated with more severe impairments in motion perception. This association could not be explained by individual differences in fluid intelligence, task switching or response speed. Negative priming was not specifically associated with attention-induced motion blindness. The results confirm that attention can modulate motion perception and suggest that the processes involved may be shared with high-level cognitive abilities.     

Distribution of Spatial Visualization and Mathematical Problem Solving Scores: A Test of Stafford's X-linked Hypotheses

This study investigated distribution of spatial visualization scores (Space Relations test of the Differential Aptitude Test) and mathematical problem solving scores (Mental Arithmetic Problems) obtained by 161 male and 152 female, 9th grade, white students for fit to the distributions predicted by the X-linked hypotheses of recessive inheritance of these skills. Data did not support the X-linked hypotheses. No significant sex-related differences were found between mean scores of tests of spatial visualization or mathematical problem solving.     

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.