Distinct processing for pictures of animals and objects: evidence from eye movements

Many studies have suggested that emotional stimuli orient and engage attention. There is also evidence that animate stimuli, such as those from humans and animals, cause attentional bias. However, categorical and emotional factors are usually mixed, and it is unclear to what extent human context influences attentional allocation. To address this issue, we tracked participants' eye movements while they viewed pictures with animals and inanimate images (i.e., category) as focal objects. These pictures had either negative or neutral emotional valence, and either human body parts or nonhuman parts were near the focal objects (i.e., context). The picture's valence, arousal, position, size, and most of the low-level visual features were matched across categories. The results showed that nonhuman animals were more likely to be attended to and to be attended to for longer times than inanimate objects. The same pattern held for the human contexts (vs. nonhuman contexts). The effects of emotional valence, category, and context interacted. Specifically, in images with a negative valence, focal animals and objects with human context had comparable numbers of gaze fixations and gaze duration. These results highlighted the attentional bias to animate parts of a picture and clarified that the effects of category, valence, and picture context interacted to influence attentional allocation.     

Lost sleep and cyberloafing: Evidence from the laboratory and a daylight saving time quasi-experiment

The Internet is a powerful tool that has changed the way people work. However, the ubiquity of the Internet has led to a new workplace threat to productivity-cyberloafing. Building on the ego depletion model of self-regulation, we examine how lost and low-quality sleep influence employee cyberloafing behaviors and how individual differences in conscientiousness moderate these effects. We also demonstrate that the shift to Daylight Saving Time (DST) results in a dramatic increase in cyberloafing behavior at the national level. We first tested the DST-cyberloafing relation through a national quasi-experiment, then directly tested the relation between sleep and cyberloafing in a closely controlled laboratory setting. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, practice, and future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

A confirmatory factor analytic approach on perceptions of knowledge and skills in teaching (PKST)

This paper reports the cross-validation of the factor pattern of the Perceptions of Knowledge and Skills in Teaching (PKST) survey, which was used to assess the self-perceived pedagogical knowledge and skills of pre-service and beginning teachers. The sample comprised 323 pre-service teachers enrolled in a 1-yr. post-graduate teacher education program in Singapore. The survey had 37 items distributed across six scales: student learning, lesson planning, instructional support, accommodating diversity, classroom management, and care and concern. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to cross-validate the survey's factor pattern. The results showed that the model was an acceptable fit to the data. The PKST survey can thus be adapted by different teacher education programs to assess pre-service and beginning teachers' progress in developing their pedagogical knowledge and skills.     

Functional Extended Redundancy Analysis

We propose a functional version of extended redundancy analysis that examines directional relationships among several sets of multivariate variables. As in extended redundancy analysis, the proposed method posits that a weighed composite of each set of exogenous variables influences a set of endogenous variables. It further considers endogenous and/or exogenous variables functional, varying over time, space, or other continua. Computationally, the method reduces to minimizing a penalized least-squares criterion through the adoption of a basis function expansion approach to approximating functions. We develop an alternating regularized least-squares algorithm to minimize this criterion. We apply the proposed method to real datasets to illustrate the empirical feasibility of the proposed method.     

Two experimental tests of trust in in‐group strangers: The moderating role of common knowledge of group membership

The role that shared group membership plays in decisions to trust others is now well established within social psychology. A close reading of this literature, however, shows that this process is often moderated by other variables. Currently, we examined one potential moderator of this process. In particular, we evaluated the role that common knowledge of a shared social group membership between self and a to‐be‐trusted stranger provides as a basis for trusting this stranger. This common knowledge emerges when the truster knows the group membership of the to‐be‐trusted other, and believes that this other also knows the group membership of the truster. In two experiments, using pre‐existing and minimal groups, we show that people are more likely to trust an in‐group member over an out‐group member under conditions of common group‐membership knowledge rather than private group‐membership knowledge (i.e. other does not know truster's group), even when they could choose not to trust anyone. The manner in which these data add to current understandings of group‐based trust in strangers is discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Entrepreneurship,professionalism, leadership: A framework and measure for understanding boundaryless careers

We propose a person-centered framework for conceptualizing subjective careers in an increasingly boundaryless work context. Specifically, we argue that entrepreneurship, professionalism, and leadership (EPL) can serve as three key dimensions of subjective career space. We relate this framework to earlier macro-level national and organizational career models proposed by Kanter (1989) and Schein (1978). Our empirical study involving 10,326 Singaporean university students demonstrated that entrepreneurial, professional, and leadership career aspirations (including motivations, efficacies, and intentions) can be measured independently, that these career dimensions are independent of vocational interests, and that they are to some degree viewed as competing career alternatives. We also show that EPL motivation profiles can operationalize the boundaryless and protean career concepts. Individuals concurrently high in entrepreneurial, professional, and leadership career motivations, and those high in entrepreneurial and leadership motivations are highest in boundaryless and self-directed career attitudes, while those primarily motivated for professional careers hold the most traditional career attitudes. We conclude by discussing the potential of the framework for understanding human resource issues at organizational and national levels and for enhancing the study of entrepreneurship, professionalism, and leadership.     

Lexical and sublexical semantic preview benefits in Chinese reading

Semantic processing from parafoveal words is an elusive phenomenon in alphabetic languages, but it has been demonstrated only for a restricted set of noncompound Chinese characters. Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm, this experiment examined whether parafoveal lexical and sublexical semantic information was extracted from compound preview characters. Results generalized parafoveal semantic processing to this representative set of Chinese characters and extended the parafoveal processing to radical (sublexical) level semantic information extraction. Implications for notions of parafoveal information extraction during Chinese reading are discussed.     

Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Child Social Preference During the Early School Years: Mediation by Maternal Warmth and Child Emotion Regulation

This longitudinal study examined processes that mediate the association between maternal depressive symptoms and peer social preference during the early school years. Three hundred and fifty six kindergarten children (182 boys) and their mothers participated in the study. During kindergarten, mothers reported their level of depressive symptomatology. In first grade, teachers rated children’s emotion regulation at school and observers rated the affective quality of mother-child interactions. During second grade, children’s social preference was assessed by peer nomination. Results indicated that mothers’ level of depressive symptomatology negatively predicted their child’s social preference 2 years later, controlling for the family SES and teacher-rated social preference during kindergarten. Among European American families, the association between maternal depressive symptoms and social preference was partially mediated by maternal warmth and the child’s emotion regulation. Although the relation between maternal depressive symptoms and children peer preference was stronger among African American families than Europrean American families, its mediation by the maternal warmth and child’s emotion regulation was not found in African American families.     

影响控制感剥夺的因素及其后果

控制感是指人们相信自己的选择和行为与相应的结果存在一致性的一种认知状态,对人的身心健康都有重要影响。控制感剥夺之后,人会产生不适症状（如习得性无助和抑郁）。例如,长期剥夺控制感会引起习得性无助,甚至导致抑郁。影响控制感的因素包括社会环境、个性气质、生理基础,甚至可能受到基因的调控作用。深入理解控制感剥夺背后的心理机制能增进对人们自身心理特点的了解,有助于预防或干预一些心理疾病的产生。     

Frog embryos use multiple levels of temporal pattern in risk assessment for vibration-cued escape hatching

Animal Cognition - Stereotyped signals can be a fast, effective means of communicating danger, but animals assessing predation risk must often use more variable incidental cues. Red eyed-treefrog,...